It’s Valentines Day, and my wife said to me yesterday “What are we getting for the kids as Valentines gifts?”
Hallmark has instilled in us the need to acquire and distribute OOLU (Objects Of Little Use) on all occasions, until our lives are overflowing with memorabilia - “keychains and snowstorms”.
It’s ironic, given our personal history.
15 years ago, I logged into an IRC chat room from London, and met the Rutgers student who was to become my wife. After a transatlantic love affair, we decided that someone needed to change countries, and that was me. From my father I had inherited the Packrat gene, an overwhelming urge to collect, complete and categorize. By the age of 31, I had amassed an envious collection of books, records, games, videotapes, magazines – each one of which I thought was somehow vital to everyday living. You never know when you might need this volume or that article. I was terrified to let go.
But for someone on a meager budget, knowing that my cash reserves needed to last through many months of a tourist visa, storage or transport for my personal mountain wasn’t an option. I was faced with the task of selling everything I owned in three weeks, everything that I could not fit into two suitcases. It was the most liberating, freeing experience of my life. The nothingness of my belongings, the absence of anything to carry through life.
Today, I'm looking in my office as I type, and the ensuing digital age has finally allowed me to digitize and dispose – iPod, Apple TV, Kindle. I’m approaching physical collection zero again. Which should make me feel as happy as it did before.Instead, another collection now weighs me down – blog readers, twitter followers, Facebook friends, Foursquare connections – a network I rarely use but feel the constant need to feed, to update, to notify, to check-in for. It collected around me over the years, and once again I’m scared to let go.
But the devil on my shoulder wonders – if I woke one morning and deleted it all, would I feel the same lightness that I did before? Would I be free – or just alone?
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About the author: Steve Coulson comes up with big ideas at Campire NYC.
