And so it begins…

November 12th came and went with barely an acknowledgment from me.  What’s so special about that date?  Well Dave Bruno’s 100 Thing Challenge officially began on that date.  He’ll start with 97 personal items which gives him some wiggle room.  While I aspire to be like Dave, I just don’t think I’m a 100 (or 97) Thing Guy. Maybe I’m a 229 Thing Guy or a 312 Thing Guy or a 987 Thing Guy?  Anyway, I’m fairly sure Dave arbitrarily chose 100. My main problem seems to be procrastination. I allow myself to be easily distracted in order not to do something straight away.  Yes, another way of saying I’m lazy.  Hence the reason why I have not yet even counted what I own.

But procrastination or no procrastination, I finally bagged up my first batch of stuff to get rid of.  A medium sized black bag now sits in the corner of my bedroom ready to be dispatched to the nearby Islamic Relief clothes bank.  Contained therein is the following:

• 1 pair of steel toe-capped safety boots
• 1 jacket
• 1 zippered jumper
• 1 pair of trousers
• 2 3 ties
• 1 cap
• 2 4 t-shirts (incl. two Corona ‘party beer’ t-shirts I received and never wore; not sure how that will go down with Islamic Relief)
• 8 shirts

I found the internal chatter when going through my stuff pretty annoying.  When in doubt over whether to keep something or not, I managed to repeatedly convince myself that I should hang on to something or other because I might need it.  I have two three ties that I kept (just in case) even though I rarely wear ties.  I have two t-shirts that I have only worn once but I managed to tell myself that they are trendy items that trendy backpackers (or soon to be backpackers, like me) would be wearing.  Thinking about it now, I should ditch the t-shirts purely on that basis.  Fuck, I’m becoming delusional.

And with the stuff I’m getting rid of, I try not to convince myself I’m being charitable.  In fact I know most of the stuff I’ve bagged up this time was stuff that has been sitting in various cupboards gathering dust.  Either that or it was stuff in poor condition.  So this was not a charitable act but a selfish one – the stuff I’m getting rid of is an inconvenience to me.  I feel relieved at being able to get rid of it and, with lesser satisfaction, I feel happy that a charity will benefit.

In related news, my friend Nick is going to start being a car-boot sale merchant.  He told me he was looking for stock and we came to a deal whereby I’d supply him with some goods (ie. my junk) and he’d sell it for me at the car-boot sale.  We’ll split the profit 60-40 in his favour.  I don’t want to get caught up on the money side of things, I just want to get rid of the shit that is clogging up my life, metaphorically speaking.

Just thinking about it, I should make dispatching of stuff a weekly routine….

Filed under: blog , buddhism, charity, consumerism