One Nerd's Effort to Let Things Go
At one point, a couple of weeks ago, I had written "make to do list" in the margins of a legal pad I was using to take notes at a faculty meeting. Later that day, I sat down to make said list and when I was done, I saw that I had filled out the …
Continue reading Return of the Freedom is Tyranny of the To Do List
So "uncollecting" music has not been a huge priority in this venture, and I was thinking about this a couple of weeks ago when Dave Holmes' piece "A Decade of Music is Lost on Your iPod. These Are the Deleted Years. Now let us praise them" was published on Esquire. Holmes is a few years …
I've been doing a lot of mental and emotional cleaning along with the physical uncollecting and one of the most important parts of that has been my efforts to restore and reestablish the self-confidence I seemed to have lost over the last few years. I can't pinpoint one specific thing except to say that myriad …
Among the piles of personal ephemera that I've found in my office are awards. Many, many awards from elementary school, junior high, and high school. A few are sports-related, but most are certificates for participation in service events, citizenship and service awards, and academic honors. They're all going the way of the trash heap and …
Continue reading Personal Archaeology 5: Confessions of an Achievement Junkie
My wife and I were talking on a recent episode of my podcast about who we were when we graduated high school and went away to college. One of the things that came up was the idea that when you leave a place that has been your home for a very long time and head …
Continue reading Personal Archaeology 4: The People Who Barely Knew You Probably Knew You Best
The tale is as old as collecting and collectibles--you had something that mom threw away or gave away and years later, it's worth a mint. Even I have wondered, over the years, what type of money I would have made from my old Masters of the Universe Toys (which are the only toys that I …
So it's late April-early May of 1997 and I'm sitting my dorm room working on yet another take-home final exam and out of nowhere and apropos of nothing, one of my roommates walks in and asks, "How are you going to forget to take your finals?" I take a minute to turn my attention away …
