Okay, so I’m spending every spare moment packing and purging (man, is it EVER liberating to toss YEARS-in-the-making collections, stacks, and STUFF!) and I come across my 377-page Getting Interactive with Authorware manual by Lloyd P. Rieber, circa 1997 and the start of my PhD program in Instructional Technology at the University of Georgia.

Why do I feel the need to keep this thing?!?

I don’t understand it. I haven’t OWNED a computer on which the version of Authorware depicted in this manual’s pages could operate since 1999. I haven’t DESIGNED a piece of Authorware software since 1998, in the class associated with this very manual. I haven’t RUN a piece of software designed on Authorware since 1998 (unless I may have run my programs in 1999, just for sentimental reasons — can’t recall).

Why do I want to keep the manual that taught me how to program in Authorware? Well, it IS a very well-written and easy-to-follow technical manual, as technical manuals go.

I must say that the most influential “while-petsitting-and-not-packing” reading I’ve done this week has been Clear Your Clutter With Fung Shui. If that can’t decrease your OCD/packrat tendencies, I don’t know what will!

LIBERATING! That’s what throwing things away IS!