Old magazines, or the reason there’s no place to set down a coffee cup in my house
Old magazines are a conundrum to me. I subscribe to periodicals that are really interesting to me, so when I’m done with them, it’s correspondingly difficult to throw the damn things out. They pile up and finally I started dropping them in doctor’s offices and coffee shops with a sticker on the front that says;
FREE MAGAZINE
Too good to throw out
Like it? Just want to finish reading it?
It’s yours – take it home!
But the time consuming part is going through the stack putting on the stickers and bagging them up for distribution, which I tend to do on Sunday when I have the house to myself. It isn’t easy going through the leftovers of my addiction.
“Ooh, that was an interesting article…” (sits down to read about radiocarbon dating, hog farm waste, nanoscale carbon-tube solar energy experiments, or an Indian ruin in New Mexico)… There’s New Scientist, National Geographic, The Economist, MIT Technology Review, Scientific American, or my son’s old back issues of American Scientist or Nature… I still can’t bear to part with back issues of American Heritage Science and Technology. I could just sit right down and read them all over again.
Which is why it’s so damn important to GET RID OF THEM!!!
You know my parents have a hard time throwing away old junk too. It took a flood in their basement for me to convince them that it was finally time. The way I see it, you are moving on to a new better life. The past is interesting, but if you get too caught up in it you miss the future.
Maybe an organization should be created for people with this disease…
It’s been three weeks since I have held onto an old magazine or peridoical…