Travis has finally decided to clean out his closet and move on with his life. Over 700 CDs have been shipped off to the local Beat Goes On, and he couldn’t feel better.<\/em><\/p>\n

To my former self,<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve done it. You\u2019re going to hate me for it, and maybe some part of you always knew that it would happen, but I have done the unspeakable. At the time of this writing, I have begun to clean out the massive amount of crap in our room that you left behind for me to manage.<\/p>\n

You may not appreciate it in your time, but I can tell you that although it was a big surprise, I feel better now. Like a weight lifted off my shoulders, my collection of stuff that was piled higher every week and with ever increasing danger of crushing some poor soul beneath its weight (probably a family member or concerned friend) is now manageable.<\/p>\n

Now, you may worry that I have succumbed entirely to letting other people tell me how to spend my money and my time, but this simply isn\u2019t the case at all. I still watch terrible movies and listen to music that doesn\u2019t always satisfy me completely, but I have been trying to remove myself from the trap of being a collector for collections\u2019 sake. I think I understand where some of that all comes from now, and having recognized the impulse to archive everything and the costs (not just financial, but emotional) of that, I believe it will make my life easier and more enjoyable.<\/p>\n

I remember feeling suspicious of people that only watched art films, or only listened to indie bands, or that didn\u2019t read superhero comics due to some ill-formed literary pretension. I felt that these people were cutting a lot out of their lives by trying to sanitize their pop culture consumption, something I couldn\u2019t imagine trying, let alone succeeding at. Instead, I took what I thought was the opposite approach and ingested as much as I could, so that I could at least give myself context for the things I really loved. And while you\u2019re making a valiant effort to be a pop-culture guru, you will end up causing yourself more grief than necessary acting this way. You will beat yourself up over the fact that people don\u2019t appreciate the things that you\u2019ve heard or seen, or that people dissect things they don\u2019t like for improperly thought out reasons. This will always happen.<\/p>\n

So, since you\u2019ve taken a hard-line stance against downloading albums (despite a mixed-up perspective of economics – free digital downloads will never 100% represent lost revenue), you\u2019ve purchased a great number of albums or films cold, without hearing word one about them. You made a lot of money in the summer working some pretty crappy jobs, and the limited amount of retail therapy you were afforded in a small-town fit the bill. An excuse to go to Music World once a week wasn\u2019t such a bad thing in the grand scheme of things.<\/p>\n

(Remember how CDs were like $25-35 there, and how unfeasible it seemed to be so inflexible with their business model? Guess what – you were totally right.)<\/em><\/p>\n

And you may cite Grandpa\u2019s overwhelmingly huge antique collection as a sign of similar behaviour, and that it\u2019s perfectly okay to accumulate huge amounts of stuff. There are several ways in which I can respond to that. The first is that you will not have the same physical resources and space that Grandpa had. If you ever want to leave home, you will need to be more mobile. Embrace digital media. Forget about discs and books for a while. Second: Learn about and spend more time with people. Grandpa\u2019s collection afforded him the opportunity (or the excuse) to travel and talk to people with shared interests, giving him common ground with people outside of his local social group. It was healthy for him, but you\u2019re not exactly going to concerts or conventions for a lot of these bands.<\/p>\n