Lughnasa                            Waxing Green Corn Moon

This morning a few more items got moved out of the computer room and a space for not currently needed electronic accessories created.  I’m still not sure why the declutter genie has landed on me, but she’s buzzing me pretty hard.

I remember, long time ago, in the early 1970’s, a hoarder.  Community Involvement Programs had hired me as a week-end and night time staff person.  In return I received a minimal salary and an apartment.  C.I.P. provided independent living training to recently deinstitutionalized persons.  This was a time when states all across the country began to shut down their state hospitals.

C.I.P. got mostly developmentally delayed adults though some of our clients also had an M.I. diagnosis.  This guy, whose name I don’t recall, never threw anything away.  He lived in one of the apartments in the Mauna Loa building, one the same as the one I had.  In his he kept grocery sacks, magazines, food wrappers, junk mail, gift wrap.  While wondering what to do about him, I read an article on overloading therapy.  In this case instead of insisting on the hoarder cleaning things up  you give them more and more things to hoard.  The idea is similar to desensitization therapy.

It may be that I’ve hit my overload point.  I’m a hoarder of a certain kind.  I buy books, lots of books.  I keep them; I keep almost all of them.  I’m reluctant to throw out magazines.  In both instances I think, what if I want to look something up.  Then, there are the files and research, gathered over many years.  And, too, the computers.  On this desk right I have three desktop computers, each a different generation.

I also hoard knowledge, stuffing it in, stuffing it in until it feels like my head could not hold anymore.  Then I add something else.  In all these cases I operate from the just in case principle.  Just in case I ever need to know more about the pre-Raphaelites, Chinese history, linguistics, American political philosophy, water politics, philosophy, the Renaissance, the middle ages, Taoism, Chinese literature, poetry I read and learn.  I also watch movies in the same way, television programs, too.

Now the upside is that I gain a broad knowledge base and have a few areas where I have some real depth:  biblical studies, theology, certain areas of history, gardening, perhaps some aspects of art history, politics.  It has always been my dream that at some point a gestalt would appear, a synthesis of all this learning.  Some insight, some new understanding.  Maybe they’ve come and I didn’t recognize them.

A long time ago I took a test to see what my strengths are.  My top strength was curiosity and interest in the world.  My second was love of learning.  So, you might say that this is not hoarding at all, rather it is an expression of my core personality.  Whatever it is, in terms of books, papers, stuff, I’ve got too much and before Kate retires next year I’m gonna get rid of a lot of it.