Lent, Day 1

Yesterday I:

• Culled enough clothing out of my closet that I could fit the shelves of clothing in there as well, making a lot more space in my bedroom. Those clothes will go to a local thrift store.
• Packed a foot-high stack of books to be shipped off for cash.
• Sold my laptop backpack, unused for years.
• Added three bags of 'stuff' to the bags of clothing going to a thrift store, thus emptying a shelf in my office.
• Moved six or seven books from my shelves to the pile of books to be sold.

That's the physical stuff. On the 'making time' level I:

• Decided to stop playing Facebook games -- I'll use it to communicate, but using actual words, not sending karma or the like. (Nothing against the concept -- but I found it was eating time I could use elsewhere).
• Reduced the number of blogs I read, both here and on LJ.
• Deleted a bunch of games from my computer.
• Signed off of a couple of mailing lists.
• Took the rats to the Humane Society.

That last was a hard decision, and has been a long time coming. Too long, for them -- I simply wasn't giving them the time, attention, space they needed, no matter how often I promised myself (and them) that I would. Their cage was too small, not cleaned often enough; they didn't get enough time out, and certainly not enough time with me. And I felt bad about that, and it weighted on me.

They're getting lots of attention there, now, and I know they have a nice big cage to run around in. They'll find homes, or not -- if they spend the rest of their lives there, they'll be much happier than they were here. I know how well they treat animals at the local place.

I've lightened my load a lot, and I plan to lighten it a lot more -- I've got another 39 days to do it in, after all. Once I'm done the physical, there'll be a lot of emotional stuff to clear out, too. It'll be interesting, and probably painful, and I'm looking forward to it.