This is the season of chuffing. By this I mean I’m starting to recognize root causes of not being able to get momentum on tasks and hobbies and clearing those root causes. One of the main ones was clutter.
For a while I caught myself mentally complaining about being weighed down by projects. It was confusing, as I also had a desire to work on projects like sewing and weaving, etc., so why did I find projects cumbersome? The actual issue was that the fun projects are currently blocked and in perpetual holding patterns because house clutter is blocking their proper space. I can’t just use my gym equipment because clutter blocks and the problematic project is the clutter.
Shifting to addressing the household clutter has been refreshing. I’m basically downsizing all my stuff, deciding what I keep and what goes. The scale of the Goes pile is large enough to be intimidating. Initially I was trying to make trips to Goodwill to drop things off but this is too slow. I hit on companies that come take junk away and am just dumping everything I want to get rid of in the main basement room and the guest room. That way the company can come and clear those two rooms and all will be… so nice.
You might be asking yourself why I don’t sell it in a garage sale. The spoons and energy needed for me to set that up, price everything, haul it out to the driveway, sit in the heat for people to pick through it… that is a Stoppage Project and will not happen. I don’t give a shit enough about the money gained from that. I am donating specific things or considering selling or giving people specific things, but in general the juice is not worth the squeeze. I’ll see if the junk hauling company will give me docs for tax write-off, but beyond that, fuck all that.
So that’s moving along. Once all the junk is gone, I can rein in the accumulation of more junk (something I already started) and make the whole of the big basement room into a creative studio and the old smaller sewing room the new gym. Imagine just stepping down there and doing fun things! Wow!
Resurrecting the Gaming PC
Speaking of doing things I finally got around to rebuilding my gaming PC. I’d bought an Origin pre-built system a couple years ago and just over a year into ownership, the motherboard died. It was then out of warranty so I bought a new motherboard and CPU and set it aside to rebuild.
That was easily over two years ago. It’s been a floating UFO project since.
Last weekend I finally tackled it.
I took the guts out of the Corsair case on the top and installed everything into an old and beloved Coolermaster HAF XB case I had. The Coolermaster is an amazing case, so much room, made of solid steel. All the sides come off and it’s very easy to install things. After a few hours it booted, installed Windows 11, and now I’m able to play all my games at Ultra quality. This is a big upgrade from my poor Macbook Pro, which has been my gaming system in the meantime.
The old case with a few extra Corsair fans still in it will be donated to Goodwill. I hope some gamer out there gets it at a deal and it makes them happy.