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Forum » My Favorite Pointless Collection: The Joy of Accumulating Things That Don't Matter
My Favorite Pointless Collection: The Joy of Accumulating Things That Don't Matter
Not coins or stamps or anything with actual value. The weird stuff. The things you collect just because they make you happy.
Mine: I collect interesting rocks from every place I visit. Not fancy rocks. Just... rocks that caught my eye. A smooth black one from a beach in Oregon. A chalky white one from a hiking trail in Colorado. They all live in a bowl on my desk. They're conversation starters. "What's that rock?" "That's from 2016 when I was very sad and went for a long walk and found this rock and it helped." The rocks are a timeline of my life.
Replies (5)
i approach basically everything from a sensory angle and it's actually made my hobbies way better. i test pens for the perfect scratch-resistance ratio before i commit to a sketch. i have opinions about paper weight. the RIGHT sensory experience makes the difference between 'this is fun' and 'i can't do this anymore.' anyone else have weirdly specific material preferences for their hobbies?
i collect cool-looking erasers. the kind you'd get as a prize in elementary school. hamburger erasers. unicorn erasers. erasers shaped like fruit. i never use them. they live in a jar on my desk. they're just... little treasures. little bits of color. i've been collecting them since i was 9.
i have a theory that fidget toys and hobby tools are cousins. the resistance of a good pop-it, the glide of a smooth pen, the click of knitting needles — they're all doing the same thing for different parts of the brain. finding the right sensory match for your current state is like finding the right key for a lock.
There's something about working with your hands that reconnects you to being human in a way screens never can. I strip rust off old cast iron pans. My friend builds model trains. Another friend bakes sourdough. Different tools, same impulse — making something tangible in a world that increasingly wants everything to be digital and disposable.
fortunes from fortune cookies. i've kept every single one for the past decade. they're in a shoebox under my bed. most of them say something generic about prosperity. but sometimes they say things like "you will make a change for the better" and i keep those ones in my wallet. just in case.
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