Neat Freak

You would think I would have all this spare time on my hands what with not having to deal with a job but I've been engaged in a major cleaning out of the house.  I don't have huge, horrible amounts of stuff accumulated because I have a small house but there are some storage cabinets that have stuff I haven't touched in years and it's time for it to go.  Plus I've been watching that t.v. show about the Hoarders.  You watch that show and I promise you you'll be running for your closets and throwing out every last bit of clutter.  I don't know why, maybe because you see all the clutter in those houses and you want to throw it all out so badly because the sight of the mess hurts your head and since you can't throw out their mess you start in on your own.  Or maybe you live in fear that you'll become one of those people, completely oblivious to the decaying pumpkin right in the center of your living room and the other rotting gourds over in the corner or the 10 year old mummified cat corpses or the 3000 pounds of your own feces along with all the assorted smells, insects and e-coli.  There is digital hoarding too-music collections, articles, photos, etc.  I went through a major purging of my digital photo collection and it's so much nicer now.  I can click on a folder and look at only the nice photos without having to waste time wading through a bunch of crappy and/or boring ones.  I know, I should do it right away whenever I upload photos and from now on I promise I will, honest.  I also threw out a ton of film photos and organized a lifetime's worth of memories into 3 shoe boxes including Jonny's photos.  I could probably cull it down even more but I don't want to waste any more time on that project.

Then I found the shelf full of old punk rock fanzines from the 80's.  I saved a few gems out of the pile and dumped the rest into the recycling bin, about 90% of them.  Then I discovered people were selling the very same fanzines on eBay for $15 a piece!  Those were actual bids on the things, not asking prices.  So I went through and pulled out the ones that looked valuable but I don't know, it felt so good to get rid of them and now I have another project on my hands.  Photographing them and setting up ads on eBay and shipping them out and even though I don't have an actual real job at the moment and could use the money I can think of about a million better uses for my time.  Isn't this exactly the sort of  'logic' that leads to rotting pumpkins in your living room?  I predict these things end up back in the recycling before they ever see the light of eBay but we'll see.

The lesson here kids is to throw out all your crap when you're young.  I promise you, you will not care about those punk rock fanzines when you're 45 years old.  You won't even remember who half the bands are and you really won't care about interviews with the other half.  At least I don't.  Plus, through the magic of the internet and somebody else's case of OCD you can access a boatload of those old zines online anyway.  As an aside, I had a moment of panic when I realized that there was a picture of me singing in my old college band in one of those magazines but I think I lucked out and the issue that I was in is missing or maybe whoever did the scanning left out that page because I checked the issues near the time period when I think the picture was published and I couldn't find it.  Scary to think of how far reaching the internet is.  Anyway, I wasn't saving this stuff out of sentifmentality, I just lost track of it then got busy with all the dogs and whatnot and next thing I new I was old and found myself with all this ridiculous stuff from my youth and you will too if you're not careful and next thing you know, rotting pumpkins in your living room.

Disclaimer:
I realize hoarding is a serious mental illness and I'm not trying to make fun of it.  It's horrible on the family members and if you're dealing with it in any way or form my sympathies are with you.  Just having a bit of fun at the expense of my own neuroses.