When my grandmother [My dad's mother] died, it was the first time in my life that a death resulted in the vacating of a home. Up to this point, there was always somebody still left to manage the property and possessions left behind. We found ourselves with a house full of my grandparents' stuff that needed to be organized and extracted. Stuff that had meaning to my grandparents that we could not comprehend. I'm not talking about a room full of Elvis memorabilia. Just the odds and ends of life. I wanted to know where those trinkets in the shadow box came from and what they meant to my grandmother.

A couple of thoughts entered my head during the months of that project:

1. It made me want to get rid of almost everything I had accumulated over the course of my life.
2. It made me want to document the things that I kept so that the people who had to manage my empty home would know what these items were and their significance to me.

The original concept of this project was to be a manifest of the tokens of my existence. This project is also the therapeutic component of my mission to purge everything. I thought I'd take some photos of an item then provide the details. This could be the digital record that I retain in place of a sold or discarded item. Or it would serve as the encyclopedic index of everything kind of like that TV show Friday The 13th - The Series. I imagined my descendants rummaging through my curiosities. “Hey, look up Ceramic Monkey Head” one would say to the other as they try to discern its origin. I've often said that I have a house full of stuff that I don't need and yet cannot bear to part with. I've had that series of Dr. Seuss Books since 1971. Do I honestly believe that I'm going to reread Bears On Wheels again?

Photos and descriptions of select items evolved to include memories of other things, places and possibly people. The next evolutionary step would include ideas, thoughts and opinions that emerge. So the current landing spot is Myography. It is kind of like my auto biography except that it isn't told like the typical story with an opening act, a hero's journey, a redemptive arc, or a nail biting climax. My plan is to discuss the items in my possession, my recollections and impressions of the world around me and pretty much anything that comes to mind. An inferred life story with numerous dots to connect. It is a book with no pages numbers and no particular order with each chapter focusing on a particular subject. Maybe a biography written in the style of Quentin Tarantino.

I was born in the mid 1960's. I don't know if it is because my grandparents were children of the depression but I've always taken great care of my stuff. A side effect of taking care of things is that they last a long time. I have little bits of this and that from almost every era of my life.

I wouldn't consider myself a hoarder but rather a curator. I don't compulsively buy things and squirrel them away, I just happen to hang onto just about everything in a tidy, organized manner. I don't buy things with the intention of them being disposable. I don't even like paper plates and plasticware. When we have a garage sale, I'm that guy that sell's used electronics with the original, pristine owner's manual.