When I write for my travel blog, I know that I am sharing personal stories about the places I have been and what I have seen and been able to do in my life.

When I write in this blog, it is personal and sometimes feels like confession. Now, I am Jewish so I have no idea what going to confession is really like, but I have watched my share of tv shows and movies so I have some idea.

Why blog? Why share personal details about yourself, your life and the way it makes you feel. Well, I think firstly there are probably a lot of you out there, that I may have more in common with on the inside than what appears on the outside. It is a way to connect without haven’t to put anything out there. Many people have told me, “wow, I feel the same way about what you wrote about”, or “that happens to me too”.

So, here goes the confession part of this post.

By now you probably know that I live in a condo. A beautiful, but small condo. Perfect size for one person, you would think. But what happens when you have pretty much outgrown the space you live in? Well, again, one would say, “you need to get rid of some of your ‘stuff'”. There in lies the problem and what has brought me here today.

When I lived at my parents house I used to collect ‘things’. There were always incentives at work – at one point, there was an incentive for gift cards at…wait for it…Consumers Distributing (you all remember that store). I would go to the store, and buy dishes, and pots and pans, and all kinds of ‘stuff’ that I was keeping until I had my own place.

Little did I know that when it finally came time to pack up and move to my own place, I HATED everything that I had collected over the years. Well, that isn’t totally true…

I heard that UNopened Disney movies were (are) worth something. So, I would buy TWO, yes, two movies (VHS) one to keep sealed and one to watch. And every movie had a corresponding mug. I should say that I do use the mugs and they sit happily in the cupboard and are used for tea/coffee all the time.

Fast forward to moving to the condo. After going through what was coming with me and what was not, boxes were labeled and away we went to the condo.

For a while things were great…oh, I should rewind….what about all the visits to the annual Mikasa sale? What about you ask? Well, again, I was living in my parents house, but that didn’t stop me from buying beautiful serving platter, glassware, candle sticks (oh let’s not get to talking about candles).

WAIT…there was the William Ashley sale that came through town every November. It still does, but I no longer go to the sale.

Now you are starting to see the potential problems arising in my beautiful condo.

And now we come to the home office….seems to be the biggest thorn in my side.

I worked from home for almost four years that ended almost a year ago. During that time I have gotten rid of the ‘work from home’ elements – brochures, extra filing cabinets. But what about all my arts and crafts, my scrapbooking supplies, magazines…I could go on.

But I really don’t want to go on. I want to throw away the food and drink magazines, but then I look at them and think about the pretty cover, the recipes, and more….really? When was the last time I looked at the magazine?

I want to fix my home office. I have someone who can customize this for me. I have someone else who has already shared her vision and drawn it out for me. I have a vision.

But I can’t make the vision come true until I tackle my ‘stuff’.

Have I mentioned I have lived here for six and a half years. I would have to say that most of this ‘stuff’ did not come with me when I moved here. How did all of this get in here and how can I make it go away?

That is the question I am faced with even as I sit here typing this post – I look to my left and see a magazine rack filled with magazines, and I look to my right and see CDs, movies and more.

and then of course I think there is my adult ADD….because I start to look at something while I am trying to type this post.

The internal battle continues…I am off again this weekend. Maybe this will be the weekend that I really get a handle on this. That is what I said last weekend, and the weekend before and probably the weekend before that.

Yours truly,

collector of stuff

I think I am going to have to save my money and invest in a laptop. I constantly have thoughts running through my brain and it just never seems to work out that I have a place to write them down or put thought to keyboard when I want to. So, that is thought number one on day number one of my new year!

A couple of years ago, before I was about to turn forty I was having a conversation with the sister of an old friend of mine. She was telling me that things change in your forties. She really didn’t elaborate but basically said it is different for different people. That you start to figure things out for yourself, come into your own and really become “yourself”. Of course I wasn’t there yet, so I really didn’t get it. I am now “in my forties” and starting to really get it.

Late last year the Judd Apatow movie “This is 40” came out. I saw it after several of my friends and actually went to the movie alone. Which is probably something that someone does in their 40’s that maybe they wouldn’t have done when then were younger. I laughed out loud, because I could relate. When I commented on facebook that I enjoyed the movie, one of my friends commented something like “really, I heard it wasn’t that good”. Maybe it’s a “40” thing (this person wasn’t quite there yet).

Several people I know are turning 40 this year. There has been a lot of chatter about this number and I remember how I was feeling before I had turned “that number”. Everyone says, it is just a number, and maybe I would agree with that, but as I am moving through the last couple of years I am thinking that maybe there is more to that.

As I said, I have a lot of different thoughts in my head right now, and rather than try to summarize them in one post – perhaps I will explore the possibilities of forty thoughts on 40.

I will leave you with this one thought this morning – the word Journey.

The first definition that came up for the word Journey was this:

• an act of travelling from one place to another

Which of course is the definition of Journey but not in the context that I am using the word. I went on further to the Oxford dictionary and it says the same thing, but below that it also says: 

•  a long and often difficult process of personal change and development

That makes more sense to me….
 
Stay tuned on my continued forty thoughts on 40. 

There are a lot of people that aren’t on facebook, or don’t like facebook, or think that people put too much out there on facebook. In the last few days (especially in the last few hours) all those people who have negative things to say about facebook should keep it to themselves.

Let’s start off with Sarah Watkin. She is a beautiful five year old girl fighting for her life. She has AML and needs a bone marrow donor to survive. This of course hits close to home for me since this is what Shari had to go through three years ago. I was very involved in the bone marrow drives and keeping my facebook profile active with all the details about drives, and information.

People all over facebook (myself included) have been sharing the details of Sarah’s need for a bone marrow donor, drives going on, and basic information on how to get on the bone marrow registry.

Several people have commented that they were already on the bone marrow registry because of the drives for Shari. That made me feel good that so many people were made aware a few years ago and took the time to register.

If you are not already on the registry, there is a bone marrow drive for Sarah on February 12th and a facebook page has been set up as well. Click here to get to the page. 

Let’s hope that Sarah gets her match soon and another life saved.

And now tonight, where through the eyes of social media we find out that someone in our community is missing a child. How could this be on a such a cold, wintery night like tonight? Who knows why? how? but there is a family out there searching for their child.

Within minutes and hours one person’s status update is shared with the community. Some might say “how does sharing a status update help?” But it does. It helps the family know that they are loved and that the community cares and is hugging them. No one wants to hear/read/see a story about child who is sick, a missing child. It is scary.

Tonight it is cold, snowy and we all want to be inside staying warm and comfortable.

My thoughts and prayers are going to the Watkin Family, and the Zimmermann and Bender families for their children.

Make sure you say I love you to the people in your life. Life is precious and we should never forget that. 

Only one thing left to say – I just called to say I love you.