It is the 30th of June in the year 2024 and I am halfway through my year of LESS. Six months into the Shopping Ban, I have accumulated some opinions about the value it adds, and the challenges it presents.
First of all, Hello
I have only recently awoken from the lengthy creative slumber that followed National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) in April. I look forward to NaPoWriMo every year, and I love the experience of pushing myself creatively to write so many poems in such a short time. However, as the great Julia Cameron advises in Week One of her creative recovery book The Artist’s Way, creating without rejuvenating your creative energies is akin to overfishing a stocked pond without re-stocking it.
“We fish in vain for the images we require. Our work dries up and we wonder why, “just when it was going so well.”
The truth is that work can dry up because it is going so well.”
- Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way
This year in particular, I needed a long and deep creative “nap” after so much fishing. So, hello again, I am proud to share that I remain committed to balance in my creative life, such that it occurs less fitfully for the next two thirds of my days.
Takeaways from 6 Months Without Shopping
Regretfully, however unrelatable this may feel to you as a reader, the main takeaway for me during the past six months is that it was quite easy to go from buying very little to buying “nothing.” Perhaps because of the way I designed my three lists, thinking out seasons ahead and listing items I expected to need, I have scarcely strayed from purchasing only approved items. There were, nevertheless, more interesting results of this somewhat intense self-restriction—I realized that, actually, self-restriction is not a skill I need more opportunities to practice.
Yes, you heard me right, I actually think I am quite fluent in self-restriction. As I mentioned in my blog post LESS Shopping: Three Lists for the Shopping Ban, I am actually quite prone to asceticism, the rigorous self-denial of worldly pleasures. This predisposition lends itself well to a challenge like this one, because I am well-versed in turning down and rejecting my desires. I am typically doing this rejecting in service of some “higher goal,” like turning down drinking in pursuit of a healthier lifestyle, and turning down trips I can’t afford to take so I can have more financial freedom. Still, I flex this muscle often and have come to see that there are other muscles that may need more attention. Curiously enough, self-restriction and self-discipline are not the same skill.
Also in that post is an interesting piece of foreshadowing I wish to highlight here:
[T]he shopping ban is not about asceticism, at least not for me… the entire point of downsizing and decluttering is to make room in my mind and my life for the really good stuff: Love, connection, community, joy, travel, spontaneity, silliness, purpose.
If, in trying to spend less money, I get to a point where I am disallowing myself joy, I have missed the mark.
It is quaint to me that I so specifically named what would become the major problem with completing the Shopping Ban. I wanted to approach the Shopping Ban as, primarily, a solution. My consumer debt had spiraled dramatically in the year prior because continental moves and extensive life changes are frequently expensive, and so is trying to survive late stage capitalism on one income. I looked to the Shopping Ban as an answer—no, THE answer—to finding financial peace.
It was this hopeful (naive) and sweeping (overextended) mindset that set me up to fall into the trap I identified, and labeled, before I even started. The truth is that my financial situation is more complicated and more fragmented than can be addressed by a Shopping Ban. The uglier truth is that my financial situation is worse right now than it was in January when I took this challenge on. In a big way (and I knew this), shopping is not the problem, and not shopping has not been the solution.
As radical as the choice to undertake a Shopping Ban would be for many, I came to learn that my average monthly spending includes less than 5% spent on “wants.” Sheesh, talk about a gut punch. I’m not harping on the value of small and incremental effort, but clearly reducing that 5% even to 0 would have a negligible effect on my overall financial wellbeing. The kicker? Reducing the 5% I spend on “wants” even to 4% has an effect that is decidedly not negligible on my quality of life.
The Times They are a-Changing
During the Spring, a rapid series of events effectively forced my hand on additional large-scale life changes. As I’ve shared previously, I have made huge sacrifices and major changes to my lifestyle in an attempt to attain an affordable life. There are also many sacrifices I have not made, not been able to make, or not been willing to make, and I acknowledge the privilege in having any options at all financially.
The largest changes I have made have included giving up my efforts to obtain Canadian citizenship, moving to a small town two hours away from where my family lives, and of course, giving up shopping entirely. In May I made another sacrifice that has changed the structure of my days and will impact my life materially in many ways. I have undergone a career shift, returning to a line of work I did right out of college, and in that move, I have given up the flexibility of working remotely.
If you recall, one of the privileges that allowed me to move to my small town in the first place was that I could work from anywhere. Going from a less-than-full-time, work-from-home, 100%-commission job in an industry with seasonal peaks to a full-time, in-person, request-PTO-if-you-need-time-off job has been the shock of a lifetime for my nervous system, but this was a necessary shift.
I feel beyond grateful that I found this job, that it is so near to my beloved little green house, that it is full-time and decently-paying with benefits, that I am currently physically able to meet it’s demands. As challenging as the transition has been, I am tuned into both the positive factors that allowed this job to find me, and the long-term potential impact of this kind of safety and stability. With a regular, relatively-steady paycheck, I will have a new kind of flexibility: the flexibility to budget, plan, save, and (eventually) move toward a lighter debt burden.
Even with this shift, I still can’t afford my life. Not yet. And the biggest obstacle to being able to afford my life is the absolutely unhinged amount of money I spend monthly on credit card minimum payments. Solving for that variable is, barring a windfall, a bit of a long game. I am home now, and I am not leaving. I am focused on nurturing the little baby ROOTS I have begun to put down. My head is in the game for a marathon, and I have become disillusioned with the sprint. With the path I have ahead of me, even a year-long Shopping Ban is something of a sprint.
No More Shopping Ban?
“Should you just quit the shopping ban?,” you might be asking. To be fair, I considered it. I have a bad habit of riding things out to the bitter end in some deranged act of ego and pride, because I’d rather suffer than reevaluate a decision that I’ve already made. I consider it a side effect of seeking metabolic efficiency (and THAT is a story for another day) but I keep track of it in any case. Part of me thinks that letting go of the Shopping Ban at this point would be a sign of growth; learning to let go of things that might not be serving me. A bigger part of me still thinks there is still a pearl of value to be had at the center, and the center is, counterintuitively, at the end.
Rather than giving up the Shopping Ban, I decided to re-evaluate it. I decided to hold in my mind the true context of my current experience, weigh it against the Shopping Ban as prescribed, and to wonder at any overhang. In doing so, I was able to identify some pain points, and I’ve also come up with particular modifications that I hope will help me get to the center, and the end, without sacrificing the journey.
Alterations for Fit
Instead of quitting the ban, I am looking to recommit with all the new knowledge I’ve gathered from the last six months.
The overriding, and I mean overriding, tension I’ve experienced around the ban is the way that it blanket vetoes all kinds of purchases regardless of source. I have literally zero trouble not spending my money at Walmart, but I feel like a big piece of my life is chunked away when I am avoiding flea markets, antique malls, farmer’s markets and garage sales because I am “not allowed” to spend money. It’s true that I am attempting to dramatically reduce my spending, and it is also true that I gain something thoroughly enriching from the aforementioned experiences, and truthfully I spend relatively little money in the process.
1. I am allowed to make secondhand purchases
In spirit I am a collector and a treasure hunter; maybe in another life I’d have been a cartographer, a museum curator, or a traveling trader. Few things ignite my interest and spark flow faster than being in a place with myriad items of unknown origin, and bonus points for a high concentration of analog and antiquated items. My home is thoughtfully adorned by transistor radios, record players, classic novels and all manner of “magic items” procured from my quests and voyages. It brings me enormous joy to be among these items in all their wonder, and though I am discerning, it robs me of presence when I am in my head about what I can and cannot do in these spaces.
This probably sounds small, or maybe it sounds like an excuse, but my reality is that life is a little emptier without such explorations and frankly, I am not willing to continue giving them up. When I wade down deep to the trenches of who I am, swimming among my values and desires, my dreams and my hopes, I sometimes stumble upon certain non-negotiables—things that have always been there, things that are truly part of the fabric of who I am; I call these things kernels. Kernels are the tiny yet durable pieces of your personality and being that define you, things without which you would not be wholly you. Weird as it is, secondhand treasure hunting is a true and verifiable kernel.
As such, my first change to the rules of the Shopping Ban is that I am allowed to make secondhand purchases, with discernment, provided that they are practical, beautiful, or true. It is my intention to primarily use the additional cash I have gathered from selling off my excess belongings for this purpose, but I am listing that here only as a guideline.
2. The Approved Shopping List has been simplified
There was something a bit oppressive about having a list of individual ITEMS I was allowed to buy, especially when that list was as long as it was. It felt like I was torn between adhering strictly to the list of explicit items, and honoring the spirit of the ban while not being an overbearing, exacting, punishing control-freak. I’m unmistakably lighter and more joyful when I am not being an overbearing, exacting, punishing control-freak, so I have made some changes to The Approved Shopping List which allow me to honor the spirit of the ban more deeply:
The (NEW) Approved Shopping List
Gender-affirming items, as necessary
Household nesting items
Creativity and pleasure boons
Items which encourage or allow for more physical movement
I can also purchase anything that must be replaced, but the original item has to be tossed or donated
This simplified list feels like an exhale. It is short enough to be memorized (gender, nesting, creativity, movement, replacements) and open-ended enough to allow for my judgment to be a factor. I didn’t even violate the previous list, but I felt the almost constant pull to violate it, and this list does not generate such a demand-avoidance drive in me, so it is more fit for purpose.
3. The Nonessentials List is eliminated
In the same vein, I do not need a list of what NOT to buy when my list of what TO buy is so concise, accessible, and case-specific. A way I think of these changes is that they are in service of providing guidelines rather than rules. Instead of attempting to govern and manage myself toward better financial habits, a sort of lifestyle “diet” that I am destined to rebel against and rebound from, I am applying a set of carefully crafted parameters inside which I can be free and play.
Of influence recently is a quote I came across, which caused something to click clearly into place in my mind.
“You cannot bully yourself into recovery.”
While this quote was not about finances, debt, or shopping, I have found that it applies quite broadly. Changes you want to be able to keep for life are lifestyle changes, and they must be entered into freely. They must leave room for enjoyment, for silliness, even for the occasional flare for indulgence. You cannot bully yourself into being whoever you think you should be, anymore than your partner or parent can wash out your true desires to replace them with their ideal lover or child. Even when we try to meet those kinds of inhumane demands, we suffer excessively. Yet we bring those same weapons home and use them to suppress our whims as frivolous.
I don’t want to bully myself into financial freedom. I want to live, love my life, dance, and feel joy on my way to financial freedom. I want to find balance, seek pleasure, make art, and build community on my way to financial freedom. I want financial freedom to be something I value, something I embody, not something I obligatorily pursue. The method must match the medium, and the medium is my random, hyper-present, ever-shifting, curious, cheerful existence.
It is my wish to continue with the Shopping Ban, and now that I know it from the inside, to bravely ask it to liquify and fit the the container of the life I aim to lead. In adapting the ban, I am attempting to honor it’s essence and it’s purpose, while at the same time infusing it with something of me. In this way it might even become sustainable enough to be invited on to stay.
I’m digging deep in an effort to be kind to myself. I hope that you will be kind to yourselves, and that if you hear that quiet inner-knowing telling you something isn’t for you, you are willing to compromise on that something before you compromise on your kernels.
Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash