I had a major decluttering session last week and I came upon (one of) my dusty magazine racks. The old piles of New York Times in my navy blue IKEA rack symbolizes my naive belief that I can read, well, everything.
More words pour out daily, and a reader cannot keep up. It’s shocking and overwhelming to consider the amount of words that pour out each second, especially at a spiraling rate increase thanks to Twitter and such.
This is my shameful secret: I have “collections” of old periodicals—newspapers and magazines--that I can’t get myself to throw out because I haven’t quite “finished” with them. Of course I also have shelves and shelves of books I haven’t quite “finished,” but for some reason, it’s much more acceptable to have words bound in books than words bound in periodicals. But when all my piles of periodicals came together to an overwhelming heap of words I can only choke on, came crashing down was the belief or the desire to get through them all. So I decided take my first step to a manageable reading environment by throwing out the oldest pile, umm… I mean collection, of New York Times sections.
I am also trying to accept the fact that some things have to be left undone so that I can make room for new things, ya know, cut my losses. I figured that’s the grown up thing to do. So well, after I took a deep breathe (because it was a difficult decision but also because I did not want to breathe in the dust that soon would fill the room), I started making a paper recycling pile out of the old New York Times sections I would never read in full.
Initially I felt great! I was getting rid of a huge nagging burden (I think every one of my weekly to do list mentions something about attacking my periodical backlog… and it was never joyful to put that item on my list). I felt so free, free to fly over to current issues of nyt, vanity fair, in style, and huffington without feeling like I am cheating on the old issues that have been faithfully and patiently waiting for me. Adios yellowing hardening newprints.
But as I went further back into the past, I started getting nostalgic, which really proves that things get harder to throw out the longer you hold on to them, because with shared history, items become memory.
It was fun to go back in time though. I got to re-experience the New York Times the way it was a few years ago. Go back a couple of years, and the “Metropolitan” section was “The City.” The actual dimensions of the papers were larger. And is it just me, but did the New York Times Magazine contain more memoir like pieces than now?? In my decluttering/time traveling session, I got to relive some events that were vivid and hazy at the same time. For instance, there were Obama and McCain on the front page of 09/07/08 paper and Michael Phelps on the front page of 08/17/08 paper. But my journey ended on January 6, 2008, the earliest paper kept by me.
The recycling truck came and left with my really really old newspapers. I think I truly did the right thing for myself, even if my grandchildren won’t be able to see Obama selecting Biden to be on his ticket.
