If history is any indication of the future, anything I’m currently collecting is ultimately doomed.

In my life I’ve collected model cars, Star Wars stuff (a technical term), stamps, vintage paper back books, and a few rare books. Now I have a small collection of knives and pens.

I typically start a collection with righteous fervor and very little discretion. The goal is to collect shiny pretty things. Actually, that should be the plan because well made shiny pretty things may actually hold their value, but what ends up happening is I buy what can get my hands on without any consideration toward future value except in the form of “yeah, I’ll totally sell this for a profit some day” without actually knowing what’s worth collecting.

I ended up with milk crates full of plastic wrapped paperback books with cool covers, lots of interesting stamps, lots of plastic model cars and lots of dolls, er, action figures and action figure sets. Now, I have several pens and two small dry boxes full of various knives.

Eventually I reach a saturation point where I just stop caring. It’s as if I move them from point A to point B one time to many and get sick of it all and decide to dump them. This overrides the sentimental value and the sunk cost fallacy, or the hope of making money on the transaction. In the case of model cars, I’d stopped building them and just dumped them to someone I knew would be interested in them. The paperbacks I dumped just to be rid of them.

Occasionally, the energy involved in selling things causes me to keep things I’m no longer interested in. For example, I still have a bunch of stamps partly because I have no clue how to sell them and no interest in wasting any more time on them. (Of course, I haven’t decided to throw them out or give them away yet.)

The only thing I actually didn’t dump was the Star Wars stuff, which I sold at what it was worth to other doll, er, Star Wars stuff collectors at the time rather than at fire-sale prices.

The knives I’ve sold have made their money back partly because a big chunk were acquired at a great price from another collector dumping part of his collection. Now that I know what I like, the things I don’t are on their way out which, for me, is a huge improvement. I’m also looking to sell most of my old pens to keep the collection from growing beyond a handful of pens I can use on a regular rotation.

In the back of my head, though, I’m wondering what my next collection will be.

Back a few hundred years ago (give or take) when I was in the Boy Scouts in Colorado, a few us brave young men set out on an epic quest to hike 50 miles over Rabbit Ears Pass, do a day of service and bask in eternal glory. Two days later we were begging to go home but no one would let us.

I vaguely remember we had prepared and distributed various foodstuffs. (I remember peanut butter in a tube and fake potatoes for some reason.) After we assembled at the starting point, the hike began with a gear check that involved scout leaders convincing us that things like portable games and large books wouldn’t be as useful on the trail as something like water.

They also tried to convince a few hikers that jeans and a long sleeve shirt would be more useful in the woods than shorts and a t-shirt.

We started the actual hike with lots of energy and maintained it through a marsh area that is apparently the birth place of all mosquitoes. (Luckily, country mosquitoes aren’t as fast as city mosquitoes and it was possible to kill four or five in one slap.) We also maintained it through the revelation that the maps being used by the leaders apparently predated the actual formation of the mountain which, as you might imagine, kind of complicated the path.

I don’t remember where we camped the first night, but by the time we reached a US Forest Service campsite on day two (or maybe day three, I don’t remember), we were all pretty much like “Well, we’ve proven our point. That’s enough manliness for us. Time to go home.”

Unfortunately, our scout leaders played a dirty trick on us by having our parents waiting for us at the campsite. Our parents’ only job was to tell us they weren’t going to take us home. Even my own mother was like “Suck it up you little pussy. Stop whining and act like a man. The only way you’re getting home is through the forest. I don’t care if your feet fall off while you’re doing it.”

For the record, my mother never actually said that, but it was STRONGLY IMPLIED.

In order to earn the 50-Miler Award, we were also required to do 10 hours of service. That meant the next day we helped park rangers clean and maintain the camp. This turned out to be a lot harder than we expected. By the end of that day we were all pretty much ready to get back on the trail and wait for our feet to fall off.

The rest of the hike was mostly uneventful, except for having to change paths because the main road was blocked by an endless series of fallen trees. We finished with a burst of energy and a sense of accomplishment. We also got a patch (and a lingering distrust of adults and park rangers).