Marilyn's Photos - Oct 8 2026 - Hoarding my useless skills
I saw an article on hoarding where some poor guy had to clean up his parents' house after they died. The house was in significant disrepair and was full of stuff the parents had hoarded over the years. From some kind of extreme nostalgia, he was repairing and cleaning up the house, and reporting it all on social media. This was in Texas - I am never surprised about the depths that occur in Texas.
But then I got to thinking - what about all the skills that I hoard, but are no longer of any use at all? What are they?
Shorthand/stenography - I am off the hook there as I didn't learn it.
Human computation - I am a bit guilty as I like to count change, but I don't calculate anything complex by hand - excel to the rescue, mostly - where is that percent calculation function these days?
Typewriter speed and error correction - I am in the bull's eye there - I've turned off error correction as it makes odd words that shouldn't be in any composition anywhere, and I like to whiz away with my fingers on the keyboard.
Switchboard patching - I am younger than that so consider this a red herring.
Card Catalog and Alphabetical indexing - Should I file my music titled Irving Berlin's White Christmas under Irving Berlin or White Christmas. It should be under Irving Berlin - guilty of skill hoarding.
Paper map and compass navigation - thank goodness for GPS now - that skill wasn't in good shape to start with.
Have we even discussed memorization, resume writing - OK, just being able to write well, reading an analog clock, how to tie things like shoelaces. Have we even walked into the kitchen where we sifted flour, manually defrosted the refrigerator, estimated oven temperatures, and hand-cranked the egg beater?
What do we hoard in our memories?
It is grape time - you can see the grapes hanging on the vines from the road.
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