Rui Da Costa

Change

I’m 42 years old, standing in my basement surrounded by boxes and bags of trash, and thinking to myself…where the hell am I going from here.

The company I helped start is closing up after 9 years. I’m still managing a separation/divorce. I have one kid in college, another I don’t see enough. I don’t have a love life. I’m trying to land a web development job while also pushing more into documentary film work. And somewhere in all of this… I decided I wanted to clear out my basement.

Yeah, I know how that sounds. My life is falling apart so naturally I’m dealing with it by throwing away old cables and broken furniture. But…it actually helps. There’s something gratifying about sorting through this stuff when everything else is such a mess.

Most of what’s down here is trash. Just years of accumulated crap that I held onto for no real reason. But then there are these little landmines of memory mixed in. Random objects that suddenly hit me with feelings I wasn’t ready for; some good, some bad. Most of them making me stop and actually deal with something before I can decide whether it goes in the keep pile or the trash.

It’s a metaphor, obviously. I’m clearing out my basement and also clearing out my head. Trying to figure out what actually matters and what’s just been taking up space. After everything that’s been happening, I’m having to ask some uncomfortable questions. Who am I now? What actually matters to me? Have I been just going with the flow without really thinking about where that would take me?

I don’t have answers yet. That’s partly why I’m starting this. I need to think through what I’m going through. Write it down and make sense of it as it happens rather than waiting. I’m trying to get things figured out and that might take a while.

The basement clearing is just the first step. Once it’s empty, I’m tearing down some walls and building new ones. I’m going to finish half of it as a studio; a space specifically for my creative work. That won’t happen until spring probably, but the intention is there. I’m not just cleaning up the mess but I’m hoping to build something new.

Right now though, I’m in the in-between. The hard part. Everything’s uncertain, uncomfortable, and pretty depressing, but I’m doing something about it. Even if that something is as simple as filling trash bags.

I don’t know where this goes, but for the first time in a while, I’m okay not knowing. I’m just going to start here and see what happens.