(no subject)

I realized this evening, as I got back from Rockhead's, the local game store, and looked down the hall to the computer room and my camera sitting on its tripod, that I'm probably coming up on the last chance I'll have to get some pictures of the house as it is. Before major packing and divesting and change. My computer room is already significantly different, with the CD racks and the small desk cleared off. I only have a few pictures of the apartment in Warren, and one or two from my room in my parents' house. I wish I had more, so I made more of the place I live now. They probably won't be shared widely, if at all, since everything is a terrible mess. But I'm glad I have them.

Rockhead's was fun. Friday nights are evenings of open board gaming. After todd_riverden and serinthia stopped in the house to pick up a tape drive, the three of us met up there. They showed me how to play Tally Ho, which looks like cute and engaging. Then I played a game of Say Anything (no relation to the movie) with barton_fender, akreaveter, and a couple other people. I also, since I got paid today, bought a copy of the first expansion to Cutthorat caverns. Who wants to play? *wags*

I fell and scraped up my left knee on the way in to the shop, ruining my second pair of jeans in two weeks. I'm going to have to check out the Goodwill again soon. I need to stop ruining pants!

As I worked this evening at organizing laptops and writing Ebay copy for them, I listened to some of the They Might Be Giants albums I downloaded that I haven't heard before. One of the songs I discovered has joined the list of my favorites works of John and John. It's about a band that nobody's heard of, as they drive in their van between gigs. They're called The Mesopotamians. A sample bit of lyrics:

This is my last stick of gum
I'm going to cut it up so everybody else gets some
Except for Ashurbanipal, who says my haircut makes me look like a Mohenjo-Daroan

How does the same band go from from bizarrely obscure historical references to things like:

I was all out of luck like a duck that died.
I was all out of juice like a moose denied.
I was all out of money like a bunny that's broke.
I was all out of work like a jerk who's a joke.

John and John, I love you.

I guess I've got a whole weekend to work on cleaning, packing, and huckstering. Moira's picking up boxes from Woodman's tonight, so that'll help in the process of packing up the various random bits in here. My jacob's ladder I built years back. My Rubik's Cube. My lovely bill minder with the little numbered wooden slots that moiracoon bought for me. All the various kinds of printing paper. All the things that have found their way into this room over the years.

I'm trying to decide if I want to keep my great big inkjet, or if I want to just give up on keeping it in ink, figuring out the right printer settings, and tweaking the colors the right way and instead just have someone else print things for me. I dunno. I printed a few things earlier and they were oddly free of the streaks and smears that often happen with that thing; I think mocha_mephooki's advice helped. But it also seems to be running out of magenta ink. Meh.

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I feel just a touch of melancholy as all this stuff happens. I think it's just 'cause I'm alone in the house and have nothing much else to think about. I'm giving up some things that I once thought I was going to pursue, to invest myself in, that would give me pleasure. But it's also freeing. And thinking about this in depth is enlightening.

I think that a lot of the old computer hardware I collected, the Magic cards I've sat on, the classic board games I've collected, and so much else, was an attempt to be 'cool'. To be the person who has all that weird stuff. To have some kind of status. To show to the outside world that I am committed. I am a devotee. I wanted to impress people with the diversity, the unusual nature, and even the uselessness of my collection. Owning things that are essentially useless, and investing time in them and using them just for the sake of doing so, can be an affectation. Perhaps not quite for me since I wasn't really conscious of it, but it was one way that I molded myself to be likable. It was a way to make people think I'm neat. To be one of the crowd. Because, when I was a kid, I didn't know how else to be. It really was as much about other people as it was about me. There was some of myself in it too, of course; it pains me to think of history being lost, and I wanted to be some great preserver of our silicon past. But it was just as much to make other people see me that way. To be the best facsimile I could of the my family and friends' image of eccentric geek. The tech guru. The guy who has everything and anything down in his basement somewhere. And, for all the layers of complexity I could stack on top of that thought, a significant part of it was simply because I wanted people to like me.

I know people like me. I'm not hoarding things anymore. I don't need to be pretentious, and I think I might have unintentionally been. I just need to be me. I'm finding good homes for all the important things with people who will appreciate them. We need people who think it's important to preserve bits of the past like this, for whatever reason. I have a lot of admiration for people who keep the past that way; they are an invaluable resource on many levels. But I don't need to try to be one of them anymore.

I need to be conscious of when I'm doing something as much for other people's benefit as for my own. I need to be satisfied in my own feelings, not those of others. I need to determine what truly gives me pleasure and immerse my soul in it to the core. I should live for me and the present this year. Not for others and for the past.