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 everything 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 spending all my cash on stuff I didn’t want. However, I have neglected 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 year. It’s booked. I am having the most 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 ebook from a collection 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 winner here?”
On the rare occasion that I purchase a brand new ebook, it’s miles because 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. I am not complaining because public libraries are free, and I am lucky to live nearby. Still, on occasion, I am impatient. Books are probably the one region of my lifestyle that I am impatient with.
I will purchase an ebook again if I cannot locate it at the library. The books I purchase are almost always bought and used at a reduction, and when I have read the library copy as soon as possible. I tried being a person who had to have a copy of every book they desired to study. I couldn’t be that man or woman. It changed into high-priced. With my good-sized library usage and rare ebook book-buying, why 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, and 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 that is so generic in social media. If you don’t want to personalize 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 the books of direction. It’s in its entirety commercially available. The collector’s mentality is especially familiar within the splendor social media area. That prompted me to forestall shopping, buying, and looking for the next new issue.
I am selecting to use and enjoy what I already have. With books, even though, is what I have excellent enough? Haven’t I read those books before? Books are not like tubes of toothpaste—I can not use one 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 realize 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 this year’s path. Until then, I have envied anybody with a bookstore gift card.
