I went looking for my recording gear today and found ten iPhone charging cords instead.
Ten of them, in one drawer, for phones I no longer use. Every phone I own charges by USB-C now. My wife has the only Lightning port left in the house. I stood there sorting cables and all I could think was, why do I still have this?
The question my wife asked
This has been coming for several days. Last night my wife and I were talking about the office and how to get my creative gear set back up. She asked me one question: what are you not using for what you want to do? That tells you what can be put up and what can be downsized.
So I came in today to clean. I got done what I set out to do. But somewhere in the middle of it, the room got heavy. There is thirty years of stuff in here, and most of it is visible. It is hard to focus in a room where everything is asking to be looked at.
A library I don’t read
Here is the funny part about my book collection. I hardly ever read paper books. I listen to audiobooks. Once in a while I pick up a paper one just to prove I still can.
So the shelves aren’t really a library. Some of those books came from thrift stores with good intentions attached. Some I read long ago. Good to Great is up there. The ideas still hold, but at least one of its great companies has since gone bankrupt.
And there are a few by a pastor I listened to in the late 2000s. I haven’t opened those books in ten years.
Markers and relics
I’ve started sorting things into two piles in my head.
A marker is a book I look at and nod. Part of what I believe today sits in it. C.S. Lewis is like that. I still pull him down to check a quote. Zig Ziglar is like that. Some of Seth Godin is like that. My wife put it simply: if you still value it, keep it. That counts as use.
A relic is here because it has always been here. The cords were relics. The pastor’s books are relics. They were comfortable, and they were costing me. Today they cost me time I wanted to spend setting up to make something.
Not every version
I have a hangup about getting rid of things, and books most of all. Maybe it comes from a time when we didn’t have as much. Maybe it’s because I value learning. Either way, it’s mine, and it is the reason a lot of this is still here.
I’m not becoming someone who owns nothing. I still want my stuff. I just don’t need every version of the thing I like.
So the pastor’s books are going. Lewis stays. The cords are gone, except the one my wife needs.
I also own six guitars. I play two of them.
