Saturday, March 5, 2005

I'm such a pack rat. It's terrible. I can't bear to throw things out, not just because one day I might need them, but because I feel awful that stuff just gets put in a big hole in the ground to rot or, in some cases, hang around for the next few tens of thousands of years quietly poisoning everything in the area.
When I lived in Reading, I had a two bedroom maisonette all to myself and was making good headway in filling it full of stuff. I then had to move back down here to Dorset, where I had two rooms to my name. Last year I moved house again and now I have one very small, very pink room which doesn't even have enough space for a wardrobe. Most of my stuff is in boxes in the loft.
My plan, up until relatively recently, was to go back to London. My small brain was telling me that when that happened I'd be able to take all my stuff with me and would once again live in a nest of my own building, like that of a schizoid bower bird with a thing for candles and gadgets. In a way, that would have been lovely, but part of me is sort of glad that that's not going to happen. Sometimes you just get stuck in a rut and the only way to get out of that rut is by launching yourself head-first into a ditch. I may be struggling now to get out of the ditch, but that doesn't mean the rut looks any more attractive than it did two years ago.
So, my plan is to have no plan, but it would be easier to have no plan if I had less stuff. I've got used to the nomadic life over the last six month, and the future seems to hold the promise of more wanderings, so all this stuff I have carefully packed in boxes is just going to sit there until… until what? I magically buy a house? Father Christmas comes a-thieving? My parent's hold a big car boot sale whilst I'm out of the country?
Best to beat them to it. I am going to be putting as much of my stuff up on Ebay for sale as possible. Obviously I won't be letting my books go, or my records. But the two sheepskin rugs that I bought 15 years ago but never really used can go. The handbags I have been bought but never use can go. The hats. The dinosaur with the roar and the flashing eyes. The camera. Maybe the guitar. The four drawer filing cabinet, if I can ever get round to clearing it out. Definitely the tent.
It's all too much stuff for one nomad to own. It hangs like a weight around my neck, dragging me down. I don't need it, and I don't want it anymore. You can have it. It'll all be going cheap, I promise you.
(If you want, you can grab my Ebay auction RSS feed so you can stay totally up to date with what sort of crap I'm trying to flog.)

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