nycwriter
Well-known member
All this being said ...
... just remember this: it's a very narrow line between being a collection enthusiast and a hoarder.
My list of questions above assumes that the collection itself is not an issue, but rather how it may impact YOUR daily life.
It is entirely possible, however, for the collection to get out of hand and take over your life.
I'm sure we've all seen "Hoarders" on HGTV (or one of those cable channels). If you haven't, watch an episode or two. If you see yourself in the screen -- or even glimmers of yourself, sharing the same psychological traits -- now is the time to take a serious self-examination.
I was just having a conversation with a new guy I'm dating (***smile***). We discussed our mutual love of old things, and he accurately put a name to something that I know I've had for quite a long time: "separation anxiety".
It's when we cannot bear to part with anything because it feels too much of an extension of ourselves.
Now, I don't have collections per se, but I was starting to see myself going down a bad path. I'm a huge audio aficionado. Ebay has given me the opportunity to own the very esoteric stereo equipment of my youth that I was never able to afford when it was new. I never got too far, but at one point in my smallish 2-bedroom Brooklyn Heights apartment, I had two receivers, two amplifiers, a tuner, 2 tape decks, 6 speakers, and four turntables.
One receiver I bought back when I was only 14 years old -- brand new -- and it took me an entire summer's worth of grass cutting to save up for it. That I will never part with.
I settled on a Kenwood amp, tuner, and tape deck ... kept my circa-'90s Yamaha CD player ... and selected ONE turntable to keep (a 1967 Garrard) ... and gave everything else away to good homes.
One of the turntables was hard to part with; it had been a birthday present from my parents. It was a top-of-the-line BSR (as top of the line as BSR ever could get -- sort of like a top-of-the-line Chevrolet) that was rebadged as a "Zenith". I accidentally broke the dust cover in the back by hyper-extending the hinges (it was actually quite well-built with high-quality metal hinges, but a critical design flaw was that the metal was screwed into a weak area of the plastic). Anyway, my dad, the consummate woodworker, fixed it up by installing a thin piece of wood along the entire back end, staining it to match the rest of the cabinet, and re-installing the hinge.
To this day, I feel a slight pang of guilt for giving it away. It was a gift from my parents -- and my dad even put his own work into it. But I had no room or use for it. Should I have given it away? Probably not. But what's done is done. That was 10 years ago, and it still bothers me.
Maybe I have more of a problem in my head than I'm letting on, if such a small thing is still bothering me after a decade. But I do know this: I have a tendency to attach too much importance to things people give me; it's really a misplaced channelling of my affection for them. I feel like discarding something I've been given by someone who loves me is like throwing away a piece of THEM. It's not healthy. But the fact that I recognize it, I think, means I've got it in check.
Living in an apartment in New York precludes me from getting too far along in accumulating stuff; I have a small-ish "walk-in" closet in my back hallway (I call it more of a "step-in" than a "walk-in") that is crammed to the gills (but exceedingly organized, in those nice colored boxes from The Container Store). I don't have a basement, attic, spare room, or 3-car garage to keep stuff. Hell, I can barely keep Christmas decorations from year to year; this is why New Yorkers are so big on REAL Christmas trees (and wreaths and garland); we have nowhere to store artificial ones.
Anyway, back to "separation anxiety". I believe it's more common among single gay men than in everyone else, for obvious reasons. We all, to some degree, like to hang on to something from our past, if not as a security blanket, but for continuity's sake. Straight married people have their spouses and children to take them through their life's journey. Single guys like me ... not so much. It's just me and my kitty, alone in the world. And if that swing-arm lamp from my childhood bedroom that I'm now using in my kitchen brings me comfort and keeps me grounded, so be it.
Just a few thoughts ...
... just remember this: it's a very narrow line between being a collection enthusiast and a hoarder.
My list of questions above assumes that the collection itself is not an issue, but rather how it may impact YOUR daily life.
It is entirely possible, however, for the collection to get out of hand and take over your life.
I'm sure we've all seen "Hoarders" on HGTV (or one of those cable channels). If you haven't, watch an episode or two. If you see yourself in the screen -- or even glimmers of yourself, sharing the same psychological traits -- now is the time to take a serious self-examination.
I was just having a conversation with a new guy I'm dating (***smile***). We discussed our mutual love of old things, and he accurately put a name to something that I know I've had for quite a long time: "separation anxiety".
It's when we cannot bear to part with anything because it feels too much of an extension of ourselves.
Now, I don't have collections per se, but I was starting to see myself going down a bad path. I'm a huge audio aficionado. Ebay has given me the opportunity to own the very esoteric stereo equipment of my youth that I was never able to afford when it was new. I never got too far, but at one point in my smallish 2-bedroom Brooklyn Heights apartment, I had two receivers, two amplifiers, a tuner, 2 tape decks, 6 speakers, and four turntables.
One receiver I bought back when I was only 14 years old -- brand new -- and it took me an entire summer's worth of grass cutting to save up for it. That I will never part with.
I settled on a Kenwood amp, tuner, and tape deck ... kept my circa-'90s Yamaha CD player ... and selected ONE turntable to keep (a 1967 Garrard) ... and gave everything else away to good homes.
One of the turntables was hard to part with; it had been a birthday present from my parents. It was a top-of-the-line BSR (as top of the line as BSR ever could get -- sort of like a top-of-the-line Chevrolet) that was rebadged as a "Zenith". I accidentally broke the dust cover in the back by hyper-extending the hinges (it was actually quite well-built with high-quality metal hinges, but a critical design flaw was that the metal was screwed into a weak area of the plastic). Anyway, my dad, the consummate woodworker, fixed it up by installing a thin piece of wood along the entire back end, staining it to match the rest of the cabinet, and re-installing the hinge.
To this day, I feel a slight pang of guilt for giving it away. It was a gift from my parents -- and my dad even put his own work into it. But I had no room or use for it. Should I have given it away? Probably not. But what's done is done. That was 10 years ago, and it still bothers me.
Maybe I have more of a problem in my head than I'm letting on, if such a small thing is still bothering me after a decade. But I do know this: I have a tendency to attach too much importance to things people give me; it's really a misplaced channelling of my affection for them. I feel like discarding something I've been given by someone who loves me is like throwing away a piece of THEM. It's not healthy. But the fact that I recognize it, I think, means I've got it in check.
Living in an apartment in New York precludes me from getting too far along in accumulating stuff; I have a small-ish "walk-in" closet in my back hallway (I call it more of a "step-in" than a "walk-in") that is crammed to the gills (but exceedingly organized, in those nice colored boxes from The Container Store). I don't have a basement, attic, spare room, or 3-car garage to keep stuff. Hell, I can barely keep Christmas decorations from year to year; this is why New Yorkers are so big on REAL Christmas trees (and wreaths and garland); we have nowhere to store artificial ones.
Anyway, back to "separation anxiety". I believe it's more common among single gay men than in everyone else, for obvious reasons. We all, to some degree, like to hang on to something from our past, if not as a security blanket, but for continuity's sake. Straight married people have their spouses and children to take them through their life's journey. Single guys like me ... not so much. It's just me and my kitty, alone in the world. And if that swing-arm lamp from my childhood bedroom that I'm now using in my kitchen brings me comfort and keeps me grounded, so be it.
Just a few thoughts ...
