Category Keeping

I opened the desk drawer where I keep greeting cards and found a small stack, bought with real intention and never mailed, some of them years old. A close look at good intentions that quietly expire in a drawer.

When the house two doors down was cleared out after the owner moved into assisted living, I ended up with a chipped blue bowl from the estate sale. A story about why I bought something I didn't need from a stranger's kitchen.

I leave my porch light on every night, a habit that started for a practical reason years ago and has outlasted the reason entirely. A small look at the rituals we keep long after their original purpose is gone.

My back garden bed has been half finished for three years, one section thriving and the other bare dirt I keep meaning to plant. An honest account of a project that never quite gets prioritized.

I finally went through the old red toolbox in the garage, most of it his, and found tools I don't know the names of alongside a few I use all the time. A practical, unsentimental look at what gets kept and why.

A shoebox of loose photographs has sat on my closet shelf for years, unsorted, and every attempt I make to organize it stalls out within twenty minutes. A look at why some tasks resist finishing no matter how many times you start them.