Look, we're Sidharta-like

Someday, you'll probably take a course called History of Communication, or something like that. In it, you'll learn about the internet, which by the way, we used to write the Internet, but that changed maybe last year when it went from being a Thing to being a thing.

From my point of view, a course about the History of Communication seems like a silly notion. Not that it isn't worthy of a course, but when I was your age, there was no such thing. When I predict that you'll end up taking a course like that, I guess I'm being a little derisive because courses tend to be for people who don't have firsthand experience in a subject. We're living the development of the internet now; by the time you get to that course, the internet will probably have become whatever it's going to be and entire careers will be built on explaining what happened.

Anyway, in that course, you'll probably hear about something called Craigslist. Your professor will tell you that it was the logical progression from the classified ads that appeared in newspapers, which will seem incredibly quaint to you, but which, as I write this, still exist.

Yes, you can really go to a machine, put a metal disk in that represents currency, and remove paper with printing on it that purports to be current. In our world now, that is still normal.

Mind blowing, isn't it?

In those newspapers there's a section of what you probably call peer-to-peer advertising. Classified ads. If I have a table to sell, I take out an ad. People looking for tables read through the ads and if they like the sounds of mine, they call me.

Craigslist allows me to do more or less the same thing. Which I did. Which is why I'm writing today's installment.

Your mom and I had a couple of pieces of furniture we didn't want to take with us to Portland. So she took pictures of the stuff and I put ads on Craigslist.

Okay, here's how it really went down.

Your mom said days ago that she wanted to put ads on Craigslist. And she went around the place, taking pictures of the stuff she wanted to sell.

And then never got around to putting up the ads.

Two days ago, I kind of got mad at her about it. And I huffed dramatically over to the computer and made a big deal about how once again, I was going to do the thing that she said she'd do but didn't.

I know. Childish. Parents get that way, too.

The reality is that we're both lousy at selling. I'm not sure her reason. She loves recycling. She'll go to a lot of trouble to recycle a single empty water bottle. But then she'll throw away a perfectly good television set. When she's over something, she can't get rid of it fast enough. It never occurs to her that she could sell the television set.

For me, it's a completely different thing. I have a hard time getting rid of things. Not because I think they're so valuable, but because I think they only have value to me. I may hate the television, but it works. And if I got rid of it, I'd only have to replace it. So throwing it out would end up costing me the price of a new one. If I sell something, I have an incredible compulsion to disclose every possible flaw. Because--I think--I have a really negative association with selling. If somebody's selling something, I figure there's probably something wrong with it. Otherwise, they'd hold onto it. Especially when that someone is me. In fact, the only way I'm comfortable getting rid of something is giving it to charity. Because the Salvation Army has no expectations of its worth.

Your mom didn't follow through with Craigslist because it would have been easier just to throw the stuff away. And normally I wouldn't have followed through with Craigslist because I coudln't imagine that anybody would actually want the stuff that we wanted to get rid of.

But here's the magic of Craigslist: You put your stuff out there, but you're not putting yourself out there. I can post a bookshelf for sale and if everybody thinks the price is too high, I won't hear anything back. And that's good. I don't know why that's good, but it makes it easier to do than, say, having a garage sale.

Long story short, we sold every bit of furniture that your mom and I had acquired since we moved to Hollywood. For a profit.

It feels as if we've divested ourselves of all of our worldly possessions and now we can go forth, naked, to find enlightenment in Portland.

Just like Sidharta, only with $2,750 in our pockets.