Light Posting Ahead.....

Getting down to the wire, and the stress level here is past eleven....

I'm going through the remaining piles in the backyard, and told the wife to call the junk man.

This is as hard for me to do as it was for me to stop on the aft brow of the Iowa yesterday, and salute our flag before I walked off the ship for the last time.

I know, it's just "stuff", and it's bad to be too materialistic, but this "stuff" is a collection of things I managed to acquire after I got sober in 1995. I put my life back together and got my own apartment after living in a men's sober living house for a year, and slowly started rebuilding my life.

Amateur Radio played a big part of that, and for years I scratch-built equipment because the job I had managed to hold on to before I had my "Moment Of Clarity" didn't pay all that well, so I had to build stuff if I wanted to get on the air.

So I guess this "Pile Of Junk" as my wife refers to it represents a whole lot more to me than just parts for future projects, and parts from past projects; it represents a time of my life where I not only found sobriety, but had to "reinvent myself" as a means of keeping busy. "Idle Hands" and all that....

I'm happy that my son kept all the little things we built together during that time, as I was completely out of his life for a couple of years after my first wife tossed me out. I didn't really come back into his life until my best buddy from college dragged me out of the cheap motel I was slowly dying in, and helped me clean up. It took me another couple of years before I finally manged to get sober, and stay that way.

Maybe it's finally time to put that all behind me, and open a new chapter in life.

I still hate tossing out good parts and equipment, but the clock is ticking, and if I don't get it done in the next 48 hours, it'll cause a real mess with things....