2009

The things you own end up owning you

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you know I am in constant struggle with myself over super minimalism and owning too much stuff. My progress is slow and while there isn’t much difference between now and the last 6 months, there is a huge difference between now and 5 years ago and more importantly my attitude has completely changed which is really the key first step. And yes I know I sound like a broken record about this sometimes but that’s only because it’s actually incredibly important to me and sometimes gets overwhelming.

Recently I’ve been having fantasies of getting rid of every single thing I own. Not because I would ever actually do it, but just because of how freeing it would feel. Let me make that clear, I could never get rid of everything, even though I really do want to get rid of a lot. I haven’t read All My Life For Sale but that’s kind of the flash fantasies I’ve been having. Of course those come with complete panic as well because the thought of trying to sell every single thing seems like such an impossible task. But mostly, there are a few objects that are incredibly sentimental to me and I don’t think I could ever really part with them. I know people who decide to get rid of things by putting them in storage and then calculating the cost of the storage vs the value of the item, when storage becomes more expensive then replacing it they get rid of it. I think that’s a pretty good method for things aren’t irreplaceable.

I could just throw it all out or donate it but the truth is I have debts I’d like to pay off some day and I’m fairly certain the value of my stuff far exceeds what ever I owe so selling things definitely trumps just walking away from them empty handed. For more background on this I recommend It’s All Too Much which spends a lot of time talking about how stuff doesn’t really enrich your life, and having less of it allows you to live more fully. I know from my own experience that this is definitely based in fact – perhaps it’s the feeling of suddenly not being tied to so much that let’s you do so much more.

My problem is that when I get in this mindset and start looking around at what I can get rid of I start thinking of all the reasons why I can’t get rid of that. I started to think that perhaps I’m approaching things from the wrong side. Rather than looking at everything I have and trying to find places I could reduce, maybe what I should be doing is assume it’s all gone, and then see what I need and miss the most. This is kind of the desert island approach – if you could only take 5 things with you, what would the be?

So 5 things might be too limiting, but categorizing my stuff might end up making things easier to sort through. Or that’s my current thought anyway. Over the next few weeks I’m going to try and break things into a few categories that should help me isolate the expendables a bit easier. This isn’t final, but here’s the 6 piles I’m starting with:

  • Essentials: Things I can’t live with out, this would include things like clothing.
  • Requirements: While my life doesn’t depend on these things, they play a big part in my quality of life and I’d hate to lose them. This would include things like my laptop and my bike.
  • Irreplaceable: These are things that if I get rid of them they are gone for good. They could include a signed high school year book or a piece of artwork.
  • Replaceable: I have it, I like it, but if I got rid of it today and in 2 years decided I missed it I could most likely get it back in one form or another. I might put an Eames chair or my motorcycle in this category.
  • Expendable: Why the hell do I even still have this? Do I need 4 black hooded sweatshirts? Why do I still have this book that I read 5 years ago and never plan to open again?

I think that is a good start and once I get things mostly classified it will be much easier to start reducing. It’s not as simple as working my way backwards either. While the Expendable category is a no brainer, just because something is in the Irreplaceable category doesn’t mean I should keep it, it simply means I should be aware that goodbye is goodbye for good before I part with it. And similarly just because something is Replaceable doesn’t mean it’s out the door – I could replace my couch but I’m not getting rid of it because I sit on it all the time. You get the idea.

Anyway, a lot of this is simply thinking out loud but just processing this for a post makes it seem to make more sense to me.

You should write a book

Those words have been echoing in my head for years and are constantly refreshed by myself and a host of other folks. I’ve begun and talked myself out of countless projects and have folders full of everything from notes to outlines to rough chapters to fully compiled collections of completed work from other sources. They are all gathering dust. I always run into the “no one cares, it’s not worth the effort” monster and let it get the best of me.

In years gone by I could blame not having the right connections or publishers “not getting it.” I certainly sent proposals to several editors and publishers many many years ago only to have them reply with any number of things that essentially meant “no.” And surely I could have gone back and forth with them trying to convince them otherwise but for better or for worse I have a massive aversion to trying to convince people that what I’m doing is interesting. I assume people will either get it or they won’t, but I don’t want to be in the position or trying to explain anything to anyone. So I let those connections and often those ideas fall to the wayside. Luckily those people are no longer the gatekeepers and with things like lulu and the amazing success friends like Wil and Glen and Jon have had publishing their own books there is really nothing standing in my way anymore.

Other than actually doing it.

Which, as anyone who has read my blog in the past knows is actually a sizable hill to climb.

But it wasn’t always, and recently I’ve been trying to figure out what changed. This weekend I was showing Tara some of the records I put out and had forgotten a bit how much time and effort went into many of those. And they actually saw the light of day. I started wondering why things I started then actually got finished and why things I start now more often end up filed for later on. There are three major things I think that have an impact on that. Or at least they are the three things that come to mind initially for me:

1. Money. It takes some amount of cash to do things, either in the materials and production required or the time spent doing them which you need to be able to focus on and not be worried about how you are going to pay bills. In the Toybox days I saved up cash from a crappy day job, initially and then relied on sales of previous releases and student loans which I had no intention of ever paying back for the later ones. I don’t have any of those options available to me today so it ends up being something I stress about more than I would like.

2. Faith. Before I did anything I could only assume the outcome would be everything I hoped it would be. Before putting out a record the only result I could foresee was massive success. And that was a pretty powerful driving force. However after putting out almost 20 records over a 10 year span they rarely sold as fast as I wanted or got the reviews I was hoping for and mostly what I recall now is the heartache and debt I was left with. Of course that is my own fucked up perspective because as I learned showing the records to Tara, to the outside person those records don’t have any negative attachments. She didn’t know about the bad blood with that distributor or the nasty break up with this band. All she saw was the cool end result. I should probably try to look at all of this though other eyes every once and a while and remember that most people only see one side of things, and you can choose which side to show them. When I step towards any new project these days my thoughts of how cool it can be are always side by side with how much it might fail. I need to ignore the fail more often.

3. Feedback. When working with bands it was easy to see the need for our work. They would have a show and people would come out and pay money to see them. That’s easy math, anyone who is willing to pay to see the band play live is probably interested in checking out a record if they had one. Plus, it’s easier for me to put that on someone else. I can talk up how cool someone else band is or how fantastic someone elses work is. I can’t do that about myself. At all. I never have been able to. Maybe it’s being too self conscious or maybe it’s not wanting to come off like a self marketing douche, but it’s always much harder for me to determine if anyone would give a shit about something I’m working on myself and the idea of trying to gauge interest in my own stuff is filled with breakdown inducing fear. Which, admittedly, I should just get the fuck over.

Anyway, this is getting pretty far off the initial topic but I’m been running around my own head with this for weeks, months, hell probably years and wanted to just spit it out so I could get on with it.

With my blog I really don’t give a shit if anyone reads it. I know some people live and die by traffic numbers but I really never look because I’m doing this for me. This blog, and in fact posts like this very one I’m writing right now are self therapy. Yes it’s public but that’s because I have this goal of pushing “publish.” Anyone who knows me from highschool or college remembers the rants I used to write and photocopy and pretend they were zines or something so this is an old habit. Anyway, I write this blog for me and if others dig it then cool.

But a book isn’t for me.

If I’m writing a book I need to consider the audience, which is a scary idea. Does anyone actually want to read a book filled with the crap inside my head? Should that book be personal or technical, historical or fictional? If I decide on one is that a mistake and should I have really decided on one of the others? If no one likes the first one will I have the balls to continue with the second one? Do I write about blogging and about the web? Do I write about communities and networks? Do I write about self improvement and personal reflections? Do I write about relationships and interactions with others? I have a lot to say about all of them, and every one of those has been suggested as a topic by someone else, but I know that I’m the one standing in my way.

I also know that making a goal public makes it that much harder to complete, but since I don’t have a clear goal this is all random thoughts anyway. I do know I need to start doing things again. It’s been too long.

Don’t Tase Me Bro

My friend Noah got Tased for an article on Wired. I’ve been hit with stun guns and with a very very very early version of a Taser which I’m sure is nothing compared to the X3 he got hit with. He got a 1 second shock and it took him out and made him scream. You can follow the link and watch the video, but this is the best part of his article and something I think should be asked more often:

By the company’s estimate, Taser-wielding police and troops have blasted more than 750,000 men, women and children. On average, they received a five-second shock. Which means I got off relatively easy: Mine was just a one-second blast, at 19 pulses per second…

What I keep wondering is: Who would inflict that kind of pain? And under what circumstances? We all know that our tools change our behavior. Give us cars, and we’ll go new places; give us iPhones, and we’ll check our e-mail way more often. So when we hear stories about grandmothers and kids and handcuffed prisoners and even runaway sheep getting tased, I asked Smith, what does that say about the stun gun’s impact?

The question wasn’t answered, but I think enough research has been done with things like the Stanford Prison Experiment to indicate what happens when one person has power over another. I know from my own experience being a bouncer that when you know you have the authority and can get away with anything because everyone else on staff will back up your story, the rules and what is “legal” get very gray and flexible. It’s not a pretty situation and I think tools like Tasers are not the deterrents they are touted to be, I think they give people who are already a little drunk on power the excuse to hurt other people and get away with it pointing to policy and “non-lethal” tools at their disposal. Billy clubs leave marks and break bones, guns have the potential to kill you. Tasers are seen as a much safer option than those to, but because of that they are used much more often. When people are forced to think about the long term results of their actions they are more cautious, when they aren’t… well, they aren’t.