The one with the possible end of major spendage.

Spending insane amounts of money on Japanese media has been quite the fun hobby for me, and I have several types of media from almost every single major genre I’m interested in. I have manga, anime DVDs/soundtracks/radio dramas/singles/figures/plushies/magazines/books, J-Pop CDs/DVDs/posters/collectibles, video games, game soundtracks/singles/memorabilia, movies, idol/AV books/photobooks/mooks/magazines/DVDs/CDs, and many more things, perhaps, that I forgot to list off the top of my head. To put it bluntly, I have a lot of stuff that’s starting to overfill my living space.

As you can see from the pictures above, I don’t have as much stuff as some people I know, but at the same time, I’m not as bad as some people I’ve seen on the web. At the same time, I’ve accumulated quite a lot of stuff for somebody who just started making real money two years ago. Not only that, but count the fact that three years prior to that, the bank gave me a $14,000 line of credit and I spent almost all of it on starting my collection, which began as Hamasaki Ayumi’s Fly high single. I was still just working at the restaurant part-time while attending college when I started collecting J-Pop by downloading it on Napster, believe it or not. It was quite a pivotal change in my life – I was beginning to identify with my Chinese heritage and I started buying Hong Kong pop music. Hahaha… when I reminisce about it, that road led me down the path of my Japan obsession. At first, it was just a passing interest, ever since my parents brought the whole family there for an overnight flight transfer to their home country, Malaysia. Needless to say, I never forgot about it. We were shuttled to Hotel Nikko Narita, where we got a nice view of the city, watched Japanese TV, and ate at the beautiful restaurant downstairs.

I was getting somewhere, wasn’t I? Ah, yes. Darn memories.

Yesterday, James H and I rented The Matador. We walked all over town because my car was in the shop (that’s another story for later), so my left leg was cramping up from all the sudden walking. Believe it or not, even though the guy is kind of annoying and my other friends can’t stand him or just plain hate him, he’s always been there for me when I need it and we’re always hanging out even though I don’t feel like hanging out, plus we have a history that’s just about as old as Ian and I. You can’t shake that kind of friendship off, no matter how much you want to. I have many different faces, and with Ian, I can be as silly as I want with him. However, with James, I can easily speak my mind, and no matter how vulgar or insulting I get, he wouldn’t care (in fact, he retorts just as much).

Anyway, we were talking about moving out of town eventually, because we both hate it here. Hell, I’m only staying here because of my parents and my lil’ brother, Esmond, and James is only staying here because I’m the only friend he really has. Incidentally, Esmond is moving to Winnipeg to attend university for the next few years, and although I love my family, Esmond is my favorite, and when he’s gone, I no longer have somebody to kind of look after in the family. I certainly don’t want to follow him, since he kind of hates it that we all treat him like a baby, so I think it’s best for him to go his own way – we’ve taught him all we could, and if he wants to come back, he’ll be welcome anytime.

Now that Esmond will be gone and my parents are talking about retiring to BC, I’ve been thinking about future prospects for myself. Although it doesn’t feel like it to me, I’ve actually accomplished a bit, but I feel like I haven’t found my place in the world yet. I still want to do things other than computers, but it seems to me that it will always be there in my life, so I’ve learned to accept it and take advantage of it. I’ll just do the other things in my life on the side, even though it may take longer. As a result, I was thinking about Winnipeg, but for somebody in my field, I won’t have as many opportunities as I want. Although Corydon Ave will always be a home to me in some way, I want to try something different. So, I’m thinking about Edmonton or Calgary. Alberta has a higher standard of living, but money is easier to come by there, plus the lack of a provincial tax helps. James H really doesn’t care where I go, but he definitely wants to follow. Daniel is there, as well, so that’s a bonus, plus I have friends scattered throughout the province, which is cool.

I do want to leave town, but I want to leave on my own terms. James H and I were chatting over supper last night before the movie, and we traded pet peeves about each other – I told him that I hated the fact that when we were living together, he never kept clean and just made it harder for me to handle the cleaning. I hate nothing more than seeing a mess and feeling it while I walk on the floor. So, I told him that he would have to clean up after himself – a lot. At the same time, he complained to me about my excessive spending on Japanese media – which was more of a concern than anything else. My parents always bug me about it, and while I appreciate everybody’s concern, it’s not something that I have no control over. Nevertheless, I make a huge chunk of change from working on personal computers for people on the side, which is where I make the money to buy my Japanese media. At the same time, that money could be used for other things as well. I usually deposit the money into my Visa, where it gets spent accordingly.

I’ve been thinking heavily about this. I do realize that I’ve been spending quite excessively. I have a lot of pride, and collecting is more of a pride thing than anything else – I love having the item I love sitting on my shelf as a sign that I earned money to buy the thing I wanted. I see a lot of people online who download everything they don’t have the money for, and while I do download a lot of Japanese media, I like having a physical copy. Many people don’t understand it, but I feel good about myself when I can afford the things that others can’t, even though I will never use it again once I’ve copied it to PC.

I do want to get out of town. It took some thought, but I realized that spending excessive money is not conducive to accomplishing this. So, in the end, I’m going to go back to just downloading the media I want. I will still buy some things – I need to satisfy that pride thing somehow – but I won’t be buying everything I like in sight anymore. Unfortunately, I’ve already made preorders all the way until December, so I will be keeping those preorders, but I won’t be making as many new ones. If things continue in that vein, I may even retire the Preorders page.

So, after the last preorder, I’ll still be making money from fixing home computers. I won’t be as determined to do it, though, since I’ll no longer have a goal or a quota to aim for each month, but it will still be a good chunk of change that will continue to go into my Visa. At the same time, money will be paid monthly into my MasterCard to take care of my car expenses. I’ll be working on my loans as well. I feel confident that if I really curb my spending (renting movies and copying them helps a LOT), I can pretty much spend an entire paycheck on lump sum loan payments every month.

There it is, I guess. The end of major spendage. It’ll be difficult, like giving up an addiction, but if Karyn Bosnak can do it, so can I. BYAAAH!

以上。。。であります。