Hoarding bits of Paper

I do like to collect stuff and have it all nice and neatly filed away, all my bills in one folder, receipts in another, tax stuff in another etc.  And I've developed a humongous collection of them over the past few years, but I found myself yesterday asking the rather sensible question "Do I really need all this stuff?  In what possible circumstances would a dentist receipt for a filling I had 17 years ago be of any use?".  I also had every phone bill I've ever received in my life, all itemised so i could, for instance, look up who I called at 16:34 on the 21 April 2002.  Why, I ask you?  It wasn't a conscious decision to keep them, just every time I got one it got put into a file,  resulting in me having a couple of trees worth.

So yesterday I went through my files and put most of them into the recycling bin (only because I'm moving soon rather than as a result of realising how pointless keeping it all is).  Was quite a difficult thing to do though, it is so tempting to just hold onto the past/keep detailed records.  I also gave a load of clothes away (some of which I'd never worn but bought in a bout of fashion blindness) and junked a lot of other nick nacks and bits of crap that I had lying around the house.

The end feeling of it all being that I'd quite like a minimalist life, so long as I don't have to throw away any of my stuff as I like my stuff.

My favourite picture finding of late is this one :

I'd like to know what circumstances led to this man, being dressed like that, being stood in front of that photo having his picture taking saluting.  Glorious lunacy.  I am sure he's a very happy individual though.

Digitising One's Analogue Existence

This week has mostly been spent collecting together all my old, clunky format, analogueness life and feeding it into my computer via various gadgets.  Thankfully at the moment I do have a rather large collection from my early years (ie. much larger than my digital life), I seem to of spent an inordinate amount of time between 1992 and 1999 recording every minutiae of my existence.

I have a collection of audio diary tapes from the year I left school which are great and slightly worrying, in that I don't quite recognise who the squeaky voiced person on them is.  My views, ideas and position on mostly everything in the world seems to of changed considerably over the past 15 or so years (as it should do).  Although on them, I'm obsessed with cataloguing everything that happens (I do love my OCD side) and worrying all the time about exams, whether to go to college and various other stereotypical teenage things.  All of which is somewhat similar to me organising everything onto my shiny 500Gb passport drive and worrying about what my new career choice should be.  So I guess I've really changed and not changed atall, all at the same time.

I also have around 90 hours of camcorder footage over a 7 year period, all on BIG VHS tapes.  What a pain in the arse, but soon the huge box of tapes shall be shrunk down to zeros and ones and instantly available at the click of a button.  Most of it is drivel, or at least just a camera plonked down in a room with the usual mundanity of life going on around it.

Whether all this is a good or bad thing is another issue, is endless reminiscence a worthy look back on past mistakes/fortunes with an eye to learning from them or a nice and easy way of living in the past and avoiding the future?  Probably depends on just how much time one spends reminiscing I suppose.

This weeks choice of looks is inspired by @Glinner on twitter, he spotted these absolutely amazing t-shirts :

Quite what selection criteria they had for the slogans I do not know (although I suspect there was a long list placed infront of a crazy person and they picked them), and I do love that things like being a Rebel are put next to Slave (also, does it count being an Ex- something if it was only your ancestors that were? or am I falling into their crazy world by thinking such things.)  And who uses the word fornicator anymore?  I believe I do need this t-shirt though :

Apart from the Ex- part.