I've made myself obsolete

I've been going on about Cardboard History Gallery lately, because it's taken up most of my life since August. I've worked hard on it, and it's important to me. It had an unexpected, unforeseen consequence that has kind of changed my outlook on stuff.

Since 2009 I've been typing everything into Excel charts, and as you may recall from previous posts, I only typed stuff into the charts once it was scanned.

I generally used the charts to look up what I had of each person. My scans were all stored by set, so if I wanted to see, for an example, what cards I had scanned of, say, Ryan Blaney, I would go to my NASCAR Excel file, scroll to his listing, and then see the cards I had of him. I would then go to my scans sorted by set, and go to each one to see it. If I wanted to see, say, what cards I had scanned of the New Jersey Nets, I would go to my NBA by team file and click on the Nets, then go find them in the albums sorted by year.

But since I made copies of literally every scan in my collection- twice- and sorted them by Person and by team, I no longer have to do that. If I want to see the cards of Blaney, the Nets, or literally everyone else I have scanned a card of- I simply go to that sport folder, open up the file for them...and there they all are. I don't have to jump around from album to album, I just pull up that person or team's album. And not only do I have a list of every card already right in front of me, I can see them, instead of just a list of them.

It's...just better. My Excel files are now outdated, antiquated.

Since January 11th or so, (each typing wave takes about two weeks) I've been working on updating each of my Excel files, as I had finished a wave of scanning. (If you don't remember or never saw, everything I scanned goes into a plastic case, of which I have 41 of them. When I finish filling them, I sort the cards by sport, then person, then type them in). The entire time of this typing wave....I've been growing increasingly bored, frustrated and even a little resentful by the process. It just seems so redundant and essentially pointless, now. I only ever used the files to find the scans of what I had, and now I no longer need to do that because the scans are all together- sorted by person, team or season.

My Excel charts are mostly obsolete.

It doesn't help the fact that I'm typing this stuff more than once. I type each card into a chart tracking the order I get them, I type them again when I scan them- ever since my last remote hard drive died and took stuff with it, I'm documenting what I scan each day so I can recreate it if I ever lose it again- and then I'm typing it into the actual collection chart, which I copy and paste into 3 other Excel files, one an overall list, one sorted by team and one by season. Yes, complete duplication. I lost my only copy of my original NBA file around 2004 or 2005, and it played a larger role than I realized at the time in why I walked away from the entire sport in 2006, something I now regret immensely. I also realized that after I created the charts for the other sports, and the non-sports cards, and multi-sports cards last year (I spent most of February and March creating the charts) that I never pulled them up to just look at them. I only ever pulled them up to enter the newly scanned cards. I did not even open them a single time for fun. I almost never go into the NBA, NASCAR or NHL lists unless I'm looking for something, usually to post on here. I created the NASCAR chart in 2009 and I'm not sure I've EVER opened it just to look at it, only to add to it.

This is supposed to be a hobby, not a burden. During this whole wave of listing, I feel like I've been wasting my time. Time I could better serve by scanning, writing blog posts, watching sports on TV, you get my drift.

So, I've made an executive decision. I'm NOT going to list all the cards now. I'm going to put them in a box, label is as scanned but not listed, and get back to creation- scanning, and uploading to the new Cardboard History Gallery, of which I'm not even a fourth of the way through uploading to, although  I have begun to upload in earnest now.

However, I'm not going to abandon the Excel lists fully. I'm still going to track the totals- the number of base, insert, parallel, etc. I have of each person. (You can see this file- the only one I have made public- by clicking the "Complete List of People in My Collection" tab at the very top of Cardboard History). That's still a lot of fun for me, and, importantly, is NOT duplicated in the Gallery. I'm also going to maintain my listing of Serially numbered cards, autographs and relics, which is also not duplicated in the Gallery...well, the images are there, but I would have to go hunting to find the things, and that would be a step in the wrong direction.

In a way, it's come full circle. My original NBA file- now lost, thanks to the floppy disk I had it on corrupting- that was just a total of what I had of each person.  In essence, I am going back to that, but it will be more detailed now than the original file was- the original file was just a total, now I have a total and how many of each kind of card.

I figure that, eventually, I will run out of cards to scan. More than half my collection is scanned already. Perhaps, when I am done scanning everything and have nothing left to do, I will go back and type them in then. I would guess, at that point, I will no longer feel like I'm wasting time I could better spend scanning or working on uploading to the Gallery because that will all be done...typing them into the Excel charts then will give me a chance to reconnect with the cards.

Or I will just be happy looking through the actual scans on the Gallery and just maintain that. Only time will tell...and if I decide later that I made a big mistake, I can always easily grab the boxes labeled scanned but not typed, and enter them in. They will already be sorted by person so I can get the total numbers for the charts I am going to keep updating.