Squinting at the 3:03 AM glow of a backlight, I am currently deleting and re-typing the same figure into cell C43 of a spreadsheet I titled “The Exit Strategy.” My thumb is throbbing with a dull, rhythmic ache, a souvenir from an hour ago when I tried to force a metal dowel into a pre-drilled hole that didn’t actually exist on a flat-pack bookshelf. It is a fitting metaphor for my life right now: trying to make pieces fit that were never designed for each other. I am looking at a row of plastic bins stacked 13 high against the far wall of my office, and I am telling myself they represent a down payment on a house. In reality, they represent a very expensive way to keep dust off of things I haven’t touched since 2013.

We are all, at some level, failed actuaries. We calculate the value of our possessions based on the sweat equity of the hunt, the 3-hour drive to a rural estate sale, and the 73 minutes we spent haggling over a price that was already 23 percent higher than it should have been. We translate our effort into market value, which is like trying to pay your mortgage with a collection of high-fives. It doesn’t work, yet we keep the ledger. We justify the acquisition of a $103 trinket by convincing ourselves that in another 13 years, some desperate soul on the internet will pay $603 for the privilege of owning it. It’s a beautiful lie, wrapped in bubble wrap and tucked away in a climate-controlled storage unit that costs $123 a month.

I’ve spent the last 83 minutes trying to find a single comparable sale for a specific vintage watch I bought back in 2003. Every listing I find is “Ended” with no bids. There are 33 of them currently for sale, all sitting at a price point that suggests the sellers are also looking at the same imaginary spreadsheet I am. We are all holding onto the same ghost, waiting for it to turn into gold. The frustration is visceral, much like the realization that the dresser I spent all evening assembling is missing exactly 3 screws, leaving the bottom drawer perpetually askew. You can have 93 percent of a finished product, but without those last 3 pieces, the whole thing is just a pile of wood that shouldn’t be leaned on.

The Inheritance Hallucination

Charlie N.S., a grief counselor who specializes in what he calls “transitional logistics,” deals with the wreckage of these delusions every day. Charlie doesn’t just help people process the loss of a loved one; he helps them process the loss of a legacy that turned out to be a landfill. He tells me about a client who spent 53 years collecting porcelain bells, convinced they were the financial bedrock of her grandchildren’s future. When she passed, the grandchildren realized the collection was worth roughly $233 at a local auction house, and even then, the auctioneer only took them as a favor.

Charlie N.S. sits in his office-a space so minimalist it feels like a personal rebuke to my 73 boxes of “investments”-and talks about the Inheritance Hallucination. This is the specific type of grief where survivors aren’t mourning the person as much as they are mourning the lie the person told them. “My mother told me these were my college fund,” a client told him while gesturing to a wall of 113 Beanie Babies. It’s a heavy burden to carry, both physically and emotionally. We spend our lives curators of a museum that no one wants to visit, charging ourselves an admission fee every day in the form of space, insurance, and mental energy.

There is a peculiar comfort in the hoard, though. It’s a defense mechanism against the guilt of simple consumption. If I buy a $63 item because I like the way it looks on my shelf, I am merely a consumer. I am participating in the churn of capital. But if I buy that same $63 item because it is “rare” and will be worth $103 by the time I retire, I am a savvy investor. I am a visionary. We lie to ourselves to avoid the vulnerability of admitting we just want things. We turn our desires into a business plan to make them palatable to our internal auditors.

I keep thinking about the bookshelf with the missing dowel. I could probably go to the hardware store and buy a replacement for 3 cents, but I won’t. I’ll keep trying to wedge a piece of a pencil into the hole or use a bit of wood glue and hope for the best. I’d rather struggle with a broken version of my own creation than admit that the original plan was flawed. This is how we treat our collections. We see the holes in the valuation-the lack of buyers, the shifting tastes of the next generation, the sheer volume of 233 million similar items on the market-and we just apply more glue. We tell ourselves that the market is just “soft” right now, or that we just haven’t found the right buyer yet.

Honesty in Present Joy

There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. There are objects that retain a weird, stubborn liquidity because they are actually used. When I look at the community surrounding certain modular collectibles, I see a different psychology at play. Take Nora Fleming minis, for example. These aren’t just things people throw into a bin and forget about; they are part of a social ritual. They have a utility that transcends the “investment” tag. If you look at the curated selections of nora fleming plates, you realize that the value there is transparent because it’s tied to the actual joy of the object in the present moment. People buy them because they want to use them at a party, not because they’re hoping to flip them for a $33 profit in five years. There is a honesty in that which my spreadsheet lacks.

I’ve been moving the same 13 boxes of comic books for 23 years. They have lived in 3 different states and 6 different apartments. Every time I move, I pay a premium because they are “heavy and fragile.” I have spent more on moving and storing these books than they could ever possibly be worth, even if the market for 90s era foil covers miraculously rebounds by 103 percent tomorrow. Why do I do it? Because letting go of the books means letting go of the version of myself that was a smart 23-year-old making a “good move.” To sell them for $3 each is to admit I was wrong.

Charlie N.S. says the hardest part of his job isn’t the death; it’s the 83-year-old widow realizing her husband spent their vacation fund on “limited edition” coins that are only worth their weight in copper. There is a specific kind of silence that falls in a room when the appraiser leaves. It’s the sound of a narrative collapsing. We build these houses of cards out of cardboard and plastic, and then we act surprised when a light breeze knocks them over. We are so afraid of the transient nature of joy that we try to petrify it into an asset.

Liberation in Letting Go

I look back at my spreadsheet. I change the value of the watch from $3,203 to $83. The total at the bottom of the column drops significantly. It feels like a physical weight has been lifted from my chest, even though my bank account hasn’t changed by a single cent. There is a liberation in admitting that my junk is just junk. It frees me from the obligation of protecting it. If it’s not an investment, I don’t have to worry about the humidity. If it’s not a legacy, I don’t have to feel guilty about the 13 items I lost during the last move.

Tomorrow, I will go to the store and buy those 3 missing screws for the dresser. I will finish the shelf, and I will put things on it that I actually enjoy looking at, regardless of their resale value in 2033. I might even take those 43 figurines and give them to the kids next door. The spreadsheet is still there, glowing with its 3:03 AM promises, but I think I’m ready to close the tab. I’d rather have a functional bookshelf and an empty bin than a retirement plan made of porcelain and lies. We tell ourselves stories to survive, but sometimes, the most survival-oriented thing we can do is admit the story is over.