stacks

how collecting vinyl woke something dormant in me i thought was gone forever

one of my first jobs was umpiring. there weren’t as tight of age requirements (i think i started at age 11?) and the money was pretty good for the time — $25 per game and depending on how big a strikezone you had, you could get a game done in around two hours — plus it was sports-adjacent.

(i ended up umpiring through college during the summers, getting certified, moving to softball only and could still pull in a couple grand. when the industry finally collapses out from under me and/or my time is up i’ve thought a lot about doing it again along with bartending or dealing cards.)

my first big purchases were a surround sound system — aiwa 3 cd changer, dual cassette deck, am/fm tuner, with a subwoofer, two front speakers, and two back speakers — and a open box 19-inch rca tv. at the time, this was the peak of middle school era performance. the ability to watch the original star wars trilogy on vhs with surround sound in my room, alone, there wasn’t anything better.

(this isn’t the exact one but it’s very close — i distinctly remember taping a barenaked ladies concert off the radio to a cassette at one point.)

the combination of early aol internet plus a crippling addiction to the record exchange and functional adhd (hyper focus, as i had come to learn later than i should have) meant i wanted to consume as much media as humanly possible. i bought vhs tapes as quickly as i could, then later used dvds, and cds oh so many cds.

then the napster/limewire/kazaa era opened up a world i couldn’t even reach with used media (mixtapes, live performances, compilations, box sets, and more). allmusic.com and early-era wikipedia were my way of connecting dots, of learning, of catching up to those people a bit older than me who were lucky enough to know all the older bands that felt a little out of reach. i wanted to know as much as i possibly could about music and movies and tv and this quickly moved to live music the second i started driving. i worked part-time jobs all through school, in large part to fuel this need, but in a lot of ways so i could relate to as many people as possible. “oh you like this band?? me too! i just saw them!” it wasn’t long before i was making custom mixes for just about everything. wing night mixes. mixes for crushes. mixes for friends. mixes to mow the lawn. mixes that helped me come out of the fog that insomnia and severe depression created. the sheer power of unlimited media, a high-speed internet connection, some reliable message boards, and an intense lack of sleep meant i could learn so much, so fast, and feel like i belonged somewhere.

i had never felt that way before. i still don’t feel that way now, often. it’s all i’ve ever wanted. i crave that feeling — belonging. my entire life i’ve felt like a fraud. that if someone’s friends with me they will abandon me or betray me. if someone is dating me they’ll eventually wake up and realize they’ve been wasting their time. but this gave me a sense of control, a way to bury myself in the stacks and be safe, and if anyone wanted to join me for even a brief moment, they could.