Last Day of Freedom

Well the last day of my sojourn of freedom has arrived. It was a decadent fortnight spent doing what I wanted when I wanted. A reversion to a child-like state was just what the doctor ordered. Or would have ordered had he/she been trying to remedy my mental stress. Things went fast this fall. I've said this before. Even though each year is different, sometimes it feels like it goes faster each year. I'm not talking about my relative perception of time either. That was discussed with GRP in a Conversation. But rather the intensity and urgency of everything work related. I have spoken with a couple of colleagues who have moved on to other roles or retirement and they cited that trend as a contributing factor to their decision. So I'm not imagining things. That is good, because I try to reserve my creative energies to keep content flowing into this site. So far, so good. The point of the matter is that my vacation has expired for the time being. I'll be heading back to the "old salt mines" tomorrow. And to start my year I have a couple of events to attend where I will be required to interact with customers and farmers. So I go from this past week of solitude to a pair of very crowded events. Should be interesting.

Also interesting, I halved my wardrobe today. I mean that literally, and without exaggeration. I am donating half of my clothing including several coats and jackets. I had a bunch of branded shirts that I can't wear anymore and many didn't fit appropriately. So I axed them. Then I started looking around for other things that I could add to the growing pile. It all started when I was trying to hang up a couple of gifts from Christmas. I didn't have any hangers so I decided to rid myself of some extra garments and the next thing I knew I'd emptied several drawers and half a closet. While I was shuffling things, I moved stuff around and optimized my setup a bit. I would like to go through all my old electronics next and pare things down to an appropriate level. My philosophy is that if I haven't used something in two years I probably don't need it anymore. So anything I don't need I'm cutting loose. I'm not sure if it's the turning of the calendar or more just that I've been here for a week on my own and have done enough sitting around melting my brain. I'm leaning toward the latter myself. We'll see how much I can rid myself of.