What am I saving this for?

I have posted several times on clutter and the quantity of goods I possess at this point in time.

“What is yours today belonged to someone else yesterday, and will belong to someone else the day after tomorrow. You are mistakenly enjoying the thought that this is yours.” This is an excerpt from the Bhagavat Gita simplified presentation I received from my dad. In the grand scheme of things, anything that I possess now came from the earth and will return to the earth. Just as we consume oil that was left of the earth, future generations may seek out landfills as treasure troves of raw materials.

I began an effort to enjoy the things I own. If something doesn’t fit right, it gets donated or tossed. If something fits great, it is in the front of the queue for usage. A guy named Dave from the 100 things challenge keeps one pen. I have not made an exact count, but I would estimate that we probably have 100 pens in the house. I have 7 at work alone. I can only use one pen at a time. Of the seven, 3 are out of ink, 2 just got new ink refills and 1 I don’t like but was using until I could get ink refills. Now I have two functional pens that I like.

One of these is a Cross pen I received for my high school graduation in 1989. It has been used probably a half dozen times during interviews. It is a little narrow relative to pens I have been using recently, but nevertheless I am going to give it a shot. The other was my favorite until it ran out of ink. This was a freebie with the StorageTek and Sun Microsystems logo. It is now ready to go.

It is nice to have a pen handy to remember things. I have a couple in my car, one in my swim bag, one in my softball bag. Curiously, I don’t have one in my gym bag. I will rarely carry one on my person, except when traveling (less than 1% of my time).

I started down this road when I started researching the embassy pen. This $38.50 + S&H writing instrument would probably have collected dust along with the Cross pen rescued from a box of office supplies in the basement.