Angst

My mother says that I'm a damn hoarder.

Well, I don't tend to throw things away. Not that I'd live three metres deep in used tissues but I have files of old bills, boxes of various paperwork, train tickets accumulated since around 2001 and similar stuff. For some reason, I like to have my life archived somehow. Let's admit, I'm not the most orderly person so a good part of those receipts, cinema tickets and opera programmes are just stacked around. But, they're there.

While browsing the internets sort of randomly, I came across an article in The Atlantic which describes the ephemeral nature of the internet. I didn't need to go and lie down for a while out of the horror that I may not be able to access this or that. I'm apparently anxious or paranoiac enough to download stuff I like and save it to DVDs which are another stack of some-or-another. (When I go to Ikea, I need to get more storage boxes.) I abhor the clouds, no damn way I'm storing my data somewhere out there. I had a computer to die a sudden death back in around 2008 or 2009 and I lost quite a bit of my files, and before, I had a computer stolen, along with the data that included my almost finished thesis; what saved me was my habit of printing out and photocopying everything. (I also need more bookshelves. My model, Norrboten, Norrland or some other Norr thingy ceased production. Judging from watching the channels, I guess that most of the production ended in soap opera sets. Now what.)

The other day, I got a bout of what-will-I-do-if and as I tend to hoard stuff, I started printing out all my paypal receipts. I got only to 2013, 6 years to go yet. It rocks in a way, I'm bookmarking all the book bills and I'll finally assemble the thing called The Book List I've been keeping since I was 16 or so. On paper torn out from a school notepad. I will be able to add a lot of info to my Ravelry files, too. And I may end up with a neat row of files full of neat stuff; I can live with the lacunae caused by thrown-out receipts from brick and mortar stores but I must say that the idea of one database (the bills) supported by other database (old diaries, with the exception of the badly missed one from 2008 that was left on a train to Rome) and a few more partial databases (those train tickets, for example) will be nice when I'll be getting demented. Or some future wacko may use it to build a museum collection of some-or-another.