As a non-public experiment or assignment, I decided to make 2019 the year not to purchase whatever. To clarify, I am now not shopping for anything pointless this year. I am still buying meals and gasoline for my car, but the whole thing else has emerged as extraneous. When I found out shopping had emerged as my main source of leisure, I changed into horrified. Not the handiest turned into I spending all of my cash on stuff I didn’t want. However, I have become neglecting other hobbies. I needed to quit purchasing. Cold turkey. No greater than buying an additional pair of socks here or there, purchasing the library sales, or making online orders.
It is only mid-February as I write this, but no longer buying has been easy to date. I could have the maximum problem with now not buying beauty gadgets, which has been my biggest vice in previous years; however, no. Clothing, I realize, will, in the end, be a problem, as my present-day clothing turns shabbier and shabbier. Oh properly, that’s pleasant. I can be shabby for a yr. It’s booked. I am having the maximum difficult time with no longer shopping for books. I have never been one to buy stacks and stacks of books at a time, preferring to shop for a manageable 1–3 books. Library income and used ebook clearance sales crush me. I purchase gardening books from the ’70s and the 1/3 e-book from a collection that no person has ever heard of.
“Ha! Ha! Tricked you into buying a book you may never examine!”
“You’re proper! But I best-paid 50 cents for it, so who’s the actual winner here?”
On a rare event that I do purchase a brand new e-book, it’s miles due to the fact I want to examine it so desperately, and the maintenance list for my nearby library system is horridly long. According to the department, I live in a town of nearly 1.Five million, but with only one reproduction of a brand new launch. Not complaining because public libraries are free, and I am lucky to live close to one. Still, on occasion, I am impatient. Books are probably the one region of my lifestyle that I am impatient with.
I will now and again purchase a ebook if plainly I will by no means locate it at the library. The books I do purchase are almost always bought used, at a reduction, and when I have read the library copy as soon as earlier. I tried being a person that had to have their own copy of every book they desired to study. I couldn’t be that man or woman. It changed into high-priced. Why then, with my good-sized library usage and rare ebook buying addiction, has it suddenly become tough NOT to buy books?
I’m analyzing extra. That’s a conscious desire. Previously, my evenings consisted of TV, browsing online shops, TV. I’m now trying to study each nighttime as I did as a teenager. That child was given into university; she did o.K… Maybe it’s a part of the collector’s mentality so generic in social media. If you don’t want personal all of the new releases, you’re now not a real reader. If you don’t study everything the second it’s to be had—well, you would possibly as properly not. This mentality is going past books of direction. It’s in the entirety commercially available. The collector’s mentality is especially familiar within the splendor social media area. That is what prompted me to forestall shopping, buying, and looking for the next new issue.
I am selecting to use and enjoy what I already personal. With books even though, is what I have excellent sufficient? Haven’t I read those books before? Books are not like a tube of toothpaste—I can not use one up and then purchase a brand new one. I can’t forestall the collector’s mentality, but there’s no way I can gather or examine simply the entirety. That is not possible. Even a properly-stocked library doesn’t have every book ever published. That’s why inter-library loans exist. Do I need to browse bookstores? Desperately. However, I recognize doing so will make the collector mentality fire up again. Instead, I am sticking with my libraries because I recognize there is no possibility that I can ever own those books. I hope that my collector-client mind learns to enjoy different matters once more over the path of this year. Until then, I envy anybody with a gift card to a bookstore.
