A few weeks ago, I was taking things for granted. I had everything most people would assume is necessary to be “happy.”
But now, things are not what they seem. And it is not up to me to correct them; rather, to change them. I keep thinking about trying to “go back” to whatever happened to supply a sensation of comfort and joy. Well, regardless of what the present is, I can’t go back. I can only go forward.
At this point, I have some things in my life that I don’t need; and I don’t have others that are essential to my stability. I’ve decided that in order to reach my goals, to accomplish my dreams, I have to believe in them, and I have to consciously work hard to get where I need to go.
This attitude should apply to anything and everything in life, but it’s easy to let it slip out of your reach and think that you have to go back, and stay stuck in the status quo because you can’t go back.
But in order to go forward, you have to believe.
To rid myself of unnecessary baggage I’ve decided to move some things:
- I sold my flat screen LCD that I don’t need
- I sold my AKAI MPC1000 production system that I never used
- I’ll sell all the extra furniture in my apartment that is simply collecting dust
- I don’t need turntable
- I don’t need a mixer
- I don’t need a Kaoss Pad
- I don’t need a set of golf clubs that I don’t use
- I don’t need an extra laptop
- I don’t need an HDTV
- I don’t need a subscription to The New York Times (so I canceled it)
- I don’t need a subscription to Good Magazine, to Fader magazine, to Rolling Stone Magazine
- I don’t need to be buying music every week on iTunes when for $20 I can get 75 songs on emusic.com
- I don’t need a queen-sized bed
- I don’t need all the channels that Comcast can offer
- I don’t need a full data plan on my Palm Treo
- I don’t need a Palm Treo
- I don’t need to play video games
- I don’t need two gmail accounts
- I don’t need a .mac account
- I don’t need new clothes
- I don’t need to see the dark knight
- I don’t need to visit the new H&M store
These are things that tie me to the past; I don’t need them to forward, so I’ll get rid of them. They are material, and they can be replaced by new things if I wanted to. But I don’t need them.
What I need is peace of mind in knowing that I’m willing to fight for what I believe in on a moral, emotional, and professional level; that which will help me achieve the goals that I’ll set up for myself.
With this post I hope to begin a Radical Change in my life that I hope will eventually get me back on track. At this point in my life things are a nebulous cloud; and I have to make a list of all the things that I don’t need (see above) but I also need to figure out what it is that I need to do to take the next step. Get a new job? Move to a new country? Reconcile my spiritual disconnect? We’ll see…
