PSA: Life is short. Don't spend too much time obsessively cataloguing your data collections.
PSA: Life is short. Don't spend too much time obsessively cataloguing your data collections.
Over the last 2 years, I've noticed that I spend WAY more time carefully cataloguing my collections of digital media (games, anime) than actually experiencing those media.
I would spend months carefully renaming the files, grouping them into folders by franchise, creating watch order files, remuxing videos so they would only have one audio and one subtitle file, reencoding videos that I considered bloated, reencoding videos that had flac or 5.1 audio to opus stereo, putting all my files into a spreadsheet along with other information, etc. etc.
Today I realized that my obsession is pointless. I'm just wasting my life doing something that's not enjoyable, instead of experiencing the media I've collected. Who am I making those neat-looking catalogues for? I will never pass on my collection to anyone. I am just lost in my unhealthy obsession instead of enjoying life.
So yeah. Today I've decided to stop wasting my time. I will keep archiving (because I believe that in the future, the governments will make it very difficult to share copyrighted media online), but I will stop trying to make my collection look nice and tidy.
I will also delete stuff that I've watched/played that I didn't enjoy. I've come to a realization there's no point archiving it if I'm never going to use it again.
Anyways, I hope this helps someone realize that obsessions with cataloguing your hoards are unhealthy and a waste of life.
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It makes me happy to look at my collection. Even if I'm not opening the files, just seeing a folder full of thumbnails of every issue of Nintendo Power magazine, or that dream collection of old console game ROM, brings out that eight year old whose family could afford to get me two NES games a year - one on Christmas, one on my Birthday, and that was a HUGE deal for me. It gives me this little spike of dopamine just see it and remind myself it's there. It's mine. It's a collection. I get a thrill from collecting it.
A lot of people, they sit in front of a screen, they scroll Facebook, they seem gossipy bullshit about vapid celebrities, the same generic, memey "riding the wave of trends so you'll like me" reels made by people who will be end up the subject of some drama YouTuber's expose in a few years, and of course the ever-important "here's your super toxic thing of the day, make sure to get as furious as possible at this, while we go ruin people's lives for participting it, and then for agreeing with it, and then for disagreeing with it, but not loudly enough" shit that twists them into knots and re-affirms on a daily basis that the world is a horrible place and everything is bad and they should be fucking miserable.
I sit in front of a screen and catalog and sort all the wonderful things that make me feel excited. So maybe no one else will ever see it. Maybe I'm not impressing anyone else. Who cares? We need to stop basing our valuations of things on whether or not it gets us attention or appreciation from others. This stuff makes me happy. That's enough.
Respect first line indent. Lost art. A small expression of beauty.