What to Keep, What to Let Go

The UNCC Writing Project's Summer Institute comes to an end on Friday and I already am missing the daily conversations and the excitement as we make connections, scribble notes in our daybooks, and think--collectively and alone.  This always is the time of year when I realize how important it is to be "in the conversation."  Even if it's just sitting in the same room with others who are thinking and working, there is some kind of connection that takes place.

I never would be writing in this space if I had not attended the summer institute.  To say what I think is difficult for me probably because for so many years I have opened my mouth and inserted my foot.  I have had to learn the hard way that silence sometimes is golden and to remember Abraham Lincoln's advice to write a letter, put it aside and read it the next day before deciding whether to mail it.  Now here I am putting my thoughts right out here, hitting publish when I finish and not thinking that I might ought to wait a day before saying what I'm thinking.

For a couple of days we have, off and on, talked about hoarding and holding onto things we should let go.  They always turn to me since for three years I've been working on a self-discovery video about my own hoarding of books and other things that I don't need but am afraid to let go.  I pulled out the dusty storyboards again and vowed to finish that video before school starts this fall.  The unfinished video cluttering my computer's storage space is another example of my not finishing what I start and I've been pondering that trait as well.  I am packing up things to sell or give away and I am tying up loose ends with things in my house--organizing, sorting, pitching.

So today I invited the group to think about what to let go and what to keep as we begin another school year.  Here's what I have decided to let go and what to keep and I hope somewhere in this listing is a key to my holding onto stuff way long after it should have been recycled or loved by someone else.

Here's what I'm letting go:
The fear that I'm not good enough.
The fear that if I can't do it the first time people will think I'm stupid
The idea that everybody knows more technology than I do
All my insecurities
(and clothes that I'll never wear even if the price tag is still attached)

Here's what I'm keeping:
The technology I'm using in my classroom and some new that I'm adding
Ideas for papers I want to write--particularly one on complex texts and one on women (rights, discriminations, bodies, and so on)
My work and my writing and my determination to write every day and to write with purpose and conviction
My friends

I have let go so much and every time I let something else go I feel a great weight lifted from my head.  I love the energy that comes from a clean empty space.