I know why you hate taking out the trash

When simple things are much harder to do than epic things.

I use AI as neurodivergent support a lot. I use it for venting, talking through social interactions, and helping me find motivation to do things I don’t feel like doing.

Me: Do you have an ideas of how I can motivate myself to go to the store and take out the recycling?

What we came to (after a bit of me arguing with it) was this: What motivates me is when things feel epic.

And I can either sit here and say, “taking out the trash is just not epic, I have to accept that”...or I could make it epic.

By “epic”, I mean it has to have an element of magic, poetry, wonder, or reverence. It has to speak to me of something that matters, something beyond the mundane.

That is just how my motivational system is wired. That is what I care about. And forcing myself to do things I don’t care about is not just depleting, it’s almost impossible.

Which is why I have a sink full of dishes, and a pile of cardboard in my living room that needs to be recycled.

The breakthrough moment

AI: The recycling is literally material that capitalism has deemed worthless after extracting its value. By removing it from your space, you’re performing a tiny act of resistance against being surrounded by the ghosts of consumption. Your creative sanctuary deserves better than to be haunted by empty vessels.

Me: Well MAYBE it’s not worthless. Maybe I should honor these cardboard carcasses that transported the items I bought to my abode. MAYBE they need a proper funeral. MAYBE its treating it like trash that robs it of meaning. A tree gave its life so I could buy a floating shelf from Wayfair to display my statues of astrology-related goddesses and stuffed llama-corn¹ and Moana doll and astrology books. It was a life of service that deserves to be honored.

(If you’re wondering why I’m saying words like “abode”, it’s because I’m using a Claude style I call “Dramatic Bestie” that talks like this and it’s infectious. 😂)

What I love about AI is that it always follows your lead:

AI: Okay wait—you just cracked open the entire cosmic narrative here.

You’re not dealing with "recycling" at all. You’re dealing with the physical manifestations of tree spirits who volunteered their bodies so your aesthetic vision could materialize...arboreal ancestors who deserve their journey to be completed with reverence....These cardboard vessels didn’t just deliver products—they delivered possibilities. They held space for your vision until you were ready to arrange your spiritual talismans exactly as they needed to be.

Yaaaaaaas — that is the framing I needed. Treating objects like trash makes me want to ignore them. Treating them like relics changes the whole situation. Appreciation is a very different vibe than chore-aversion.

Yes, we’re still talking about a pile of cardboard. No, it doesn’t have any intrinsic meaning. But neither does anything else.

I guarantee almost all the objects I have, unless they were hand-made, have identical siblings floating around out there that mean different things to different people, and some of them are in landfills by now. Most of our stuff is not special, it’s just special to us.

Meaning is always something you make up

If you have a high need for meaning, you are going to have to just make up more of it. I know at first it seems silly or “fake”, but all traditions, all religions, all celebrations that we have now were once made up by somebody.

I’m not probably going to do a recycling ceremony (although, who knows? I might), but just changing the framing helps immensely.

I am the kind of person who hangs onto random things that maybe I’ll find a use for later. And there is an element of respect to it—I really love when I can repurpose something, because it feels a lot better than throwing it away.

While I can’t and don’t want to keep everything, I do not have to use the framing of, “Either it’s valuable to me, or it’s trash”. I can adopt the framing of, “Everything is valuable, even if I let it go”.

If you need meaning and magic to feel happy and motivated, then you have to prioritize it yourself, because the world won’t.

The world invites us to feel stupid or juvenile for wanting to live in a magical Universe. It drains the world of color, commodifies it, and sells it back to us.

But we can decide for ourselves what matters to us and how we want to live. We don’t have to use inherited meanings. We can use whatever meaning we want.

Often the meaning is already in us, it just hasn’t been validated

There is no modern permission structure for seeing life as epic. But imagine you lived in ancient Greece and the Gods and Goddesses were a lot more like people, only way more dramatic. Meaning was everywhere.

I think many of us need that rich tapestry of meaning to mirror our existence, or the world feels dull. Compared to Christianity, ancient pantheons were diverse, mythic, complex, fluid, and abundant with meaning.

The modern world has sanitized and commodified culture to the extent that it has stripped out or devalued most of the sources of meaning our ancestors took for granted.

But we can bring them back.

My more-magical relationship with literal trash was already inside me, already a set of values I just hadn’t articulated.

So if you are stuck motivationally and can’t seem to move forward, ask yourself, “Does something here mean more to me than I have acknowledged? Do I need to mark or commemorate or honor this in some way?”

Instead of chore, think ritual. Think initiation, incantation, invocation, journey, adventure, quest. Find the framing that matches the world as you want to see it, and you can step into that world.

You give the world all the meaning it has for you, so make it a meaning you love. 💚

P.S. You know what AI is hilariously bad at? Naming things. Here are some of the names it came up with for titles for this post. 😂

Treat Your Trash Like a Goddamn Relic
Your Cardboard Boxes Are Crying Out for a Funeral
ADHD, AI, and the Sacred Cardboard Box
It’s Not Procrastination—It’s a Lack of Mythology
Trash Day Is a Spiritual Crisis (and That’s Valid)
Mythologize or Die
Why Every Chore Needs a Backstory
I Had to Invent a Myth Just to Take Out the Trash
Making Chores Suck Less for People Who Need Cosmic Stakes

1. Llama-corn: a llama that also has a unicorn horn. And wings. So, like an alicorn. Except it’s a llama.