02 November 2007 Friday

Collections

When I was a kid (~elementary school..), I collected stickers, pens/pencils, notebooks, marbles, books, music (cassettes, then CDs).
I collect journals(calendar and simple ruled), domain names, post-it note tabs, books, downloadable software, AVIs of TV eps, music, mp3s.

It was always more about quality than quantity, though I had a huge sticker collection (until Tina stole two of my good binders-full), and during college I collected more music than I really consumed.. Furries were favorites, satins were really rare, shinies/pearlies were also favorite, puffies were not really my thing but I had lots. Always better to have a handful of good furries than books of plain or common metallics. I was very good at trading them, which is how I amassed the most unique pieces of my collection (there was a big sticker trading market at school around 2-3rd grades+. Marbles were assorted too…shinies and frosties and pearlies.. large and regular and tiny (so cute).. the clear with little bubbles.. I also learned from someone that if you sit some good shiny (plain colored glass) marbles in the freezer for a while, and then drop them in hot/boiling water or heat them up around the edge of the fire on a stove, they’ll form very pretty little cracks through them. If you don’t do it right, you end up with broken marbles. I love my domain names. I don’t really need them all, but when I do, I have them. I can’t avoid collecting new software — there’s new and better and awesome stuff developed and made available all the time. I was trying not to collect books..quite content to borrow from friends or library, but the biggest problems with that are a) not being able to lend it to your Dad or friends to read, and b) not being able to pull it from the shelf when you want to reread a passage you’ve suddenly remembered. I’m better at deleting music I don’t listen to, but my collection is still unruly size-wise, and I can’t avoid adding more. Just means I have to get rid of more.

I have to get rid of a lot of things. Sentimentality, possible future usefulness, all that is valid and I maintain..but fact is that I plant o collect a good many more things in my lifetime, and I need more room for them. Rather than just collecting extra storage space on top of it all, to encompass it all, I have to let go of many many things.

But I’m not giving up my stickers, domain names don’t take up physical space (though they do cost $$), and …I really want to make a joke about not losing my marbles, but I actually probably will let those go.