Shawn L. Bird

I’m not very good at letting go…

I once read that only children regard their toys as their friends, and so they tend to keep them around until adulthood, because it seems disloyal to get rid of them.  This explains the Barbies (plus van, clothes, etc) in my storage room yay these many years past the playing time.

I also spend a lot of time with books, and I have difficulty get rid of them as well, because books become old friends, and who wants to lose the opportunity to re-visit an old friend? I’m an English teacher.  I earned a degree in English.  Can you imagine how many books were involved in just that BA?  And I’ve been teaching for  almost two decades.  I own most of the novels or plays I’ve taught in those classes as well.  Oh my.   Needless to say, my bookshelves are very, very crowded.

Recently I discovered http://www.goodreads.com and it has opened up an interesting possibility.  As I record and rate each of the books on my shelves, I might be able to let them go, knowing they remain on a virtual book shelf.  Hmmm.  It might work.  If I could get down to 1000 books in the house, that’d be a huge improvement.

How about you?  Do have trouble letting go of anything?