A lot of stuff
Jun. 11th, 2023 02:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psipsyRecently, I started to figure something out. I looked around my house, and I figure I must have enough going on here to keep me busy for the next 100 years. In my never-ending war against boredom, this by itself is not a problem. I also know I'm certainly not going to live for 100 years on top of my current age. I would consider it generous if I see a third of that extra century. Again, that by itself is not a problem. However! When putting those two facts together, something resembling a problem starts to come into focus. Obviously, the amount of things and activities here will easily outlive me.
There are things I collected when I was younger because I thought they were cool. Things that could be classified as "it was there and I had the money for it". Or "it was a good idea at the time" and I was simply caught up in the high spirit of the moment, of which there were many. I liked the concept, the aesthetic, the character, the anime, and so on. Projects I laid the foundation for but never got around to. Things that were perfectly logical to have or do when I was in my 20s, that still made sense in my 30s, then became questionable in my 40s. I am nearing my 50s, and I'm certain that will bring a mindset with a more critical perspective.
Huh. Maybe Marie Kondo was right.
I have a lot of anime-themed figures that I've collected over the many years. I kept thinking eventually I would put them all on display, and after I moved, I got a Detolf from Ikea for that purpose. But there isn't room for all of them, and I'm not going to fill a whole room with Detolfs, even though I would be fine with the "Akihabara Rental Box" aesthetic. Many of the figures are of characters of anime I had only passing interest in, or games I never got into. I have a lot of figures and statues of maid-themed characters, some of which I don't know what they're from or even what their names are. Again, for many of these figures, I was driven by aesthetic.
I have a lot of Figmas. The appeal of Figmas is simple; they're action figures of characters from anime/movies/games (and a few real people). Would it be awesome to pose the Love Live cast with Robocop, Bruce Lee, and Pyramid Head? Absolutely hilarious, I'm sure. That was the idea, one of many. But, that's never going to happen anytime soon, at least not by my hands.
I have a lot of manga. I've started to go through this, sifting out the books that I bought the first couple of to check out, then lost interest in, or the publisher abandoned the title for whatever reason, or I read it through and decided "I'm never going to read this again". There are a few full series I got because the used shop had a crazy sale on already cheap manga, and I just had to go for it. Full set of 8 volumes for under $30? Hey why not.
I have a lot of comic books. Not as many as I used to. I stopped buying them long ago so that pinched off the supply. I've sold some, I've given away others. I think I'm down to 2 or 3 long boxes. I have a few series I'd like to keep, such as the Animaniacs and Pinky & The Brain comics. It ain't even about the collectible value of those, I just liked them.
I have a lot of doujinshi, almost enough to fill a standard Billy Bookcase from Ikea. I have more doujinshi than comic books now. Not getting rid of that any time soon. Just sayin' that I have it.
I have a lot of convention and fandom memorabilia. Program guides, badges, flyers, fan magazines, that sort of thing. On one hand it doesn't have any kind of financial value. On the other hand, I've already condensed it down to a few boxes so it's not really an issue. If someone (not me) were to start up some kind of museum dedicated to anime fandom in the US, I would be willing to make a donation of content.
I have a lot of old clothes. I have done purges in the past, filtering out the damaged or undersized items and disposing/donating them. I'll have to do this again and with the anime and convention shirts. I already sold a bunch of anime shirts that were either undersized or beat up. I'm not sure why I kept old socks full of holes, but I think the main reason was for the fabric itself as some kind of filler and not to wear them. Enough of that silliness. They should just go.
I have a lot of DVDs & BDs. This is probably not going to get reduced by much. I'll prune out the doubles, the orphans (happens when buying the individual volumes then suddenly a box set with the whole series appears), and stuff I genuinely didn't care for. Also, I learned that when comparing image quality of DVDs from 20 years ago to the xvid-avi files of the same vintage, the DVDs aged a lot better. Most importantly, the only guarantee about online availability is that someday it won't be available. Torrents lose seeds, streams dry up, sites shut down. The internet is extremely volatile and ephemeral, almost dangerously so.
I have a lot of music CDs. This can get thinned out more aggressively. My CD music collection absolutely EXPLODED in the past 5 years thanks to 2nd-hand stores in the US and Japan selling them for as low as a dollar each. Initially I was scooping up the albums I was nostalgic for. Perhaps I kept meaning to buy the album years ago but never got around to it, until it appeared in front of me with a $3 price tag. Then I started to build up entire discographies of groups I liked. Then I was taking chances on unknown stuff, sometimes picking out random CDs as a means of filling out the requirements for the "buy 5, get 5 free" sale. While I found enough winners to justify continuing that practice, I also found that many of the others were being sold cheap for a reason. I have a growing pile of them that are going to find their way back to the buyback counter at the 2nd-hand store, or to whoever would want them.
I have a lot of Lego. That's all I'm going to say about that because Lego is sacred here.
I have a lot of model railroad stuff. I know I have more engines and rolling stock than what can run on the layout at any given time. I'm alright with this for now. However, an older and more experienced model railroader with a layout much bigger than mine shared the wisdom that one should stick to a particular time period, a particular region and railroad, and so on. Basically, be picky about what you're modeling. Don't have to go completely anal with the details, just set some boundaries. And that makes sense. There are a lot of options. Eventually, I'll go through my railroading stuff and pick out the things that either don't fit with what I'm trying to do, or just don't jive, or whatever. Fortunately, the nature of model train stores makes it easy to re-home such items.
I have a lot of general toys, many of which are from my own childhood. The sentimentality is going to make this hard to go through. I have to accept that some of it had not survived the decades and simply turned itself into trash. Plastic breaks down, degrades, and becomes brittle, paper gets ripped, metal rusts, electronic components fail. And so on.
I have a few video games and game systems. My newest system is a PS2 (bought a few months after launch), and I can't remember the last time I played any games on it, or any of the consoles. My hands do not have the fast-twitch anymore to play many of those games.
I have a lot of electronic components. At least this doesn't take up much room overall. Does one need half a dozen Raspberry Pi devices? Probably not but I'll find a use for them. Besides, the tinkerer in me gets a spark of inspiration from it. I think I'll leave this alone.
I have a lot of assorted projects that were either planned or started on. Many of them were for an initial need or purpose, and more often than not, that need or purpose ended up either getting fulfilled by an externally provided turnkey solution, or was rendered completely moot, or both. For example, I had the idea of making a high-powered FM transmitter so I could play music from one source and listen to it anywhere in the trailer without wires. Then after I moved I discovered Apple Airplay could do the same thing over my wifi network without putting me at odds with the FCC, and TOSLINK eliminated any ground-loop hum.
I have a few bicycles. One I had since my teens, and there's really not much left of it. I'm not sure why I kept it. The neat thing about getting rid of old bikes is you just have to leave them out, and someone will take them before the garbage truck does. Another one actually belongs to a friend of mine and I just need to get it to her somehow. She might just throw it out anyway but that's her call, not mine. The third one is much newer and the last time I rode it was in 2014. I'll probably keep that one for the time being, especially now that I live near a bike trail. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy bike riding. I would enjoy it much more if my knees didn't get destroyed in the process.
I have a lot of car parts. This just needs sorted out by Ai or Nozomi. I also have a bunch of leftover parts. Many of them are too worn out to re-use, too large to put in the general trash.
I have a lot of computer parts. Hard drives, graphics cards, sticks of RAM, various other parts, all the way up to whole computers. If someone were to guess that I had a total of 100 hard drives, I'd say that's not far off. When the local MicroCenter is selling 1TB SSDs for $50 (with the prices steadily dropping) and I've been consolidating data to my server, I can't see much use for platter drives in the 500GB range. The IDE drives would still be good for the few legacy systems that don't play well with SATA but that's a very niche application these days. Also, it's been over 15 years since AGP was a thing for graphics cards. I somehow have half a dozen of them anyway. I have a few whole surplus computers, some of which just found their way here and I'll figure out what to do with them (or send them to electronics recycling).
I have a whole Amiga 2000 computer system. Monitor, peripherals, everything. I have that because back in the late 90s, my friend and I hatched the idea of starting our own fansubbing group, so we got that from a very-new ebay, along with a genlock card. Before we could do anything with it, computer specs increased by orders of magnitude on a regular basis and digi-subbing became more prevalent. Now the Amiga is more of a novelty than a usable machine, and it needs a new hard drive to replace the 80MB SCSI drive that's turning to goo inside.
So! At some point, I'm going to start going through my stuff with less forgiving eyes, deciding what can stay and what can go. I'm not going to throw it away, unless it's obviously turned into garbage. I have an idea of how to handle each category. Anime figures? I know a guy who will buy them to resell at conventions. He'll be able to sell them to someone who will value and enjoy them more than I do. Anime/manga/music? 2nd-hand stores. Computer stuff? If it works, I'll either find a use for it or find someone who can. If it doesn't work, recycling. I should probably check with some of my MAGFest-going friends if they or someone they know would be interested in an Amiga to fix up as a retro-gaming system. It's going to be a long process overall, and there will be multiple iterations.
There's no way I'm going to make any kind of side business out of this. I don't have that hustle mentality and I already have a job. The collectibles market can pay the bills but only when the bills are already paid.
Hey, wait! This sounds like another project! Shenanigans! Shenanigans, I say!
There are things I collected when I was younger because I thought they were cool. Things that could be classified as "it was there and I had the money for it". Or "it was a good idea at the time" and I was simply caught up in the high spirit of the moment, of which there were many. I liked the concept, the aesthetic, the character, the anime, and so on. Projects I laid the foundation for but never got around to. Things that were perfectly logical to have or do when I was in my 20s, that still made sense in my 30s, then became questionable in my 40s. I am nearing my 50s, and I'm certain that will bring a mindset with a more critical perspective.
Huh. Maybe Marie Kondo was right.
I have a lot of anime-themed figures that I've collected over the many years. I kept thinking eventually I would put them all on display, and after I moved, I got a Detolf from Ikea for that purpose. But there isn't room for all of them, and I'm not going to fill a whole room with Detolfs, even though I would be fine with the "Akihabara Rental Box" aesthetic. Many of the figures are of characters of anime I had only passing interest in, or games I never got into. I have a lot of figures and statues of maid-themed characters, some of which I don't know what they're from or even what their names are. Again, for many of these figures, I was driven by aesthetic.
I have a lot of Figmas. The appeal of Figmas is simple; they're action figures of characters from anime/movies/games (and a few real people). Would it be awesome to pose the Love Live cast with Robocop, Bruce Lee, and Pyramid Head? Absolutely hilarious, I'm sure. That was the idea, one of many. But, that's never going to happen anytime soon, at least not by my hands.
I have a lot of manga. I've started to go through this, sifting out the books that I bought the first couple of to check out, then lost interest in, or the publisher abandoned the title for whatever reason, or I read it through and decided "I'm never going to read this again". There are a few full series I got because the used shop had a crazy sale on already cheap manga, and I just had to go for it. Full set of 8 volumes for under $30? Hey why not.
I have a lot of comic books. Not as many as I used to. I stopped buying them long ago so that pinched off the supply. I've sold some, I've given away others. I think I'm down to 2 or 3 long boxes. I have a few series I'd like to keep, such as the Animaniacs and Pinky & The Brain comics. It ain't even about the collectible value of those, I just liked them.
I have a lot of doujinshi, almost enough to fill a standard Billy Bookcase from Ikea. I have more doujinshi than comic books now. Not getting rid of that any time soon. Just sayin' that I have it.
I have a lot of convention and fandom memorabilia. Program guides, badges, flyers, fan magazines, that sort of thing. On one hand it doesn't have any kind of financial value. On the other hand, I've already condensed it down to a few boxes so it's not really an issue. If someone (not me) were to start up some kind of museum dedicated to anime fandom in the US, I would be willing to make a donation of content.
I have a lot of old clothes. I have done purges in the past, filtering out the damaged or undersized items and disposing/donating them. I'll have to do this again and with the anime and convention shirts. I already sold a bunch of anime shirts that were either undersized or beat up. I'm not sure why I kept old socks full of holes, but I think the main reason was for the fabric itself as some kind of filler and not to wear them. Enough of that silliness. They should just go.
I have a lot of DVDs & BDs. This is probably not going to get reduced by much. I'll prune out the doubles, the orphans (happens when buying the individual volumes then suddenly a box set with the whole series appears), and stuff I genuinely didn't care for. Also, I learned that when comparing image quality of DVDs from 20 years ago to the xvid-avi files of the same vintage, the DVDs aged a lot better. Most importantly, the only guarantee about online availability is that someday it won't be available. Torrents lose seeds, streams dry up, sites shut down. The internet is extremely volatile and ephemeral, almost dangerously so.
I have a lot of music CDs. This can get thinned out more aggressively. My CD music collection absolutely EXPLODED in the past 5 years thanks to 2nd-hand stores in the US and Japan selling them for as low as a dollar each. Initially I was scooping up the albums I was nostalgic for. Perhaps I kept meaning to buy the album years ago but never got around to it, until it appeared in front of me with a $3 price tag. Then I started to build up entire discographies of groups I liked. Then I was taking chances on unknown stuff, sometimes picking out random CDs as a means of filling out the requirements for the "buy 5, get 5 free" sale. While I found enough winners to justify continuing that practice, I also found that many of the others were being sold cheap for a reason. I have a growing pile of them that are going to find their way back to the buyback counter at the 2nd-hand store, or to whoever would want them.
I have a lot of Lego. That's all I'm going to say about that because Lego is sacred here.
I have a lot of model railroad stuff. I know I have more engines and rolling stock than what can run on the layout at any given time. I'm alright with this for now. However, an older and more experienced model railroader with a layout much bigger than mine shared the wisdom that one should stick to a particular time period, a particular region and railroad, and so on. Basically, be picky about what you're modeling. Don't have to go completely anal with the details, just set some boundaries. And that makes sense. There are a lot of options. Eventually, I'll go through my railroading stuff and pick out the things that either don't fit with what I'm trying to do, or just don't jive, or whatever. Fortunately, the nature of model train stores makes it easy to re-home such items.
I have a lot of general toys, many of which are from my own childhood. The sentimentality is going to make this hard to go through. I have to accept that some of it had not survived the decades and simply turned itself into trash. Plastic breaks down, degrades, and becomes brittle, paper gets ripped, metal rusts, electronic components fail. And so on.
I have a few video games and game systems. My newest system is a PS2 (bought a few months after launch), and I can't remember the last time I played any games on it, or any of the consoles. My hands do not have the fast-twitch anymore to play many of those games.
I have a lot of electronic components. At least this doesn't take up much room overall. Does one need half a dozen Raspberry Pi devices? Probably not but I'll find a use for them. Besides, the tinkerer in me gets a spark of inspiration from it. I think I'll leave this alone.
I have a lot of assorted projects that were either planned or started on. Many of them were for an initial need or purpose, and more often than not, that need or purpose ended up either getting fulfilled by an externally provided turnkey solution, or was rendered completely moot, or both. For example, I had the idea of making a high-powered FM transmitter so I could play music from one source and listen to it anywhere in the trailer without wires. Then after I moved I discovered Apple Airplay could do the same thing over my wifi network without putting me at odds with the FCC, and TOSLINK eliminated any ground-loop hum.
I have a few bicycles. One I had since my teens, and there's really not much left of it. I'm not sure why I kept it. The neat thing about getting rid of old bikes is you just have to leave them out, and someone will take them before the garbage truck does. Another one actually belongs to a friend of mine and I just need to get it to her somehow. She might just throw it out anyway but that's her call, not mine. The third one is much newer and the last time I rode it was in 2014. I'll probably keep that one for the time being, especially now that I live near a bike trail. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy bike riding. I would enjoy it much more if my knees didn't get destroyed in the process.
I have a lot of car parts. This just needs sorted out by Ai or Nozomi. I also have a bunch of leftover parts. Many of them are too worn out to re-use, too large to put in the general trash.
I have a lot of computer parts. Hard drives, graphics cards, sticks of RAM, various other parts, all the way up to whole computers. If someone were to guess that I had a total of 100 hard drives, I'd say that's not far off. When the local MicroCenter is selling 1TB SSDs for $50 (with the prices steadily dropping) and I've been consolidating data to my server, I can't see much use for platter drives in the 500GB range. The IDE drives would still be good for the few legacy systems that don't play well with SATA but that's a very niche application these days. Also, it's been over 15 years since AGP was a thing for graphics cards. I somehow have half a dozen of them anyway. I have a few whole surplus computers, some of which just found their way here and I'll figure out what to do with them (or send them to electronics recycling).
I have a whole Amiga 2000 computer system. Monitor, peripherals, everything. I have that because back in the late 90s, my friend and I hatched the idea of starting our own fansubbing group, so we got that from a very-new ebay, along with a genlock card. Before we could do anything with it, computer specs increased by orders of magnitude on a regular basis and digi-subbing became more prevalent. Now the Amiga is more of a novelty than a usable machine, and it needs a new hard drive to replace the 80MB SCSI drive that's turning to goo inside.
So! At some point, I'm going to start going through my stuff with less forgiving eyes, deciding what can stay and what can go. I'm not going to throw it away, unless it's obviously turned into garbage. I have an idea of how to handle each category. Anime figures? I know a guy who will buy them to resell at conventions. He'll be able to sell them to someone who will value and enjoy them more than I do. Anime/manga/music? 2nd-hand stores. Computer stuff? If it works, I'll either find a use for it or find someone who can. If it doesn't work, recycling. I should probably check with some of my MAGFest-going friends if they or someone they know would be interested in an Amiga to fix up as a retro-gaming system. It's going to be a long process overall, and there will be multiple iterations.
There's no way I'm going to make any kind of side business out of this. I don't have that hustle mentality and I already have a job. The collectibles market can pay the bills but only when the bills are already paid.
Hey, wait! This sounds like another project! Shenanigans! Shenanigans, I say!
