Cal Ripken, Jr., 1992 Donruss Diamond Kings #DK 5

I'm experiencing something of a love-hate relationship with my favorite hobby right about now. For the past 10 months, I've been sitting on a massive backlog of cards that need to be sorted, catalogued, and then consolidated with the rest of my collection. I've been chipping away at it in bits and bites all along, but I've finally gotten sufficiently tired of the chaos and clutter and picked up the pace. That's led to several frustrating moments, in which I think I've got all of the cards for a particular year organized and logged into my personal card database, only to discover an orphaned stack of cards in a previously-overlooked box. Just when the finish line starts looking closer, it gets pushed back another quarter-mile. Ultimately, it's most frustrating because I know that I'm the one responsible for letting it all get so muddled in the first place. There's no buck to pass.

Similarly, after weeks and weeks of procrastination, I found myself putting the finishing touches on the last post for my 1965 Topps blog last Friday. After nearly five and a half years, I'm more than ready to put that particular blog to rest...and probably launch a new one, because I haven't learned my lesson. So prior to publishing the final card, I decided to go to my checklist page/table of contents and clean up the hyperlinks. In doing so, I discovered a full dozen cards that I never scanned, wrote up, and posted. Chalk up another win for chaos and absent-mindedness.

So, we regroup, and set a new goal, and publish it here so that you can point and laugh when it all goes sideways again. Let it be decreed: by the end of March, THIS March, I will have my collection completely organized. That goes double for the O's team collection...any new Orioles I've gotten since...oh, let's say 2009 have not been properly sorted along with the rest of my cardboard birds. Moreover, I will finish posting the Dirty Dozen holdouts on The Great 1965 Topps Project. Any time I start to dawdle, or lose hope, I'll just let the stern, off-center face of Cal Ripken, Jr. be my motivation.