Sunday, and Late Saturday

In New York City, people throw out perfectly good furniture all the time. And other people frequently pick the stuff up before the garbage man gets there. I've found a few items this way myself.

One such item was a full-length mirror. I found it a few months back. It didn't have a scratch on it, just was missing a frame. So I took it home thinking it wouldn't be hard to find a frame given that mirrors are thrown out fairly often around here. I even thought about hanging it with just those corner pieces you can set a mirror into.

A few weeks ago I found a broken mirror with an intact frame. I brought it home and last night decided to switch out the broken glass for the mirror I already had. Everything went fine until I got the new mirror halfway down the frame. It hit a nail that was a little too tight for the mirror to slide by. So I started to remove the nail. After loosening it, I got the hammer to pull it out. I barely touched the mirror, and it broke! I was so mad at myself for not pulling the mirror out first. So, both mirrors got thrown out, and then I figured, why keep the frame? And I took that to the lobby.

After that I got into a dream scrapbook I had started and recycled a bunch of the pictures I had cut out. I even pulled off many of the pictures I'd already glued in - they just didn't inspire me anymore.

BTW, someone took the feather mask and hung it on the mirror in the lobby. It looks really cool hanging there - I have awesome neighbors!

Today, I took some ink cartridges to Staples for recycling. They weren't my junk, I was doing it for one of my employers, but they had been sitting at my place for awhile. I also took 18 plastic bags to the grocery store to recycle them. That's right, I had 18 extra bags hanging around this place. Mind-boggling.

It's slow going, clearing clutter one, or a few, pieces at a time. I'm impatient to get more done. But I've always quit before when I got too ambitious, so slow and easy does it this time.

The big result this week: A paradigm shift. I was working on a solar power project for a class I'm in. The project went through two incarnations and ground to a halt. I was out of ideas and didn't know how to proceed. This clutter project was in part created as a diversion from the solar project, as I knew I just needed to focus on something else for awhile.

This week, I began seeing the solar project in a way I'd never considered before. I began to see it as a business I could start, and the possible fulfillment of a dream I've had for several years with regard to solar power. What's amazing about this is that I didn't want to be a business owner. I had heard different money gurus talking about doing what you loved and making money at it, but identifying what I loved proved difficult for me, and I couldn't see how to make money at it. But as I thought this week about the form my solar project could take, it suddenly occurred to me that what I was thinking about was something I had had dreamed of doing if I ever got rich. I finally got it that this what the gurus were talking about. Do what you love, do what you dream, be passionate about something! I would want to do this project even if I made nothing doing it. THAT'S the kind of love they are talking about. I finally connected the dots and realized, I could make money at this.

Wow. I wonder what will happen when I really start to get rid of stuff!