Jeffrey Worley (Same guy?)

From: Patrick Rigney <patrick_at_evocative.com>
Date: Sat Jun 28 22:43:00 2003

> How do others deal with relatives who complain about collection size?

Diamonds and German cars are excellent peacemakers, and from what I've read
on this list, the monthly payments may be lower for some collectors than
their monthly eBay expenditures. ;-) Kidding, of course...

Truthfully, my collection is quite modest by anyone's standards, and my wife
gives me a lot of latitude. When I don't get latitude, I've usually broken
one or both of the following simple rules (made by observation, not
declaration): (1) out of site, out of mind--I keep my stuff put away and
well organized, and I make a concerted effort not to let it spread outside
of a contained area (and never refer to the living room as the "receiving
dock"); (2) pace yourself--getting a big box every day, three or four days
in a row, starts the "what is all this stuff" conversation.

Those are the big ones, but there are a couple of "survival skills" I think
also apply to any hobby. First and foremost, practice good relationship
management. For example, ask yourself when you last spent as much time
thinking about a spontaneous gift or event for your
spouse/partner/S.O./kids/family as you do in digging up rusty
Vaxen--holidays and birthdays DO NOT count. Has (s)he been asking you for
months to do something around the house, and you never have time for it, but
you've had bottomless time to repair that <whatever>? That's just asking
for trouble.

Second, don't not spend more than you can afford. This seems obvious, but
on more than one occasion I've been surprised at the end of a month by how
much I had spent on eBay and thrift shops.

Third, give yourself an honest evaluation as to why you are collecting--if
the motivation is bragging rights, nobody will care but you, and someone
else always has more, so you're wasting your time, money, energy, and
probably looking pretty foolish to those around you. In fact, you may be
distracting yourself from what really does matter to you. I think real
collectors collect for themselves, and for the love of the things they
collect, and the challenge of finding certain things and preserving their
history. And if it's really about the love, then choose a focus and stick
to it for a long while, just like collectors of other things generally do.
For me, having one or two really great pieces is much better than having
boxes full of so-so stuff.

On a recent visit to my house, Sellam declared me a "hobbyist", because my
collection is only about a dozen machines and a bunch of add-in boards and
peripherals. Yet at the same time, I was able to pull something out of a
box that seemed to get him pretty excited (original, boxed, AIM-65 expansion
unit and a Rockwell 256K bubble memory board for it). In any case, I think
he made an accurate assessment. I only have two machines that I lovingly
care for and coo over, keep in their original boxes, take them out to show
someone and but them right back, and rarely power up (annually if that).
The rest see power and daylight regularly and often, they don't just sit,
and they don't not work (at least not for long), and this is probably
another reason I don't get much static from my wife about my hobby.

My 2p. --Patrick


P.S. On a related note for the folks who like to collect things just to have
them: my parents were avid "collectors" of Persian and Oriental rugs. They
had a few of them around the house, but most of what they had collected was
still rolled up and in the shipping material it arrived in, stacked roll
upon roll in the garage, and in the nooks, crannies and bottoms of various
closets. At times, it seemed like they bought them faster than they could
be shipped in. And still they bought more, thinking "some day we're going
to do something with these." What they did with them was watch them all
burn up with their home in the Oakland Hills Fire, having never once been
displayed or even looked at after the day they were purchased. The loss
they felt was for all the things they truly loved, like one-of-a-kind
pictures and family heirlooms, and they only felt foolish and wasteful about
the rugs. My parents' mind-set now is that they are not willing to have
(let alone "collect") anything in their house that they are not going to
display, use, or otherwise draw regular and immediate enjoyment from.
Lesson I took away: use and enjoy what you have, don't have more than you
*can* use and enjoy, and certainly don't have more than you're willing to
lose. And if its something reproducible like pictures (or programs, data,
disk images, etc.), make sure someone else has a copy, because having only a
copy rather than the original may be tragic, but that pales when compared to
not having anything. (I'll call that 3 more pennies for an even nickel
now.)

P.P.S. That same fire burned my original North Star Horizon, ADM-3A, and 8K
Commodore PET with 4040 floppy, long in storage after I had left the nest.
Sigh. Fortunately, my KIM-1 was at the time hanging as a novelty
wall-decoration for my cube at work, if you can imagine. --P
Received on Sat Jun 28 2003 - 22:43:00 BST