Collection closes in such and such hours, such and such minutes.
Just Jot It January, #JusJoJan
I have a
of memories, of things, of dust on the surfaces of my house.
I don’t get rid of it like I should. Somehow, by not being able to see the dust covering the many surfaces in my home, I can forget it’s even there. I don’t dust like I should.
Well, we forget how much we do collect and don’t ever know when to get rid of the clutter. Some of my collections of stuff and things I keep hidden away in boxes, in my basement, and start to forget it’s still there.
When is it just a mess, taking up space, and when is it valuable and worth collecting and keeping?
My brain continues to collect memories and experiences. I am grateful for that, but sometimes it can get a bit crowded, even dusty up there.
It’s at these times that I think of purging it.
All the blog linkups I do now all have a deadline, a cut-off point. If you do not get your blog post added to them before the deadline, the collection is closed, as it says.
That’s life. We get a certain number of days in which to collect things and experiences, as many or as few as we’d like, before the collection of our life is finished, closed.
I have a collection of DVD’s, CD’s, somewhere.
Now that there is NetFlix and other services, everything to be found online, these bulky cases and disks only take up space on the shelf.
I still don’t mind. I collect The Simpsons, collector editions. These seasons of the cartoon come in a box shaped like the face of one of the show’s characters. I like this because now that I can’t see what they look like on TV, I can feel them.
My music collection is in a box somewhere. I had it all on my laptop, in iTunes, but then my laptop was ruined. All that work for nothing.
😦
Now I access most of my music through YouTube.
I used to collect pop bottles and cans. My brother collected beer bottles, of all sorts, and I wanted to be like him. My cousin showed me an option for this, but of course my brother got the idea from our uncle.
My younger brother used to collect fast food boxes, mostly McDonald’s. It started with those toy kitchen sets, and then he got a pretend McDonald’s set for Christmas.
I used to love to collect pamphlets, brochures, even the plastic utensils and other things given to you on an airplane. This was to remember the trips I went on: Florida, Germany, California. This soon got unruly. My closet was eventually full of these treasures. I couldn’t just be happy with the memories, the experiences I kept as treasured memories in my own head.
I tried collecting postcards for a while, but again I felt like I couldn’t quite commit to a collection, especially of photos I couldn’t see printed on cards.
Then I decided to become a writer so I could write about my life, to use words to represent the collection of stuff I’d always tried to hold onto.
Oh, I still have most of my whale and dolphin collection. This collection is all over the tops of my bookshelves. This only adds to the dust problem.
I would love to collect books, but I feel like I am being silly. I can’t read the books, but I just love how they feel in my hands. I would love to be surrounded by a whole collection of books, my very own library, but I do not have the space.
Right now, one of my most prized possessions is my Harry Potter braille book collection.
a lot of travellers like to say it’s better to collect experiences, not stuff, and they have a point, but the pack rat instinct is a strong one in most of us. It can be incredibly freeing when you let some of that stuff go, but sometimes the memories attached are just too great to even contemplate parting with them.
My older brother collects currency from around the world. My younger brother collects vinyl. My sister is sentimental, like me, and that is both a blessing and a curse.
What do you collect? How did you feel if you decided to give up the act of collecting?
Here is today’s blog host for Just Jot It January.
Time to hit publish and switch over to another post I’m working on. I’d better hurry. After all, the “collection” says I’ve only got 4 hours/53 minutes left before I miss my chance to link up with the rest.
Her Headache 
