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Absolutely, Octoberman!
It was a very sad time for me, but once I got past it…WOW!
Life is so much better now, and I couldn't be happier!
That's right, RoryR.
"NO SHIT!"
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Posted: |
Apr 29, 2016 - 4:38 AM
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By: |
Rameau
(Member)
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When getting rid of the "stuff" we're drowning in, the biggest thing was the realization that things that had meant so much to me, mean nothing to the rest of the world. Rare out of print books that I'd visited many s/hand bookshops to find now go straight to the charity shops, along with CD's, DVD's & interesting bits & pieces that I'd bought from all over the world. You get the pleasure of buying & owning & using these things, & then the pleasure fades & it's then just the habit of having this stuff around. This is all very much work in progress for me, I have a spare bedroom that I can hardly get into, the last time I tried sorting it out consisted of me picking things up, saying, oh I forgot I had this...& putting it back down again. I have to be stronger, I know I'll be happier when it's all gone.
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Posted: |
Apr 29, 2016 - 8:56 AM
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By: |
mastadge
(Member)
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And I imagined how free I'd be if I simply didn't have anything to keep. I'd get books from the library, watch films once at the cinema, look at good documentaries and stuff on YouTube (and explore more music there too, but not listening to the same thing over and over again). I'd buy new shoes when the old ones fell off my feet. .
I hear you, and I've been moving in that direction. I get books from the library, rent movies, and don't replace my shoes until they're falling apart.
Yet I still amass stuff. Books by authors I know personally or whose careers I want to support. Or books that are obscure enough that I can't get them through the library. Movies that, again, aren't available from the library/netflix (which, weirdly, means that my ratio of movies that I watch over and over to those that I was merely curious to see once keeps decreasing). Stuff like that.
Another problem I've found: it can be surprisingly hard to unload stuff. Libraries don't want old books. It can even be difficult to donate new, good condition, limited edition books that barely in WorldCAT. I also have tons of longboxes of comics from when I was younger, and it's proving impossible to get rid of them. I don't want to trash thousands of dollars of stuff that I no longer want, but I don't have the hours in my life to sort through it all and value it all properly, and the local comic book stores don't have the space to take it off my hands in bulk. A weird problem to have, owning probably tens of thousands of dollars of collectibles that I don't have the capacity to unload because there are simply too many of them!
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Posted: |
Apr 29, 2016 - 10:10 AM
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By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
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Hello again all! Let me take the opportunity to acknowledge everyone's contributions in a very clumsy way, namely by thanking you all but in a very clumsy way. You'll see - you all get a mention.
Zardoz - Do not worry. I shall indeed obey, but only by listening to dodecaphonic music when it comes around once a week on the "Dodecaphonic Music" show on the radio.
Kev - Thanks for the laugh, but la señora really doesn't mind if I keep on buying. "As long as it makes you happy" she says, not realising the irony of her words.
Rory - Strangely, POTA could have been one of the "indispensable" scores which I alluded to in my initial semi-cryptic comments, one of those which I thought I couldn't live without before realising that I could probably go quite happily without anything at all.
Bill - No, it's certainly not just about ripping my physical CDs to invisible compo-byte jobbies. It's about not having anything permanent to listen to or read in any format whatsoever. But I recognise that you were making a joke. Were you? You ARE Frank Carson, aren't you? "It's the way I tell 'em!"
MusicMad - Thanks for the offer of the boxes. Have you got one big enough for me to use as a house? Again, it's not really a "decluttering" issue, but that's an interesting related topic in itself - on which many of you have commented.
Ed Wood's Mom - Hope all goes well with your mum-in-law, and your own downsizing. I feel good that my post seemed to help you at the right moment, but honest, I didn't know. It wasn't my intention, but I'm glad of the momentary result.
Christopher K - Nice story of getting rid of all your own stuff and freeing yourself. That's part of what I was on about.
Rameau - Yeah, selling stuff off can be tricky.
mastadge - Ditto Rameau. My brother got rid of hundreds of film related stuff through auctions etc, but it did take a lot of catalogueing and trips in a van full of memorabilia. Still our rare "Star Wars" Hildebrandt poster went for 1,800 pounds, and a piece of cardboard which advertised "Star Wars Trebor Sweets" went for 900. But I'm sounding materialistic.
Grecchus - You suggest that it's a little bit sad when the glow starts to fade. Yes, it is. But I'm not sure at this stage if the glow will suddenly reignite, or transform itself into something completely new but equally vibrant.
David - Yes, you more or less guessed my age. It's probably a boringly predictable mid-life crisis after all.
Octoberman - You may think that you didn't have the eloquence to express yourself properly, but I understood it perfectly. Yes, the "quantum shift in thinking", where nothing has the same relation to other things as before. It's like contemplating all our old values with alien eyes.
solium - The story of the bloke you knew, the one who had no possessions and just sat around chatting to friends, or going to the beach and surfing... that really struck a nerve with me. I can relate to that.
Sorry if I missed anyone out.
Y'know, the funny thing is that I don't actually HAVE that much. I don't really own many possesssions at all. The bulk of the stuff I had acquired until 1990, when I relocated, is still sitting in my elderly mother's loft in Scotland. All of my LPs (thousands of them) are at my brother's house. Luckily he likes soundtracks and jazz too, so there's no waste there. I'd never dream of shipping them over, even if I could afford to do it. It would just be more "stuff", and I've never really missed not having the LPs here, although I used to think that I really did need them here beside me. And I buy about one new book a year. The shelves are hardly creaking under the weight of a mass of things. No, the recent feeling is what I already said. I don't need anything anymore. I don't necessarily want to go to the bother of selling it off (it's a paltry amount of things), I just don't feel the urge to add to it anymore.
It probably actually IS the boringly precictable mid-life crisis. I'm spending too much time wallowing in nostalgia and not moving on. And moving on means letting go. I want to take each moment as it comes. And oh Jeez, I have lost touch with nature! I can't even remember the names of the trees and flowers which surround my blinded eyes!
You will excuse me. I'm going out now to use my five semi-abandoned senses. I think I'll leave my watch in the drawer for once and come home when it's dark and cold, and then who knows? I might even feel like listening to a soundtrack.
Anyway, thanks for the posts, and I hope I haven't bored you all too much with this last one. Apologies in advance if I'm not back immediately to follow up on it. I think that at my age I can only throw off the shackles to a certain extent. My knees feel a bit arthritic, so no cave-dwelling. So I will be back I'm sure, but not obsessively.
See you around.
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I remember finding a dvd of ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938) on the curb, still sealed. I WANTED to keep it, I really did.
Or I thought I did. I tried an experiment. I went to the library, checked out the same dvd, watched it, ENJOYED IT THOROUGHLY.
Then I looked at the dvd I found and thought, "Hmmm. I don' think I really want to keep this now." So I sold it to the used cd store.
One less thing on my shelf.
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Posted: |
Apr 30, 2016 - 9:44 AM
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By: |
Rameau
(Member)
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Nostalgia is not exactly a positive thing. It's mourning for a past that's gone. Sometimes it's painful.
"Nostalgia is a form of depression."
Yes, and collecting can be regarded as a form of mental illness, though not a serious one -- unless you're a hoarder.
Bloody hell, what's this, a bunch of analysts trying to drum up business. There's nothing depressive about nostalgia, it's perfectly normal, it fact if you have a past that you can get nostalgic about, I'd say it's good news for the future (& I know nostalgia is very rose coloured, you don't remember the not so good times as well). And collecting (if it doesn't get out of hand) is quite normal, as is noticing you have too much & getting rid of things. Stop trying to be "normal".
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Posted: |
Apr 30, 2016 - 9:58 AM
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By: |
Jim Phelps
(Member)
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Nostalgia is not exactly a positive thing. It's mourning for a past that's gone. Sometimes it's painful.
"Nostalgia is a form of depression."
Yes, and collecting can be regarded as a form of mental illness, though not a serious one -- unless you're a hoarder.
Bloody hell, what's this, a bunch of analysts trying to drum up business. There's nothing depressive about nostalgia, it's perfectly normal, it fact if you have a past that you can get nostalgic about, I'd say it's good news for the future (& I know nostalgia is very rose coloured, you don't remember the not so good times as well). And collecting (if it doesn't get out of hand) is quite normal, as is noticing you have too much & getting rid of things. Stop trying to be "normal".
Well Graham Watt sure comes off as pretty god damned depressed in this thread's posts and he attributes it to wallowing in nostalgia. Only Graham's indefatigable sense of humor, which can only come from being a longtime British tax exile, is what keeps his head above water, before the ocean of materialistic-fueled nostalgia sweeps him away in a tide of Weetabix promotional giveaways, an autographed copy of Sod This, I'm off to Marbella, and some guiltily-purchased tapes of Jon Pertwee's run on Dr Who before the Beeb finally made them legitimately available.
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