Being a Collector
There is a lot written about the negative aspects and psychological dangers of being a collector. However, in this blog post I am going to suggest that it is a worthwhile wellbeing strategy, which can form part of a a healthy work life balance, and even increase your effectiveness as a school leader.
First, lets get the warnings out of the way. Maintaining a collection can lead to obsessive behaviour patterns, and it can become financially ruinous if a healthy balance is not maintained. Collecting can also become hoarding if taken to the extreme; if you are my age you can probably remember the documentary in the 1990s about Edmund Trebus, whose life had been taken over by the desire to hoard. If not, I would recommend watching it as a study of someone who had been psychologically damaged by his past.
As with Mr Trebus, the dark side of collecting is only likely to come to the fore if there are other psychological or mental issues at play, so it is important that you have enough self awareness to spot any harmful behaviours, or that you have someone who will do that for you and intervene. If you have that safety net in place, then collecting is a fun, safe, and relatively inexpensive pursuit that can be managed alongside work commitments to help support positive wellbeing.
There is some science around the benefits of collecting; around the start of the new millennium psychologists described collecting as helping one to establish a better 'sense of self'. In basic terms, your sense of self is your understanding of who you are as a person, your likes, dislikes, motivations etc. It is thought that the collection becomes a curated physical representation of the collectors social identity.
At this time, five main motivations for becoming a collector were also identified. They were:
- for selfish purposes
- for selfless purposes
- as preservation, restoration, history and a sense of continuity
- as financial investment
- as a form of addiction
As we are looking at the positive benefits of collecting, for the purposes of this post I am going to focus on the factors from the list above that have the most positive impact on the sense of self. I therefore want to define 'selfish', as listed above, as 'for the self' and not in any negative sense as the word is often used. Therefore, the desire to collect and complete a collection is 'for the self', but in a positive sense. We desire completeness and order because it gives us satisfaction of a job well done. Collecting can give us this satisfaction, even if our work lives do not.
Psychologists also have a lot to say about the nostalgic element that is often a factor in collecting. Some believe that nostalgia is a way to cope with loss and change and others believe that collecting with our past is a way to better understand who we are and where we come from. Regardless of the theory, there is agreement that nostalgia through collecting has a powerful impact on our wellbeing.
So, what are my own personal experiences of collecting? Well, my collection is not particularly unusual or imaginative, but it brings me great pleasure. I am a man in his fifties so I collect vinyl records. I think it is a requirement of this decade to be honest!
I slipped into collecting vinyl after inheriting some from my brother and from inadvertently acquiring a few bits which came as part of box sets I purchased. I was a big CD guy in my teens and twenties but teaching got in the way of things and I drifted away for a bit, so getting into vinyl was easy. It was made even easier when my partner bought me a lovely record player (I refuse to call it a turntable like the kids do).
As my collection grew I found that I was enjoying it on a number of levels. Apart from broadening my music tastes, I also found that I really enjoy the ritual of cleaning and testing a new record, and the fact that you really have to listen to a whole side of an album (do youngsters even know what 'sides' are?) rather than jump ahead when you hear a track that doesn't immediately catch your ear.
Referring back to the negative aspects of collecting, I did notice that my behaviour was starting to become a little obsessive when it came to looking for records, so I took steps to manage this. I realised this whilst in one of my local charity shops one day, as I spotted that I was not alone in my hunt. There were two other men, about my age, who had obviously also come in to the shop only to look for vinyl. We even had scarily similar bags! One of the men even had his phone out and appeared to be checking the value of a disc he had selected. It hit me, I had become a cliché, one of 'those' people, so I vowed at that point to make a change.
Not a big change, mind you! I haven't cut out charity shops completely, but I don't go out specifically looking for vinyl any more. Instead, I have a planned monthly trip to an amazing record shop in my nearest city, where I set myself a maximum spending limit and spend a good hour and a half in vinyl heaven.
What could you collect?
As I did, you will probably find that you have the roots of a collection in your possession, even if you don't consider yourself to be a collector already. You might have something you collected in your younger days and you might just need to kick start it again. If you are not inspired by an embryonic collection or by one from your past, then these are the criteria I would use for choosing a collection:
Cost - don't choose something that is going to put you under financial pressure, like Faberge eggs for example.
Availability - obviously some collectors visit antique shops and auctions to maintain their habit, but I would suggest below the premier league, into division one (junk shops) and division two (charity shops). Scarcity is something you need to consider too, you don't want to have to go looking for needles in haystacks, which leads to criteria three...
Time - you don't want to get yourself into something that takes time away from other areas of your life as it is important to maintain your balance. Stay local would be a good approach here.
Collecting vinyl ticked off all three of these criteria for me. Although you can spend hundreds of pounds on rare vinyl it is possible to pick up some really good records for under £5. There are plenty of them around; I mentioned charity shops already, but most towns have also got a good second hand vinyl shop. This also covers the 'time' criteria too.
Perhaps the most important criteria for collections, one which I have not listed above, is simply to collect something that gives you pleasure. Remember, we are not doing this to make money but to support our wellbeing! If you need some inspiration, here are a couple of sites that will help:
40 Cool Things to Collect as a Hobby - Facts.net
What Should I Collect? 41 Cheap & Plentiful Ideas • Adirondack Girl @ Heart
Finally, as teachers are great at mining their personal lives for material to use in their jobs, it is worth considering if your collection, once you start it, can be used in the classroom. Coins and stamps would be good examples of these, but I bet you creative types can find a way to use anything in the classroom!
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