Mythic Logos

Here is something mythic: getting rid of 300 books (goodbye Perl).

How to:

1. Wake up.
2. Go “Ugh”.
3. Be merciless in putting books in piles to remove.No breathing, no reflecting, and when in doubt, chuck it.
4. Have an iPad, a PDF reader (iAnnotate is my favorite at the moment), an ebook app, and a SafariOnline book subscription.
5. “Gift” some books to others.
6. Break your back loading car with heavy book loads.
7. Drive to Book Thing in Baltimore and watch grown man weep with joy at seeing new book quality high-tech books come in.
8. Drive away and never look back.

Repeat variations of this for childhood memories (goodbye Infocom manuals and their 5 1/4 floppies), DVDs (goodbye B5),  CDs (goodbye Weird Al+hits from the 80s), VCRs (goodbye Star Wars) and PCs (good riddance Windows).

Thrift store might work for some, garbage for others, bugbears for the rest.

All I have to say is that it felt incredible to get rid of all that crap. I still have 300 books to do away with, but it is a significant decrease from the 1000 that I started with a long time ago. There are also two crates of notes/papers from my younger days of indiscretion (ah the joys of PhDing); these I find hard to part with just yet. But one ton at a time.

With the internet, Netflix, Amazon, and Apple, we might just one day arrive at the promised land of no stuff, just a flask, a pan, a knife, a pair of chopsticks, an iPad, and, if you insist, some clothes.