Paper Trail

As I sort through all this STUFF, I'm noticing for billionth time in my life that I seem to always be leaving a paper trail of who I am and who I've known, what I've done, where I've been. This includes this blog and the fact that I was so tempted to write earlier in great detail about the paper pile I discovered tonight in what I thought was a bag of piano music. That I haven't thrown out some of those things until now is incredible: My old books in which I recorded how much piano I practiced when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old and addresses I kept of people who I don't want to see again for very good reasons, or who have moved away or even died.

If I had thrown these things out ages ago, I know I wouldn't miss them. But something about the fact that I've had them so very long makes me feel a little guilty when I let them go.

Who is this paper trail for anyway? If I'm meant to remember those people, I'll do it in another way. And I remember piano fine without the practice books. Do we all have delusions about people picking up the puzzle pieces of our lives and trying to put them together to figure out who we were?