What Was Left in the Attic

Recently, I worked up the nerve to venture into the attic where most of my life has been packed away. I’m in the process of transitioning everything from the locked-away tower of the attic into a storage unit where I can actually access what doesn’t fit in my immediate living space. This shift feels intentional. It feels earned.

On my first trip up, I was hunting for old sketchbooks. One oversized newsprint pad. Whatever art supplies might still exist. About a year and a half ago, I consolidated most of my life down by half. Carloads went to donation centers. Bags went into the trash because they didn’t survive storage. I threw out or gave away roughly ninety percent of my art supplies. It happened in what I call a fit of joy, which is totally sarcasm. It was rage. It was grief. It was anger at losing that part of myself and not seeing a way back to it. At the time, it felt like relief. In hindsight, I was only about a year away from returning. I just didn’t know it yet.

The First Box

The first thing I found was a box of oversized sketchbooks. I was convinced it was the ace in the hole. All or nothing. I brought it down, set it in my bedroom, and let it sit for a few days. I had to mentally prepare myself to open it.

When I finally did, I was disappointed.

I did find the oversized newsprint pad, which felt like a small win. But the rest of what I thought I was going to find wasn’t there. Instead, there were stacks of unused paper in various stocks, and unfinished oversized sketchbooks from life drawing classes of years past. Useful, eventually, but not what I had braced myself for.

I felt a little silly for how much mental preparation I’d done. When I didn’t find what I was looking for, it made me question why I’d felt the need to protect myself so intensely. Still, I’m glad I did. That preparation wasn’t wasted.

What the Storage Unit Represents

As I continued sorting through what I brought down and what I had already moved into the storage unit, I realized something important. The storage unit isn’t just a place to put things. It’s a door. Creative, mental, and physical. This winter, my project is to go through everything that remains. Every bin is being opened, sorted, and itemized into a Notion database with a numbering system attached to it. It’s methodical. It’s slow. It’s deliberate.

This process is as mental as it is physical. I believe that in order to move forward, I need to finally sort through the last twenty years of my life. Organize what stays. Purge what no longer suits me. Only then do I think there’s room to grow without feeling weighed down by what’s unresolved.

The Unexpected Find

Later, while sorting through another bin, I realized something. Without knowing it, I had brought down the box of sketchbooks after all. It was a lucky break I wasn’t expecting. Those sketchbooks hold my life from middle school through around 2010. The point where I creatively died. I’ve been mentally preparing myself for the day I’d sit down and go through them, and now that day is finally possible.

There was a brief moment of panic when I thought I might have thrown them out during that fit of joy. I am deeply grateful that I didn’t. Art supplies can be replaced. History can’t. Creative memory can’t.

What’s inside those sketchbooks deserves its own space.

That will be an entry for another day.