What if I fail at collecting?

When completing this weeks reading on networked knowledge activities, I appreciated the discussion of the terms collection and curation.  As mentioned in the article by Dennen et.al, (2020), collecting is a lower level activity involved in capturing something for the future. Curating involves manipulating that list to select the items of value. 

As I was reading, I kept thinking, but I am a terrible collector.  What does this mean for me?

At home, I am accused of being a minimalist. I am not really but in contrast to the collectors in my family, I am. I had a collection as a child, of little statues, so I think I am capable of collecting. As I got older collecting felt like work.  Then I would need to display it, and dust it, be careful with it.  And that just seems like too much energy into a thing. I would rather feel free to explore. (Hmmm, I did recently make a post about wanting to settle... Is still ok to want to settle but without a lot of stuff?)

Online, I never use bookmarks. I occassionaly create a bookmark, I never use them. For this course, I have a bookmark to the blog. Instead I go to it from the Canvas page - every single time. It is the same way for my work. I never use the shortcut link to the library. I always go to the university webpage. 

I have Zotero and Diigo and I can't seem to remember to bookmark items I find. If I do it is often because I go back and find it again. It seems that the act of collecting, not the result of it that is most appealing to me. 

So I wonder, can I learn to be a collector?  Perhaps it is about seeing the value. The more connected I become, I can see the possibility of collection. But it is curation that is most appealing. 

What about you? Is collecting easy for you?

Reference: Dennen, V. P., Word, K., Adolfson, D., Arechavaleta, V., He, D., Hsu, C.-W., Hur, J., Jung, D., Kent, H., Russell, A., & Toth, K. (2020). Using the networked knowledge activities framerwork to examine learning on social networking sites. In P. Kommers & G. C. Peng (Eds.), Proceedings of the international conference on Web-based Communities and Social Media 2020 (pp. 165-172). IADIS Press.