What happened to my underpants?
You know, my first pair. The ones from when I was 2 years old - Have you seen them?
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I know. One day I’m talking about qualifications and picking yourself, next day its goals. The two go together. Somehow. And thank you for reading as I bounce between these two threads…
Not a lot of people find themselves asking about their first ever pair of underwear. My first baby booties? Bronzed, memorialized and stored somewhere in the bowels of my parents suburban house. My first underpants? My first big boy pees in the toilet underpants? They are nowhere to be found. Though never bronzed, they were most certainly showed in gold.
My first bicycle was an item that brought me much more joy than my first booties or underpants. I imagine now it is currently little more than rust and rubber somewhere under a pile of garbage at a now closed landfill site. It’s gone forever. What’s worse, I loved it. Riding it defined me.
If I were a guest on the Tim Ferris show and he asked me what my spirit animal is? The answer is easy: bicycle. Or me on a bicycle. Fuck you Tim.
When I was a child things that were no longer necessary were gotten rid of. Even those damn baby booties. They are not actually covered in bronze. They were used to make a mould. The bronze was poured into the mould. The booties? Likely somewhere a few layers deeper in the sludge than my old bike.
When I was four, my goal was to become a police officer. That one didn’t last. Another goal was to drive a 4 x 4 truck and be dating that pretty girl in my seventh grade class. These days you’ll never get me out of my little Honda subcompact no matter how much I earn. As for the pretty girl? I don’t even remember her name.
Getting rid of stuff and letting go of dreams is a fundamentally important skill.
Hell, this foolsletter exists in a small part for me to dump ideas. The good ones make the book. The bad ones get a place to live that is no longer in my brain.
Which brings me to the next point - The Book of Wrong Answers Volume 1. I’m editing right now. This is really tough work. It shouldn’t be. And it is. I’m facing things that I’ve written, worked on and loved that do not fit in. They don’t work with what I’m trying to say.
Save them for the B side?
In the old days when my parents were children, back before anything of significance had been invented yet, they had 7 inch single records. These had an ‘a’ side and a ‘b’ side. The ‘a’ side was the song you would hear on the radio. The ‘b’ side got the crap that didn’t fit anywhere else.
But the Book of Wrong Answers is a book, not a record album. And I’m not releasing a seven inch single to go with it no matter how much you beg me to. As such, I need to eliminate these ‘b’ side posts. They need to go away from the book.
It’s a funny thing though. Unlike my first underpants, or the bicycle that I loved, or the dreams that are no longer valid, I have a love of my little, shitty ideas that don’t belong. I’d love to have an orphanage for bad ideas that don’t fit in. But ideas aren’t children. They don’t need an orphanage. They need to find their way into the bin. They need to take their rightful place next to my first pair of underpants. They can go live with that bike I loved so much.
And, if they’re truly good ideas, they’ll come back another day, in another way and likely in another book. I can’t be to precious about them.
What does this have to do with you?
Well… If you’ve been reading along and listing goals, it’s time to edit your list. When I started the book, I printed a lot of my posts here. I read them with my editor. We classified them as different kinds of posts. We categorized them. Then? We did it again and again until we found several categories that became chapters. Then? There were the things that didn’t fit in.
Your next job with your goals lists is to come up with a few categories that your goals fit into. Some to start with might include: Financial goals, artistic goals, career goals, health and wellness goals, relationship goals, family goals, status goals…
Get all of your goals in a category. Then? See if there are any that are stand alone goals that resist categorization. What do you do with those outliers? Are they essential moving forward or do they belong in a landfill with the underpants that I wore in 1974?
Hahah you totally cracked me up on the Tim Ferriss line!! Excited to play along with the goal setting!
I found the cure to not letting things go. My Mom passed almost three years after my Dad did. Mom didn't want my sibling in the house. This was my job. I touched every piece of paper in the home and I had the chance to see the covers for 25 year old tax guides. I personally held every possession and decided to keep, throw away, give to sibling or donate. I emptied the house and renovated it for sale. I got tennis elbow from scraping popcorn off the ceiling. A few years later, we repeated the process, with some help, for my husband's parents. I touched every paper again here. Through these years, I saw the personal objects and lives of four people whittled down to a handful of shoe size boxes. I learned a lot. I learned to love the things I loved. I believe in using good china all the time. I learned I don't want to leave that overwhelming job for my children, but we have a much bigger one for them that I am highly motivated to clear up because of these years. I have a good handle now on enjoying my ideas and stuff with little sentimentality. Someday, someone will riffle through my stuff and I want it to be a curated collection, not a bunch of random things that I had not dealt with. I have let my booties go so someone else doesn't have to decide. Now, my other half? We have some work to go there and he's the sentimental one. But, he's trying.