Throwback Thursday - Stuff and Such

One of the most frequent questions that people preparing to go cruising ask, is how do you deal with all the STUFF you've accumulated in your house before you sell it?  I did this post very early on and it is still not only applicable to pending cruisers, but to happiness in life on land.

Stuff-and-Such

Posted by Deb

Monday, October 29, 2007

When I was growing up, my grandmother (who was quite a character) used to talk about "Stuff-and-Such," meaning all the mounds of accumulated things that end up surrounding us. She was, after all, an expert in the matter. All the reading about living aboard a sailboat and the simplified life aboard caused a great amount of philosophical rumination on the subject recently, which culminated in a long weekend of dealing with said "Stuff-and-Such." I faced the garage storage compartment with a great deal of courage, large trash bags, empty Goodwill boxes, and a space designated on the floor with each child's name. Things I learned in the process:

1. If your garage burned down and you never had a chance to look in these boxes you'd never miss what was inside of them. The matches mocked me every time I passed them throughout the day.

2. Personal shredders should have been invented a long time ago.

3. If your child asks you if she can store something at your house, tell her that if it's not important enough for her to have in her house, it's not important enough for you to have in your garage.

4. Spiders already have enough homes to live in without you providing a box of Christmas ornaments that you never intend to use.

5. I could buy a lot of stuff for a boat with the money I would have saved not renting storage centers over the years.

6. If I haven't opened a box in 3 moves I should throw it away immediately.

7. Never ever should I let things or the acquiring of them become more important than people.

Don't get me wrong. Not all "things" collected are bad. Objects have a tremendous power to connect us to memories of good times past and to people we love. I tore open one box of things I'd saved for the kids' kids only to find mixed in with the stuffed animals an old, ratty red hooded sweatshirt that belonged to my mother. She wore it in a picture that I have of her raking leaves on a beautiful fall day. It was one of the last healthy, happy days of her life before she had her stroke. I cried for half an hour. The key is in determining what things are worth saving and what things are not, and the reality of it is that, in the end, we can take nothing with us at all. So as I begin the long, long (did I say long?) process of reduction, I'm trying on the liveaboard life a little at a time, anticipating the tremendously liberating feeling of living life as it should be - hard work with your hands, a close tie to nature, and time with loved ones. It just doesn't get much better than that.

A different take on stuff...

Every tribe has certain markers, common characteristics or habits shared by a majority of the members. One characteristic of the cruising tribe is a nonchalant attitude when it comes to filling one’s life with bits of this and pieces of that…stuff. The travails of downsizing from a the typical American home filled with personal items to a boat is a part of nearly every cruiser’s story. Even after the move is made, finding room for the things that were brought along is a regular challenge. As time flows by, even some of the things brought along, things felt to be “essential”, get lost in the corner of some little cubby somewhere. Months go by, the thing gets forgotten and, even though it might still be on the boat, it is one more thing dropped from life’s space. Then the boat shows up in a boatyard somewhere…and suddenly there is stuff everywhere.

Mid-project on our old boat. Stuff everywhere and plastic protecting the scratch-prone surfaces

Boat techs live and work in cubby holes. That is where the wires, pumps, hoses, and switches dwell that we run, change, clamp, and replace. But rare is the event where we can reach, or even see, those things after opening a door and lifting up a hatch. What we will see are trash cans, life vests, cleaning supplies, dishes, cookware, bedding, towels, and clothes. Getting to items needing repair often requires moving mattresses, cushions, or multiple pillows out of the way. And then the question becomes, where does one stuff the stuff that needs to be moved in order to reach the stuff that needs to be fixed? The interior of any boat getting extensive work rapidly takes on the look of a giant, 3-D, Chinese puzzle. One can’t move anything without it fowling something else and, once it is moved, there is no place to put it. It is one of the peculiarities of working in a boat yard, there is no storage space off the boat. Even if there were, think of a boat on the hard. It is the second story of a house that has no first floor, with only a ladder for getting to the street.

Working in the cockpit is only marginally better. Open any hatch and what is found are fenders, lines, deck brushes, hatch boards and more life vests. They will quickly fill a cockpit so tiptoeing around on the coaming, on that aforementioned second floor, is a regular exercise in maintaining one’s balance. Sometimes the stuff ends up on deck. In any case, at the end of the day it all has to go back in the lockers so at not to be blown around or utterly soaked in the ever present thunderstorms that frequent these parts. (I know, this stuff is supposed to get wet. But stash a wad of rain soaked life vests in a locker; close it up tight for a week or so in the Florida heat, and then be around when the owner pops the top before leaving with his boat - and after paying a rather sizable bill.)

One of my personal trials seems to be engine hatches - Catalina engine hatches in particular, though they are far from the only offender. Once the hatch, unwieldily, heavy, and dirty, is removed, where to put it? There isn’t enough floor space to set it out of the way. Even if there was, it would likely be covering access to someplace else that needs to be reached. Can’t put it on the table, hell, the table itself is already in the way. Can’t go on a counter. Engine hatches end up being a lump of inconvenience to be suffered for the length of the job. On top of that, getting in and out of the boat is now an exercise in exercise.  The hatches that swing up are, sometimes, worse. There is simply no way to get in and out of the boat with the hatch up, and the head room under the hatch is often severely limited. Banging the back of one’s head hurts just as much as any other head hit. At least the blood doesn’t run into the eyes.

Mattresses are another spiteful thing. Drag one out of the aft cabin to reach a leaking holding tank, and what to do with it? A giant, floppy irritation that is going to sag in the way no matter where it is stashed. Often, before the mattress can be moved, the bedding has to be removed. How is a sweat stained, grubby boat tech working in temps well over 100 degrees going to manage that without staining the pretty whites and, once again, where to stash them so they stay pretty and white? Sometimes, before removing the bedding, a pile of dirty clothes has to be moved. They didn’t include that in the “boat tech guide to happy living” brochure. I don’t worry about staining dirty clothes.

It doesn’t help that, when working on a boat, we generally bring a bunch of our own stuff on board, hoses, extension cords, fans, lights, and tools. The boat is already full, now it is over flowing. Getting tangled up in one’s own extension cord and thus pulling one’s own light down on one’s own bald head, followed by a cascade of screwdrivers and wrenches, is just one of the joys to be found in this profession. Try to turn to get out of the way and skin one’s shins against the engine hatch.

Sometimes we get a boat that has just recently been purchased. The original owner has removed all of the stuff, and the new owner has yet to put replacement stuff on board. A happy occasion. Last week included working on just such a boat. Only a trash can and a couple of small bins of brick-a-back stood in the way of reaching the autopilot computer. Cockpit lockers were only half full. If access was needed to the port side, everything fit in the starboard hole, and visa-versa. The lockers themselves were large enough to crawl inside and move around…some. One day it started to rain and pulling the hatch cover partly closed meant I had a dry space in which to work while hanging the ram and rudder position indicator. How cool is that? There was even room in there for a fan, so it really was cool…er.

The inside of the boat wasn’t near as much fun. The cabin was tiny! Standing up inside was impossible, being on my knees was the exact right height for “standing” at the sink. Half way along the settee, going forward, the ceiling dropped a foot or so lower. Already bent 90 degrees at the waist to move means not really looking where one is going. Ouch. I soon learned to move slowly in that boat, caring not what that meant to the labor bill.

The v-berth was already stuffed full of cockpit cushions, topped by the helm wheel. Gaining access under a settee meant piling cushions from one on the other, filling that side of the boat nearly to the ceiling. Needing to be under both at the same time was, fortunately, only needed once. On that occasion the cushion pile went on the galley counter, completely blocking the companionway. Finding a place to stash locker hatches was a constant challenge. This was a very pretty boat, with high gloss varnished inside decks and teak glowing in the sunlight. It is the kind of finish that will scratch just from brushing it with a hatch corner or belt buckle; that will nick at the touch of a screwdriver blade. Cardboard and tape were liberally applied, but had to be folded up and stashed somewhere when the floor needed to come up.

Then, of course, the floor needed to be stashed someplace as well.

Stuff…

The Story of Stuff

If you haven't been there yet, storyofstuff.org is a wonderful resource for news on new recycling efforts that will ultimately help to save the oceans by using less water and dumping less polution into the seas. Here's one of their recent articles by Andrea Newell that highlights an exciting new development in the recycling of clothing.

The Story of Stuff - Soon Your Clothes Could Be as Recyclable as Glass or Paper. Really.

The gargantuan glut

 glut

(ɡlʌt)

n

1. an excessive amount, as in the production of a crop, often leading to a fall in price

2. the act of glutting or state of being glutted

vb (tr) , gluts, glutting or glutted

3. to feed or supply beyond capacity

4. (Commerce) to supply (a market) with a commodity in excess of the demand for it

5. to cram full or choke up: to glut a passage.

Periodically (and really only rarely) Facebook's algorithms hit spot on and something enters my feed that is so relevant that it deserves more than a quick Like or Share. The article at the following link is such a thing, and I'm shocked that it was published in 2012 and it took me this long to find. It moved me, and I want to talk about it, but first you must read it. Go ahead, I'll wait.

The Gift of Death by George Monbiot

Can you breathe yet? Because that's the way that all this glut of stuff makes me feel. When I walk into Target (or any other big box store) this time of year I feel frantic - I simply have to turn and run out the door just so I can breathe. The excess presses me from all sides, the coercion of guilt compels me to want to buy useless stuff for my grandchildren in some freakishly corrupt desire to secure a place in their hearts.

George Monbiot's statement that, "this boom has not happened by accident. Our lives have been corralled and shaped in order to encourage it", was born out by the stacks and stacks of things we ended up throwing away because we couldn't even sell it to move onto the boat. No one wanted it. My kids didn't want any of those countless ridiculous Christmas gifts sitting in boxes, sealed, that I had worked so many hours to foolishly buy. Not even perusers of Craigslist could be convinced.  Selling what we could and moving onto our boat helped sever the ties, for sure. But still the pull is there to fill even this small space with the latest boat gadget, and to spend money we don't have to honor some obligatory exchange. The latest cruising glossies as well as most of the popular sailing blogs are rife with gift lists for sailors. Facebook is full of Amazon ads for the perfect gift.

STOP!

So what can you do? Monbiot's assessment, "When the world goes mad, those who resist are denounced as lunatics," seems to fit those of us in the cruising community so well. We have resisted and denounced and yet the tethers to this maddening glut of consumption are still strong. But there's hope. Our consumerist society can be salvaged if only we would learn to spend our money on experiential gifts rather than grotesque assemblages of cheap plastic and glitter that feed the pockets of Disney or Mattel. This holiday season, and for the rest of the year for that matter, give the gift of time. In Monbiot's words,

"Bake them a cake, write them a poem, give them a kiss, tell them a joke, but for God’s sake stop trashing the planet to tell someone you care. All it shows is that you don’t "

(Ed Note: for more reading on the issue, The Story of Stuff Project)

The value of a thing

I take it as a given that people are generally undervalued, and things generally over valued. It is hard to tell when or where such an insidious inversion of value gets started, but there is evidence of it all around. It starts early. A child breaks a dish or spills a glass. The next thing that often happens is they get disciplined as if they did something wrong. A harsh word, a bit of yelling, maybe something more. At that moment the “thing” has more value than the kid.

Relationships are often sacrificed to things, people simply refusing to let go of something they hold dear, even at the cost of harming another. All of us have been victims. All of us have been perpetrators.

Often, the longer we hold onto a thing, the more value we think it has. In our minds the thing gets filled with history, memories, and emotions. It has become a talisman, its value far surpassing any original price tag. Usually being attached to such a talisman is harmless, filling the background of a life with fondness and a subtle joy. Items like a grandfather's pocket knife or a mother's wedding ring become something that could never be sold, partly because no one would ever meet the asking price. It is good that most such talismans are small and portable. They get left behind only when we shuffle off to whatever comes “after”. The next generation gets to struggle over the value.

Sometimes items bigger, less portable, and less worthy also become talismans. Items like houses, cars, and furniture. Items that cruisers often need to leave behind. Items whose selling price will help fund the kitty. And items that often seem much more valuable to the those doing the selling than to anyone who might be buying.

Deb and I sold just about everything we had to make it to this cruising life. The three big items were the house, the Z-car, and the motorcycle. There were smaller items sold as well, riding gear, tools, bits of this, pieces of that. We would have sold more of those kinds of things but we ran out of time. Selling things is labor intensive so, if you are heading this way, start selling early. It will take much longer than you think and, if our experience is indicative of “normal”, you will get far less than you believe the things are worth. It can be discouraging, discovering the things we value have less value than we thought.

But the truth is that meaning has value. Memories have value. Experiences have value. The best any thing can do is reflect the value of the meaning it helps one discover, the memories it helps one form, or the experiences it allows one to have. After those tasks are done, the thing has no value at all.

Land magic

Deb and I are spending the days getting the condo ready for market. It has been rented, fully furnished, for the last 2 years. The renters took some of the stuff with them when they left, but try as we might, we could not get them to take it all. So we had a condo full of stuff that needed to go away, far, far away. Daughter Middle and Deb came up with a plan, and today we had a “Free Sale”.

Now I know what you are thinking. “Free” and “Sale” are mutually exclusive terms. If something is free then it is not for sale. And if something is for sale it is, most definitely, not free. Putting those two word together makes absolutely no sense at all.

But, apparently, if one does put those two words together and then casts them into the cosmos via “ReUseit” and Facebook, they become a potent magic spell. Wafting out across the city the words will provoke, compel, and seduce all kinds of people into action. Soon texts were flying and phones were ringing. People wanted to make appointments or put things in reserve. Used things, things they had not even seen, and some of the things built specifically to fit into this one condo and our specific kind of living.

The Free Sale was supposed to start at 2 pm. By 2 pm virtually everything was spoken for. By 3 pm virtually everything was gone. Two items were left, and tomorrow someone is coming to collect them.

Unbelievable. I am a well known skeptic of all things wooish, but how else to explain a house full of used stuff disappearing like a field of wheat under a cloud of locusts? Even better, one of those looking at stuff got to looking at the condo itself. More than an hour later she left empty handed but with the contact information for our broker. Now that would be some special magic indeed, though I would be surprised if any woo has that much power.

With the place now empty enough to echo, the last push is upon us. With any luck we will be done by the end of the week and the condo can go on the market. Now all we need is to find the magic that leads to the words, “Under Contract”.

It would be fun to have the house done that quickly as we have other things vying for attention; the most important of which is the arrival of grand baby number 9. Little Sophia made her way into the world yesterday morning. She and Mamma and the rest of the family are just a few hours drive away. Grampy-T is feeling the need to gather up the new little one and say, “Hello!”

Understanding

 It has been a bit surprising, the reactions people have when they find out they are talking with someone who lives full time on a sailboat. About half exclaim that they could never do such a thing, and then go on about how cool it must be. The other half go on about how cool it must be, and then get a bit whimsical about doing it themselves. If the situation allows, it will take a while to get away as each will want to hear all about storms and pirates on the one hand, beaches and resorts on the other.

Which usually leads to them being a tiny bit disappointed. Cruisers are pretty good at avoiding storms and pirates, don't have as much time for beaches as non-cruisers imagine, and don't often care much about visiting resorts. Somehow people who live in houses with a thousand square feet of living space imagine that a 42-foot sailboat is large, that life on the ocean is easy, filled with cold drinks, fantastic food, and beautiful people. All-day excursions to go shopping, humping water on and trash off, munching soggy crackers to fend off motion sickness on a bumpy night passage, and all the other joys of this life that cruisers know so well, come as a huge surprise to those who live in big boxes with yards. Yet almost all still think it is cool when the conversation ends.

Another near-universal question is what our plans are, where are we going next? Trying to give an honest answer goes something like this;

"Well, for the rest of the summer it looks like South Carolina will be home base for some boat work. Come fall, Biscayne Bay until the New Year, then probably over to the Islands again. The Abacos are fantastic, but friends have talked up the Exumas and it sounds like they shouldn't be missed. The goal come next Spring will be heading to the Northern Chesapeake to park the boat for a while; overland to St. Louis to try and sell the condo in June. By the end of 2015 Kintala could be back in southern FL looking forward to a third winter in the Islands. Spring 2016 she might be heading farther south, instead of north, to hide from hurricanes. Maybe we will make Central America for the summer of 2016; live in another country for a while. After that, who knows?"

To a cruiser's ear this is a perfectly normal sounding response. But to those living the American Dream it sounds like the ravings of the demented. "Looks like," "should," "could," South Carolina, Biscayne Bay, Exumas, Abaco, Chesapeake, 2015, 2016, Central America . . . The stark difference between the old life on land and the new one on the water is plain as their eyes glaze over and the wheels turn trying to figure out where some of those places are. "Planning" years into the future to be in locations we have never seen, while not really knowing where we will be in a week or a month?

This is a very odd way to live, and I have about given up on the idea of getting those who haven't done it to understand. Not a big surprise. After 7 years of preparing, shedding nearly everything we knew, and now having almost a year and 2000 nm in our log, I am just beginning to understand it myself.

This is also a very tenuous way to live. The ocean environment is what it is with complete disregard to anything else. We see it as beautiful, challenging, compelling; as well as uncaring, uncomfortable, and quite easily deadly. But that is only land-living unmasked. For example, I have two grand kids now living on a sailboat. Many have commented on how dangerous that is. Really? In a society of cars, guns, and gangs just how dangerous is the ocean by comparison? And those cars, guns, and gangs are nearly as hazardous to adults as they are to children. Living on the ocean means admitting life is fleeting and capricious instead of living on land and pretending life is permanent and predictable.

For many of us, getting here means dumping most of the material things that make up American life. Houses, cars, furniture, yards, gardens, swimming pools, monster grills that fill the patio, the patio itself . . . none of that stuff fits on the common cruising boat. We cut the ties to stuff, and many of us are surprised to discover the idealism of our youth was more righteous then we thought. We should have stuck with it from the very beginning. Sadly, we missed the chance to teach this old / new idea to our kids. They are already buried under mountains of student loans and struggling to survive the class warfare of corporate America. But we have grand kids . . . 

From the back yards of suburbia and through the eye of the TV tube, America is a big place and the world is kind of small. From the deck of a sailboat and through the eyes that nature gave us, the world is a big place and America is kind of small. And I mean "small" in more ways than just geography. Once upon a time a collection of Americans brought out the best in each. Now, collectively, we are mean spirited and narrow minded. Dreams of greatness have been replaced by delusions of grandeur. Once we had hope. Now we just hope for the best.

Literally yards off shore that starts to fade. People keep an eye out for trouble, step in and help when they can. There are lots of smiles, waves, and greetings. Complete strangers-soon-to-be-friends will stop by in a dink to ask about the boat or comment on the home port listed on the stern.  Stories of places far away will be shared, and the idea of visiting them will be encouraged.  Before we left, a lot of people said we shouldn't go, that we weren't ready.  Once we did go, the cruiser community encouraged us to keep going.  This is a life of bold people doing a different thing.

There is a sometimes cruiser custom that I love.  As the sun touches the horizon in the west, conch horns sound to herald the close of another day . . . "We are with the tribe, riding safe to anchor or mooring, thankful for the challenges of the day, and content with the peace that comes with the night."

Hard to explain to those who haven't been here.

Project overload

In my demented little brain The Retirement Project has morphed into Project Overload. Deb is completely buried under the house, trying to get it emptied and readied for the rental market, with something like 10 days left for her to get it done. It doesn't help that she is essentially doing it alone, but I am as buried trying to get the boat ready for the truck. So jammed is the schedule that the workbench project was being used as a workbench to finish the workbench project. And though finished just a day or so ago it is already cluttered with the tools being used to get the self-steering gear installed.

That project is, as expected, going slow. For all of my complaints about the shoddy way the boating industry goes about its business, the butt end of a Tartan 42 turns out to be a serious chunk of fiberglass. Boring the 3.5 inch hole that is the heart of the project has already chewed up two days of effort, two hole saws, and a couple of other bits. And it isn't done yet. It turns out the transom is thicker than your average hole saw is deep; not a problem if I had access to both sides from which to drill. But, so far, I haven't figured out how to access the transom from inside the boat. Once upon a time crawling into the outboard wing bays of B-52s to pound rivets and insert systems was just another day of work. That was once upon was a long time ago. I fear that level of flexibility may be beyond my battered and bruised self, to say nothing of not being nearly as calloused about squeezing into small places as I used to be. But I'll figure out something. I just haven't figured out what that something is, yet.

I'm told this is normal, that everyone who has ever moved from the land to the sea has had to climb this mountain. The accent involves getting rid of stuff while the descent is mostly getting a boat into the water. I wonder if I should be worried since, as any climber will tell you, most fatalities occur while getting down, not going up. Anyway...

... I am going to offer a bit of advice to any who might be following this blog with hopes of joining the sea-living community some day. Though I have been critical of setting a "go" date I think I've changed my mind. Go ahead, set a date because it really doesn't matter. What matters is pulling the trigger on actually going one year ahead of said date. Yep, one year. Put the house on the market, get it emptied out. Sell all the stuff you have accumulated over the decades. That stuff may actually be worth quite a bit IF you have the time to spend selling it. Deb and I don't have the time so thousands of dollars are being left behind, left in the hands of people who are getting some very good deals. If your nice car actually sells while you still need wheels, go out and get a "junker". It will get the job done and give you practice driving "loner" cars. (At least if marina loner cars are anything like airport loner cars.) The house goes? Same thing, get a small (all your stuff is gone or going, right) cheap apartment ... or go ahead and move onto the boat if you can.

All the spare time you have not taking care of the stuff you have unloaded will be sucked up (I promise you) by getting the boat ready. If you don't have a boat yet then all of that time can be spent finding just the right one at just the right price. Which puts you way ahead of the game.

Had I known then what I know now I would have kept little Nomad on the lake, sailing and living aboard as much as possible. I would take the year and get rid of everything methodically, banking as much money as I could as we went along. When it was all done Nomad would have been shipped east at a fraction of the coast of moving the Tartan. (If the house had sold quickly we would have just spent some more time living on a 27 foot Compac. There are worse things ... trust me.) She would splash in salt water with a "FOR SALE" sign on her bow and we would go find the right boat at the right price. Sure we would move onto a "new" boat needing work ... which would be about what we are doing anyway.

Of course I didn't now then the things I know now, and we started all of this living about as far away from an ocean as is possible to be. Those already living near the sea may have a slightly different mountain to climb.

But start a year early ... I promise it will make things a lot easier.

With a CAPITAL P

PURGE, that is. I spent Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday in our garage. We've lived in this place for 12 years now, and that time encompasses 5 years of house projects and 7 years of boat projects so our garage was filled with project leftovers. Wood scraps, one-purpose tools, boat bits removed from Kintala, piles of stuff to go to the kids, scrap metal, camping gear, and junk. Did I say junk? And this all was after having purged several pickup loads worth of stuff from the house when the kids moved in with us two years ago. In my defense, when the kids moved out after a year of living with us, I determined not to fill up the rooms, closets, and drawers vacated by their stuff and I have, for the most part, managed to do that. It still boggles my mind how much stuff two stuff-haters can accumulate in that time.

Friday I made the trip to the boat and began the same process on the lockers. I hauled loads to the dumpster, I hauled stuff to the picnic tables under the pavilion and put a "free" sign, and I hauled some stuff home to go to Goodwill. With every minute I am becoming a stuff-hater with even more vengeance than before.

It rules your life people, so travel light and be happy.

Four Cheese Pierogies and French Fries

What do they have in common? Why they're two of the things in the freezer that got cleaned out today which only have one serving left in them, so since Tim is at the boat slaving away and I'm at the house sorting stuff for purging, I get the four cheese pierogies and french fries for dinner. Not exactly a well-balanced meal, and pretty assuredly not very  healthy, but it gets the cleaning out the freezer job done a little faster.

Now - who wants a box of 20-year old T-shirts and a bag of 200 balls of yarn???

CPR

It's 5 minutes to midnight on New Years Eve and in fact, 2011 will have arrived by the time I hit the post button. I believe it's an impossibility to approach January 1st without at least giving some passing thought to the ritual of resolutions, and having those resolutions painted on the canvas of the 5 year plan yields some interesting results.
Since most resolutions are restorative in nature (diets, exercise, smoking cessation...) it got me onto a health care train of thought.  My New Years Resolution?  CPR.

CPR - Challenge - Purge - Reallocate.

Challenge:  I'm resolving to challenge my assumptions on what material possessions I require.  In the process of cleaning my house for the arrival of my children and grandchildren, it occurred to me that I was cleaning a whole lot of items that I hadn't used since the last time I cleaned them and that life would be a lot simpler if I removed the items so that I didn't have to waste time cleaning them.  All purchases in 2011 will be filtered through the "Can I use this on the boat when we leave?" criterion.

Purge: I'm resolving to remove any stuff from my house that I haven't used in the last 12 months.  One closet at a time, e-bay and Craigslist and ReUseIt and Goodwill will be my new friends.

Reallocate: I'm resolving to reallocate resources and priorities to what matters.  It's troublesome to me that we spend enough money in a year on the security system in our house to cruise in the Bahamas for a month.  It's also deeply troubling to me that I allow media and political influences to weigh me down and distract me from the important things.  Even though we gave up television nearly 8 years ago, we are bombarded with negative influence and fearmongering on all sides from headlines at the checkout line, 6 TVs on the gym walls, coworkers at the water cooler, the internet, the newspaper and even NPR, all vying for my attention and some deliberately aiming to control.  As much as I try not to use this blog to press religious opinion, there does happen to be a certain scripture that I find immensely inspiring when thinking about the promise of the New Year and my attempt to best use its time:


"Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things."  Phil 4:8


Happy New Years to you all and best of luck to you on your own resolutions.