This is especially true for the comics that I have amassed. About 3-5 years ago, I had a major comic collector, and I’ve amassed a collection of monthly issues and all the classic trades, but I don’t feel that I am able to properly enjoy them on a regular basis.  No matter how often I tell myself that I don’t care about comic conditions or value, I end up treating them as ancient treasures that cannot be damaged.  I would say that 99% of issues that I have have been read through once and stored bagged and boarded in alphabetical order by series for years.  It’s a rather sad existence for some wonderful art that someone put so much time into to write, draw, ink and color.  By selling them, I hope that someone else is able to get better overall enjoyment than I ever was.

I started the process with comics, because I find that I care less and less about the characters that I once loved.   At the time,  I was obsessed with super hero comics, especially Batman, but in hindsight these are characters and stories that I can relate to less and less as I get older.  When you take away some of the magic around ’super heroes’, I don’t think that I am able to properly appreciate the books any longer.

Thankfully,  this is stuff that holds it’s value pretty well on the open market due to the success of the recent movies.  I have been putting up a bunch of them up on eBay every week in an effort to clean things up.  So far, I have been fairly successful,  almost everything is selling because I am setting the starting prices super low in an effort to unload it.  Once the comics are done, I hope to undertake a similar effort on the books and DVD’s.  Due to the bulky, heavy nature of these things, I haven’t come to terms with how I am going to post them up on eBay. I think I am going to just post them up in lots and let people have at it.  At worst, I will end up giving them away, because this is more about removing the clutter than it is about recouping the money.

Do you have any tips to unloading unwanted comics, books or DVD’s?  Any success stories to keep me on this path would be greatly appreciated

I have been tinkering around with a couple of different means to achieve this goal, and I haven’t found something that I am particularly proficient in yet. At some level, I think that I have spread myself too thin – pursuing writing, guitar and even pencil drawing from square one all at the same time, moving from one to another as I realize that it’s not living up to the idealized vision I had in my mind.

For example, I got this great idea that I wanted to learn guitar. I purchased the equipment, bought the books and tinkered around with the guitar for about 3-5 days total, and then gave up. I still haven’t figured out why I haven’t tried harder – perhaps it is is because I had unrealistic, almost romantic thoughts that I would be a rock star within a matter of days and when that didn’t happen I became extremely frustrated.

It’s hard to stay motivated in the learning of an art such as music when starting out is so much about failure. You can’t put your fingers in the right place, can’t read the music and simply can’t make the instrument sound the way it should. To be completely honest, I thought that there was something wrong with my guitar until a friend came who had been playing for years. He picked it up, and within seconds it sounded amazing. If anything, this only made me more intimidated to really put the work in because it turns out that I was the problem.

As I get the ball rolling on learning learning the ‘art’ of creative writing, I am really reminded of these sorts of failtures. I must realize that I am not going to put a story down off the top of my head and win a Hugo Award. I have to try, and I have to fail before I can succeed.

I think that Geoffrey Ballard summed this up the best- “Failure is the mechanism of learning”.

I have had many experiences on the internet and writing blog, and I am opting to make another run at it to provide myself a creative outlet. I’ve decided that I don’t particularly care how many people read the site, or how many links that I get.. those are the things that have completely discouraged myself from various blog and sites in the past. This time I am going to write for me – about things that I think are interesting, and hopefully some folks out there share my sensibilities. If not… I guess I have a problem.

I hope to get to know a bunch of my readers, so please stay tuned!