things i didn't buy this month
may non-zine of the month
I wrote the essay below and then read something on Substack — one of those pieces where the writer bemoans X, Y, and Z that all the writers are doing, and how it’s sentimental trash — and then I worried: Am I just writing uninteresting, sentimental trash?
I’m always making things about me that aren’t actually about me!
Anyway, I’m nervous to send this out — not because it’s at all salacious, but because, well, I have a hard time knowing if a piece of writing was just useful for me write (so I could clarify what I think), or if it’s also useful in some way to other people. A work in progress :)
A few other updates:
The June zine will be a Full Moon Almanac for June-December (all the full moon dates! Prompts for reflection!), plus if you enjoyed this craft essay, I have another on the way…
At the end of this month, I’m going to be launching a New, Participatory Thing…get your star stickers ready!
There’s a photo of a very stoned Mamsy at the end of this newsletter <3
With love,
portia
In college, I had a friend with excellent taste, always beautifully dressed, her apartment lovingly styled – complete with all the aspirational French-chic-meets-Audrey-Hepburn of the early aughts.
Every month, this friend posted a list on her blog: “Things I Didn’t Buy This Month.”
I thought it was a little silly; I dislike shopping for clothes or home goods (don’t worry, I’ll get to the part where I tell you what I do like to shop for), and my tastes and budget were, at that time, happily aligned: Forever 21 and tips from the bar where I waitressed.
I understand a little more, now, the appeal of a “Things I Didn’t Buy” list
— one part a way of possessing the things without having to buy them
— one part self-congratulatory affirmation (“I am responsible with my money”).
I don’t mean to sound harsh – I’m saying all this to myself, too, as I think about the hundreds (thousands!) of screenshots on my phone and computer, captures of clothes, shoes, sewing patterns, earrings, craft supplies, and – more than anything else – fabric (my wish list at Stonemountain and Daughter is embarrassingly long). When I think about the hours and hours and hours I’ve spent shopping on that tiny screen!
Why does taking these photos feel necessary in the moment? I rarely go back to look at them. It’s like an impulsive desire, pinned in my photo album like a dead insect.
The screen shots of fabric – yards and yards of fabric – when I took the photos, I imagined them as fabulous, perfect garments, part of a closet full of gorgeous, me-made clothes.
Really though, what I imagined was the life where I have the time to sew all the beautiful clothes I would like to have. Perhaps I could make time now, but at the cost of other things I want more than time to sew (time to write, time with R, time to exercise and sleep and read). I sew slowly, piecemeal, far less than I desire.
So the list of things I did not buy this month is a story about the life I don’t have.
Is it useful to spend energy and time yearning for that life?
Does it feel good?
Honestly, when I think about it, it feels more like an ever-growing string of cans rattling along behind me, clattering out my lack, my lack, my lack!
And where can I (authentically) go from here?
When I sat down and began this essay, I thought I would be making a zine of all the things I didn’t buy this month – because there is pleasure to be found in savoring our desires, in a mild kind of covetousness.
But I am too aware of the frivolity of my own covetousness to let it simply be a pleasure, an unadorned list.
At other times in my life, the list of things I didn’t buy this month could just as easily have included “fresh produce,” or “gas so I could drive to visit a friend,” or “preventative dental work,” or any number of things that bring no pleasure to desire, because inherent in desire is absence, lack of possession, inaccessibility. There are too many people whose desires – whose needs, really – bring only angst, only discomfort, only suffering of some degree.
How do I reconcile these ideas: That coveting (and possessing) beautiful, desired things is both deeply human1 – not just the privilege of the rich – and also (usually) deeply capitalist. That the desire for beauty exists alongside poverty, wealth disparity that’s truly dystopian, and so much — so much — unnecessary suffering.
Is my “didn’t buy” list just an affirmation of my own individual morality, protecting only my own individual bank account?
Is curbing the impulse to buy good for my soul?
Should I be doing more for others?
Probably yes to all of these.
It’s not so fraught, I want to tell myself. I could be binging Shein haul videos, buying knockoffs from Temu. My screenshots aren't that big of a deal. It's not that deep!
But I come back to this: investing too much of my desire in things has a cost beyond money.
I'm not trying to feel, like, an intense guilt about it, but I don't want to spend my wild and precious life taking screenshots of things I'd like to own!
Better, perhaps, to spend more time looking at the things I have, the creatures and people I love, making active choices about how I spend my hours (my days, my life), more time being in my body in the world, rather than feeling – whatever it is I feel when I think about all the things I didn’t buy this month
Seeing some cosmic tally of how many hours I've spent browsing things I didn't buy would devastate me, I'm sure. Probably more than tallying the money I did spend frivolously. Somehow there was a time before the endless browse (and it was when I was susceptible to all the advertisements for toys and sugary cereal that played between the cartoons I binged). But as soon as I had any disposable income, there were shinies to look at and dream about spending it on.
I've been thinking about scrolling and phones a lot lately during my Weeks of Leisure Between Things and it's a very similar trap. Product pictures, ads, apps, and the phone are all designed by experts to get you never stop looking and scrolling. Or to ever feel complete and free of want. But once you do succumb, people are there to criticize you for wanting, which makes you feel worse, and like you need to fill that void and stop failing Once And For All.
You're right that what you want is not the fabric but what it represents, and it's a life where you have all the free time you could want (and would never ever waste!). I've found a lot of freedom in acknowledging that the battle against the capitalist impulses isn't a fair fight.