Thanks, everyone!!! Great to hear from other "otherwise minimalists" who struggle with this piece. My collection is, again, small. My young son and I live in 400 square feet and have oodles of space to move, play, be. The papers are inside one filing cabinet. One drawer is tax stuff I'm required to keep, one draw is daily life files (son's school and autism stuff) and office supplies (envelopes, etc). One is archives (these projects, five little things from my son's infancy. So it's not a lot.
And yet, in having this conversation with you all here, I realized that for me it feels like a spiritual issue, if I can call it that. I feel like I'm relying on these physical items of proof, and am over-relying on the past. I haven't gotten to develop a new project in 5 years, and this seems to be driving me batty. I have this belief that if I release the old stuff, including on a physical level, my life will change for the better. I crave more freedom -just me, my kid, laptop, car, tent. The filing cabinet is hard to drag around. I once lived for some time with only a bank account, a library card, and a school bag of stuff. I don't want to quite do that now, but I want the filing cabinet gone.
I have one friend who lives in an even smaller space -he hides his required stuff (taxes) in an out-of-the-way place at his work. Ha!
I love the thought of the library! Several of my works are in regular libraries (but would be pulled as they become obsolete); Canada has a legal archive that keeps a copy of everything permanently. I have resisted sending the latest project to the Archives, only because it seems silly to (waste of mailing money). But now it makes perfect sense!
Scanning/tagging/organizing seems like a lot of work. Hmmmm... But such a great solution to much of the paper!
I had a dream about this last night -in real life, one of my projects had been essentially co-opted and over time the new agency downgraded everything about it: content, typesetting, artwork. (Why, I can't imagine. If you can spend $10 to make something beautiful or the same amount to make something ugly, why choose ugly?) I woke from my dream almost in a sweat, remembering this. (I've regretted allowing the co-opt to happen -limited experience on my part. To this day I wish I had simply shut the project down at its peak, and let them create ugliness from scratch.) In the dream, and in those moments after waking, I wanted desperately to be able to show people the version I had made, the beautiful and comprehensive version, and struggled with the fact that my name was linked to the current one. And so I keep a hardcopy of the beautiful one -my proof that I can see the difference. Wild.
I imagine some might be perplexed as to how I'm making this such a big deal, and I can't really speak to that. It just is, in my soul and heart. I was once reading a fellow who develops then sells blogs. Another reader asked how he ensures the blogs retain their integrity after the sale. He said he can't, and that the blogs tend to spiral downward in content and focus after the sale, but that this is how he makes his living -creating a great blog, then selling it for $20,000. He hangs on to the few that are most important to him, that he would be devastated to see going downhill. I couldn't help but wonder if he feels compelled to keep "proof" of the pre-sale versions of those he sells. I really admire this guy's ability to let his "babies" go.
I have a hunch that most successful business people are folks who are willing to walk away from their past attempts, set fire to it all (figuratively speaking), and start fresh. It's an energy thing. I've done it -with incredible results- in so many areas of my life. I feel really compelled to do it here, too, to get those kinds of results.
Thanks for being in this conversation with me, folks!