2006.04.28
Random Kirk Anecdote: when I was in first or second grade or so my elementary school (St. Pats, in Salamanca, NY) decided to have a fundraiser by getting us kids to sell plastic tumblers. They gathered us all in the gym for some salesguy's demonstration. Part of the act was hurling a tumbler fullforce against a wall. Now I'm willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt and believe his story that that particular tumbler had been his demo model for a bit too long, and believe that those tumblers were indeed reasonably durable, but the end of that sucker sheared right off.
For some reason I had some fool idea in my head about constructing steam-engine-y machines (I don't remember the details, I was pretty young) and though that the tumbler would make a good chimney. Or something. Anyway, I asked the guy for it, and he of course refused, looking kind of angry. And I can't blame the guy, he probably assumed I wanted to show off how durable the tumbler wasn't, and was probably a annoyed that his demonstration hadn't gone off as planned anyway.
Anyway, the moral I'm currently trying to take from that story is this: I need to tell myself to stop saving crap just because I have some fool idea in my head about making it useful at some uncertain point in the future. If the stuff needs to be unearthed, if it's been that far from the frontburner for so long, it's extremely unlikely to have a big utility in my life at any point. In fact, if the only reason I'm aware of it is the current decluttering effort, then its pretty easy to posit that in effect, the thing hasn't even really been existing for me, except in some ability to add to the clutter in my life.
The other lesson, without an anecdote at the moment, is I really don't need to be nostalgic about so much of the detritus of my life. Over the past few years I've gotten pretty good at recording life as it and I groove along. I have an electronic datebook with entries back to Spring of 1997, a "mundane journal" going back to June of 2000, a list of all the media I've worked through since 2000, and a website that I've updated daily since 2001. It's a well-documented life, I'm going to have plenty to look back on.
My guiding hope and principle is, the more inconsequential stuff I can ditch, the more mental and physical and emotional space there will be for the stuff I really find worthy.
It's sometimes tough to explain my burning desire to declutter to Ksenia, whose old life in Russia wasn't so immersed in goods of various types. (Though I remember her expressing mild amazement that all the stuff in my apartment was for one person.) Ditto for me not wanting to keep a full fridge... for me a full fridge is just a lot of temptation to distract myself with food, for her an empty fridge is a source of concern.
Link of the Moment
I was having a hard time conceptualizing inductive vs deductive reasoning, the diagrams and explanation on this page on Deduction & Induction came in handy.