12/12/05

Life is just one damned thing after another.

Life is just one damned thing after another.

Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)

You can’t take it with you. I need to get rid of …….stuff. Stuff is getting me down. Especially money stuff, like debt and crap. Debt sucks. It makes you stuck. And tired.

And crap sucks too. I (and my people) have too much crap in our lives.

It’s just amazing to me how much money and labor we will invest just to house and protect crap that is not us! Talk about attachment issues. I have some.

We rented a storage unit to “temporarily” house all our shit from the house. The stuff that we have had in boxes for 20 years or used in Detroit, but never felt at home enough to unpack since we moved to Utah 7 years ago.

Kid stuff. Well, all the kids are “adults” now, but four of the six have left piles that have consumed the entire floor area and one end of the basement. There has been a little trail between stuff since they all moved out.

Some of them, like my son likely could care less about what they left behind – junk! The girls though, all care deeply I think, about their crap, most of which they have rummaged through and left a big mess for Mom and Dad to sort, box, store and get rid of.

If it wasn’t for the very real chance of coming across many borrowed and never returned possessions of my own and Kita’s, I would consider throwing out everything that looked like trash without looking through it. But no, I’ll have to inspect every little bit of everything.

When the kids were younger, every time I needed a tool, I would look all over the house, after determining that the tool box didn’t have it, and invariably end up having to buy the needed tool if I was going to get to do the job. Every new tool would disappear within a week or so never to be seen again. It was so frustrating. If I needed a tool, I had to call a kid to find it or buy one.

When we moved from Michigan to Utah, I found over 40 screwdrivers, a half-dozen hammers, saws of all sorts, who knows how many socket sets and all kinds of other tools I had been doing without for years. I was in tool heaven.

After we got settled in Utah, all my tools kind of disappeared again, but since the kids left, I have been amassing thousands of pounds of sockets and end wrenches and stuff as I come across it.

Yeah, I’ll be having a yard sale all next summer I think. Right in front of the studio.

I wish I had smaller interests. All the gear that supports my work makes quite a pile of crap.

So I guess somehow, I’m pining for the pre-electronic revolution days when life was simpler. Of course, I don’t recall “those days”. My vision is of my own making. But it was good, dry and warm (but not buggy).

Now, everything has some kind of chip in it. Everything needs a battery for its back up memory card. Everything is subject to malfunction or implosion if any attempt is made to use it in the prescribed manner or any manner. Stuff don’t work so good.

And what about this whole idea of “planned obsolescence” anyway? Who is planning that? Why are we supporting it?

Kita says a Mall is coming to town. Not too happy about that if it’s true, but the local Utaranians will be absolutely foaming at the mouth with joy if that is the “big announcement”. It might be okay for us too. Maybe the downtown stores could have battles with their mall counterparts like in old kung fu movies. “My candy shop can beat up your candy shop!”

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