Someone in one of my Facebook groups (one for stationery nerds and journal addicts) shared a link to a blog post I really loved to read. Facebook provides something both useful and timely twice this year, and it’s only February? We may actually be in the End Times.
I’ve browsed the archives and a lot of her writing resonates with me (though not the paper filing systems stuff). That essay in particular hit home, because I’m a stationery nerd. I LOVE beautiful notebooks, and in the last couple of years in particular, have amassed a small collection of lovely notebooks that I once would have hoarded, because they are “too good to use.” I do use them. I just keep accumulating more than I can use at one time, because if you are a stationery geek, you can’t help yourself.
My perspective about not saving things changed several years ago when I was cleaning out my parents’ house after their deaths, and saw how many things my mother had saved all of her life, put away for me, I suppose, or just because the stuff was “too good to use.” I still have her Mikasa china, the stuff she only busted out for Christmas and Easter dinners for 40 years. I don’t use it either. I don’t do big Christmas and Easter dinners.
Her china is carefully packed away in nice quilted china storage cases, and her box of impractical flatware that needs to be polished is around here somewhere still. I never use it (I haven’t seen the flatware in years, I honestly don’t remember where I put it) yet I can’t seem to get rid of it. I really should take it to a consignment shop and let it go to someone who would actually enjoy it. I’ll add that to this year’s to do list.
I had several candles I’d bought or was gifted in the last few years, sitting around unused. In the last month or so I’ve started lighting a candle every day while I’m working; it makes a nice light scent in the house. I also have an urge to wear perfume again; no issues with allergies at the office now that I work from home.
I’m going to Epcot tomorrow and I think I may splurge on some fancy perfume, just because. (Because I haven’t bought perfume in at least ten years.) Did you know Epcot’s France has a Guerlain shop? It smells like magic, and I’m drawn in every time I walk by, and then I go, no, no, I don’t need it. True enough, I don’t NEED it, but I want it. And I’ll wear it daily, and not save it “for good.” (And yes, I did do a price comparison because I’m well aware of theme park markups, but this shop is expensive enough they don’t feel the need to gouge.)
Lots of changes are coming this year, and it’s going to be interesting, and I’m here for it.
My daughter and her fella are planning to move in together when the school year is over. They each have shared custody of a current and future middle schooler, and each also has a large young male dog (one GSD, one Heinz 57 Goofball) and the logistical complications involved make me want to lie down with a cold cloth on my forehead and a teacup full of vodka, but fortunately this is NOT my problem to manage. They are smart and capable adult professionals with six college degrees between them, and they’ll sort it out. They don’t need my help or advice. My daughter has a new job MUCH closer to home, and that will improve her quality of life immensely.
2023 is going to be the year of many changes, and it’s all good.