On the brink of leaving the home country again, I am looking through things with the intention of trying to make some sales.  I need to pad my bank account a little bit so that when I get to Korea, I won't have to wait for my first paycheck to actually leave my apartment.

However, every collection of "things" I have seems to bespeak some phase of my life that I am afraid to let go of.  I'm not talking about the past, though; all of these things may be a part of my future.

I am passionate about the ideas discussed in philosophy, but I have not been reading like I should.  There are a lot of books that do me no personal good when I am reading for my own enjoyment, though they would be helpful resources if I were ever to try to return to academic pursuits.  For example, I recently tried buroughing through Kant's "Critique of Judgment."  It would be a nice thing to quote in discussions about music, aesthetics, etc.  I decided shortly after that I should read something a little less dense for my own entertainment.  Freud and Dostoyevsky are probably dense by most people's standards, but I can derive enjoyment out of them without getting frustrated like I do with Kant's writings.  As much as I love Kant's ideas, he's not the most perspicuous writer on earth.

At the same time, I would hate to lose my collections of Kant and Nietzsche, even though they will be thousands of miles away from me for quite a while, and I might never have any use for them.

My Fender Strat was the guiitar I honed my skills on.  It has always been my guitar, though I could get one better fitted to the styles I play in Korea.  Instruments are less expensive over there.  I plan to do this when (err...if) my tendonitis heals up enough to play again.

Though learning stenography was the main cause of my tendonitis, which, consequently, was a major part of what created the rut in which I currently find myself, I chose that as a vocation to learn because it would give me enough money and enough control over my schedule to live the life I want in my free time and not have to worry.  I enjoyed it, though I was never as passionate about it as other things.

I could probably make a pretty penny selling my stenowriter.  However, that would probably be the last straw, and I doubt I would ever go back to it.  I doubt I will anyway, considering the pain it caused my wrists.  I could also sell texts and dictionaries geared toward it.

I also fear going through what I went through when I moved back to the US a few years ago.  That is, though I had the basics when I moved in to my apartment in Novi, I hardly had any crap to fill it with.  People actually commented on how empty it looked; I literally had about five DVDs; I still haven't invested in any kind of video game console which, though I'm not a big fan of throwing away time like that, is a good way to kill some spare time.

Anyway, my next blog will probably be about whatever I'm selling.  I'm partly doing this to get spending money for my first month+ in Korea, partly to clear away unnecessary crap.  So the prices will be practically giveaways, though I need some kind of small compensation at the moment.