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Sentiment and deaccessioning

The approved librarian term for weeding collections is “deaccessioning.” Contrary to popular belief, we don’t hold on to every item we have until the end of time. We have to get rid of things periodically, and this is usually done through some set of criteria based on how useful the items remain over time. Sentiment can factor in to the process, but shouldn’t really be the primary factor.

I’m moving right now. Actually, I’ve already pretty much moved, but I’m consolidating the two houses (and a few leftovers from the one in Pittsburgh as well) and getting rid of a lot of stuff in the process. There are a few specific items that have some sentimental value for me and I’m having to consider whether they have enough value to justify keeping them. This is a process I wish my mom had gone through at some point in her past as well, but in a sprawling, suburban place like the American Sunbelt, it just doesn’t happen–at least not for settled residents who own their own homes that they can fill with limitless collections and accumulations of crap.

In fact, the ability to hold on to things like this was something that attracted me back to the whole detached single-family home model nine years ago. I like hanging on to things. It was also apparently attractive to my ex, since a not insignificant proportion of the stuff I’ve been “deaccessioning” was originally his. When you think you have unlimited space, it’s easy to avoid making decisions about what stays and what goes.

Until some event like a divorce, or a death, or a “geographical realignment” forces that decision, that is…

For me, the consolidation of the houses is the current incarnation of that event, and I’m using it an opportunity to get rid of tons of things I really have no use for. When a letter or a photo or a small toy has some special meaning or memory attached to it, it’s not unreasonable to hang on to it. But what if the thing that has sentimental value is a bedroom suite that–apart from the memories–you don’t really need or like that much? Or maybe a box of items that you otherwise wouldn’t have any real use for? is there really any reason to hold on to things like that when they actually start causing you stress rather than giving you pleasure? How important are things that you keep in a box in the basement and never look at except when you move or need to “rearrange” them to make room for more stuff?

I have several large pieces of furniture like this, many of which I have offered to sell or give away to Facebook friends. Some of these friends have suggested that i really “should” hold onto items because they were my grandmother’s or because they pertain to my childhood or whatever. But these are big, bulky things that take up space and that I would never acquire on my own given the opportunity to do so. Why should I keep lugging them from place to place and stepping around them when I really have no good use for them? It’s not like I’m going to forget my grandmother if I sell this bedroom suite that’s too big and not my style. And why do I need boxes of newspapers that I’ll never read and whose content is really of no interest to me just because they remind me of a specific trip I took in 2008 or because I think that I’ll eventually forget what newspapers look like if I don’t keep them?

I won’t even get started on the pressure I’ve gotten from some of my cousins to hang on to my dad’s guns. It’s great that he loved them. i don’t. They make me nervous and I don’t want them in my house. Case closed. And the funny thing is that these cousins are strangely hesitant when I offer to give them the whole fucking arsenal.

So I’m being pretty ruthless. I’m only hanging on to furniture that (a) I really like or (b) serves some useful purpose in my life. And I’m not feeling bad about deaccessioning items that match neither criterion. I’m selling what I can get rid of with minimal effort (I can’t be bothered with yard sales or Craigslist) and calling Habitat or the junk man to get rid of the rest. The funny thing is that once I made the decision, the process got so much easier! I think it helps that I was a city kid who lived in cramped urban quarters for many years; interestingly, I buy groceries like a city kid too, with multiple small trips rather than big weekend excursions.

I’m learning to do the same thing with people.

Over the past few years, I’ve reconnected with lots of old friends, some of them people I haven’t talked to in twenty years or more. I’m incredibly excited to be back in touch with a lot of these people. I’ve missed them and we were able to resume our friendships with ease. With others, I have–how shall I say this?–quickly realized that there was a reason why we’d lost touch.

In some cases, it’s because they became batshit crazy lunatics or never grew out of the “drugs, drama, and divahood (divadom?)” of their twenties. With these, I pretty much manage to lose touch again as quickly as possible because I have anough bullshit in my own life without taking on the additional bullshit of someone else who adds nothing positive to my life in the process. I have a few interesting Facebook anecdotes I can share if you want illustrations.

With others, I find that they have just moved off in a different direction and I’ve discovered that we really don’t have much to talk about anymore. Reminiscing about drinking in bars in 1989 is only interesting for so long if you have nothing new to add to the conversation. Usually, I think they realize it too and we just sort of back off again, realizing that our “friendship” will be the modern equivalent of running into each other downtown every few years, having a five-minute “catch up” on the street corner and then moving on. I have no animosity, but there’s no need to expend effort cultivating a relationship that clearly offers no real benefit to either party.

Like my house, my life is cluttered enough without feeling the need to maintain relationships that really don’t make me happy anymore. And I have way too many stressful relationships that I can’t ignore for one reason or another to hang onto additional ones that can be avoided, especially if we’re just friends because of fifteen or twenty years of inertia or a shared experience that ended years ago and was never replaced by anything new.

Now if I could just get a little better at letting go of grudges. And pictures. And cans of green beans…

A productive sort of Thursday

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Sometimes you have to take a day or two off just to catch up with your life.

Today was that day for me. I knocked out a huge pile of things that have been hanging over my head, related to the sale of the house and to my mom. I no longer feel like everything is so out of control. And I’m thinking I may actually take a day off this weekend (and not use it to write an article like I did last weekend).

That said, the disposition of the house has been delayed, maybe for several weeks, due to a storm this week that forced the contractor to push back the oil tank removal. No comment yet from the buyers, but I think they’re pretty invested at this point and they apparently love the house, so I’m thinking things will be OK.

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Got rid of a car today, and a shitload of stuff leaves tomorrow to help Habitat (or to line the pocket of the junkman). Just for reference, you can sell a car without a properly notarized title transfer in North Carolina as long as it’s for salvage and the car is more than ten years old. You apparently cannot, however, donate it or sell it to someone who may actually want to register it. As I’m all about making things as simple as possible these days, I opted for the $175 path of least resistance. The extra cash will cover one or two per cent of the oil tank removal cost.

Also for the record, no one (charity shops included) wants big, useless entertainment centers or particle-board computer desks. And Greensboro is much more advanced in its waste management program than Winston-Salem. By “advanced”, I mean that recycling is easier and everything else is generally less of a pain in the ass in Greensboro. Unfortunately, most of the stuff I need to get rid of is in Winston-Salem.

Getting rid of stuff makes me strangely happy. So I should be ecstatic tomorrow night. Maybe I’ll even splurge and do this. I saw them a couple of years ago and they do put on quite the show.

Death in the news

Maybe it’s because it was fairly close (Roanoke is about a hundred miles away), or maybe it’s because I’ve known a fair number of reporters in my time, or maybe it’s  because I’ve known a lot of people who work in broadcasting, but this morning’s shootings are getting to me more than these things usually do.

And what really disturbs me here is that I just typed “more than these things usually do” as if random gun violence were a pretty regular and otherwise unremarkable thing. Which, of course, it is here in America, where every crackpot gun nut in the trailer park (or on the golf course) believes himself to be a one-man “well-regulated militia.”

There’s no way in hell you can convince me that we’re going to solve this problem by arming even more people. And the next person who tries to compare this to the shootings in Charleston may get smacked for being an idiot with whom I no longer feel the need to be patient or tolerant.

Randomly Sunday afternoon

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No attention span. Latest stuff:

  • The house sale continues to be a nightmare, thanks to that fucking oil tank that we thought nine years ago would be “no big deal.” So far it’s probably cost me $15,000 and I still don’t have a clean bill of health. the buyers (and their lender) are getting nervous. So am I.
  • That said, the house is mostly cleared out. And the non-tank repairs came in at (slightly) under $6500, so there’s that. If I can keep expenses at this level, at least I won’t owe money at closing.
  • The chimney sweep was as cute as a bug’s ear. it was a lust connection.
  • After moving them yet again, I’m torn. Should I leave my records to someone I really like or to someone I really hate?
  • Finished my next article today, more or less. If I can get one or two of my librarian pals to give it a look tomorrow, I may actually get it submitted on time.
  • Pondering Pittsburgh for Labor Day weekend, as Toronto for Thanksgiving in October is looking much less likely.
  • Someone who gets it.
  • Best news of the week? I am once again not at Burning Man. That fact may make up for all my other stress.

Submit

I finally submitted that article, approximately seven hours before it was due.

  • It’s either going to be really good or really awful. I basically wrote the whole thing over the course of about a week and a half, due to all the drama in my universe this summer, and I didn’t even have a chance to let someone else read over it. Pressing “submit” felt kind of like having unprotected sex with a complete stranger.
  • When your article is to some extent a case study about things you did at your own institution, which is named in the text, the concept of a blind peer review starts to sound a little bit ludicrous
  • There are no journal content management systems that are not incredibly irritating for authors. None. Not one. That includes the one we use for the two open access journals where I’m the managing editor.
  • Unless this article gets approved in the next two weeks, it will have no effect whatsoever on my tenure decision. I knew that going in. I still wrote it. Go figure.

I’m going to go have leftovers from last night’s delicious meal with no name now.

Not perfect. Just forgiven.

Thirty years ago, I was working part time as a DJ in a gay bar. I enjoyed it because I was very into music and I was especially happy about getting to play something other than the miserable disco schlock that is mandatory in 99.25% of all American gay bars.

One night, several heterosexual friends came by to hear me. Two of these friends were a couple (of the male-female variety, obviously). At some point during the evening, they kissed. And that finally pushed my boss over the edge. He was already offended by their very presence in the place and when they had the audacity to engage in a very tame public display of affection, he came up to the booth to tell me he thought they should leave.

I was appalled that a fairly sophisticated gay man would not ultimately realize the irony and hypocrisy involved in his actions. Ethically, I felt that I could no longer work for him.

So I quit.

That very night.

You see, that’s what you do when you face such moral outrage that you can no longer justify doing your job.

And that’s what Kim Davis needs to learn. She needs to do the job she swore an oath that she would do. Or she needs to quit. Right now.

For her to continue accepting her salary amounts to theft and misappropriation of public funds. For her to continue refusing to do her job amounts to criminal misconduct. Her beliefs don’t matter one infinitesimal damn. She’s free to believe whatever she likes. She is not, however, free to continue collecting her salary while not doing her job.

A lot has been written today about the hypocrisy of “sanctity of marriage” claims being made by a woman who has been married four times and divorced three, and who seems never to have cared very much whether or not her children were fathered by her husband at the time. It’s a fair criticism, but one that her supporters feel is a moot point since her sins happened before she was “washed in the blood” (or in the Holy Windex). Too many conservative Christians use the “not perfect, just forgiven” excuse as a way of refusing to take responsibility for any of their own actions, which is particularly ironic in that so many of these same conservatives very much stress the concept of personal responsibility in others.

But even being the biggest hypocrite on the face of the earth would not disqualify Kim Davis from keeping her job–although her double (triple? quadruple?) standard does make her a pretty wretched human being.

What disqualifies Kim Davis from keeping her job is the fact that she refuses to do it.

Wow…

So that article about which I was so stressed went through peer review and was accepted with minimal revisions in four days. That’s a pretty enviable turnaround time for an academic journal, some of which take many months for a decision (a good example being the other article of mine that got accepted this summer). Even better, this one was accepted in time for me to add it to the tenure package, giving me two extra publications to include.

And I’m already done with the revisions.

Pretty good way to start a long weekend, methinks.