Google is only second best...at best

My brother bugged me for the 63 millionth time in a week to clear some space up on our shared computer.

Confidently, I replied, "Dude, there is nothing that can be deleted, I just need all that stuff. You are going to have to back it up."
"I'm sure you don't need all of it!"
"Well, turns out I do. Like you know anything about data! Scoff"
He then swirled around on our new revolving chair, and randomly opened some folder and a file within it and went through it. "Are you telling me, you need to know what time you ordered a Smokin' Joe's pizza on the night of December 21, 2007? As cheap as you are to jot down the time of ordering, so you can ask for a discount when they overrun the delivery time, do you really have to maintain that record forever after that?"
I was caught unawares. "Uh, well, its just a text document dude. What do you need, 2 bytes of space urgently?" I defended feebly.
"Its not about the 2 bytes man. Its your whole personality. Delete some crap dude."

I ended that duel without an answer. But I pondered over it later. What he said was true. I am a hoarder. I big fat hoarder who is eventually going to run out of space. A hoarder of text documents with random telephone numbers. Hoarder of receipts from restaurants I haven't visited in ages. Hoarder of random internet links that I thought someone else would find interesting. Hoarder of clothes. Oh! Clothes! Thats a Pandora's box right there! I have a shirts and t-shirts in my cupboard that I have neither worn nor been able to fit myself into, since years ago. I hoard old jeans thinking maybe one day, when I am in dire need of shorts, or if mens' hot pants ever come into style, I would have something ready. I have a sweatshirt that must have last kept me warm when the Queen was still hot. I hoard pictures, I backup old emails and chats, I do it all. My security guy has asked me around 250 times if I wanted to sell my bicycle that hasn't been used for years now. I tell him off each time, with an unconvincing reason- that I will start using it some day. The real reason is that I am a hoarder and I can't let go of anything. Not the good, and not the bad.

It is actually a vice of sorts. It consumes you. Its an obsession with random things that once upon a time may or may not have been special. Preserving old pictures and gifts and books is normal, healthy even. But the separating wall between a museum and its attic is paper thin up here. And this attic has apparently rendered many a fertile acre of mindspace, fallow. Regardless...

I have come to realize that this is a personality thing. One, that hasn't been typified in any personality class (type A/B, X/Y etc). At least to my knowledge it hasn't, which is actually not saying much. So yea. Hoarding, and an inability to generally let go, is a part of a bigger philosophy that we hoarders inadvertently follow. I can't remember at what point I chose to be a hoarder. But ever since I have converted, I have been a staunch follower. Which incidentally, is another hoarder trait. We don't switch sides easily, if ever. Sometimes, this is confused with having a big ego and generally being stubborn asses. But the truth is, we get so attached to one side, that we consider switching sides as an act of betrayal. Betrayal unto our own selves. Which is why we just blindly refuse to budge from our positions. For better or for worse.

One more hoarder trait is that of not being impressed easily. When someone recommends something to us, be it a movie, a restaurant, a book, anything, we find it difficult to appreciate from the get go. We like to explore our own stuff and to get attached to it for life. By ourselves. If the recommendations come from a fellow hoarder, then they go down a little bit better. That brings me to another point. We seek out hoarders. Active as well as unaware.

A somewhat helpful, but definitely not confirmatory, test of a hoarder is good memory. It indicates how much random stuff has been well-indexed in our well-oiled brains. Some of us may not be able to rant out old dates and times. But give us a scent of a memory indexed up there and we will easily trace out the entire day before and after that...with the crucial details.

There are several such traits I can cite. Thats not the point. The point is we are. Personally, I think hoarding makes us more endearing and more enriched as people. People who are able to easily let go, may be more blissful and happy in general. But I find them too shallow. Like a flat plate. Like a computer with a small page file memory. They exist in the extreme present. We exist mostly in the past, and somewhat in the idea of the future. I find that cute. For all its pitfalls and potential for self destruction, I wouldn't want myself to be any different. So in a way, what I told my brother was actually true. I actually did need that stupid text document. To be who I am.

So here's to it all. All that is in here. To stay. To the files and the folders. To the shirts and the shorts. To the bicycles and the books. To the times and the people. The shitty ones and the jewels. To the ones who escaped, and to the ones who stayed. To the ones who returned and to the ones you thank your stars didn't return. On behalf of the hoarder community, I thank you all. For it is all of you, that make us the awesome people we are!