Please, write a book.
I’m pissed off. Not mad, but pissed off. My father was a hoarder of paper, and I now need to dispose of most of it.
My problem is that a small portion of this hoard is personal narrative, letters, family photos, etc. These interesting bits are mixed in with financial notes, random musings and doodles, clipped ads, junk mail, bank statements, and so forth.
He was also always writing his signature, and the various bank account and credit card numbers on bits of paper. That’s a big security risk!
Here are the rough distributions of pure junk : security risk junk : nuggets of value. Look at these photos.
This is the generic stuff to toss, around a hundred pages:
Next are the papers with important identifying information, around fifty pages, which must be destroyed, because it’s a security risk.
This is the interesting stuff, around ten pages.
I am grateful to have the ten pages.
The distribution is 100 : 50 : 10.
The ratio of interesting stuff to everything is 10:160, 6.25%
It took an hour to deal with this paper, and that is a pain in the ass.
So, don’t write numbers and signatures. If you do, dispose of them in a shredder.
Write an autobiography.
Epilogue
I took the papers with the identifying information on them, and burned them in the barbecue grill, to start the coals.
A second cremation, of sorts.
Then I cooked some pork chops in the barbecue.
