resolution update
2 saturdays ago i was feeling….angsted…about politics and capitalism and the lack of equity in even the Land of the Free and all that non-happy stuff, and i acknowledged that part of my own unhappiness was that i give into things that i don’t theoretically or logically support, either due to the inability to have some self-control in the wantwantwant area, or because i’m too lazy to find/do the alternative options when the easy ones are put right in front of me, just like most other americans. we’re all presented with innumerable choices every day and sometimes we don’t make the best ones, fully consciously.
in an armchair attempt to do *something* about it all, particularly the current consumer-debt crisis coupled with the ever-increasing problem of the u.s. trade deficit (when did i start worrying about these things? how old am i?), i vowed to not buy anything but food for at least a week. this is also partly because it’s almost september and closer to the end of 2007, and i only had one resolution this year: get out of debt. so far i’ve been doing pretty well. i started out $10k in debt at the beginning of this year, and i’ve cut that in half without much change in lifestyle in the past 8 months. however, this is not as quickly as i had hoped, probably due to the not really changing my lifestyle, and so now i have $5k in debt to pay off in 4 months if i want to reach my goal. um. huh. i mean, i *could*. if i never went out and ate cereal for the next 4 months. and didn’t go to burning man. it’s possible. but i don’ t think THAT dramatic of a lifestyle change is going to happen.
so anyway, the week went by and there were a couple of non-food items i really wanted to buy but didn’t, including a hand-built antique wooden rocking chair from urban ore. i absolutely love rocking chairs. and it reminded me of my grandmother. i think more than a week went by before i bought anything non-food, but i stopped keeping track. it wasn’t that big of a deal; more or less all i really did was put off buying things for burning man by a week, which hopefully means the total overall spent will end up being less, and i won’t be putting my out-of-debt date too much further off. once out of debt….? i’m not quite sure how being debt free will change my day-to-day life, particularly if i’m committed to less consumer spending. what do you do with more disposable income if you don’t believe in spending it? invest, i guess. but in what? i can’t really wrap my head around that right how; those are questions for 2008.
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