Destroying information. I’ve never had an easy time with this. Feeling in a productive mood the other day, I made a plan for my next side-project* (picking back up my interest in building gas discharge tubes, i.e. those decorative plasma globes, except doing it right this time), and set my sights on clearing some space in the basement, starting with several large, sealed boxes of stuff left behind by my ex when she left. I didn’t want to put them out with the trash since they probably contained all kinds of very personal information and things of value (sentimental, IP or otherwise), but at the same time, sort of dreaded opening them for this same reason. The majority of the contents turned out to be books, which were easy enough to process into a keeper pile, an ask-friends-if-they-want-it pile and a Goodwill pile. But also a bunch of notebooks, diaries, unreturned books from libraries I’ve never heard of, her high school yearbook… What does one do with all this stuff? Besides avoid the temptation to go poking through it of course**. The last thing I would want to do is give it over to her parents, or random tangentially-connected third parties to go poking thru. Chucking all the personal effects into the permanence of the trash is not an idea I like either, but I don’t really have better ones.
* ignoring for now the jillions of other half-finished projects yet to be worked on, when my interest in them renews
** except for one anti-anti-vegan political cartoon, marked for widespread distribution via “Top Secret Do Not Read” marked on the outside in cleartext English.
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