Jack Kerouac, as Sal Paradise once said: "I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion." And I think that's a rather apt description of my blog over the years, and perhaps the most perfect description of me in general that I've ever read. So that's what this blog is, a collection of the falling stars that are beckoning me at any time.

29 July 2005

there's no escape from the hoarding gene

I like to pretend that I've managed not to inherit the hoarder gene that's severely present in the females on the matriarchal line of my family tree, but to be honest I've only refined it, mainly through my habit of picking up and moving to and fro. Keeping one's life pared down to what one can cram into a Ford Escort hatchback is one way to ensure that you never have enough crap that it will take one week's to find your body should you die.

What I am is a digital hoarder, the harddrive to my old computer has every email I ever sent or got from someone, a billion and a half old usenet posts, mailing list post, etc. It's a biographer's dream of my internet social life in the mid to late 90s.

I don't email so much now, or really have too many people to email, I'm bad at keeping in touch and besides getting an email was never as exciting as getting a piece of real mail, I'm far too archaic sometimes to really appreciate digital life, other than of course the ease at which it keeps me in touch with the whole globe at once almost like a teleport device. I'm planning a move at the beginning of the year back east after I've got my degree, and actually I'm really feeling more convinced inside that I really should move to the UK in the next 5 years. It's something I've always wanted to do, assert my British citizenship and move, and the more I look at where the US is heading it doesn't seem like such a frightening idea anymore (I've always an excuse in my head why I should stay, the economy is bad in Europe, the cost of living is much higher, unemployment is high, antisemitism is on the rise, but you know they are really all just excuses because I'm not exactly in the middle class, if I'm doomed to crap retail jobs and eating beans and rice it' doesn't really matter where you have your garret :)) So with more moves on the horizon I'm a little loathe to start any big collection, so for now I hoarde links. My blog list is up to 120. (well plus my regular lj friends on my personal journal) and my shopping links are unwieldy, I of course save everything remotely cool for the day I win the lotto or something and can afford to shop til I drop :) I also hoarde Mp3s, at last look I had some 67 gigs of music on my harddrive, I think between that and my cd collection I could listen to music for a year straight and not be back at the beginning of the loop.

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