As always, let’s start with the numbers …

Physical Comics Read: 21 (83/261)
Digital Comics Read: 0 (471/471)
Trades/Graphic Novels Read: 4 (2/14)
Books Read: 5 (108/125)
Movies Watched: 1 (170/194)
TV Series Watched: 0 (55/58)
TV Seasons Watched: 0 (99/105)
Podcast episodes remaining: 178

So I thought I would write about vacation and its effect on my hobbies. I ahve always had a strange relationship with them, as vacation has either marked the end of a collecting hobby and there have also been things I only ever collected or bought on vacation.

Comics and Mad Magazine are the best examples here. Back in 1987, I was collecting G.I. Joe, Transformers, and a few others books. I went on vacation, came back, and didn’t pick them up again until 1990. With Mad (and Cracked), I only ever bought the magazine while on vacation (as I mentioned when I guested on the podcast of the same name, they were my version of “Mountain Comics”). So vacation, or whether a hobby would survive a vacation, was a benchmark.

Now, it’s been years since I measured hobbies by vacation but I do have to wonder how the idea of getting away affects the way I operate. More specifically, why is it that vacation can upend my routine?

Prior to my recent vacation the Outer Banks, I was tracking a lot of stuff on the regular: habits, spending, calories. I decided that a week at the beach was truly a week off and didn’t touch any of it, figuring I’d get back to it when I returned. But that never happened. It’s been two weeks since I “tracked a habit” and even those uncollecting numbers listed above might be inaccurate (although my spreadsheets need adjusting anyway).

What made this happen?

Well, first, work started back up. I barely got a chance to breathe during the back half of August, so I had to be consciously doing something if it was for fun. Otherwise, I’d just lay about trying to find the energy to do the most basic tasks. But more than that, I started to wonder if some of what I was tabulating and tracking was even worth it. In some cases, it’s probably a good thing to track stuff like calories because I want to get healhier. But other stuff? i mean, I put “floss at night” down on my habit tracker sheet after my dentist got on my ass about my gums, but it’s a nightly thing now that I probably don’t need to tally.

At work, my administrators are always asking us “what the data shows us.” I get htat. But do we need that data to begin with? Why are we even collecting it? That’s the question I am asking myself as I try to adjust in life so that I feel better about myself.

As for The Uncollecting, I have my spreadsheet of stuff because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t know what I havne’t consumed or what I’d bookmarked for later. I find that to be important, especially as the lists slowly shrink and I can consider those things somewhat of an accomplishment.