The Collector

I've collected things since I was a small kid. I think a lot of people have collections and I've had quite a number over the years. I used to collect badges from police departments, POG, beer bottles from different breweries and stamps. 

Some of those collections I've gotten rid of over the years. The beer bottles were recycled; the POG were sold for $50. The stamp collection is still n a shelf in the corner. 

I also have a number of practical collections, things that I use like my guitars and kazoos, or my collection of tools. Even my music collection like my CDs and records are as much archival and research as they are just a collection. 

The music collection in particular has been wrought with disaster. As the digital age moved in through the '90s and early 2000s, I found myself not wanting to carry these collections around with me through life and many of them were sold or found the curb. It was mostly the practical stuff that stayed. My beat up CDs and tapes from my youth found landfills in this time. The records seem to stick around, at first it was really cheap to get them because I'd get them at garage sales. I do still have a small box full of CDs and an even smaller box of cassettes but mostly my record collection is actual records or online. 

The Navigator has made the wise and correct choice to leave Spotify for less fascist pastures. I on the other hand haven't been able to make that switch just yet. It is part of my master plan I spoke of to diversify and change my digital footprint over the coming year. And it occurs to me that I kind of want to go back to having tangible music and a few tangible things. 

I've got five or six albums from this year that I really like and for the most part my listening has been to those albums. I would totally be able to afford say a couple dozen albums a year over buying my music from Spotify and having access to all this stuff I don't need. I also think I would have a closer attachment and a closer relationship with that music. 

But at the same time I don't have a CD player in my car or a portable tape deck I can use in the garage. Everything's Bluetooth. So I'm going to have to find a balance and find a new way to consume music as part of that larger project. At the same time, one of my favourite albums this year, "Looking for People to Unfollow" by Ecca Vandal didn't even see a physical release until the last few weeks. It's been digital only since the spring. 

I've also had this thought in my head over the last few weeks about collecting all of the mainline Zelda games. I think it was seeing all of the switch Zelda games that I have together on one pile that sort of triggered the idea. I don't own basically all of the consoles that they would be played on, but it would be really cool to be able to hold on to each game and play them. I also think this is just a reaction to the recent debate, discussion and movement in the game industry where you don't own a game, you just rent it until the studio decides they're done with it.

I dunno. I don't particularly want to sort and store more stuff in life. I think we have plenty. But the way the world is going, it sure feels nice to have something tangible in hand sometimes. Maybe there's a balance point.