books

I continue to purge, clean and organize so I tackled my office bookshelf yesterday. I donated 179 books to our local library and tossed a 3 foot high stack of binders and conference handouts. It is interesting to notice what I kept:

• several core coaching books that I think I may need as reference for my book
• 3 psychology books
• a single copy of the book for which I wrote a chapter in 1996; donated the extra copies that will soon end up as landfill, but I couldn't bear to toss them
• two Tarot books and two decks of Tarot cards
• an exercise and diet book (out of a weird sense of obligation)
• an entire shelf of books focused on using narrative and/or dialogue to develop and/or heal
• travel books for Maine and the west coast
• two assessment binders: Personal Directions and CCL's suite of 360s
• 3 books on publishing a book
• 2 genealogy books
• dictionaries including a medical dictionary from my pre-med days. a thesaurus, Merck manual
• 2 fiction books that I've yet to read!
• field guides for identifying birds
• a shelf dedicated to "inspiration"--some poetry, 2 Julia Cameron books, two Patti Digh books, one little book entitled What I Learned From Children's Books
• a few gardening books mostly for reference photos for art; I don't weed!
• jewelry and art books
• a shelf of journals--some empty and waiting, others with sporadic entries whose content would embarrass my kids
• 9 books on aging
• 7 books on what I'd label as human development
• only 6 books on retirement (there used to be 3 shelves!)
• yearbooks

Shel said, "I can't believe you are giving so many books away. They contain everything you've learned over your career." He's wrong. I can give them away now because I realize that they only served as a catalyst for my own thinking. What I learned came from my experiences, insights and reflections. It will be in my brain as long as there is room.

The freed up spaces on the shelves now house family pictures and art and there's SPACE for whatever comes.