Tag Archives: consumerism

All this stuff

29 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by in My Journey, Writing, Writing101

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Tell us the story of your most-prized possession.

 

For the final day of the Writing101 challenge the prompt is to tell the story of my most prized possession. But I’m not going to do that. I want to talk to you about material things. I’ve spent a bit of time over the last few days thinking about, no, obsessing over, the stuff I own and whether I actually need it. Now that I’ve quit my job and have a more uncertain income situation I’ve been considering whether it might be time to move house.

There are pros and cons to every living arrangement. The room I have now is pretty cheap and it’s in a great location. On the other hand, the room I have is weirdly shaped, cramped, and drafty and there are ants in summer and there are four people living here (not to mention with various overnight guests). So, pros and cons.

I looked online for other places that would be less expensive, just assessing my options, and I started thinking about what I would take with me if I moved. There are some things that I’ve been carrying around with me for years that I hardly use, but for whatever reason I’ve been hanging on to. Objects which are associated with memories, with times in my life.

Take my stereo for instance. It was a present for my fifteenth (or possibly sixteenth) birthday from my parents. My brother sourced the components from the second hand hi-fi place he was working in, it’s chunky and old and I love it. It also comes with the two speakers I got at fifteen and the two much bigger speakers I inherited from my second boyfriend (the gothy one from this post). I’ve taken this stereo with me every time I’ve moved house since I left home, and if I’m honest, it’s really awkward, because it’s massive and loud and analog and and and.

It feels like a betrayal to consider getting rid of it – I’ve had some really great times with it, listening to music on my own, or using it to blast the neighbours at parties, but not lately. I’m beginning to realise that I’m a pretty big nanna; I don’t like parties or late nights, and for the most part I’m happy to listen to music through my computer. Which means I don’t need, or use, the stereo.

What other stuff am I hanging on to ‘just in case’ I want to use it? How often do I catch myself buying stuff just because it seemed like a good idea? I feel myself being a mindless consumer, wanting something just because it’s there, and it’s shiny, and someone else has it.

I know that things can have a lot of significance based on where you got them, who you got them from, what memories you’ve created with them, but in the end everything is just stuff. We’ll remember the stuff that’s great without the thing to remind us, especially if it’s a good memory. We’ll remember the hard times that we’ve had, deep in our hearts, whether or not we have the objects there to remind us.

I want to be able cherish the things I have and use, but to be able to disconnect myself from them when it’s time. Stuff is just stuff. The more you have, the more you have to lose. The more you carry the heavier the burden. I don’t need stuff to be happy. Most of my memories are stored in digital form anyway – my writing, my journals, my photos, are all on hard drives (and some websites), I won’t get rid of those, but what else do I need? I just need something to eat, somewhere to sleep, something to do, and people to love and to love me.

I’m going to repeat that to myself that over and over until it’s true.

On why I choose to be poor and happy rather than rich and miserable

09 Friday Mar 2012

Posted by in My Journey

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Recently both my psychologist and one of the guys who works at my gym have commented on how much happier I appear; that there is much less rage emanating from my presence. This makes me happy.

I know that when I started this blog I said ‘I will never get a job’ – but I’m sure you all knew that that was a bit of an oversimplification. I was (almost) completely unemployed for about 4 months (Nov-Jan) but then two things pointed me towards some sort of money-brining-in-arrangement:

1 – in a capitalist (or any really) society one cannot exist without contributing to the machine (e.g. working) and getting something in exchange (e.g. money); and

2 – I was starting to go a bit peculiar spending a lot of time alone in my house.

The problem with being largely directionless is that there is no external motivation to achieve things. There are no deadlines or commitments to juggle and so you (or at least I) end up procrastinating the whole day sitting on your ass in front of either computer, tv or both. It also didn’t help that I didn’t have any money to go out and do ‘exciting’ things like eat out, or see movies, or go to galleries etc.

So I started applying for jobs; I applied for all sorts of things, all part-time; recruitment, HR, office temping, reception, hospitality, child care, call centre etc. I had a few interviews for HR/office jobs and to be honest they all sounded kind of awful. I didn’t really want to go back to the office world where people earning $100,000 + complained about not being paid enough – that and the obsession with full time work as the only viable option sounded horrible. As it turns out I was not offered any of these positions; maybe they new that I wasn’t really in the cult of the office worker, maybe they could smell the hippy from across the desk, or maybe there are just way more people out there looking for part time jobs than there are jobs.

The job I ended up being taking is 4 days a week in a canteen in a school in Melbourne. There are a few cons such as having to stand all day and getting minimum wage but there are a lot of pros to this job: I make coffee and sandwiches, I chat to the teachers and the kids, I finish by 3.30pm, I get free food and I get school holidays off! The biggest pro for me however is that I don’t spend the day watching the clock tick down until home time, I smile a lot and I look forward to going to work*.

I have never thought of myself as being money driven and I was always of the opinion that you spend whatever money you get in no matter how large or small the wage. When I finished in HR I was earning a pretty decent wage but I was also spending most of it and I was miserable.

I have found that the exercise of stripping back all the layers of stuff I was buying but didn’t need and trying to function on the barest of minimums has forced me to look at my buying habits. I don’t have the money now to buy random stuff, so every time I want to I have to think: am I buying this because it’s there, because it is marketed to me, because I can or am I buying this because I am replacing something that is worn out or something that I really actually need (in a utilitarian way)? It’s kind of hard in the beginning to try to rationalise every single thing you buy but once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty empowering.

I buy things because I need them; food, toilet paper etc. I buy things because I need to replace something; my pants are worn out so I need a replacement pair. I buy things from op shops because it’s cheaper and greener. And if it’s not one of these things, I basically don’t buy it.

I feel like the decision to step out of the rat race, the career oriented, money hungry office job market has allowed me to take a step back from the ‘you need this product to make you cool’ mentality. It makes me much more conscious about where my money goes and much more aware that it is a finite resource that I should try to spread as far as possible.

So what am I actually saying? I am so much happier being poor. I didn’t realise I was miserable but I was. That’s really what it comes down to. I am living for me; I am working to live not living to work. I am taking charge of my life and making the system work for me, instead of becoming a cog in the machine.

Oh and I’m back at uni, but that is a story for another day.

 

*getting out of bed is still not my favourite but once I’m there I’m all good.