Easy, just go get vaccinated, all the mercury and chemicals causes arturism.
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Iāve sold a couple of things on EBay lately ā just attractive trinkets I held onto for too long ā about $800 worth of stuff and I just pushed it all against a credit card debt I had rung up during a cash shortage. Itās very liberating, actually.
What I need to do is get rid of some books. And thatās hard.
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Iāve sold stuff on ebay mostly to give it back to the universe. But, I also donated a box of maps from the seventies and a punk rock collection to the Prelinger Library in San Francisco and I donated my extensive California Green Party collection to Stanford.
Donāt know if there is a name for it, donāt know if I want to know but I tell people I am the opposite of anal retentive.
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Iām a crafter, and Iāve been slowly clearing out the bins and bins of things Iāve been stashing away for decades. Not entirely sure why I needed to keep all those cigar boxes (that I got for free!), along with all the other stuff, but I really was going to make something with them one day.
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āI donāt care about losing all the money. Itās losing all the stuff.ā
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Ugh - I used to love ebay - but my god, their fees get more and more, and while I used to pad shipping some, I had to resort to getting a scale so I could KNOW the price to charge, vs guess and get screwed, or get accused of padding.
Iād be fine with giving/selling cheap some of the stuff to someone who appreciated it.
Somehow I ended up with two factory sets of Star Wars Galaxy II cards. IIRC these were like $80 new. I think the most I saw them selling for was like $30. Ugh. So I took a hit and just gave them to my older nephew, along with some protective sheets. I think they are in decent hands.
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Same here. Youād think all that extra revenue would allow them to hire web and UI designers whose aesthetic sensibilities continued to evolve after, say, 1998.
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AND they double dip with PAYPAL fees (well back when they owned paypal - I think they sold them, yes?)
I am surprised though that no one hasnāt made an ebay killer with like half price fees or something.
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Good news for that, eBay no longer cares about overcharging for shipping, according to the idiotic shipping charges I see with no way to report them.
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You give them 1 star on the feed back. And if you get like less than 4 stars Ebay fucks with your account, IIRC.
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Yeah, but youād have to aggro-buy the item first to complain about the above-market shipping.
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Books are one of my worst problems. Iām trying to pare down, but I still have so many. Of course I wonāt have time to read them all again (especially not with so many more yet unread!), but I like to pick them up and skim every now and then.
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I aspire to significantly downsize my physical possessions, and my bits, and my media consumption. Looks like freedom from my perspective, but difficult as heck too ā¦
Iām convinced that stuff in this sense is a social pathology wrought by late-stage capitalism. The most extreme manifestation is hoarding, but B-grade Reality TV has feasted on this issue for the past decade ā¦ * Hoarders, Storage Wars, Pawn Stars, American Pickers ā¦ these shows fascinate me for what they say about cultural priorities.
A part of the problem is how the human brain is wired. I, probably like many people, have an ability to anchor memories to objects. I could tell you the circumstances surrounding the acquisition of 99% of my possessions, down to articles of clothing and individual books. Maybe I couldnāt tell you the price I paid, but I have a memory attached to almost every object. Things become vortices through which to retain some of our own personal past, for good or for bad.
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More than a few years ago we just punted and donated several big boxes to Friends Of The Library.
I have some autographed books I want to keep and my Doc Savage paperbacks from the 70s but really almost down to nothing now.
Heck the hard to find even used Joan D. Vinge books I found a few summers ago (and it was great to read Castpaw again as well as finally read Psion) both are now in the mostly scifi bookcase at a nearby coffee shop.
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Move backwards and forwards across the Atlantic and North America a few times. Works wonders for getting rid of possessions.
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But then there is also the Japanese art of Clutteringā¦
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I want to sell my records (and some other stuff) but I want to at least attempt to break even. some of it is pretty collectible, but even if most of them are only worth a couple bucks plus shipping, weāre still talking hundreds of hours of data entry, packing, and post-office-ing. Iām prepared to take a hit on my time but combined with learning how to ebay, how to fairly grade the records, build and maintain a reputation, getting all the shipping materials; itās fairly daunting to get started.
Minimalism is expensive as an aesthetic. For many people it just means throw out your old stuff and replace it with stuff you like better. Not friendly to the planet or pocketbook but it feels good. The real minimalists never acquire more than they need so they donāt have the dramatic stories of throwing everything out.
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Bah, if you only get 1 star every 30 packages, thatās still a 97% positive feedback:
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