You begin life simple and slowly become more complex. Within that life there are often multiple periods of growth and reduction. This is evident quite clearly in one’s interests. My life is no different.

You are born. You no longer get all nutrients from another life form (well, ok, you still will for a while, but the process of stopping this begins). It’s a lot brighter, a lot noisier, and a lot weirder than the small, warm, comfortable space you’ve been in for months. However, while you were gestating, you grew from a simple organism to a complex one. And now that you’re on The Outside, you’re only going to get a lot more complex.

…

I’m now in my mid-40s. I’ve experienced things. I’ve learned things. My interests have broadened. Regardless, I go through periods where I’m seriously all about adding more stuff to my life, and then periods where I want to just excise any and everything non-essential.

As a kid, I was into collecting comic books and trading cards of the sports and comic varieties. These collections now sit in boxes in my garage, never looked at for decades. I did some research on whether they’re worth anything, and they’re not. I would like to purge them from my life as they don’t bring any value anymore, but it’s hard to just throw them away. So…they sit.

…

Since “getting into computers” in the mid-90s, being able to learn and toy with new things, and thusly binge them, has become quite easy. Bingeing on something when it’s new or once-new-and-now-refreshed is often followed by a purge once the newness wears off, or the administration to handle it becomes mentally taxing.

BINGE: I can run applications on this thing! I will try this application and that application and this application, because it's so easy and fun! Now I have a LOT of apps on my computer. App stores made the process easier, and now Github has become the place I look first for new tools and technology since I can get them and see how they're made and modify them.
PURGE: My hard drive space is filling up and I realize I haven't used this or that application in a long time, so let's get rid of it.

BINGE: I can collect music to listen to! During college I "acquired" a lot of things, and then later when I was gainfully employed I bought a lot of things. Between the two, I've got a music library that's tens of thousands of songs large, good enough for ~2 months of constant listening without repeats.
PURGE: Despite lots of space, looking at 20,000+ (not even mentioning Spotify, Apple Music, et. al.) tracks makes choosing any one thing to listen to near-impossible, so I just keep occasionally getting new stuff, listening to it, and then repeating that cycle, and ignore the years of music I already have. Like photos, there's no real need to purge them since they don't lose value and I can always listen later.

You can see where this has gone and will continue to go. New things are fun and as cheap storage space ballooned over the decades, acquiring and storing it all got easier and easier. The Internet has allowed more people access to more things and so much of it can be digitized so it’s accessible.

BINGE: I can browse and save favorite websites in a browser on this thing! I have many different folders of bookmarks now! I also have a Read-It-Later web service I self-host that has thousands of entries, so that I can largely not look at or refer to after I save them.
PURGE: Why did I save this website I haven't visited in forever as a bookmark? Time to remove. Also, this directory of sites all pertain to some activity I don't do anymore. Gone.

BINGE: I can MAKE websites and buy domains with this thing! Since I know how to make a website for any old idea that comes across my brain, I should probably do that. Oh, wow, I have a LOT of websites now.
PURGE: I don't need so many domains. No one goes to these sites, and I haven't worked on them in a while, so axe 'em. They can be kept as subdomains of fewer domains! `/time-passes` Wait, no one visits these sub-domains, not even me, so...make them sub-directories so I don't have to see so many items when I do a ls -la /var/www.

BINGE: I can take and hoard pictures to look at! Modern mobile devices with excellent cameras make taking photos easy and so I will do that. Now I have years and years of photos that I probably won't look at often, but I guess I'm glad I have them?
PURGE: The cloud storages like iCloud/Google/OneDrive/etc. and a large backup drive make this a thing I can just ignore, so no purging ever really happens, but I should probably cull them? I'm going to take more pictures, so the collection is only going to grow...

This is not a new thing because of digital life, as people have hoarded material things for centuries, buying bigger homes to store more stuff. As I’ve gone through life, my place of residence and the potential amount of storage I have increased, and I’ve definitely spent some time filling it. However, the digital avenue allows for immense scale and speed in harboring binge-dom. If you keep on this road and never stop, then you might become a “hoarder” and, at the most extreme, become fodder for a show. If you course-correct and go the other way without stopping, you might join the “minimalist” cult. As I’ve learned over the years, however, is that long-term extremism is not healthy.

BINGE: I can play video games on this thing! Steam and GOG and all the other marketplaces that have seemingly limitless games to offer make it very easy to build a monumental collection of games. I've got plenty and I know I haven't played them all. Looking at the possibilities to choose from brings that paradox of abundance into sharp relief.
PURGE: Like other media, I don't purge my collection, but I ignore existing games and focus on a few new things every once in a while until I beat them or grow tired of them. Then the cycle continues.

BINGE: I can learn programming languages on this thing! Now I have a ~/Code folder full of various projects big and small in lots of languages, just because I can.
PURGE: New projects will fill up my local machine as I work on then. Once they're done-ish and enter maintenance mode I will tend to move them off to my backup storage. I like having lots of projects to go between, so this will build up again until I get overwhelmed or lose interest, and then they will get purged to backup again.

Even outside of the digital world, I go through periods of binge-purge.

BINGE: E-bikes are amazing! A few years ago I test-rode one for the first time, and was instantly sold on the idea. I like riding a bike, but the landscape of my city is quite hilly, and I'm not very physically fit. This is the answer! I bought one, and then a while later I bought two more for the rest of my family. We will all go on bike rides together!
PURGE: And we did...once or twice. Then the reality sets in that I'm the most into this thing, and the other two bikes largely languish in the garage. Time to put two of three bikes on the market, and probably only go on sporadic rides.

BINGE: 3D printers are rad! The family got one for the most recent Christmas, and we spent most of the holiday listening to the brrrrring of the print heads moving quickly back and forth, creating lots of fun (and sometimes useful!) widgets and doohickeys.
PURGE: While we will print more stuff in the future, the initial buzz of it has worn off and it currently sits silent. We got a laser printer a few months ago and it had its initial hey-day, too, but I barely register it being there now.

I could do an AskReddit to see if I’m the only one who has this issue, but without even trying I’m 100% sure that is false. Perhaps this binge-purge cycle is on a spectrum, like with many character traits. We all do it to some degree, and we all probably move around on the spectrum over time.

As a final meta-note, I once did blogging on the Internet SO VERY MUCH, sometimes blogging multiple times a day. Now, it has taken me literally days to even finish this one. And the last one I did was months ago.

No great conclusion to any of this, but glad I finally got it out, as it’s something that’s rolled around in my head for years. To wit: moderation in all things, including moderation.