Psychoanalyzing a Storage Unit
Friday Newsletter: 4/8/2022
Here’s a ridiculous fact about me and it’s a bit vulnerable for me to share: I had a storage unit for eight years. Now that may be a short time if you’re a hoarder or perhaps you have many collectables or whatnot and it’s actually a useful endeavor. I recently Googled how long most people rent storage units, because for a second I was hopeful that this was not a sad factoid about my life, and the average is about three months. Yikes.
So I finally got to work, cleaned it out and got rid of it a couple of weeks ago. When I perused through those belongings, much of it was not anything I would use anymore or it was generally irrelevant now. I won’t tell you how much I’ve spent over the years keeping that stuff locked up because it’s too embarrassing for me to come to terms with the money I wasted all these years. Let’s just say, I’m like the anti-Dave Ramsey of storage usage.
There are, of course, some surface-level reasons for the longevity: I often lived in and rented places that were small that couldn’t fit all the extra gear I had. There were important documents that I needed to keep around but didn’t have space for at the time. For a few years the lock on the unit door was busted and the storage company refused to break it, claiming that I had to pay a locksmith to get back into the unit (and in my stupid contrarian brain I decided to stick it to them by… paying for multiple years of their “services”). It was also, just to be upfront, a project I kept putting off. I’m an incredible procrastinator. In fact, I’m ambitious in my procrastination efforts. From an odd perspective, one could even admire my procrastination tactics.
On a much deeper level, I believe the storage unit represented something about me that I didn’t want to let go. For some context, I was born and raised in Tulsa most of my life but moved to Missouri in 2012, teaching in the Kansas City Public Schools district for a couple of years with Teach For America. I was a bit older than most of the TFA-ers, navigating a second career all the while trying to figure out a myriad of personal issues. In a lot of ways, Kansas City was a breath of fresh air. It was air that I had to get used to, nonetheless, like learning to acclimate in a higher elevation. But KC helped me form a new life for myself. I was in my early thirties, finally becoming confident in who I was after years of insecurity and doubt. I made a slew of new friends, I worked on getting out of my comfort zone, and I built a life that was different from the thirty years that had transpired before. But my two-year commitment came and went and after exploring options to stay in KC or move elsewhere, I made the decision to go back to Tulsa. I had the exciting prospect of a new school to work at but I was weary of my return to an old town with a mixed bag of good and bad memories. But I gathered and packed what I had and I made the move. Some of it came along to my new house and the rest went into storage. It might be a little melodramatic, but I can see now that the storage unit was perhaps a way for me to preserve this freshly-molded self, this “KC Dan”, as my friend Andy liked to call me back then.
To fast forward to the present, I hit a milestone this year. I turned forty. I think I’ve navigated it pretty well thus far, no midlife crisis that I’m aware of yet (though isn’t that part of the point, being blissfully unaware of the crisis at hand. Please God someone tell me if I’m in crisis!). No more procrastination, I promised myself this year, and I made a point of getting rid of the storage unit. I simply couldn’t have another year tick by with that stuff still wasting away there. As I was skimming over the boxes being cleaned out, I found one filled with birthday cards, many of them from when I turned thirty. Again, I have loved my thirties: I embraced and loved myself more, I reconnected with old friends while discovering new relationships, I met my wife, we bought a house, we’ve raised two dogs in a neighborhood that we feel so grateful to be in, and I also stopped worrying (mostly) if I was getting life right or not. But deep down and in some weird and incomprehensible way, a part of that storage unit was a time capsule, a marker of a metamorphosis that I had undergone and I feared letting it go. To get rid of it might mean that I would devolve back into a previous version of myself! Our minds are funny places sometimes, we treat them like a no man’s land, looking for landmines everywhere. We anticipate that any misstep will lead to an explosion.
Likely because of this recent transition, I’ve been thinking about a few of the men and women that I admire and the way they’ve aged in the “back half” of life. Some of the names you might know, some probably aren’t that familiar. But the thing I’ve noticed that they all have in common is that they’ve taken many personal and professional risks, moreso in their later years than in the beginning stages. They didn’t settle into an identity and into routine, they became increasingly vulnerable, daring, curious, and relationally open. This common trait of personal flexibility has brought me much comfort in the last few weeks because it’s allowed me to see a pathway forward in lieu of a locked room of preservation. Of course, it is vital that we celebrate and reflect on our growth and what we’ve moved on from, but instead of erecting mental statues we need to construct guideposts. A majority of the stuff in that storage unit I’ve now either thrown away or I’m in the process of giving to others. Perhaps that is a good practice for us all, that whatever doesn’t lead to a better future for ourselves, we either toss it or see if it can be utilized by someone else. Letting go is about looking forward, appreciating the past but not beholden to it.
Closing that storage unit for the final time, even with a Jeep full of boxes and other miscellaneous items, I felt lighter, I felt free, and I felt a little bit more hopeful.