Digital Hoarding !Take My Energy!

I knew I hoard a lot of digital things for a long time like from the dawn of my sentient digital life which is 17 about years ago. But for a last two weeks I really thought about it, because it became a really limiting factor in my life.

You could see me as a king sitting on a heap of digital gold, digital antiquities and digital valuables. And lot of digital free stuff. But that no longer makes sense. Gold is spent, antiquities lost or stolen and valuables lost in a poker game. As some people say: “Spice must flow!”

:image of Conan the King:

But not in a digital world. With regular backups it sticks around like digital “forever”.

Mix it with my NIH syndrome and tons of plans and side projects and you’ll get tons of textures, stock images, stock sounds and stock music. I will certainly finish my video game and I need this! Even if I have not created anything viable for 10 years now!

Preserving the Culture

Or I downloaded this song 14 years ago and actually I am probably the only person I has it. Or one of three people in the world where each of us thinks they are the only person who has it. You no longer can find the band on the internet for years and I need to preserve “digital culture”, right?

But is it really worth it? As my digital mental health began to deteriorate, I had to change my point of view. The problem is that when I downloaded the song, I really enjoyed it. Not anymore. It’s sounds obsolete. There’s no energy left. I don’t resonate with it anymore.

Every two years or so I change a music subgenre I listen to. Or bands. I am a volatile person. There are people who are die-hard fans of something for 30 years and on the other spectrum there is me who comes, sees, says “that’s really cool” and really likes it and enjoys the energy. But after some time - days, weeks, months, maybe years I need to move on. Otherwise things gets to feel like a stone attached to my leg with a chain. Really heavy stone with a chain made of the heaviest material ever made (iridium?). I don’t like to be stuck.

In the end I will just delete the file. Preserving of culture? Who cares…it is just a song/image/video. Copyrighted by somebody else. It’s not really mine. In fact I still store some digital valuables, but only < 100 files.

What calms me down is fact that you can always create a better music, a new image, much nicer video. It does not really matter if anything gets lost. How many things are preserved from 19st century? Not many. And that is fine. Everything needs to have its usefulness. I don’t really want to consume too old stuff. Only a little fraction of things resists time.

It is certainly interesting to hear a historic music played on shawm. But after some time I still return to electronic music and new releases. Or internet radio which actually plays old electronic songs, but I have never heard them before.

And with digital stuff it’s the same. We have forgotten many video games from nineties. Some people care and plays them, but mostly because of nostalgia. Only a fraction of games are still worth playing. And sometimes they even gets remasters to stay current like Real Myst, Age of Empires HD or StarCraft Remastered.

That File May Come In Handy One Day

Back to my video game. Things change. I realized I don’t really need files for a game to be made. As with everything else - I need to start small. I don’t need tons of assets - it’s overreaching my abilities and the game will never be done. Also a genre change. A setting change. Today everybody has a decent camera in a smartphone, so textures are not really a problem anymore. There are tons of other reasons. In fact do I really need to make a game?

I just need to let go. Too many unrealistic plans will result in a failure and wasted life. Let go and reform. Start anew with current personality and dreams. To strive to finish old plans mindlessly takes a lot of energy. Life can get into a standstill.

It’s sort of like in strategy games when you expand too much and are spread too thin. Then you don’t have resources to evolve and take research. Everything goes to keeping it (upkeep).

Digital Files Define Me

This aspect is bears many similarities to its counterpart in a physical world.

Materialism, consumerism and western culture (or society, idk) sort of suggest the more you own, the better you are. Is that so? Not really. What you really need is to satisfy your needs like hot water, not freeze to death, internet. Or extra expensive edition of GeForce GTX 1080 Ti just because the way it looks.

But if you own four sets of glasses and hardly using two cups from Ikea and you don’t have 20 guests at once. That’s not very useful at all. I realize my example situation can originate from different reasons. But if you have them only because they’ll make you a better person, think again. If keep it in case lots of guests will come one day….think again. Get realistic. And in case they will, does it really matter if not everyone of them will have it’s own cup? Will that make you a bad person? Wtf is wrong with you? Wtf is wrong with me?

Conclusion

For some time I played with a thought how I envy children which have only a little digital history. No files, no nostalgia no nothing. Wipe my digital life and start again. But later I realized it would not help. To purify my digital life is more useful. I don’t want to throw everything, only 99% of not useful.

Anyways I abandoned many digital communities and habits. My digital life needs to flow. I long for to be agile and nimble.

New digital horizons await! Just like in old times!