by Nathan Stout
Chirs has this problem… he thinks too much.
I love my stuff. America have been called ‘the materialistic nation’ and I agree. The fact is that I agree and I am a fully fledged member of it. I love having junk. Chris gave us a couple of examples from Julie Morgenstern’s book about how we are all shit bags who care nothing about anything other than our own fatheaded selves (no not really) but he said she gave two reason (out of many I am sure) why we keep stuff. I don’t feel the examples he gave fit me. I’m not the kind of person who feels my stuff makes me feel important or rich or anything. If that were the case I’d probably have better vehicles. I don’t think I keep stuff for ‘just incase‘ reasons like Chris thinks he does. I think my ‘hoarding’ (which isn’t really hoarding) makes me feel comfortable.
As many of you know I am a home body. I don’t go out and do a whole lot. The last movie I saw in the theater was Watchmen (which was early last year). Before that I think it was the Incredibles (which was like 3 years before that!)
*Note to Chris: Nathan needs some punctuation lessons STAT. Does the close parentheses come before or after the period/exclamation/etc? Also when the fuck do I write out a number and when do I use actual numbers. OK, back to the blog…
What I am trying to get at is that I like being home more than being out. With that I like having all my junk around me to entertain me. I like having my DVDs, my games, my books, and all that other crap.
Miguel will argue that every once in a while I will subconsciously fight this hoarding by selling off my junk. We did argue just that point just a few weeks back. We were discussing Chris’ ‘get rid of half my stuff’ trip and Miguel told me he thought I was talking smack about liking to keep my stuff. I told him that I hadn’t had one of my ‘get rid of my stuff’ attacks for several years and then he cited the selling of my MASH and Highlander DVD sets. I had to give him credit for that observation. My thought was that one day I would buy both series on BluRay if I were to buy them again so it was OK to sell them. If you remember I wrote a whole blog about my MASH burnout/mental breakdown so it was easy to get rid of it for the time being.
What Miguel was mainly referring to was my major ‘stuff dumps’ of years past. You see, I used to think too much (much like Chris does now). I would get it in my mind that all the crap I owned was just piling up on me and slowing me down. I would get this panic to get rid of it and ‘free myself’ of unnecessary stuff. My reason was different that Chris’ reason (which was to save money on stuff like storage.) I would have these Ebay-a-thons and dump a truck load of stuff (at a huge loss of course). Now the stuff I would get rid of is probably a little different that the stuff Chris is talking about getting rid of. He talks about getting rid of a pack of envelopes he will probably never need. I would get rid of books, DVDs, CDs, etc and NOT stuff like Chris is talking about (although I realize he is getting rid of that kind of stuff too).
For some reason this stopped a few years back. Maybe when I got married? I don’t know. I just know I stopped thinking about it so much. I just sit back and enjoy my junk.
I can totally see what Chris is getting at though. It is nice to have so little and be free to up and go and not worry about material possessions (and save money in the process). I can see it being an easy choice for Chris’ lifestyle as well. He doesn’t come across to me as someone who would keep a lot. It’s a choice everyone of us has to make and I chose to keep it all. There might be a day when I want to dump it again, but I am happy now so I will just keep it for the moment.