“I hope this is all there is to your midlife crisis” – wifey

The hardest part of any purge is taking stock of who you are at this moment as opposed to who you were or who you thought you’d be. I’ve tried indie film and there’s a little pile of that stuff here. I went to university for comparative religion and there’s a few remnants of that time. I suppose when I stop working in theatre I’ll have to deal with a box of plays and reference material.

I have been thinking a lot about who I want to be for the next part of my life. This excising of my past is about deciding what moves forward and what is left behind. Baby pictures. The pieces are part of who I am, fragments of where I’ve been.

Power Pack. The first comic I collected. May 1984, I had $2.00 left of birthday money (in those days Canada had a $2 bill). That bought me GI Joe #14 and Power Pack #1. Double sized collectors’ item first issue! 11-year old me was sure to retire on this investment.

Even if the issue had skyrocketed in book value, that copy was read so many times that it would be a sorry sale today. Instead it is the most treasured comic in my collection with a resale value somewhere south of a nickle.

The rest of the issues are long gone. I reread my 80s comics so often that I know every story by heart even after all of these years. So why is it still here? Because it says something about where I’ve come from. It stays as the representative of a thousand comics that I don’t have to own.

What stays from the other eras of my life? From my misspent 20s I will keep the opposite items. I was obsessed with conspiracy theories all through my 20’s and now I’m reformed. Having adopted Occam’s Razor as a philosophy, I’ve realized how utterly absurd those theories are. Instead of a couple of dozen JFK conspiracy books I have the most aggressively anti-conspiracy book written – Vincent Bugliosi’s massive tome Reclaiming History. That partners with the hardcopy of the Warren Commission testimony given to me by my We Talk Comics co-host Brett years ago.

Film days – the short films on 8mm. The paperwork and receipts I’ve held onto for so long go in this purge. I’m also keeping the miniature of myself that was made for a special effect shot. But only if I can finally get it on display somehow.

University days – most importantly there is my cat, who is decidedly not a thing. The Bible that was my reference copy for all those years stays. I am not a Christian myself, but it’s a nice leather-bound indexed copy I picked up along the way.

After 9 years in theatre you’d think the mementos would be massive, but they really aren’t. Instead of anything as space consuming as programs I keep ticket stubs. I painted a little brown box to resemble Dexter Morgan’s trophy case of slides and it will hold my collection for years to come.

Small reminders of different times. Key words: small, reminders, different.

Who am I and who am I going to be in 49 weeks time? I’m only starting to know the answer.

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At some point sorting what stays and what goes, my man cave started feeling like a storage room. I think I have to move some stuff out of here to tidy it. Not feeling relaxed in what is supposed to be my most relaxing place.

Just getting this blog up and then I have to do a serious sort of what is going where. Ebay, gifting (Christmas is coming up), donation, used stores, garbage. Very little of the 900 Things will be garbage, but I’m sure there will be a few. Paperwork I’ve kept too long, a few odd computer parts I mistakenly thought would come back into fashion, etc.