Confessions

I have to make a confession. Maybe even a few confessions.

I haven't bought anything on Buy Nothing Day for a decade now. Now, I live in Canada, where we don't have Black Friday per se, so it's perhaps not a big deal as it is in the US. But, on principle, I've gone along with it because I do have issues with consumption. These issues range from the extremely personal to the more widely social, but I've always taken some pride in my lower-consumption life, both in general and on Buy Nothing Day.

But I bought stuff today. And not only that, but I bought something from WalMart today.

(The horror...the horror.)

The things that I bought were all on my list of preparations that I want to make just in case. But I still don't feel so good about them, and I don't know if it's shopping in general that's getting to me, or shopping new instead of used, or shopping specifically on BND.

All told I spent about $75 today. I bought an air mattress, because I have a friend coming to stay with me for a few weeks, and need a place for her to sleep. I've also wanted one for awhile now, just in case people need to come stay with me if things go south. It's not an ideal solution, but I have room for this, and it's easily portable. I also bought a hand-crank radio and a flashlight to keep around for emergencies (happily, both on clearance and fairly cheap). And, finally, in an effort to start in on one of my competence projects, I picked up canning jars, a magnetic wand, extra lids, and a jar lifter so I can start learning how to preserve food.

I don't think there's much here that I should feel that badly about. I bought what I needed, and only things that I'd been planning to buy for awhile now (admittedly, I wasn't planning to get he radio today, but it was on my list, and newly on sale). But overall this is something that I feel fairly pleased about.

Happily, I do this very infrequently. My so-called shopping sprees are always of things that I need and usually happen annually, and that I can live with. Ideally, I'd like it to stop altogether. I'd prefer to have smaller local stores where I can get what I need from people that I know at least a bit. I'd rather buy from people I know, and businesses that I can feel comfortable with.

I wonder now if maybe it's not that I feel guilty, but that I find the whole shopping experience to be wretched. In general, I still find myself hating shopping, and especially hating shopping for things that are new and buried in the back of a huge overstocked store with underpaid employees. Part of my hatred comes from walking into a store and seeing so much stuff - on the shelves, being bought - and regretting the huge focus on consumption in our society. Part of it is hating being around crowds of people, and and another part is the helplessness of not being able to find what I want. And, part of it is probably a result of the horrible news of a WalMart employee killed this morning by stampeding customers. I understand that people are feeling the crunch this year, but this form of consumption - extreme, driven, and more concerned with stuff than with people - horifies me, and leaves me wanting even less involvement in the system han I had before, minimal as it was. I didn't hear this story until after I got home today, but it reaffirms my desire to find even more ways to buy locally and from smaller companies, and to not buy into any of the highly problematic elements of consumption.