Dumb Man does Dumb Shit
I have a recurring inner conflict between wanting to own less stuff and be more deliberate and use orientated about what I buy and hold onto, but also wanting things to be easy and comfortable and frictionless.
I don’t like having too much stuff, it feels unseemly, unbecoming, somehow.
For example, I did the whole Kon Mari thing about a year ago and got rid of:
- A 1.2m^3 heaping mound of clothing, that was secreted in various drawers and storage boxes and smaller, more shameful mounds around my home
- 93 books
- 4 video game consoles
- 3 computers
- A number of tools I never would’ve needed again
- 4 pairs of shoes
- Various pieces of ancillary equipment and technology (old printers, cameras, tv’s etc.)
Not all of this shit was mine, but most of the clothes and books were and the rest of it was the general clutter that latches on, barnacle like, to any family that isn’t deliberate about getting rid of it.
I felt pretty pleased with myself when it was all gone, I had offloaded a very significant quantity of useless shite, made my house slightly less of a fire hazard, and through exhaustive, soul destroying listing marathons had made about £1000 on eBay from everything.
But I still wasn’t satisfied, I felt like I should be getting rid of more.
Its amazing the amount of stuff you accrue unintentionally over the course of a life, so I set about parsing out and discarding of all the remaining cruft, unused and damaged pans and kitchenware, spare sheets that hadn’t seen the light of day since the 90’s, all the stuff in the shed I never touch, you know, the crap.
Then what had avoided the chopping block but wasn’t needed in daily life was organised, packed down, labelled, allocated a space, put away, all clean, all efficient. I did feel slightly psychotic at having organised mine and my family’s possessions like a hospital stockroom but nobody could’ve denied the results.
I think everything up to this point was good, and worth doing. Everything after this is the conflicted bit.
I began to think about all the things that struck me as unnecessary luxuries, things that I had bought and not thrown out but I found slightly irksome to own for some reason.
Things like the desktop computer I built, squatting unused under my desk save to play computer games that even a year ago I wasn’t sure I was actually enjoying. So off it went.
Then reappeared again as I built a new one seemingly unconsciously, against my better judgement, for no real reason less than a month later.
I’ve done that one a few times now. Its a bit of a sticking point. I’m not even sure why I dislike having it, its not useful, but then things don’t have to be useful.
My laptop does everything I need it to, but my laptop is old enough and cheap enough to have the tiniest friction to tasks like loading bloated websites or running the heaviest programs.
So me, the wannabe deliberate consumer, balks at this tiny feeling of friction and goes skittering off for something I don’t need to scratch an itch I don’t really believe I have. Why wouldn’t I just buy a nicer laptop and kill the problem for good you ask? Well there’s nothing wrong with the one I have is there?
I think its more of that problem, trying to be who I think I want to be versus who I actually want to be. It’s also very clear evidence of my habit of concrete, all or nothing, 0 or 100mph nothing in between thinking.
I’ve done this with other stuff as well, I went back to a shitbox car for a while when I had a perfectly nice one, I got rid of my big hiking bag because it felt frivolous to have when I never really used it more than once or twice a year and my small bag could do everything I needed it for OK anyway. (Trying to get a thermarest and a 4 season bag along with a tent and everything else into a 50L daysack is possible, its just not pleasant)
Does anyone else ever get this? Aggravation at their own nice stuff?
I guess it just doesn’t spark joy, alternately I may just be mentally ill, maybe I could allow myself a lit–
Anyway I have a nice computer up for sale on eBay if anyone is interested, UK & ROI only, no returns….