Ramping up thingflow

Yesterday I had on my task list: "buy new tennis shoes." I didn't get it done during the day, but before dinner I sat down at my computer to figure it out. The ASICs I have now have done well and I like their look, so I looked for more of them in a cool color but I couldn't really find anything in my size at either of the online tennis retailers. So I kept looking. Pretty soon it was taking up too much time.

Eventually I decided that I needed to let go of the colors constraint and just buy some shoes to get it done because I'm 60 years old and nobody is really looking at me and judging me by the color of my kicks. Those days largely passed in junior high school, however I may try to recapture the frisson that each pair of new athletic shoes, when the running store like the stereo store was a place we'd visit to dream and aspire. In that regard, as many, jr high was a good life stage (though there were many downsides, of course).

Similarly, last nigh, about 70 pages in, I've decided it's time to declare defeat on E. Annie Proulx's The Shipping News. The book has been on our shelf forever, it's possible Mary had the book before she had me. I really liked her Fen, Bog & Swamp so I wanted to like her biggest hit too, but I couldn't. It reminded me of John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces: it was just overwrought: too much narrator between the reader and whatever was supposed to be going on. I don't need that much narrator.

So, with Mary's permission, I will put that in the stack of books for Graham to take to the Extraordinary Ventures Thrift Store, where he is pricing rare books and jewelry and listing them on Ebay one day a week while working through his MSM at UNC's Kenan-Flagler. Good skills and experience. I will also add a pair of K-Swiss tennis shoes which I bought (I will spare you the story) and wore 2-3 times. Somehow my foot was sliding in them too much. In general it feels good to accelerate the flow of things through our home and our possession, remembering one wise client's reflection upon her mother's passing that she'd like to add to her high-level list of life goals to die with a number of possessions that will be manageable for her kids when she's gone.