Library

[marsden_online]

Continued to stay away from the office today. Wasn't completely unproductive though.

~~~
Since E-Day isn't coming to Chch, I finally got around to taking a load of obsolete computer bits to Molten Media. Including 3 monitors, the 486 and even PC-Model (lettng go of another piece of the past ... plenty to go ...).

The soundcard from my first ever computer was resident in PC-Model, and the HDD in the 486. I think the motherboard, videocard and processor are left, out at my parent's.

So anyway, that's freed up a bit of space.

I purchased a new joystick to replace the malfunctioning one that went in the odds and ends. So the accumulation begins anew.

I'm sure I'd promised to include someone else in my next trip, to molten, but I'm hapy to make a specific trip for whoever it was.
~~~

Following that I started on a task actually scheduled for the weekend just been - resorting and restacking the bookshelves. This led to thinning the collection of cardboard boxes int he hallway cupboard, as many of thier original contents had just been delivered to Molten. I was actually looking for shoeboxes to store books in - many of the ones that in all honesty I'm unlikely to get around to reading again.

I never thought I'd see the day where I'd say "I don't have enough shoeboxes".

So the first box was easy enough. A few even went aside to go in the charity book collection bins. Then I came to the main bookcase (which is actually only about 25% books). And I'm looking at all these books (OK, I have relatively few compared to many of my friends).

And I'm trying to remember when last I read any of them. Several may not ever have been opened, having been purchased more recently because I read and enjoyed the book years ago. Several were purchased as potential RPG source material and read once, then never revisited. Many are random or outdated RPG supplements or systems which will never see actual use in my hands, of real interest only to a collector (I'm merely a hoarder).

Some I own for their connections to my past, my family.

I'm tempted just to box the vast majority of them and stash them in the back of a cupboard, never again to see the light of day. It's less heartbreaking than disposing of them would be, but still feels wrong.

This is proving more difficult than anticipated.

I'm brutally reminded of similar projects I have waiting to be undertaken. Pruning all those VHS tapes I'll never watch again (or copy when I finally get a VCR-to-PC setup working) for example. Revisitng the archive CDs and burning something with just the stuff that isn't obsolete.

~~~
Take away the accumulation of my past, and you destroy the very foundation of me.

~~~
There's a pile of old MAD magazines and 2000AD comics in the lounge I could bear to just throw away.

Comments

[plato-hell.livejournal.com]

I know the feeling. The majority of stuff i own, i'm never going to use again, or even use for the first time. But i still view getting rid of any of it as some twisted form of betrayal. I get far too attached to innanimate objects.

[niennahirilfea.livejournal.com]

Well done for getting so much sorted! :) Like Lucy said, it always feels like some sort of betrayal to me, throwing stuff away. I shouldn't be so attatched to stuff, but...it's memories, and places I've been, and things I've thought about. I feel like I'll forget if the stuff is gone.

I've honestly never thrown a book away in my life, not actually binned one at least. I've very rarely sold a book, or given one to a friend, but mostly, I keep them all. (Unless you count the ones from when I was about 7-12ish, that were spirited away by my parents when I wasn't looking, for which I still haven't forgiven them. Those were my closest school friends, damnit!) It seems somehow dishonourable to put an actual book in the bin. It's silly, but there you go.

[plato-hell.livejournal.com]

I always get the "these books were there for me when I needed them, and now i'm not going to be there for them? like they're nothing to me, whne they obviously love me?"
My parents learnt not to throw anything away after i spent about a week crying because mum got rid of an old pair of shoes that i loved. i was about 4, thankfully i've gotten better.