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The Pack-Rat Unloads by DataPacRat

Yesterday was... a day. Each day for a week or three, I've been hauling some books down from my spare-bedroom-turned-library, and boxing and bagging them up. (Speed limited thanks to dust and asthma.) Yesterday they finally went out my door, to a van, and to a local used-book-store dealer. I consciously tried to avoid keeping too close track, but have spent enough time trying to ingrain the skills of estimation so that I'm confident in saying "somewhere north of 500 books".

... And that's just been the SF&F novels so far.

After spending some weeks looking around for options, my total income from this operation: not one ¢. Cash spent on the books: Well, if you assume a cover price of around $10... "a lot". Though at least it's been spread over the past 30 years.

I can definitely say that I am not feeling happy. What I /am/ feeling is... not an emotion that's come up that often in such novels. I've been applying some of the teachings of the Stoics, which is enough to keep me from spiralling into one of my depressive bouts. And, roughly a year ago, I consciously made the choice to try to stop buying physical copies of books, movies, games, and such, which required a lot more of a re-adjustment of my self-identity than I'd anticipated, so I can't say I wasn't expecting any of this. And I've found ebook copies of most of what I lost, so if I want to read some Asimov, Bear, Clarke, Dickson, Heinlein, Pratchett, Anthony, Chalker, or any of the rest of the old gang, I still can. But emotional responses don't always respond the way your intellect thinks they should, so... there's still a sense of loss.

... and there's still the /rest/ of my library to go through, and to decide what I'm most willing to lose.

I'm coping, though. I have three writing projects in-progress, which I can switch between to distract myself, without wasting time regressing all the way into comforting 1980's cartoons and emulated video games. In fact, earlier this week, I finally managed to arrange a trip to a store a hundred kilometres away, where I spent my entire rainy day fund and them some to buy a pile of physical reference books which it's essentially impossible to buy anywhere else, nevermind in ebook form; and I plan on spending a few hours this evening in a coffee shop, with a few such books and my laptop, collating and compiling and generally creating something I think is more useful out of it all. And /these/ books aren't ones I expect /anyone/ sane would ever throw away. So, er, I guess I'm finishing this journal with some sort of circle-of-literary-life reference. Though, given the nature of the furry fandom, that's all too likely to devolve into some kind of Lion-King-based vore/unbirth/etc tangent that non-fans would have a hard time distinguishing from a Giger-esque or Bosch-ian nightmare. Hm, maybe I should write a journal about how an important aspect of the fan is being willing to distinguish between one aspect of an activity, such as physical closeness and activity, from other aspects of that activity that would necessarily be attached if it were applied in the real world, such as pain and death? ... Maybe not, since that's just about all I can think of /to/ say on the subject.

Ah well; I've got a few messages to catch up on for at least one of those projects, so this is me, signing off.

The Pack-Rat Unloads

DataPacRat

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