The Cabinet, Actually

I get asked this more than I expected when I mention the site name out loud, is the cabinet a metaphor for something. It is not. There’s a real cabinet, it’s an old glass-front thing I got secondhand and refinished badly one winter, and it lives in the corner of the room where I keep games and books after I’ve actually finished them, not before. That’s the whole rule. You don’t get shelved in the cabinet on potential. You get shelved in the cabinet after you’ve earned it.

This sounds like a small thing and it turned into a bigger thing than I expected once I started enforcing it on myself. Before the cabinet, my books and games lived everywhere, half-read paperbacks stacked on the nightstand, shrink-wrapped Kickstarter boxes I hadn’t opened yet stacked next to the shelf like a guilt monument. The cabinet forced a decision. Finish it or it doesn’t get the good spot. I didn’t expect that to change how I read and play, but it kind of did, in a small way, I think I finish things more deliberately now than I used to, because there’s an actual physical reward waiting on the other side of finishing instead of just starting the next thing.

It’s not a big cabinet. Four shelves, glass doors that don’t quite close all the way anymore because I overstuffed it two years running. I’ve had to make some genuinely annoying decisions about what stays and what gets boxed up in the closet once it’s full, and I won’t pretend I’ve been perfectly consistent about it, there’s a copy of something in there right now I’m not totally sure earned its spot.

Anyway. That’s it. That’s the whole story behind the name. No deep metaphor, just an actual piece of furniture with actual rules I made up for myself and then, somehow, kept following for years.