The Magic of Ownership
drupagliassotti @ September 7, 2008 # No Comment Yet
How much of what you own is kept because you like the idea of owning it? And why do you feel that way? J.D., over at Get Rich Slowly, has been posting a series of articles describing his reactions to cleaning up his mother’s house for her during and after her serious illness — a [...]
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The Magic of Possessions
drupagliassotti @ August 20, 2008 # 2 Comments
Professors keep paper — way too much paper. After ten years of accumulation, this summer I began purging my files of articles I’d saved but no longer used. In doing so, I ran across an article I’d kept called “The Ineluctable Mysteries of Possessions.” The article disputes the assumption that the relationship between people and [...]
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Simplification vs. Safety
drupagliassotti @ July 31, 2008 # No Comment Yet
Wildfires, earthquakes, and floods are sometimes said to be Southern California’s three seasons. But over the last few years we’ve ignored earthquakes, our collective attention taken up by a series of large-scale wildfires and the inevitable flooding and hillside collapses that occur once winter’s rain hits all the burnt-out areas. However, earlier this week we [...]
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Unwanted Inheritances
drupagliassotti @ May 2, 2008 # No Comment Yet
For the last 10 years I have been simplifying my life. A traumatic event started it off, as it does so often — in my case, divorce. But even though I had been shedding possessions since the divorce, it was another trauma — my mother’s sudden and unexpected death last August — that really made [...]
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TV is an Emotional Abuser
drupagliassotti @ April 26, 2008 # No Comment Yet
Stressed about life? Feel like you don’t have enough time on your hands? Maybe you’re a victim of emotional abuse — from your television. What is emotional abuse? Its manifestations include ignoring, rejecting, isolating, exploiting, verbally assaulting, and terrorizing its victim. Emotional abusers make their victims believe they are deficient in some way, leading to [...]
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On Not Watching TV
drupagliassotti @ March 29, 2008 # No Comment Yet
I don’t own a television. I watch DVDs. If there’s a TV show I want to see, I wait for it to come out on DVD so that I can watch it commercial-free and avoid those annoying cliffhanger pauses from week to week. I didn’t quit cold turkey. I eased into it. I’ve always been [...]
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