01495: Why I Collect "Toys"

It's going to be Christmas next week and yet things are just as busy as they used to be over at the office. I still have new proposal requests coming in, presentation decks that need building and all that other good stuff. It seems almost wrong to have to work this much and I'm even hesitant to ask for more time off for the holidays given all the new tasks coming in. But we'll see, it's too early to tell for sure, I suppose.

But of course I know the holidays will win out. You can only get so much done when the rest of your colleagues are taking the holidays off as well, after all. So let's see how this particular cookie crumbles over the rest of this work week.

A cursory evaluation of my finances in line with my recent Transformers purchases has me realizing that I may have been a tad over eager these past few months. Then again, most of the new Transformers came out in these last two quarters of the year and thus my finances have been taking a beating. It's not like I'm in the red or anything like that, but my savings rate has slowed a bit in favor of more real-time purchases.

I'm not complaining though - I'm very happy with my acquisitions as of late. I've done quite an amount of hunting across various stores to get my collection to where it stands now. And I'm actually proud of that.

Some people like to wear only the latest fashions. Others like to travel. Others still are into cars or motorcycles or whatever. I collect Transformers. Yes, I buy toys, but I do this because they're not "just" toys. Every robot is a story. Each figure is a piece of my childhood captured in plastic and paint.

This is what my Transformers are to me. This is why opening up their packaging is practically like a ceremony where I transform it for the first time, document every step with my camera. And of course I then need to find the new toy a home here in the Sietch, a forever increasingly difficult challenge given our diminishing amount of free shelf space.

So yeah, I still save. I could save a heck of a lot more. But I'm still very happy with the Transformers that I have and I know I'm not going to stop buying more any time soon.