It's resolution time again. But first, take out the old before bringing in anything new.
Right now the only resolution I feel like making is to stop eating. I mainlined so much junk over the last two weeks that I feel like a tub 'o' lard. Okay, so I guess that means I have to get back to moving around more. I stopped going to the gym when the mask mandate returned. Not a political statement -- I simply cannot exercise with the mask on. It's a textual thing.
So I decide to move furniture around, instead. In doing this, I need to downsize my office supplies. Yes, you read that right: Office Supplies. I honestly have enough supplies to start my own ten-person business. So, I start with the highlighters. How I have accumulated dozens and dozens and dozens of them is beyond me. I keep two or so of the colors I need and put the remaining thousands into a bag to take to school.
Then come pencils, both mechanical and standard. I believe keeping about three dozen should do the trick. The rest go into another bag. Pens? Oh, boy, this is going to be good. But, I try each and every one and decide if I have the slightest hesitancy about using the pen (flow of ink, ease of grip, etc.), then to school it will go.
Everything is going along just fine until the colored pencils.
No bullshit: I must have 400 or more colored pencils. It's like Charette's (an old artist and drafting supply company) puked up colored pencils all over my office. I have more colored pencils than any sane person has a right to own. The truly ironic thing here is that I am not particularly good at coloring. One of my sisters manages to stay in the lines all the time, but I never mastered that in coloring nor in life.
It takes me two hours to go through the colored pencils. First, I sort them by brand. Then I try them out to see which ones I want to save: Prang? Pentech? Crayola? Faber Castell? Rose Art? Then I sort by color. Good gawd, how did I end up with ten sky blue colored pencils? What. The. Heck.
The good news is I can actually see and use my office supplies now. Oh, sure, I still have enough paper clips to build a fence around the living room, but at least they all fit into a plastic food storage container that also fits in a drawer. The better news is that my students will inherit enough pens and pencils to never have to return to their lockers for forgotten utensils for the rest of this year. Maybe even for the rest of their lives.
Purging feels pretty good. Bring on 2022. If it truly helps me to get the fat out, both personally and professionally, I'm already a big fan.
