Saturday, August 5, 2017

Why I hate stuff

The other day I noticed a beautiful quote.


And man, did I need to get myself into some things-chasing behavior before finally noticing what's going on.
I wrote in my Q2 recap about me buying stuff, or at least me having the tendency to buy stuff. Well, this kind of exploded the last two weeks. For some reason, I felt the urge to upgrade from my MacBook Air to something else. Because? Well, I convinced myself I really needed more memory and more RAM and a bigger screen. In a way this is true; the Air didn't quite work so well while recording music with my friends. It got some clicks and glitches and that just isn't ok. And has everything to do with memory shortage.

So what did I do? Don't laugh (or maybe you should).
I bought a 27" iMac. Worked beautifully. Accept the mouse was broken and the guy who sold it to me (with a story "I just don't use the iMac that often", but actually turned out to sell more iMacs on the marketplace) wasn't honest about it. Well, it's just a mouse, no big deal. 900 euro it was. But the story continues.

Quickly, I got bothered with me now owning a MacBook Air and an iMac. I loved the portability of the macbook, and as you could imagine, a 27" iMac isn't quite portable.
I wanted to sell my macbook but didn't want to loose portability.

Guess what happened. I convinced myself I needed a better macbook (dude!). So I found a good deal on the marketplace and bought a MacBook Pro and sold the iMac. 675 out, 900 in. Did I mention I also did a memory upgrade on the iMac in the meantime? We're talking about these event happening in one week by the way...

So with the MacBook Pro (older generation but super speedy) I wanted an SSD. Because hey. Disk drives are 2000-ish and it's the big data generation here. So, I bought a 1TB SSD for another 200, put it in the macbook, installed the thing and was happy. More or less break-even so that was fine. For a day. (What? Yeah... I know). Because something popped up on the marketplace: a MacBook Pro retina with a lot of accessories for a sharp price. I jumped on it (this time thinking I could make a little profit, sell the macbook and accessories apart from each other) an got the thing the next day. Whoopa. Another 800 euro. All fine, but I loved the feel of the Retina. It's lighter, a bit sleeker look and remarkably fast. So. Guess what. I didn't keep that one, but convinced myself I wanted a retina with full specs (maxed out RAM, better processor). And guess what, since everything is for sale on the marketplace, I got one the very freakin' next day. For 950.

So count with me.

iMac 900
Macbook 1 plus SSD 875
Macbook 2 800
Macbook 3 950
iMac sold for 900
MacBook Air sold for 400

Total in stock 2225 worth of macbook crap.

Put the retina and accessories (keyboards, mouses, things) on the marketplace for sale.
And guess what. I got in-cre-de-bly impatient. All of a sudden I got my "I'm in debt" feeling back. I want to get rid of it and have money in my account!

It's not like I'm broke or anything, but first I wanted all these goddamned things, and now I can't wait to get rid of them again! I think I will at least play even with everything, but I just don't want to be busy with it now. It kind of feels like an addiction and I want to let it go, which might take a little longer than I hoped for, especially when I noticed how many of these things and stuff there actually are on the marketplace. The stupidity in this whole act is only just beginning to settle in since I now got the feeling I could have thought about this a bit more and buy just one good macbook that will last me for years and not go around with the whole buy-sell strategy.

Anyway. What's really going on here? I thought about that for I while (though thinking rarely does any good when I'm compensating something) and meditated on it for a while (which usually is a lot better but also the last thing I seem to want to be doing while in a thinking-loop). Conclusion is this.

I kind of feel lost.

I'm quickly loosing interest in my work and social life and kind of don't know what I want to do with my life. I'm just not feeling very alive, I'm more or less feeling trapped in some kind of reality and my mind wants out but it doesn't see it's putting me there itself. I'm looking for other jobs, for studies and of course for stuff to buy and sell as a big distraction from what's really going on: living a meaningful life.

But where did the conclusion came from? It actually happend while helping my parents finding a computer at the media market. They wanted a laptop (no, not an apple, no deal there) and since I'm more or less the family geek (and I live around the corner of the media market) it was a logical choice to be asked for help. So I joined them on the hunt. The minute I saw all these computers there (and all the other plastic short-lifecycle terrible quality) I really, really got a sick feeling in my gut. Blegh. Why do we "need" all these things? Do they really make us happy? Of course not!! But it's so well conditioned into our minds that if we feel down or depressed (or just a bit unhappy) that we need to go and buy stuff/do things (we need to pay for).

At first, I was moping I had a better deal at home, especially when my parents also needed office and anti virus, but I managed to take a little distance and letting them decide what they wanted, it's their money anyway. But it really struck me and I really felt sick for me buying shit all the time. Ok, it's a lot better then it was a couple of years ago where I bought everything brand new, at least I don't loose that much on it nowadays, but it's the chasing thing, the "I don't know what to do with my life so I go on a massive stuff-hunt" that really sickens me out.

Maybe I just needed to hit the wall this hard before it finally got to me, but it's just not quite understandable that me, the guy who sold freakin' everything he owned to get out of debt, now uses all his well earned money on stuff (convincing myself it's a no-brainer deal which I can make profitable, something I kind of doubt right now). It's the convincing part that's fairly doing all the damage. All I need to do is sit down, let go of my phone/laptop, let go of marketplace, take a couple of deep breaths and remember I'm just fine without anything.

All I need is the air that I breath... and maybe some food now and then.

So I feel my system turning around the 180 degrees again. Right now I feel the urge to sell e-ve-ry-thing (including all the studio stuff I bought) and just watch my asses pile get bigger and just hang around and simply live a bit more. And that's just the hard thing, somewhere deep inside me there's this feeling I'm not good enough and I need to be a better version of me (including better and more stuff) to make myself count in the world. And damned, this time it's really, really hard to be aware of that creepy little voice inside myself taking me down and not staying in these old ways of dealing with it.

Could use a little support here since I'm not always the one feeling my own best friend...


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