Achievement of absence ≠ Absence of achievement
Two guys were busting up hospital beds in their front yard one block away. I saw them on my walk.
We got to talking.
They were scrap merchants. They took metal scrap.
I had a lot of metal scrap.
It was all left behind by tenants (and myself when I lived there), including an ancient broken aircon.
I was planning on hiring a skip to take it away.
But thanks to our serendipitous meeting, they drove their ute down and helped me fill up the tray.
We thanked each other and I waved them off. It's not 'goodbye'. I'm sure I'll see them again on my walks, busting up more metal frames.
I might even drop off more smaller metal objects for them. They take cookware and cutlery. I got cookware and cutlery.
Moving this amount of trash is a milestone, to be sure. But because the result is free space, it is hard to hard to see it as an achievement. It is, by definition, invisible. This is a problem because in the complex knot of projects involved with cleaning up a house, tangible wins are essential to maintain morale and stave off discouragement.
Perhaps memorialising this achievement is what I'm trying to do with this post.
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