more is less?

[flea]

I'm suffering from shopaholia lately - mostly *window* shopaholia, which means it's better for our finances than the other kind. Reasons for this affliction include my basic temperment, my mother's visit, the upcoming christmas shopping season and the proliferation of catalogs in our mailbox, our consumer society, and no doubt others.

Yes, reader, I am one of those silly conflicted fools who can declare "I want to live more simply!" and immediately sit down to make a shopping list of what I need to live more simply. I'm doing it with clothes at the moment; I'm contemplating doing the Dress a Day closet makeover test (http://www.dressaday.com/2007/07/moths-in-pocketbook-caution-long-entry.html), and stowing away everything I am "meh" on, only allowing myself to wear "love!" items for a week, or a month, or whatever turns out to be practical. I am contemplating making a list of all the things I desire, for the greater christmas shopification of my relatives. I am contemplating giving up spending money on myself for a month or two. I am contemplating swearing off ebay. I am regularly searching ebay for things I desire. (I am only rarely buying them.)

It's all making me sick, and I know the answer is to STOP with the shopaholia and use the time more wisely, with zen meditations, or podcast listening, or tea ceremonies, or something.

And then, back to ebay I go, looking for the privo ballet flat or the nine west mock croc retro style purse or the eileen fisher wool/cashmere/nylon boucle cardigan.

Blah.

Comments

[veejane.livejournal.com]

I find there's a certain pleasure in the self-restraint of knowing you want something and are too frugal to buy it. Possibly I have turned Puritanism into a fetish.

I don't think you can do the happy-only thing with your wardrobe, though. I seem to recall that you don't own any clothes (compared to me), so if you are meh about even a few of them, you will have to go to work naked.

[lala-lisa.livejournal.com]

thanks for posting that Dress a Day link! I've gotten out of the habit of checking it since I changed jobs and missed that one.

Maybe if you think of the shopaholia (but, really, only the window kind)as a kind of meditation it would help stop you from feeling so bad about it. It's just a little break for your brain, a daydream, where you look at pretty things and imagine a place for them in your life.