Downsizing A Life

September 13, 2025

Where does one donate old notions, depleted dreams and faded fantasies? Surely someone could use some slightly wilted zeal? Any thrift store will welcome cast-off stuff, tired toys and worn clothes. Regrets are desires too long held onto, and one must exhale stale breaths to breathe. Where do they sell secondhand desires?

What to do with what one does not do anymore? I have so many after a long life. They stack like boxes in my mental living-room. Stack enough boxes in your living-room and you're living in your boxes-room.

I do not fly airplanes anymore. Box it up. I do not go scuba-diving, nor report the news on TV. Box them up. Never again will I sell investments, nor manage people’s portfolios, nor teach Finance at a college, nor write professional exam questions. More boxes! I seldom write software these days for electronic gadgets such as Arduinos, after spending ten years publishing dozens of articles and buying fourteen volume-bushel boxes full of stuff along that line. Decades ago I stopped singing in bars for a living, driving school buses, tending to a tree farm. Did someone say, "Box?"

As the pile grows taller, I feel smaller. My boxes seem to be downsizing me.

Those boxes have eyes, too. They follow as one threads through the narrowing aisles left open between them. GuiltyGuiltyGuilty, they murmur in verdict. Truant. Neglectful. Judged, and found wanting.

One protests. Not so fast! I believe I shall utilize one of those boxes again some fine day — just wait and see! But tell the Whole Truth; how often do you?

Must one downsize the lived life to make room for more? Is it the goal to forget what you think you used to know, throw it all out, become childlike again, purged of knowing, open to the refreshment of learning?

Here now is the trouble with thinking that way. Days actually do come when you'll be glad to have what is in those boxes.

Today I wrote some software for my friend Roger Wagner’s MakerPort project. He wanted to exhibit Conway’s Game of Life on a 16x16-pixel display panel. He wanted it today so he could show it to some people tomorrow. It has been months since I wrote any software. When I opened the code-writer box, it all hurried back to me.

I return here to confess my code for the Game of Life did not work right. It has bugs. Code always has bugs, like picnics have ants, like canoe trips have mosquitos. I always come away knowing more about code after I find and fix the bugs.

(Post-poscript. Roger found the bug, a typographical error on my part causing the program to skip an important step. It works now. The Code Diarist blog will have more to say about this after I write it up. There will be a link here.)

A few days ago a friend who lives out of town showed interest in my technique for basting pieces of fabric with Elmer’s School Glue instead of pins, before sewing them onto quilt blocks. Making a video for her seemed like the best response. When I opened my old documentary-film-maker box from 50 years ago, by golly I knew how to shoot it. But then, what?

Film today is a video file in a smartphone. Editing involves none of the scissors or glue we needed for film in the 1970s. It’s done with software now. Thank goodness, the timing and scene sequencing concepts found in the old box apply equally well to the new tools, and following those precepts led me to a good result.

The moral of those two stories? Boxes look smaller when you look inside them, and old things may find new uses.

I should feel thankful for opportunities to pursue many different interests at different times in a long life. I should see the lessons of experience as nuggets of gold to keep, not as balls of dust to sweep away.

Let the mental living room fill up with used-to-do’s. Downsize the pile by adding-on to the house-in-my-head. Keep the past, embrace the future, do something new.

What will I do next? I don’t know (yet.) I’m sure I’ll do something. It would be great to need more boxes.

To downsize the past, outgrow it.