Toaster: Toaster: Pack it in unlabeled boxes and put it away. Give yourself a timelimit (say a year). If you don’t find yourself digging through the boxes to use it, you’re not gonna. Sell it.

It’s funny. The fact I am re-evaluating is for this very reason. My music stuff was basically all in boxes for the last 2 years. Only got it all setup up again during the summer and, for some reason, it’s that process that’s really making me think.

scanner_darkly: scanner_darkly: i did have to get over possible regrets. but what helps is the fear i’ve been having lately. i’m 44, i only get maybe an hour a day to work on music, or firmware, or read a book. i feel like i have such a finite amount of time left, so it helps making choices about how i want to spend it. so at this point i’d rather focus on few bits.

That resonates quite strongly with me although it wasn’t a thought I had articulated. I’m 45. The pondering is which few bits to keep if I do sell off a lot of stuff. Some are obvious but other items I am very much conflicted about. I’ve sold things before but rarely anything that I couldn’t purchase again pretty easily.

carvingcode: carvingcode: I recently went from 15U to 12U. Now that I am using Monome gear, I will probably be going to 9U by end of year.

I went from 18u to 6u of euro maybe 4 years or so ago. Replaced a lot of functionality with Max/MSP going in/out of an Expert Sleeper’s ES3/6 setup. I found that process pretty ok despite having similar thoughts and concerns to those I have now so maybe I should stop worrying and just get on with it!

wooer: wooer: now i own max and legacy lemur and i’m more productive than ever.

A good combination to keep hold of!

Thanks for your comments everyone. I think a sell off to some extent or another is inevitable. I usually find once I start consistently having thoughts like this that I end up following through on them. Although this does feel like way more of a purge than previous times as the whole idea, in contrast to the past, is not to really replace anything or buy new stuff with the proceeds. I have found this isn’t purely music gear related as I’ve been eyeing up other things I own and having similar thoughts over the last few weeks. Maybe I’m going through a wannabe minimalist mid-life crisis