Subj : Minimalism vs Collectionism
To   : All
From : SoDa7
Date : Sun Feb 04 2024 10:25 pm

Hello to everyone here. I think this might be my first message I'm posting after interacting sporadically with FSXNet and doing some replies, and this time I'd like to expose a little, let's say, interior conflict I'm having with myself...

Well, let's say that, when I was younger, I used to collect every kind of things about tech or media, being it updated or retro, but now, as I grow older, I'm tending to prefer to have as less things as possible (as long as it's something I use everyday)

In other words, I'm having a phase where, from being a tech-junkie I'm going to keep things as tidied up as possible, and keep only the essential stuff I'm 101% certain I'm using. 

To make a practical example: I used to have 2 postations on my bedroom and a lot of old hardware. I even used to collect and keep driver CD-ROMs of hardware that I don't even have anymore. But now, as I felt like my room started to feel smaller, I decided to tidy up my room, so I got "rid" of the superfluous, sold things I was certain I wasn't going to use, and even threw away the driver CD-ROMs (after dumping, scanning and uploading them on the Internet Archive). And instead of having 2 postations (2 PCs), I decided to get my Pi400 working instead of my 2nd PC (and my Pi400 works like a charm for stuff like paperwork and BBSing - LibreOffice ftw!) and I love how less space my Pi400 takes.

Another example: I used to buy lots of CDs, vinyls etc only to realise that I feel like I'm running out of space in my room to even store them, so now, when I want to buy an album (instead of using Spotify) I tend to buy it in digital (and load it on my digital music locker service) to hear it. After all, almost all my CD collection is ripped as MP3/FLAC and uploaded on my locker service. For now, I'm keeping my CD collection in my room but I'm not buying other physical CDs.

And, another one: I love retrocomputing, however even with that I have an issue of room space. I wish I had all the space to put my AMIGAs, C64s etc... So, whenever is possible, I use emulation on the computers I have. One of the reasons why I like my Pi400 is that, with PiMiga, it becomes literally a powered A1200 (considering that with an USB to DB9 adapter I can even connect my Quickshot joystick I used on my AMIGA), taking way less space!

The conflict is that, as much as I love collecting old media and tech stuff, as I grow older it feels like overwhelming to have that feel of having a lot of stuff and so little time to use it. So applying this minimization concept, it quite helps me feel less overwhelmed.

I wonder if you also felt something like that, and how you managed to keep your room tidied up.

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