My Drawers are Clean!

Seriously. The cleanest they've been in years. No one else was ever looking at them, so they got a little messy. But now, there are ziploc baggies holding my soy sauce packets. I have drawer liners, and special drawers for special things. It's all very exciting. And I had nothing to do with it. Well, not those particular drawers. But I'm working on others. Now I just have certain standards to uphold. Something bigger to aspire to.

Not to say the rest of the place looks as pretty as the drawers. You know how the ex-roommate didn't have anything but a mattress and clothes? Well I had a whole closet full of things in his room. It went untouched for years. Five years. And let's just say that since I moved into my place in the middle of production and usually in the middle of the night (it was only down the street so this was the 1am visual: me in slippers and sweats pulling suitcases, carrying boxes and lamps and dumping all of the aforementioned into the closet or wherever else felt appropriate... never to be seen again... until now). And that closet? It was like my job search, job history, and writing graveyard with some coats and photo albums thrown in for good measure. All very sobering. Apparently I've written 5 screenplays, 2 rough drafts of books, fifteen plus short stories, one bar mitzvah script, four personal essays, one tv spec and five episodes of the show I wrote for... which means lots of notes, scripts and boxes-- both filing boxes and big oversized ones which have no business holding so many papers. That means memories and sorting. Both of which take time to process. Especially since I don't remember half of them. Nor the bad hairdos... try being a cheerleader in Orange County in the 80s.

So the dining room-- which is now back to being the office-- looks like it should have police tape around it. And my bedroom looks well... like that, but worse. Because boys have less stuff. And boys who treat the place they live in like a flophouse? Much less. And said boy who lived here? Well, he usually used my stuff and pretended like he didn't. So that took up no room whatsoever. But once you bring another person who likes to come home and cook dinner and take baths... who likes to have a home and a presence in it? Well, that person is bound to have things. Not to say she's even in the same ballpark as me. Because she's had a significant other that she shared things with and he came equipped with stuff. Me? I created a single world--- perhaps assuming that's the way it would always be. Or just thinking that if I was going to buy five blenders for five friends off their registry, why not buy my own? (Actually, I never bought blenders, but you get the idea).
But I also realize that it's important to be able to give up a little of yourself and your things to make way for someone else.

I remember when I was dating this guy who owned a house in the hills. It was very craftsman. He was very craftsman and very set in his crafstman ways. All I thought whenever I went to his house was-- where would I fit in? I couldn't be 100% craftsman. I'm too eclectic. And he did want his world to remain his, exactly as it was. I could take it or leave it. And well, you know what happened, because I'm now living with a girl. Here's the thing, thought, when it comes to my furniture and all of my stuff, I don't mind sharing. Or moving things around. It's actually kind of liberating not to hold on too tight to the way you want things to be. Sure I want my home to be my sanctuary-- especially since the world isn't always one-- but the mentality of never letting go or getting rid of things is a poor mentality based on the expectation you won't ever have things again. (Seriously ask people who don't want to get rid of stuff and usually they grew up without money). So I'm embracing my newly cleaned drawers and sorting away. Because I've discovered in the last week that it's much more fun to share with someone who's actually sharing back. And if that someone is a great friend who has been there through good and bad, roots for your success and likes to cry at all the same things you do when you watch movies? I say, all the better.