setting up shop

For the past four days I've been setting up my new writing space in the new house, and I'm finding myself being overly particular about what goes where, and what gets tossed and where to put my reference books versus favorite novels versus administrative crap.

I've been resisting cracking open several old plastic bins that contain relics--fragments of my late adolescence and the slips of paper upon which I wrote sophomorically profound epiphanies. But crack them I have, and up bubbled some discourse between my dad and I dating back to college. The epistolary exchange developed over my wanting to quit biochemistry and hence derail my journey toward becoming a registered dietitian.

My dad's points were carefully wrought and admittedly full of ego and regret. Essentially, the message was: buckle down and get your credentials like I did. My retort: I'm not sure I'm cut out for a life as a clinician. Instead, I see myself as a vagabond who follows her heart. Funnily enough, the argument hinged on independence. How without the right credentials one is beholden to compromise.

My, my how the world has turned that one on its ear. My father, as a 72-yr old physician, is at the mercy of a broken system, while I basically do whatever the hell I want. True, I don't make a lot of dough, but as I disgorge the tools of my trade, liberate them from their plastic bins and cardboard boxes and build my nest: the books, the letters, the memories, the scribbles, I realize that, at 22, I wasn't a complete moron after all. Good to know!

Ah, nostalgia. You move and there you are, smacked in the face with it. Now, the big question. To chuck or not to chuck!