Not to get too Zen about it, but material objects really are worthless.
So, you might've spent six months tracking down the perfect bookshelf, couch, lamp or whatever. You might've spent way too much money on it, too. But someday you'll need to get rid of it, and when that day comes your precious lamp's only worth $40 at a garage sale. Unless no one buys it, and then it's worth nothing. Christ, the cab ride to the airport costs $40.
The keepsakes are even worse. Throwing out ten years' worth of memories, letters and personal artwork is downright heartbreaking. Then why do it, you ask? Because the alternative means carrying this stuff around in boxes for another ten years, pretending I'm still young. It misses the whole point of moving to Japan, which is to recharge my batteries, to change my perspective. And to get rid of old habits.
The fact is, I really don't need any of this stuff. The books could be given to friends. The videotapes are about to become as obsolete as vinyl records. I could fit my entire CD collection onto an iPod. The only reason I'm keeping all the furniture is that I just bought most of it, and I haven't had a chance to enjoy it yet.
When you get right down to it, everything I genuinely need in this world could fit into a duffel bag. Well, a really big duffel bag, anyway.
When my whole life fits into an airplane carry-on, will I be happy or sad?
I reached the decision that the important thing about that stuff is the memory and the story, so I'm loading those into my weblog where I can back them up and I'm getting rid of the physical objects. If you check my archives, you're going to start seeing more and more entries before October 1998 when the blog really started.
I got the idea from my friend Lilly (www.girlhacker.com) who did something like this with her t-shirt collection: http://home.earthlink.net/%7Eltao/tshirt/intro.html
Dude, I feel this way all the time. I had all this shit stored at my parents house for years. Mostly Star Wars, Transformers and GI Joe. I was like "When I get my house, I'll have a whole room dedicated to showing it all off and how much care of taken of these collectors items over the years". Well, I have my house. And where is all that stuff? Taking up space in a closet. I predict it will NEVER see the light of day.
The only way I can leave my possessions is to have my house destroyed fight-club style to force me live without all this crap.