I need to do something.
It feels like my life has been stagnant for a long time now, and there’s really nobody to blame but myself. I’ve written here before about what I ought to do, but very little of it has come to pass. I’m nearly middle-aged now, and things seem barely any different than they were 10 years ago.
But where to start? Well, before I can worry about dealing with other people, I have to be happy with myself first. I’m certainly no psychiatrist, but one of the more obvious manifestations of my troubles is the state of my apartment. I admit it, I’m a packrat, and over the course of the years my place has become cluttered and disorganized, filled with empty boxes, parts and books and odds and ends scattered willy-nilly, things going uncleaned and unrepaired, and so on. When you live by yourself, it’s easy to just get used to living that way and letting those things slide, and one day you realize what a mess it’s become but, eh, it’s been like that for years now, what’s the big deal… It leads to a weird state of mind where I’m simultaneously comfortable with and used to it, but also somewhat ashamed of what other people would think of it (I certainly wouldn’t want to bring a date back to it) so I become even more entrenched in my loner-hood.
So, I need to clean this place up, and that means throwing a bunch of this junk out, not just shuffling it around like I usually wind up doing. The main things I need to get rid of are:
- Big boxes. Should be easy enough, a lot of them are mostly empty and were kept around because there were still a few parts or cables in them or I just never got around to breaking them down before tossing them into a corner.
- Old parts. I’ve probably got enough spare pieces around to rebuild PCs stretching all the way back to the 486 era, plus a dead TV, way too many old cables, etc. I’ve been kind of reluctant to throw these out not because I’d possibly need them (I occasionally toy with the idea of building old PCs for games that no longer work well on modern Windows, but never have the time anyway), but because they really should be disposed of properly and getting them to a recycling centre is a pain. I might have to look into seeing if I can pay someone to haul it away.
- Books. I’ve got more books than bookshelves now, and I’m always reluctant to let go of books. Maybe I can at least start with the clearly obsolete technical manuals. I sincerely doubt I’ll suddenly need to refer to a book for Java 1.1 programming information…
- Old magazines, mail, invoices, etc. I’m really bad at letting paperwork accumulate. I’m paranoid enough to think that I really ought to dispose of it securely, but never get around to actually shredding it, so I open a box from Amazon, take out the receipt, and toss it on top of a desk, where it stays with a pile of others for the next 5 years. Easy enough to take care of, just tedious.
- Old game boxes. I’ve still got a ton of these, though at least I’m not accumulating many more now that most of my purchases are downloads these days. They’ve still got CDs and manuals inside, but removing them and getting rid of the boxes alone should still save a bunch of space.
That would probably take care of a big chunk of it, at least. Once that’s done, then I’ll be in a better position to evaluate what should be next. Tonight, I got rid of an old box that my original Dell widescreen monitor came in, 9 years ago, and sorted through another box full of game manuals. I don’t really want to throw the manuals out, but I did at least sort out the useless ones like the French versions or manuals for long-obsolete hardware and got rid of those.