Christopher Hamilton

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve decided to de-clutter my life. Which initially meant that I needed to go through all of my things, be extremely aggressive in my culling process, and start selling/giving away, (selling is my preference. Cash is goohood), all the things I have, but never use.

The first thing on that list was my PSP. It wasn’t a tough sell, I barely used it, and I was happy to get rid of it. Then the odd DVD went, again no big deal. I had watched them all and while I’ll happily sit through them again and again, those ones hadn’t been near my DVD player in a long time. Tonight was the hardest sell so far. The auction on my PowerMac G5 ended tonight.

That mac was the first professional standard mac I had owned, and I thought it was fantastic, I still do as a matter of fact. I used it for everything for a long time. The only issue I had with it, was that I’d slowly, over the last 7 months, used it less and less. It sat in my study, doing nothing more than being the home of my itunes library, and my aperture library. It was a waste of a perfectly good piece of kit. So off it goes to pastures new, assuming the guy ever pays for it of course.

My MacBook Pro has become the mainstay of my digital life. I’m writing this post on it, I use it for work, and every single piece of creative work I’ve done this year has been brought into existence using it. I have so story ideas, and scenes scattered around this thing that it’s taken me several hours tonight to get everything into a manageable structure. Knowing that after tonight I wouldn’t have the G5 made me a little crazy. Once I had organised the file structure, I started re-arranging my study to accommodate the fact that it would be gone.

After getting a little crazy with the organising, I actually feel a lot better about working in here now. That was another reason the G5 became under utilised. I haven’t really felt comfortable working at this desk since I moved into this apartment in January. There were too many things, lying around, and not enough space on the desk, (which in reality is massive), for me to want to stay here for any length of time. That’s all changed now though. The setup is almost perfect for me. All I need is a more comfortable chair, and to tidy the cabling up, and it’s going to be ideal.

Now that I have somewhere I feel comfortable to write, I don’t need to continually move the external hard drives I have around the apartment either. They sit very nicely in a little desk-side storage unit I have. It has been the home of my printer since I moved in, but now that I know where I’m going to be working, the external drives can be housed on one of it’s shelves, and added too without any issues. It just makes for a much neater, and friendlier environment.

I’ve been a hoarder for as long as I can remember, and at first the idea of getting rid of my stuff was quite uncomfortable. I mean, what if I NEED that PSP at some point in the future to hack into an alien space ship and implant a virus in order to save the world. If I sell it, and that situation happens, I would be so mad at myself. Once I got over my short spell of insanity, it was actually very liberating to begin the clear out. It’s never good to tie yourself to things. That’s all they are, after all. Just things that can be replaced, and generally make no difference in our lives. In fact the only difference a great deal of it makes, is how much storage you need, and how many unopened boxes, you have to transfer when you move house again.

I no longer need to continually buy gadgets, and new technology. I’m happy with my MacBook Pro, and my ever decreasing pile of things. The more things I move on, the better I’ve been feeling. I have more space around my apartment, I beginning to feel like there aren’t piles of things everywhere, and that having clean, uncluttered, rooms is much more refreshing and comfortable. The weight of all my possessions is slowly lifting and it’s a wonderful feeling. Again the extra cash is nice too.

Out with the old, and there’s no real need for the new. Not anymore.

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