Compelled to Collect

I do not care to collect ornaments, mugs, shoes, or silverware, lovely as these may be. What I do collect is information.

At times this frustrates me. Usually on days like today, when the pile of newspaper clippings, articles, and magazines on my piano or table or bookcase gets too much and I decide it must be organised. It is frustrating to allocate things to their different subjects, then put them in plastic sleeves, then put them in their ring binders. I collect information on politics, history, writing (including all my articles in various publications), feminism, modesty, women balancing (or not balancing) work at home and paid work outside it, marriage and divorce, children, decorating, the Bible, creation, hospitality, and health. I have two fat ring binders on pro-life issues, from birth control through to euthanasia. To make it all worse (or better?) I have recently begun collecting on mental health. I question whether it is all useful. It was when I wrote an article for the university magazine on "Why Feminism has gone too far". Mostly though, I never read the folders. I am just compelled to keep filling and multiplying them.

The second sphere of my information collection was started much earlier in my life, and inherited from my mother: book multiplication! I began with one bookshelf in my room, now I have three. Perhaps one day I can have my own mini-library in a special room!