The Finite

I’ve been selling a lot of stuff on eBay lately. About $300 worth of stuff by now. Some of it’s mine. Much of it was old flip phones ($10-$20 a pop) that we’ve accumulated from relatives. Quite a bit belongs to my aunt and uncle who have a big McMansion big enough for them to store stuff like DSL modems in their original boxes for years at a time. So far, I’ve bid farewell to a PowerMac G5, a Powershot G5, and a power cable for HP printers.

Good riddance. The days are running out from when I can actually get money for those and I’m building a new machine anyway. Hopefully the days of me using old garbage (literally dumpster dove) electronics is over. (I’m not going to say no to selling dumpster stuff I refurbish. Or if it’s new garbage electronics.) And I’m using my developing eBay prowess to pick up cheap some of the parts for the new build which I will detail in the near future.

The way I see it: Companies manufacture some high-quality durable shit nowadays. Phones, processors, and SSDs have no moving parts, are cheap to ship and are difficult to wear out. Processors either work or they don’t. Phones, assuming functional hardware (which should be obvious enough) can have software replaced. SSDs? If they survived the first couple of months of use then what’s to stop them from continuing that very long gradual decline towards read/write death? I draw the line at buying RAM, power supplies or a motherboard second-hand. Too many variables. Too difficult to troubleshoot when things go wrong. And cases are too expensive to ship from person-to-person.

I’m doing this not just as a financial end, but a philosophical one. Having helped two people move over the course of the last year, I had to carry a lot of stuff. Then I lived the city life for a while in Annie’s apartment. I learned from these that having stuff for the sake of having stuff distracts from what should be a search for a wholesome existence, a life lived with meaning. Experiences should be cherished more so than objects. Buying things for yourself will never be quite as sentimental as immortalizing in tangible form a connection with another person. I’m not advocating for a ascetic hippie lifestyle. But you should strive to fill your life with meaning, which things like circular saws on clearance or shiny cars with good financing don’t inherently have.

Not to mention, the less shit I have, the less shit I have to carry when I move out.