Letting Go - 61

I'm going through my extensive list of playlists (a total of 127 playlists are saved in my account, the vast majority of them created and curated by myself) and I'm reflecting on the idea of letting go.

I still have my first real playlist. I can see the dates that I added songs, and they stretch all the way back to October of 2019.

One thing that I have noticed is that music, more than almost anything else, invokes my memories extremely well. I have a few playlists that I listened to with my older sister and her SO while we played Minecraft together last summer; those same playlists make me meloncholy now that the relationship is over and the time gone by. I have a playlist that I listened to in January of '20, on my final vacation before COVID-19 hit, a weeklong trip to see winter in New York. If I put it on, I immediately think about the hotel, the city streets, the museums, and most of all the depressing taxi ride to the airport.

I don't listen to these playlists, and they clutter my account. That said, if I remove them, the information is possible to regain. Going forward, I have solutions to clutter - prioritize quality over quantity - but what do I do about that which already exists? What can I let go of?

I've noticed this happen with many things throughout my life. Childhood toys, like stuffed animals and LEGOs, old notebooks and schoolwork, a useless camera role filled with images off the internet: they're all things that I almost certainly will not use for any functional purpose - anything other than reminiscing - and they are pure clutter. But how can I get rid of them? Isn't it better to have these relics hidden away, tucked in some corner to be rediscovered and causing a little bit of clutter, than to lose these pieces of history forever?

There must be some art to letting go, an art that I have not mastered.
-branches