In a life where the refrain is always “more, more, more...”

...I am trying to figure out how to be comfortable saying, “I’m good, thanks.”

Disclaimer: I know everything I’m about to write about today comes from A LOT of privilege. Some I’ve worked for, but I recognize that a great deal of it is due to the circumstances I was born into. This experience will not reflect everyone’s reality, but perhaps it will reflect the reality for some.

When I was a kid, I remember the first year I was taught to make a wishlist for Christmas. I’m pretty sure I went through the Toys R Us catalog, if that’s any indication of the year. I remember taking the time to build a massive table in Microsoft Word. It was a labor of love that required far too many hours, and it was at least three pages long. From that time on—I think it must have been middle school—I built wishlists. And I don’t just mean for Christmas. I maintained them year round for my own reference. It helped me prioritize and budget.

But even more than that, it made me realize I had such a focus on affording my wants. When my allowance was small, I could pretty much only buy myself one thing every few months. And that “thing” was absolutely always a video game. I memorized the common prices for video games, calculated the tax at each price point, wrote them all down on a sticky note, and pressed it against my wall in my room. That sticky note dictated most of my life goals, if I’m perfectly honest.

Basically, all my life, I’ve been a creature of want and of wants just out of reach. When I wrote wishlists, there were certain items I yearned for, certain items I prayed to receive for Christmas because if I didn’t, I had no idea when I would be able to afford then.

I am fortunate that post-college, I immediately accepted a job offer in the field I majored in and now make a solid living. It’s been a weird transition, going form saving for years for half of a Nintendo Wii to buying a Nintendo Switch on little more than a whim. For years, I built wishlists, prioritized the items contained within, and systematically bought each one.

And yet, the creature of want inside me still yawns wide, waiting for a next meal.

To a certain extent, I’ve viewed my shopping lists and wishlists as sorts of goals to be achieved, tasks to be accomplished. And as I do with all my goals, I’m fueled by an intense desire to achieve them. So whenever I solved one problem, I would look for the next one to solve.

And then, sometime in the last year, I kind of…ran out.

Less than five years ago, I stared at my wishlist in near tears, trying to figure out how to afford new curtains and new pillows. And now, I press 'buy' on a cute new mug when I already have more than a cabinet can hold. When I went to build a wishlist this last year, knowing my parents like having a variety of items at my birthday/Christmas so that what they gift me with is still a surprise, I stressed because I couldn’t make the list long enough. There was very little else I wanted.

For whatever reason, this realization sent me into free fall. Like someone had just pulled out the rug from under me. I had never considered myself that much of a material person. Half my home is furnished by Target and the other half by the less-expensive side of Wayfair. I’ve never been picky about name brand. So being thrown by not wanting to buy things was completely unexpected. I had never prepared myself for such a feeling; had never thought I’d end up in a place with such a feeling.

Aren’t human beings creatures of want? Chasing after the next big thing? I listen to coworkers wax on about digital doorbells with cameras, vacations to resorts in other countries, the new pool they put in, and I just…don’t…care? In the sense that I'm not jealous. In the sense that I don't want that life for myself. And I’m uncomfortable. Because what am I missing? If everyone around me is talking about these topics, then am I missing some integral piece of the human experience? Did I miss a memo that was supposed to arrive?

However, I don’t think this is human nature. I think, instead, its a culture of consumerism, one I’ve felt growing up specifically in America, though it’s possible a similar culture pervades in other countries.

Now I say this with only my own personal experience to back it up. I don’t have statistics or facts to back up this personal experience. Though I know I’ve heard others reference a similar experience before (again, to be fair, I don’t have specifics; just memories of anecdotes which are potentially fallible). But it’s been interesting and uncomfortable to be subject to such an experience and become very aware of the experience over the last year.

Certainly I believe this feeling was strongly brought on by the need to quarantine during the current global pandemic. When you’re stuck sitting home, eventually you ache for some way to be productive. My solution was to buy things I needed. Or wanted. If I can’t do anything else, I might as well make that wishlist shorter. The weirdest part was ultimately running out of things I wanted to buy. At least things I wanted badly enough that it was worth spending the money.

That was the first time I recognized just how hungry consumerism could be.

Like I said, it was like the floor dropped out beneath me. Like I had been set adrift in space and someone had cut my tether. Where was my solid ground? Aren’t I supposed to want something? But I would look around my home and think, where is the hole? And there wasn’t one. I had bookshelves full of books to read that I actually wanted to read. Video games downloaded onto my Nintendo Switch that I actually wanted to play. My home decorated exactly how I had always dreamed it would be. A closet full of clothes that I loved. I had enough.

So why keep wanting?

I still click on the stupid advertising emails that get sent to my inbox on the daily. I think, “That is a cute pair of boots,” though I have multiple pairs for every type of occasion. I think, “That’s a comfy looking dress,” when I wear maybe one dress a week even though I own maybe 12. Why does this feeling persist?

I have to keep reminding myself that buying things isn’t “progress.” The things that I buy might lead me to progress but the things themselves are not the progress.

There are so many ways we see this play out in our society. Think of a time you paid for a gym membership at a gym you never visited. Think when you bought the book everyone was talking about only to leave it unopened and collecting dust on your nightstand. We buy things for the person we want to be and then think that is the same thing as being that person.

In a world where the things we buy are regularly growing cheaper and less sustainable, the issue of obsessive consumerism is given greater opportunity to thrive, since we have to keep buying new things to replace the old. Not to mention that when it comes to the topic of entertainment, we constantly want to be part of the cultural conversation, rather than risking missing out. Regardless of whether or not such things reflect who we really are.

So what’s the solution? Honestly…you tell me. This is a journey I’m still on. I’m browsing shopping websites less often. I’m focussing my time on writing and reading and playing video games, enjoying the things I already purchased before purchasing yet more. Pre-pandemic, I spent a lot more time shopping in person, just for something to do, and since I’m not really participating in that activity at the moment, that helps as well.

At the end of the day, I guess my current thought is…question the culture. Question the desire to buy something. Will it actually make your life better? Or will it just make you perceive your life to be better? And do you actually want the thing in the first place or do you just want to “keep up with the Joneses?”

Again, I recognize this comes from a place of extreme privilege. There are so many people in the world who wish for this problem. Which makes it so much harder for me to think about this topic. But I also think that is exactly why this topic is important. Why are we buying things we don’t need—don’t even want—when others don’t have enough? This isn’t meant to be a guilt-trip either. But I do think it’s something worth considering when you’re contemplating want.

Where I am now is being comfortable just…waiting. Just because there’s a dollar in my paycheck doesn’t mean it needs to be budgeted. Maybe I don’t spend it because there’s nothing I want. Maybe that means I’m able to save a little more for the future or maybe that means I can donate more to someone who needs it more than I do. It’s a strange, almost unsettling feeling, because it’s not a goal to achieve then but a jar to fill—and getting to the brim of the jar isn’t the goal.

I want the yawning chasm of want to close inside me. I need to learn that buying something isn’t the same thing as gaining value in my life. That there is actually no correlation between the two ideas. The little kid inside me who couldn’t imagine holding a $20 bill doesn’t need to rule my life now. She has what she needs.

There are more important things.

One of the hardest things I still have to learn is how to be unproductive.

Screenshot from Animal Crossing: New Horizons as captured in tweet from @_baomii

I like to think of myself as “productive girl extraordinaire.” Like that makes me some sort of superhero. I think I’d like a cape (I have a cosplay I do with one and it’s sooooo comfy). At the end of the day, when I’m feeling down, I run through my day and tally up my accomplishments. I read this many books (or pages, at least). I wrote this many words. I cleaned this and that and…

When I relay this to others, sometimes, I’m just met with wide eyes and the question, “How?” Not going to lie, I sort of live for that. I love that I shrug and just say, “I don’t even know.” To a certain extent, I don’t. To a certain extent, I do.

It’s because I don’t know how to be unproductive.

To be perfectly honest, I blame my schooling for this. I think a lot of us can. At one point in high school, I remember I was taking 3 AP classes, in a musical at a community theater, house manager for my high school’s play, in show choir right in the middle of show choir season, trying to fit in volunteering, and applying for college. I became an expert at working on homework from classes early in the day during classes I sat in late in the day. I remember crying over AP Physics homework in the dressing room during the musical’s dress rehearsal while six-year-olds got into trouble nearby. I was lucky to get more than 6 hours of sleep a night and most of that was spent on the couch where I passed out studying.

I came to think that this was what life was supposed to look like. Between school, stacks on stacks of homework, and extracurriculars, I only had time to spare for sleeping and eating, and sometimes not even that. I didn’t have free time. I watched TV while completing my homework because that was the only time available. I worked on writing during study hall on the rare occasion that homework was light that day.

College was a little like that too, though add in a job on top of that. Any free time I had then was spent with friends or doing club activities. Even when I was too tired. Which was always. It got to the point that one weekend my senior year, my body just shut down at the prospect of spending time volunteering with my friends, forcing me to spend the weekend in bed. And I felt unbelievably guilty. I was missing out on experiences. I would fail to have the right social media posts and be left out of inside jokes. I was the poster child of FOMO before I realized that was even a thing.

Getting out of school and into the quote-unquote “real world” was WILD. Because suddenly, I had gaps of unscheduled time. What is this thing? No one taught me how to deal with an hour! Where were the math problems? The three page essay? What, I’m just supposed to fill this with whatever? Did I miss this day of school?

So my strategy was to fill the time with my own assignments. Reading books is productive, because I’m a writer and I need to know the current state of the market. Writing my novels is productive because, again, I’m a writer. Watching very specific TV shows can be productive, because I can learn writing skills from them. Going out with friends is productive, because aren’t there social milestones I’m supposed to be reaching?

Most video games were off the table. If was playing a video game, especially one that didn’t have an intricate plot to learn from, couldn’t I be spending this shred of time writing? Puzzles and coloring books were only for when my anxiety reached a fever pitch. Cooking I even scrapped. I was cooking for one, after all. I could get takeout instead, which reclaimed the all-important writing time.

And then the pandemic happened.

Like most lives, mine was entirely changed. It didn’t happen entirely overnight. At first, it just meant I could work from home everyday. Which seemed a bit like a snow day. But it wasn’t long before I realized I had huge swaths of time. No more commute. No more working out at my boxing club. I didn’t have to spend a bunch of time getting dressed nice for work or even putting on makeup. Social plans were a strange myth, like a dream I once had.

My writing dried up as well. I was facing a roadblock in my novel, and I already wasn’t used to working on writing from home. Plus, you know, mental exhaustion from a global pandemic. It made sense to take a break, especially when we were still at the point where we figured this pandemic wouldn’t last more than a few weeks.

Which left me time. And nothing but thoughts to fill it.

At first, I looked at the time as an opportunity to get more done than usual. I could write, maybe not the novel I’d been working on pre-pandemic but something else. I could read ALL the books. Especially after I bought an e-reader. I could even deep clean my home. For crying out loud, I learned how to clean the burners on my electric stovetop! I organized literally everything. My closets, my drawers, my clothes, my books. To the point that I ran out of stuff to organize.

And still there was time.

I was burned out. Exhausted by the state of the world and unsure what to do with my exhaustion. After days where the time available to me grew maddening, I ended up buying Animal Crossing: New Horizons though I had no intention to do so, at least not in a world without a pandemic. But I referred to playing the game as “completing my in-game chores for the day.” Even that I viewed as a to-do list.

I bought puzzles and more video games, but guilt started to weigh on my shoulders as I enjoyed them. These games and puzzles were not a productive use of my time. Not when I could be cleaning something else. Not when I could be finishing another book on my never-ending TBR (to-be-read). Not when I could be writing, even if the thought of doing so felt more like taking a cheese-grater to my forehead in a world of so much darkness and anxiety.

I write about this like I’ve figured my way out of this guilt. Truth is, I definitely haven’t. I had so much time that I decided to spend it writing a blog! I have a gameplay video from the YouTube channel Game Grumps playing in the background, but still I have to working on something productive so I’m drafting a blog post. I don’t like “wasting time.”

A few months ago, however, I came across a tweet on Twitter that depicted a screenshot from the game Animal Crossing: New Horizons that I spent so much time playing in the first few months of the pandemic. In one of the updates to the game that dropped after the initial release, the player was given the ability to swim in the ocean water surrounding your little island paradise, where you had the chance to interact with the character Pascal. When you did, he would offer you a piece of advice. Sometimes, it’s absolute nonsense that makes me smirk. But then the Twitter user @_baomii shared the screenshot at the top of this blog post:

“[…] if you waste your time doing something you enjoy, then you don’t waste time.”

I mean.

Wow.

To have that quote hit me while in the midst of a pandemic where I’m dealing with that exact guilt, and in a game that specifically fits that quote, a game I play, was disruptive to my typical train of thought.

Sometimes, I fall into this trap where I think absolutely every little thing I do is building a sort of life resume. I read the book that people will respect me for reading. I write books that someday people will respect me for writing. I go out with friends on nights when I’m far too tired because that will fill up some imaginary meter that wins me a social prize that doesn’t exist.

A few years ago, I came across a quote in the book We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson that took me completely by surprise: “Memories aren’t currency to spend; they’re us.” (p. 175)

In case it’s not clear by the fact that I’m able to reference this quote complete with page number, this thought struck me enough that I wrote it down. And I’m reminded of it again now as I struggle to take time doing unproductive things just because I want to. Or just pursue things without a clear value to “my future” whatever that means, just because they’re things I want to try.

For example, I started writing poetry during the pandemic for the first time since college because I needed to emotionally, even though I don’t know if I’ll ever share it. I started writing a blog because I wanted to, not necessarily because I thought it would be good for my “writing career.” I’ve spent more than a rational amount of time playing the games Two Point Hospital, Stardew Valley, and PowerWash Simulator (yes, really; I blame Markiplier’s videos of the game on YouTube). I’ve listed to podcasts about fictional desert towns (Welcome to Nightvale), unsolved mysteries and conspiracy theories (Red Web), and cults (The Cult Podcast). I started hiking and riding my bike. I held virtual game nights with friends.

And you know what all this unproductive time has enabled me to do? I edited a book that I thought I had abandoned, to the point that I am now sending that work out to literary agents. The book I abandoned at the beginning of the pandemic? I took the time to replot the thing and wrote a brand new draft I'm about to start editing. My brain feels less crowded.

I think this will always be lesson for me to learn. Like I said, it’s Sunday night and I’m writing a blog post. Still a productive thing, though one I want to do. Once I’m done, I’m closing my laptop and putting my attention to YouTube videos of a video game I grew up with, just because it sounds chill. It’s not productive but it makes my heart less heavy.

That’s enough to make it worthwhile.

References:

Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Nintendo Switch, 2020.

C A M [@_baomii]. “the way i needed to hear this” Twitter, 3 July 2020, https://twitter.com/

_baomii/status/1278922763818774528

Hutchinson, Shaun David. We Are the Ants. Simon Pulse, 2016.

A love letter to my grandmother (before dementia takes you away completely).

On my eighteenth birthday (which was also Thanksgiving), we went out to dinner. At the table, you leaned in and asked, “Should I tell the waiter that it’s your birthday?” I was turning eighteen, passing into adulthood while still carrying my teen years and the idea of a restaurant’s worth of eyes on me was not a welcome one. I told you no. But the next time the waiter came over, you blurted, “It’s her birthday!” An entire restaurant sang to me on Thanksgiving, awkward and wonderful. Once it was over, you fretted. “Are you mad at me?” But I just grinned. “Of course not. I love that you didn’t care and just did that!” You had never seemed to me the wild one, the one to do what she wanted, to live free and daring.

That is how I will remember you.

You don’t remember your last home anymore. You remember every house you occupied before that, the ones where you grew up, the ones where you raised a family of your very own, but you don’t remember the house where you invited your grandchildren. But I do. I remember that home better than the first one I lived in. While Mom and Dad worked, you would watch me and my brother. You and Grandpa. I remember Price is Right with Grandpa while you washed dishes in the kitchen. I remember how you kept a collection of taped cartoons ready for the grandchildren to watch when we took over the living room TV. Your TV. The family room belonged to Grandpa, but the living room was yours. But you were willing to share.

You don’t remember my childhood anymore. But I do. I remember in elementary school when we read the book Flat Stanley. We were assigned to create our own and send them to family out of state. I didn’t have family out of state so I sent “Flat Amy” to you. I found the assignment again recently. I paged through your hand-written notes that accompanied pictures you arranged. Flat Amy helping Grandpa fill the bird feed. Flat Amy making cookies with you. Flat Amy watching Powerpuff Girls. You turned on that show for the picture because you knew it was my favorite.

And now, seeing the memories, and now, realizing what they meant, and now, as an adult and not a child, I am overwhelmed to tears to see how much a simple act meant so much love.

You are not gone. But also, you are. It’s the theory of the multiverse, like every possible version of the universe, every choice we could have made sits on top of each other. But the single point where the multiverse collides is in a human form and that human form is you. My heart breaks and my heart heals to see you.

I visit you now and your eyes light up. Sometimes, you second-guess my name. Sometimes, you second-guess our relationship. You cycle through the options out loud, “Coworker? Friend? Daughter? Cousin?”

“Granddaughter,” I tell you. The fact that I need to tell you that should burden me with tears, but it doesn’t. I warm, even though you’re not sure. I’m unworried by the fact that it feels like I’m guiding a preschooler to the right word.

Because your eyes still light up to see me. You sit up and pull me into a hug. You don’t always know my name or my relationship to you but you want to touch me, to hold me tight, to offer your love and feel it reflected back in return. You don’t know who I am but you know that I love you and right now, that’s all that matters.

Isn’t it all that ever matters?

You want to get a divorce, you confide in us. Why? Because you want to marry Grandpa. “You want to divorce Grandpa. So you can marry Grandpa.” Unfettered, you say, “Yes.” We try to explain your circular logic, but when Mom turns her back on the conversation, you start mouthing words to me, plotting your plan of divorce and marriage to the same man with your trusted confidant me. And while my head spins as I try to chase the circle you run through, warmth blossoms in my heart. Because I am your confidant in your plot. (Not to mention you love Grandpa with a passion that defies reason, his own passing fifteen years prior nothing more than an inconvenience.)

Stubborn, so stubborn. This is the woman I will remember, the woman who before and after persists. You do things your own way and resist persuasion to any other. But you love, still you love. You face uncertain memories, forgotten names, and still you ask to hug me and kiss me on the cheek. Some days you know my name, but all days you know you love me. And in all days, I know I love you. In that, we are still the same.

And though it is strange to say, I consider myself lucky to get to know this version of you in the midst of dementia. You have been stubborn all the days I have known you but now you are also fearless. You act a six-year-old child when Mom tells you—her mom—to wash your hands, but I coax you in to using hand sanitizer that smells like pumpkins. You tell Mom that you want to find a man and giggle at the thought, like a schoolgirl. I learn who you were before I was born firsthand, not just in stories.

Someday, you will be gone. Just like we all will be. I wonder which version of you I will remember most fervently. But all versions of you are the real one. The stubborn woman who knows what she wants and demands it unapologetically. The woman who loves me no matter who I am or what I choose.

Thank you for letting me get to know every version of you. No matter what version you show me next, I am lucky to know you.