Stress Issues...

For the past couple months or so I've been very stressed out. Pretty much every day, even if it's a great day for me, I've been feeling very tense and anxious inside, and I believe one of the big reasons for this stress is my collection. I have a lot of species to take care of, and admittedly, there are quite a few of them that I don't care for all that much.

The truth is, I have been collecting species for collecting's sake, which is a horrible reason to get new invertebrates. For example, I've been slowly trying to collect every species in the genus Parcoblatta, not because I really love them all, but because I wanted to be able to say that "I own every species in this genus", and that is a horrible thing to do, as it fills my collection and my life with unnecessary clutter, which really adds to my stress.

Not only that, but lately when I look for more species to keep, I try to look for the most "show stopping" ones, the ones that really "wow" people, not necessarily because I really want them for myself, but because I want the attention and admiration that comes with them. I'm basically becoming an attention wh*re, and because of that I find my self spending my time and resources trying to get species that I don't even care about, again adding to the clutter in my life and causing me more stress.

This needs to stop now, as these are the wrong reasons to get more pets, the wrong reasons to get more of anything really. You should only collect things that you love, so that you can spend your time and resources on those, rather than a variety of other things that you don't really care about at all. So, for this reason, I will be getting rid of a number of my invertebrates, anything that I don't absolutely love, except for certain essential things like feeders for my predatory pets.

In fact, I've already gotten rid of a few species, dumped my Alphitobius diaperinus culture out in the yard the other day, (collected them less than a mile from here so it's OK), and froze my Parcoblatta lata and uhleriana cultures as well, (they were all infected with a species of Herpomyces, a sort of entomophagus fungi anyway, would have taken a lot of time and effort to get the cultures through the infestation and that would only be so I could sell them off safely, so I decided to put them down instead). Will be getting rid of more species this month, and have canceled certain future acquisitions too.

I'm not leaving the hobby though, by any means, (though I admit I did seriously consider it), in fact I am doing a trade with Kyle from Roachcrossing next week for some awesome new species, (all of which I genuinely want and admire), and have some other things in the works as well! 😉

Anyway, sorry for rambling, just wanted to let you guys know what is going on with my collection, as you will no doubt start seeing a few species disappearing from my "My Bugs" list. It's all for the best though, and hopefully soon I will have a collection filled only with species that I truly love.

Well, that's gonna do it for this post, and for anyone else out there facing similar problems, remember to collect for yourself, not for the attention of others, and try to only collect species that you truly love and desire, don't bring unnecessary clutter into your lives! Will see you all in the next post, take care everybody! 😊