{"id":504,"date":"2011-03-23T10:47:11","date_gmt":"2011-03-23T17:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rayivey.com\/wordpress\/?p=504"},"modified":"2011-04-05T11:57:24","modified_gmt":"2011-04-05T18:57:24","slug":"spring-forward-day-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rayivey.com\/wordpress\/spring-forward-day-three\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a>\"instagram\"<\/a>

March 15, 2011<\/h2>\n

Cleveland<\/h2>\n

Listomania!<\/h3>\n

I\u2019ve never been a very acquisitive person.\u00a0 By that I mean I\u2019ve never really trusted \u201cstuff.\u201d\u00a0 Like any Westerner, I certainly own too many physical objects, but I think I\u2019m less attached to them than most Americans are to theirs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many years ago, when it was briefly hip, my mother owned a Krugerrand.\u00a0 Remember those?\u00a0 They were one-ounce gold coins from South Africa that people used like jewelry.\u00a0 Hers was worn pendant-style around her neck.\u00a0 She had owed it less than a year or two when it was stolen at a local festival.\u00a0 It was one of the worst days of her life (and with my mother, that\u2019s really saying something).\u00a0 You would have thought she\u2019d just had to make Sophie\u2019s choice.\u00a0 I watched her sit on a lawn chair in her front yard and cry for an entire day over it.\u00a0 As I sat and watched her, dumbfounded, I made a silent vow to never be so attached to any physical object.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve done a pretty good job of it.\"gold_krugerrand_rev\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t believe me, just come look at my apartment.\u00a0 Any stuff that\u2019s there has accumulated carelessly through the march of time.\u00a0 I regularly cull my belongings, getting rid of books, knickknacks, and anything else I can eliminate from my life.\u00a0\u00a0 I look forward to these regular purges.\u00a0 The give me a sense of relief and detoxification.\u00a0 You know, like a coffee enema.<\/p>\n

Because of my position on stuff, I\u2019ve never been a collector.\u00a0 As a kid I sort of collected model ships, but that was mostly because my Dad got into the habit of bringing me home a new ship occasionally from his travels.\u00a0 Also, this was before the instructive Krugerrand Incident.\u00a0 By the time I was an adult I had successfully eschewed the whole concept of collecting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always considered collecting things expensive, time-consuming and without satisfying rewards.\u00a0 I understand that collecting comes out of obsession, and I have no problem with that aspect of it (I think obsession is wildly underrated in our culture).\u00a0 It just seems dumb to me.\u00a0 I remember seeing a wall of unopened Star Wars action figures that took up an entire wall in a friend\u2019s room.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy don\u2019t you open them?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, you can\u2019t open them!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you open one it dramatically devalues it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Shoot<\/a>
Shoot me now.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cDevalues it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor when you sell it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOn eBay or something.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you think you\u2019ll ever sell your collection?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, god, no, I love it too much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like that.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t figure it out.\u00a0 I mean, what\u2019s the point of having a Princess Leia and a Luke Skywalker doll if you can\u2019t have fun taping them into offensive incestuous juxtapositions?<\/p>\n

At least coins and stamps are interesting, have history and educational value.\u00a0 Plus they don\u2019t take up a whole wall of your house.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even more unfortunate, in my view, are the Accidental Collectors.\u00a0 You know what I mean.\u00a0 Another friend of mine made the mistake of telling people she liked owls.\u00a0 Like when she was twelve or something.\u00a0 So a couple of people give her owls as gifts.\u00a0 Then people see her room, see the owls, and it becomes a thing.\u00a0 It snowballs.\u00a0 So now she\u2019s 45 and has 734 owls in her house.\u00a0 By now she\u2019s long forgotten why she ever even said she liked<\/em> the damn things.\u00a0 But she\u2019s stuck with them, like necklace of 734 lead beads dragging her neck down.<\/p>\n

\/\/\/<\/p>\n

So I am not down with the collecting thing.<\/p>\n

With one gigantic exception:<\/p>\n

Lists.\u00a0\u00a0 love lists with a passion.\u00a0 As a kid I actually bought with my own money several editions of The Book of Lists<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 I adored it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At an early age I began making lists of my own.\u00a0 I\u2019d just sit down and idly write down all of the houses I\u2019d lived in. \u00a0Or all the different schools I\u2019d attended.\u00a0 It was like a form of doodling for someone who had no artistic talent.<\/p>\n

Eventually some of these lists became logs.\u00a0 The logs began developing a life of their own.\u00a0 I have logs of every book I\u2019ve ever read.\u00a0 Every role I\u2019ve ever played.\u00a0 Every movie I\u2019ve ever seen.\u00a0 Every video game I\u2019ve ever completed.\u00a0 Every board game I\u2019ve ever played.<\/p>\n

After a decade or two of being a hardcore list maker I finally realized what should have been obvious from the beginning:\u00a0 List making is my form of collecting.\u00a0 So it turns out I\u2019m a collector after all.\u00a0 But I think my style is superior to collecting tangible stuff.\u00a0 It\u2019s cheap and takes up virtually no space.\u00a0 Plus it\u2019s information, which can have value.\u00a0 At least to me.<\/p>\n

Favorite Casual Doodle Lists<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Books I\u2019ve read by a favorite author<\/li>\n
  • Cities I\u2019ve been to<\/li>\n
  • Cities I\u2019ve taught in<\/li>\n
  • Games I\u2019ve played of a particular type<\/li>\n
  • Movies I\u2019ve seen by a favorite director<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    \u00a0<\/p>\n

    Naturally, a trip of this scope gets my list making impulse kicked into hyperdrive!<\/p>\n

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