My Arch Nemesis

We all have something that we have a hard time throwing out.  (We do, don't we?)  For me, one of those somethings is magazines.  Just can't make myself toss them into the blue bin when I'm finished reading...okay, IF I finish reading.  And so they stack up.  And up and Up and UP.  Most are relegated to the "desk" (aka "that flat storage space where things go to die") in the laundry room.  I've got everything from news to health to gardening to Oprah.  Now there's a big fat beautiful glossy magazine.  How do you throw Oprah into the bin?

But -- new year, new me, new policy.  They're out of here.  All 252 of them dating back to 1998.  Yes, I counted as I sorted and I didn't open a single one.  Not even a peek.  Even I realize that if I haven't needed the little tidbits in them since 1998, I can surely do without them in 2013.

Oh, and then there are some in my bedroom:  two neatly stacked piles of writing magazines that I still subscribe to -- Writer's Digest in one pile, The Writer in the other.  One hundred and twenty seven of them, chronologically arranged dating back to 2005.  I sat for a while contemplating those piles and came to the realization that the business of writing is ever changing and some material can soon become outdated.  I made a deal with myself -- I can keep the ones I haven't read and the rest had to go.  'Cause see, there's the thing:  reading magazines takes up a lot of valuable reading time and basically I've stopped reading them.  Sure they're great for the plane or the beach, but I just don't want to invest that much time into them anymore.

And in the spirit of stuff out, no more stuff in....I won't be be renewing my subscriptions when they expire this year.  Except for one.  (You know the "there's an exception to every rule" rule.)  I subscribe to a small literary magazine called The First Line that publishes four times a year.  They are a small independent press that published my first ever in print story and I want to continue to support them.

This is a big step for me.  Especially the writing mags.  But the way I figure it, if I really want to know something, there's this new thing called the Internet.  Saves a few tress and it takes up way less space on my desk.