Archives? To Keep or Discard

I may have mentioned that I live in a house full of memories; memories that are manifested in stuff. The early part of my life was lived as a collector. It was always something. In my childhood it was Hot Wheels cars, and late those electric slot racers. As a teen I started collecting records - the first albums I bought with my own money were by Earth, Wind & Fire, The Ohio Players, Hamilton Bohannon and Graham Central Station. The habit of buying vinyl continued literally around the world until about ten years ago when wax was replaced by digital music files.

The record collection made me the most likely candidate to DJ basement parties in the hood, so that's where that pass time started.

From those teen years until now I've amassed a collection of tape recordings from the things I've done; promotional mix tapes and video copies of the internet webcast I hosted on the Media Bureau Network towards the end of the last century. There are also tape recordings of parties we produced in the mid-nineties.

What's got me thinking, is whether to archive these recordings, or just let them go? There's a part of me that wants to separate myself from the burden of keeping stuff, but there's also the sentimental side... or perhaps it's the professional side... the legacy side that wants to keep proof of these activities just in case the Biography Channel, or some other such entity wants to recap my life.

This would be time-consuming, however in less than 200 days, presumably I will have an abundance of time in which to do it. The technology exists and I have access to it, so that's not the problem. If I do it, I won't really be letting go.

I thought writing it out might help me decide, but I'm still on the fence. Maybe I'll go through my stuff and choose a few special episodes to archive. Less history makes it more valuable, more enigmatic. But then again, my history might not go any further than my closest circle of friends, who already know it, because they lived it with me.