Shelving
With the new storage stuff I bought this week, I’ve managed to finally get all my books, DVDs, and CDs shelved. I was surprised to find that I even had room left over. I guess I really purged the books before I moved from Texas.
Putting things on shelves forced me to look at what I have, and it’s an effort not to get sidetracked. When I’m putting books on shelves, I catch myself thinking about how much I enjoyed a particular book, and the temptation is to open it and start reading. If I’m not careful, I’ll find myself a couple of hours later sitting on the floor with a book, still surrounded by the books that need to be shelved. CDs work the same way, with being reminded of everything I have and how long it’s been since I listened to that music, but at least there I can put a CD on to play while I continue to work. It’s not like reading, where I have to stop what I’m doing to read.
I’ve noticed that it was good for my budget when the movie theaters and music stores stopped being so common in malls. I seemed to have had a habit of seeing a movie, then going straight to the music store to buy the soundtrack. I listened to the soundtrack a lot for a couple of weeks, then totally forgot about it (and sometimes about the movie). I found soundtracks for movies I hardly remember. For a lot of them, it wasn’t so much that I loved the movie as it was that the soundtrack functioned like a mix tape, combining songs I liked in a way I wouldn’t have been able to buy together otherwise. Romantic comedies tend to use jazzy standards on their soundtracks, so that was a good way to buy that kind of music, whether or not the movies were memorable. Still, there are one or two CDs I found that had me wondering why I felt compelled to buy them. Now that most of the music stores have closed and most theaters don’t seem to be in malls anymore, at least I have time to calm down after seeing a movie before I’m in a place to buy a soundtrack rather than having a music store right there while I’m still on the emotional high from the end of the movie.
I need to organize my CDs better so I can find what I want right away instead of going through all the shelves in two rooms. I’ll need to move most of the CDs I use as writing music to the office and keep out the CDs I tend to sing along with, since those are a distraction. Then again, the writing music tends to be good reading music, but the den is only a few steps away from the office, so it’s not a major effort to move a CD from one place to another, but I want to shelve them where I’ll know I can find them.
Shelving the To Be Read books reminded me of things that have been lingering there a long time. My recent reading has been the Timothy Zahn follow ups to his early 90s Star Wars trilogy. I wasn’t crazy about all the Star Wars books that came out during that time, but I liked those, and I bought his other ones, but for some reason never got to them. I’ve been doing a project to rewatch all the Star Wars movies and TV shows in storyline order, so I guess I had Star Wars on the mind when I was packing and I pulled out those books to read during the move. Of course, that whole timeline has been erased by the sequel films and the new continuity created around them, including all the TV series that take place at around the same time that these books would have, but it’s interesting seeing where it was all going. I was a guest of honor at a convention with Timothy Zahn and had a chance to get to know him. Oddly, when I think of him now, I think of knitting because I was frantically working on a baby shower gift during that convention, and he helped me search for my cable needle when I dropped it. He was fascinated with what I was making and how it all worked, since the blanket I was making had a lot of fancy stitches. It’s weird reading Star Wars while thinking about knitting.
My next task is getting all the clothes put away. I’m getting new ideas for outfits, since I’m seeing pieces in different contexts, next to things I wouldn’t have normally put with them. I have to put together a couple of portable wardrobes that will go in the basement for off-season and rarely worn things, and then I should have room in the closet for clothes I wear regularly.
I hope to be done with the bulk of the setting up by the end of the month. There will be fine-tuning as I adjust to living in this space, but I won’t be spending the bulk of my time on it, and I can get back into a work routine. I’ve fallen into some really bad habits while normal life has been suspended.