Lessons from downsizing my office

I think of myself as a snail and not a squirrel: I don’t accumulate things, dwell on photos or messages or memories from the past, or linger over decisions made or mistakes that can’t be reversed. Still, recently I decided it was time to downsize: too many books, too many paper files, too much of the past to see the present or perceive the future.

Turns out if you’re going to be an accredited snail, you don’t simply need not to hoard—you must actively jettison. Discarding is a daily discipline of parting with things you might just possibly one day miss. I spent a couple of days with a paper shredder, going through old personnel files, correspondence, minutes of meetings, that helpful photocopy on group dynamics I meant to read, photographs, and useful trinkets that ten years on have yet to come into their own. It brought upon me three kinds of sadness.

Sadness one was the books and pleadings people have sent me in hope that I might help them publicize their work. To throw such a letter away feels like a withholding of blessing. But what has become of this correspondent now, and how many such parcels to strangers have they since sent?