Once is good, twice is better
I habitually duplicate things. I figure, if one is good, two is better. I collect more than one of the same object. If one thing is lost, I have a backup. It’s called preparation. I also duplicate and triplicate experiences by re-visiting places. Especially in recent years when I have come to appreciate that there are fewer days ahead of me than behind me, I like to visit familiar places many times, and photograph the hell out of them. Books have waned as my primary hobby. First, I jettisoned duplicate copies. Then, I redistributed all my collected library, with little discrimination. Photography and other pursuits have replaced books in my world.
Digital photography has taught me how to take better pictures than I have ever taken before, and I often re-visit places just to get better pictures of them with the techniques I’ve learned through practice. If it’s cloudy one day, I wait for a chance to return on a sunny day. It has happened more than once that I will travel a fair time and distance from home two days in a row, or two weekends in a row, for the precise purpose of re-taking pictures in better light, with a blue sky background, or with a different arrangement of shadows and sunlight, or a different crowd of people. I’ve travelled to venues precisely so that I could take pictures with the sunlight coming from a different direction, a more advantageous direction. Digital photography has helped teach me techniques like using shadow and glare, framing and contrast, composition, balance, unity/harmony, pattern/repetition, movement/rhythm, proportion, and the compositional guideline known as the “Rule of Thirds.”
I like to capture things as they are, and as I know them before they change.
It’s not a problem-free hobby. My library and personal archives grew so large that maintaining them impractical. I didn’t have the space. I couldn’t afford bigger space. I needed the cooperation of others (my family) to continue. They were unwilling. Now, proliferation of digital photographs is putting a strain on my computer and external hard drive capacities. I am starting to see storage problems analogous to the problem of book and paper storage.
Other hobbies, like collecting teddy bears and collecting Japanese “ema” votive tablets, are starting to get out of hand, as well. “Ema” tablets are small pieces of wood, one side bearing a symbol of the shrine that sells them, the other side meant for pilgrims to pen their prayers and then hang up at the designated spot on the shrine grounds. I never did that. I only ever bought them to bring home as a souvenir because of the neat illustration on one side. But now I have too much wood in the apartment. Something has to give, and soon.
I am not a materialist. The philosophical assumption that reality is nothing but a collection of physical stuff is more a prejudice or superstition than a fact. But I have enjoyed my share of physical stuff. I am fascinated by the sensual impressions of physical stuff - their smell, their physical texture, their patterns of mutability. The latter does not disqualify the former.