Michelangelo was once asked how he went about the sculpting process. His answer?

“I saw the angel in the marble, and carved until I set him free.”

This is something we can do for ourselves too - spend time carving and chiseling away to find the real person inside.

In recent years, I’ve noticed that keeping my physical belongings in check is not a problem. It’s the digital hoarding that weighs upon my mind.

The emails, the photos and videos, the files, the journal entries, the blogs and websites. It produces the same effect on my mind as a physical hoarder may experience, except I really can’t tell how big my issue is because it doesn’t overwhelm my home. It just sits neatly in a table showing up as a laptop, phone, and a couple of hard drives.

Though I know that my digital items will expand daily as I go through this process, I’m tackling it. A digital de-junk.

It’s a process like Swedish death cleaning, the practice of going through all your belongings long before you die (hopefully) so that your friends and family aren’t left with all of it to figure out.

This effort is a lot more than de-junking. It’s showing me what I’ve valued, how I’ve behaved, what I’m afraid of, and the achievements, mistakes, regrets, and hidden dreams. Everything that had been tucked away to address later in life.

It involves chipping away to find the real person hidden deep within. It is hard. It hurts. It is mentally draining.

It’s both becoming and unbecoming.

But it’s worth it.