I tend to take my vacation in stages; a week in January and a week in July; and the week in July I always arrange to insure includes my birthday. At these times, I often undertake a personal ‘refit’ – reducing the clutter in my home, rearranging the furniture, generally cleaning up in a more thorough manner than the usual daily or weekly maintenance. When you remain in one place for a long time, having things stay the same can become dull; I have found such a refit can revitalize me in a way.
This year, as I turned fifty, that refit has taken on a special significance. I’d sold my drawing table, which I had for fifteen years but hadn’t used all that much in the last two; and I’d purchased a new bookcase. A lot of material I once considered essential was reclassified as ‘clutter’ and disposed of. My place looks quite different now than it did before, and I find I do not regret the changes.
(I did worry, as I decided to sell the drawing table, that I would come to regret the choice. Sunk-cost fallacy is a real thing which has haunted me so many times; and has had me reversing course on other opportunities to reorder my life. This year, however, I’m gratified to report it has not had that hold on me as it has in the past.)
The changes this year reflect, more so than previous years, the underlying shifts in myself that have happened recently. I’ve come full circle in my creative interests, returning to writing rather than art or comics or game development (Part of this is practical: writing a story, hard as it is, is still easier than trying to script, draw, and publish a comic, or trying to incorporate a story into a game. I have a great deal of respect for those people who can do these things and do them well; but I finally have to admit that I am not one of those people). I no longer buy art supplies; but I do buy more books, both new and used. My gaming and graphics desktop computer gets less and less attention now, while the laptop I’m composing this blog entry on becomes more and more my primary electronic device.
There can be no denying that I have changed as I have gotten older. What makes this change, this refit, different from all the last is that I have finally been able to embrace it.
On the wall of my apartment hangs a poem I’ve kept since my college days, the “Desiderata.” In it, there is the following line: Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. I’ve certainly learned to surrender a lot this past year: interests, hobbies, ambitions. It was, looking back, a much gentler process than I had imagined it to be. With so much cleared away, I feel like I can move forward on the things that remain, the things that matter.
And a good thing too; for turning fifty also mean accepting that my life is well into its latter days. We Crisps live a long time, but my oldest grandparents all passed on in their eighties and nineties. With that as a reference, I figure I have thirty years left, maybe forty if I’m lucky. I believe I now have the right mindset to meet these last decades and make the most of them.