My child bride, Whirl, has begun to identify certain quirks of my characters as “windmills.” She compares my behavior to that of an errant knight, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme. And I must give her her due. She has a point. I have taken up particular causes—some may say particular frivolous causes—and attempted to advance them to no discernable end or for no obvious reason.

These impossible, foolish tasks prove capable of capturing my attention, raising my ire and consuming precious time and energy: both physical and emotional energy.

It causes me to wonder if other people have windmills and if so what they might look like. The more interesting question may be: why do we build these windmills at all and set them as targets?

Two prominent windmills on my psychological horizon are sport utility vehicles and cellular phones. These objects—these material objects—have the capacity to bring me to a frothy, bilious boil. But when I think on the topic with more circumspection I begin to realize that like most inanimate objects the true objects of my aversion are not these base things, but rather the way they have insidiously inserted themselves into my everyday life. They have done so at a cost.

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Whirl and I have been going through our belongings—paraphernalia, equipment, gear, goods we have collected. We have lived in our current home for a little over two years now. Before we moved we culled and sorted a slightly different menagerie of items. We separated it into categories: trash, donations, gifts, keepers. The goal was to minimize the amount of stuff we would need to move from one place to the other. And as we had lived in that apartment for almost six years, we had accumulated enough stuff—stuff that we found we weren’t using—that it had completed filled every possible corner of storage space.

Our loft has very little storage space. That is by design. That makes sense to me. The idea of the loft—particularly as Whirl and I envision it—is to present a large open space. The more closets and cabinets you build, the smaller that open space shrinks. As a consequence it becomes important to keep track of your accumulated substance. We develop guidelines for what stays and what goes.

I find fascinating the choices I historically have made on that score. I can alternate at moments between maudlin sentimentalist and draconian protagonist. Clichés: If I have not used this in two years, I will not ever use it again. Protests: But that is my favorite! Negotiations: If I have to get rid of this, you have to get rid of that. Whirl and I both agree that the previously mentioned two-year guideline does not apply to books. Stephen King has defined being rich as, “When you can go out and buy the new hardcover version of a book whenever you want without having to wait for the paperback to come out.” I am not convinced that we are rich by Stephen King’s standards. Nevertheless, it is a noble rubric by which to define wealth.

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