I sold my guitar yesterday

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My bounced-pay­check woes still have yet to be resolved, So I sold my gui­tar so that I could get food and even more impor­tant­ly kit­ty lit­ter. Pawn­shop gave me $50 for it (as a sale—it would have been $40 as a loan), which is not too bad. I bought it for $100 in 1990.

Basi­cal­ly I refuse to take on any new unse­cured debt. You can’t get out of debt by bor­row­ing mon­ey. Also, lets face it, it was tech­ni­cal­ly clut­ter. I don’t play the gui­tar much at all. The darn thing was tak­ing up space in my clos­et. I heard a great guide­line for keep­ing or dis­card­ing stuff: any­thing you haven’t used or looked at even once in a year you should sell or throw away. Obvi­ous­ly there are excep­tions to this. Smoke detec­tors and fam­i­ly heir­looms, some finan­cial papers, things like that.

But most­ly I was inter­est­ed in the idea of hav­ing a gui­tar more than actu­al­ly play­ing it. I’m not very good, and I real­ly mean that. If I ever decide to have a gui­tar again, I can pick up some elec­tric job­ber that will be more suit­ed to the kind of music I’m inter­est­ed in. The old one was a round­backed elec­tro-acoustic and had a real pret­ty sound, but the action was high, so it was mur­der on my fin­gers, espe­cial­ly because I did­n’t play it very much and I nev­er built those cal­lus­es at the tips of my fingers.

Any­way, for play­ing gui­tar less than once a year, I can go to a friend’s house and play theirs. It’s a good excuse for me to vis­it friends anyway.

And it does feel clean not to bor­row mon­ey. I won­der what else I have that I can get rid of…

Published by splicer

6 Replies to “I sold my guitar yesterday”

  1. I’m sor­ry to hear about your
    I’m sor­ry to hear about your finan­cial prob­lems; it’s espe­cial­ly annoy­ing that they’re caused by a clien­t’s mis-han­dling. I’ve dropped my terms to Net 15 and start­ed progress bil­ing when I have ongo­ing work for clients to try and min­i­mize my expo­sure; I had a client who was pay­ing invoic­es in 60 – 90 days and I did­n’t have a lot of mile­stones to bill on, so pay­checks were few and far between for a while.

    I can relate to not want­i­ng to take on any more unse­cured debt. Adopt­ing a child is an expen­sive ven­ture; add 4 years of var­i­ous infer­til­i­ty treat­ments vari­ably cov­ered under insur­ance and you’ve got the recipe for a huge debt load. We end­ed up putting quite a bit of med­ical costs onto a cred­it card.

    We’re try­ing to re-finance our mort­gage to try and drop our mort­gage cost, but with one steady income instead of two and our afore­men­tioned cred­it card bal­ance, it’s a lit­tle tough. We’ve cut back on a lot of lit­tle things, but the cards and financine for one of our cars is a big chunk every month. I’ve thought about sell­ing the car off and buy­ing a beat­er (we could do that and still come out even, and still have the baby­wag­on) but it would be a bum­mer if I got a job some­where where I was stuck dri­ving to/from work.

    We’ll be pay­ing the cred­it card down for 5 – 6 years. By the time Ethan’s ready for expen­sive pri­vate school, we’ll just have it paid down!

    After years of hav­ing lots of dis­cre­tionary income in my ear­ly-to-mid thir­ties when my wife and I were both work­ing and child­less, I’m in a posi­tion of not need­ing any new toys. I have a decent dig­i­tal cam­era that suits my needs, lots of film cam­eras, my LOMO, a crusty old rangefind­er, a decent desk­top sys­tem, a lap­top (although it’s in for repairs), a low-end com­put­er lab for test­ing (2 PII sys­tems, 2 Pen­tiums), my trusty old Palm IIIx, a killer espres­so mak­er, and more stuff than I can fit in my garage. 

    I’m going to start sell­ing stuff to finance any new dis­cre­tionary pur­chas­es; this will give the added ben­e­fit of mak­ing room for any­thing new by forc­ing me to get rid of some­thing first, force me to real­ly think about any new dis­cre­tionary pur­chas­es, and save on the already bloat­ed cred­it card balance.

  2. I had­n’t been keep­ing up to
    I had­n’t been keep­ing up to date on your life, so that was all very inter­est­ing. Con­grat­u­la­tions on adopt­ing! I’ve always thought that if I were to have a child, I’d prob­a­bly adopt. But who knows, really?

    What’s a LOMO? The link did­n’t work.

  3. doh! I for­got we’re in
    doh! I for­got we’re in Splicer’s journal.

    Sor­ry to hear about the gui­tar sale dude. But you’re right, it sounds like it’s prob­a­bly for the best. I’m in the same boat — not a lot of space and when I want new stuff, I have to get rid of the old. Plus I have shit I’ve been plan­ning to EBAY forever.

  4. Oops, the link was bro­ken.
    Oops, the link was bro­ken. It’s sup­posed to be http://lomo.kataan.org. The LOMO is a crude lit­tle sovi­et-era 35mm cam­era that takes unique pic­tures. They’re great for night shots (the shut­ter will stay open 2 min­utes in dark­ness) and street can­dids. They’re fun cam­eras; I’ve not shot with a cam­era that’s any­thing like it, and I keep going back to it no mat­ter what I’m shoot­ing with.

    http://www.lomography.com has lots of infor­ma­tion about them, and over­priced mod­els for sale. I bought mine for half-price from some guy in the Ukraine on Ebay… 🙂

    Thanks for your well-wish­es! We tried to have a baby on our own for 3 years or so, tried 2 rounds of in-vit­ro fer­til­iza­tion, and final­ly decid­ed to adopt. It’s an open adop­tion; we met the birth­par­ents (she’s 15, he’s 18) before the birth, met the fam­i­ly, and Ethan’s birth par­ents and grand­par­ents will be a part of his life. That way, not know­ing where he came from won’t come back to bite him down the road, and he’ll have some con­nec­tion to his bio­log­i­cal fam­i­ly. A cou­ple of extra grand­par­ents to spoil him and buy him presents isn’t a bad thing, either!

  5. Oops, sor­ry, Splicer –
    Oops, sor­ry, Splicer — did­n’t mean to get side­tracked in your jour­nal. I guess there’s a whole lay­er of jour­nal net.etiquette I’d bet­ter brush up on!

  6. No prob­lem – what do I care?
    No prob­lem – what do I care? If I invit­ed the two of you to my house and you start­ed talk­ing about lomog­ra­phy i would­n’t throw you out or any­thing. Sit! Eat! Talk! Enjoy! 

    Mi jour­nel es su journel.

    Or some­thing.

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