I spent a good chunk of my weekend purging books, CD’s, computer games, console games, board games, and DVD’s from my life. The stated purpose of this latest purge was to raise some funds for a new fractal book I wanted to buy, and also the more general goal of weeding out the things in my life (and house) that are taking up space.
This is a task I meet with equal parts enthusiasm and grouchiness. I like clearing out new spaces in my office, getting clutter off desks, making it so less of my books have to be stacked on top of each other in my shelves, etc. I even get a certain good feeling from giving myself permission not to read something I thought I should back in the day.
But the task takes up a lot of time. I have media on all three floors of the house, and particularly in my office, shoved into just about every nook and cranny. To save space in my operational life, I keep the empty cardboard boxes for PC games (yes, we used to have those before there was such a thing as Steam) back in my storage area. At the moment the storage area cannot be walked into without moving a bunch of objects, and balancing awkwardly on one foot, but if I’m selling a game I want to get rid of its accompanying box.
And there are decisions to be made. I’ve gotten rid of things in the past that I’ve later regretted and re-bought. That is a waste of both time and money. Usually the two year rule works well for me. If I haven’t touched this in two years, it’s a potential for the chopping block, though there are lots of things that meet those conditions that still get a free pass.
Long story short I spent most of Friday, and a good portion of Saturday morning on this task, and earned $44 (about half of which was for the console games which took all of about five minutes to go through).
And then I determined that I didn’t want to buy the book that had kicked off this whole process in the first place.
OK, in the long run it wasn’t so bad. I got double fuel points for the Amazon gift card. After a couple of hours more weeding down my Fractal Book wish list, I did get a new book on L-systems that’s on its way, with budget left over for more. And I didn’t waste $36.80 on a book that wouldn’t have helped me much. Plus I gained a lot of space, though you’d hardly know it by looking.
I get frustrated at such expenditures of time because I would rather be spending my time creating new things. And it forces me to grapple with the fact that at varying times in my life I just let a lot of junk pile up, and now I’m trying to sift through it to determine if it has any meager value for the future. And these projects are always the sort of thing that start as a small project, and spin out into something that takes half the weekend.
I know that tasks like this are good in the long run. There’s a difference between busy work, procrastination, and actually organizing one’s life. And I got money from stuff that was sitting around gathering dust. Plus gathering research materials is a part of working on a book, even though it doesn’t feel like much. This is why authors should never figure out their hourly rate for creating a book. It would depress you to no end.
My wife says I should not let these things bother me, that the clearing away of junk is valuable in its own right, and of course she’s right. I spend a lot of time doing things that aren’t working on my book, and it isn’t all wasted time. In fact most of it are the parts of life that bring me the most joy. I wouldn’t have much to write about if all I did was work and sleep.
Now I just have to figure out how not to be such a grouch about it.
[BTW] : Ben Trube, Writer 