Dropping the dead weight and finding a new place to dump my money
I don't need this, I thought as I sifted through boxes of old things in the basement. Let's just drop it on eBay. The music CDs and anime that were collecting dust because I no longer had the patience to endure them, the role-playing books that were slowly yellowing because I no longer had friends to play them with, the video games that had just gotten old, the art books that I hesitated selling for a minute because what if I wanted to pick up a pencil again, and the endless amounts of knickknacks that no longer amused me the way they did sitting on the selling room counter.
Crap, all of it. I didn't need it, I didn't need any of it. What I really wanted out of life, I had decided, were experiences, not...things. Experience is what makes our lives living document, while possessions merely enhance it - and if we're not careful, define us. To free myself of the false promises of habitual consumption, to consider whether or not I really needed something before I bought it, even if (especially if) the alternative wasn't as fashionable. I was resolute: I wasn't about to end up like my parents with roomfuls of useless junk that were simultaneously forgotten and somehow necessary for one's well-being. I would never rent storage space in one of those God-awful warehouses made to store piles of worthless things. I would keep things to a minimum, owning only what I needed at the moment, letting go of everything, one day at a time. This even applied to my clothes: five sets of shirts, five sets of pants, five of everything, then restrict it to black, grey, and white, with a few splashes of color. Five sets of blue jeans. Make sure the stuff would last. Whittle down stuff as I went: keep the favorites, let go of everything else.
Like the hoarders I hated so much, I needed to control my environment.
Minimalism, minimalism, badassity. The things I was owning were going to end up defining me, and eventually killing me. I wanted to be free of that: knowing the urge to collect things, and how to be free of it, is a grim hobby of mine. I'm not sure it'll help get me with my graduate studies, but quite lately I've been obsessed with how consumerism has pulled a sleight-of-hand trick on us and somehow replaced 'experiences' with 'possessions,' but there you are. Somehow we've been tricked into believing that ownership is the experience, which makes no sense at all unless one lives in a branded society...which we do.
Like the musician who hauls his priceless violin in a rusty beat-up old car, we spend money on the things that matter, and skimp on the things that don't. Our possessions partially define what we are, but we still have to do things with them first. So what happens when we spend more money on possessions than life?
All that really matters is time, nothing else. We have the experiences, possessions, and money, but these things take up time. We're all dying by the minute, so how much is our time, our attention spans, and our learning worth? What are we doing with it? What is a year of your life worth? How about an hour, a minute? Which hour, which minute? How much money would you pay for one more day with a person you loved?
I mean, think about it: you look at the money in your hand and think, this is freedom...or symbolizes it. (Take your pick.) Here's the sleight-of-hand: we're free already, but we work to get money, which expands our possibilities. With no money, I can live, but not comfortably. With money in hand, I can do things that make my life easier. So I ask myself, is this latte really $5 worth of my freedom, or can I just make do with coffee? Will graduate school expand my capacity for freedom? What is freedom, anyway? Should I spend some money to get a book and find out? What are we doing with our money, what are we doing with our time, what do we think we're taking with us when we die?
Then I go and drop another $200 on my bikes: one of them needs new chain ring bolts (really, they're broken and need to be replaced), the other needs to be less than twenty pounds. The irony here is palpable. Something I discovered was that even as I was selling my useless junk on eBay, I was turning around and buying up things for my bicycles because let's face it, I like bikes. It's not even the act of riding one that makes me happy, no. I have to get better at it, too: ride in the winter so I don't let my quads atrophy, find a spin class so I can train that 'efficient pedal stroke' even more, buy clothing that allows me to ride in all sorts of weather with minimal weight increase while still remaining breathable, buying high-powered lights so I don't have any excuses to not cycle after dark...
But then I read what I've typed above and wonder again what kind of trap I've fallen into. What am I pouring my resources into? Hint: it's not a bicycle.
Crap, all of it. I didn't need it, I didn't need any of it. What I really wanted out of life, I had decided, were experiences, not...things. Experience is what makes our lives living document, while possessions merely enhance it - and if we're not careful, define us. To free myself of the false promises of habitual consumption, to consider whether or not I really needed something before I bought it, even if (especially if) the alternative wasn't as fashionable. I was resolute: I wasn't about to end up like my parents with roomfuls of useless junk that were simultaneously forgotten and somehow necessary for one's well-being. I would never rent storage space in one of those God-awful warehouses made to store piles of worthless things. I would keep things to a minimum, owning only what I needed at the moment, letting go of everything, one day at a time. This even applied to my clothes: five sets of shirts, five sets of pants, five of everything, then restrict it to black, grey, and white, with a few splashes of color. Five sets of blue jeans. Make sure the stuff would last. Whittle down stuff as I went: keep the favorites, let go of everything else.
Like the hoarders I hated so much, I needed to control my environment.
Minimalism, minimalism, badassity. The things I was owning were going to end up defining me, and eventually killing me. I wanted to be free of that: knowing the urge to collect things, and how to be free of it, is a grim hobby of mine. I'm not sure it'll help get me with my graduate studies, but quite lately I've been obsessed with how consumerism has pulled a sleight-of-hand trick on us and somehow replaced 'experiences' with 'possessions,' but there you are. Somehow we've been tricked into believing that ownership is the experience, which makes no sense at all unless one lives in a branded society...which we do.
Like the musician who hauls his priceless violin in a rusty beat-up old car, we spend money on the things that matter, and skimp on the things that don't. Our possessions partially define what we are, but we still have to do things with them first. So what happens when we spend more money on possessions than life?
All that really matters is time, nothing else. We have the experiences, possessions, and money, but these things take up time. We're all dying by the minute, so how much is our time, our attention spans, and our learning worth? What are we doing with it? What is a year of your life worth? How about an hour, a minute? Which hour, which minute? How much money would you pay for one more day with a person you loved?
I mean, think about it: you look at the money in your hand and think, this is freedom...or symbolizes it. (Take your pick.) Here's the sleight-of-hand: we're free already, but we work to get money, which expands our possibilities. With no money, I can live, but not comfortably. With money in hand, I can do things that make my life easier. So I ask myself, is this latte really $5 worth of my freedom, or can I just make do with coffee? Will graduate school expand my capacity for freedom? What is freedom, anyway? Should I spend some money to get a book and find out? What are we doing with our money, what are we doing with our time, what do we think we're taking with us when we die?
Then I go and drop another $200 on my bikes: one of them needs new chain ring bolts (really, they're broken and need to be replaced), the other needs to be less than twenty pounds. The irony here is palpable. Something I discovered was that even as I was selling my useless junk on eBay, I was turning around and buying up things for my bicycles because let's face it, I like bikes. It's not even the act of riding one that makes me happy, no. I have to get better at it, too: ride in the winter so I don't let my quads atrophy, find a spin class so I can train that 'efficient pedal stroke' even more, buy clothing that allows me to ride in all sorts of weather with minimal weight increase while still remaining breathable, buying high-powered lights so I don't have any excuses to not cycle after dark...
But then I read what I've typed above and wonder again what kind of trap I've fallen into. What am I pouring my resources into? Hint: it's not a bicycle.