Fuck you Sephora.

No, I do not “need” that. There’s a reason I left my shopping cart without actually making a purchase. I’m not even subscribed to your emails, again, for a fucking reason. Fuck you Morphe, for pulling the same shit, don’t send me daily emails reminding me to buy bullshit. And fuck you Netflix, a big fuck you, how is it that I can unsubscribe from your emails, and cancel my account and you STILL send me the oh so exciting new releases.

I get it, companies want to make money and retain customers. But fuck am I frustrated with this blatant manipulation. The difficulty in retraining consumer habits is underestimated. Retraining those habits as a naturally impulsive person, with the constant bombardment of advertising…kill me now.

At least it’s become a source of anger, rather than an actual “reminder” to go buy whatever random thing I need absofuckinglutly do not need. Each day it becomes more apparent that this is a non-linear process, and each day I’m accepting this and while it’s frustrating, I’m being kind to myself. There’s no sense in berating myself for slipping up, I may as well graciously accept it, critically look at it, rectify it if possible, and do my best to stick with my values in the future.

Makeup and beauty stuff(lotions, perfume etc.) have historically been my week spot. Thank god I don’t wear lipstick… All those things suck me right in, so pretty, so shiny, smelling so lovely.  I’m slowly but surely selling all my high-end stuff, and working my way one by one through perfumes and whatnot. The goal is to minimize my makeup and the routine that goes with it. The cluttered bathroom counters, the full drawers, and then the shoebox in the closet full of makeup…not nessecary.

I’m torn between morning creativity, time managment and decision making fatiuge. I do truly love being creative with makeup, I get actual joy from it. I also think I can get that same joy and creativity from less. I counted eyeshadow a bit back, 81 if memory serves me well. out of those, there are ~30 that I actually like and will use, and in that 30, maybe 6 that get true regular usage. So they can go. Chances are I can be totally happy with one little $5 cruelty-free, drugstore palette to replace hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of flashy clunky chunky “high-end” palettes. That $40 blush…how about a $4 dupe?

But, time, and decision making fatigue. Do I really have time to putter around for 30 mins doing makeup in the morning? honestly, no, I have far more pressing things to do. 30 minutes of creative makeup can be saved for the weekends, for fun time after responsibilities. Is it unconsciously exhausting me to make so many morning decisions, I shouldn’t be choosing between 5 mascaras. There should just be one that does the job each day. I can have a cycling basic look, use a few colours, different blush for a week, switch it up the next week. But do the same thing each day. It’ll save time and brain energy!

With that said! I still have to fight against impulsivity. I don’t want to fill up my makeup area with new frugal options before using up things I need to use, or selling off the expensive stuff. At this moment I’m writing because I caught myself getting dressed to head to Walgreens, to buy 1 specific replacement, then caught myself thinking about what else I could possibly get. Obviously not the time for purchasing things.

There was also an incident the other day. I found a bunch of receipts and did a tour, returning around $500 of stuff to Costco, Sephora, kohls and rite aid. And yet, I managed to walk out of Sephora with $39 of shit I liked. My return was $45. I basically returned stuff and immediately replaced it. Needless to say, I didn’t even open it when I got home, it sits at the front door for returning. Same with kohls. Why did I look at the clearance beauty section? I was only there to return! I had to walk clear across the store to look at the beauty stuff. I left with a nice little bundle of SUCH GREAT DEALS. Yeah, whoops. They are also in a bag at the front door to go back.

So, a plan is needed for these moments. And acknowledgment is needed for past success. When I return things that is all I will do. If I need to get food at Costco, and do a return. They will be two separate trips, the gas is wasteful, but mentally I need separation between minimizing and purchasing. I now am recognizing these patterns, the flaws, the impulsivity.

It seems within reach to gradually undo this consumer mind.

 

Recalibration.

 

Impulsivity paired with the brilliance of today’s marketing and consumer society…it’s a bit of a disaster.

So, I’m undoing the past ADHD behaviour. All the past “OOOH shiny” moments. Those impulsive moments led me to have 42 perfumes, 26 chapsticks, up to 200 different teas, god knows what else. There might as well be neon signs around anything “new”, anything “limited edition”. I’d get sucked in every damn time. No longer.

I decided to start removing the things I just don’t love. Each of those items are distractors, things that lead to decision making fatigue. 42 perfumes…really? There just no need. None.  It just means I have to think more about which one to put on each day. I certainly do not love 42 different scents. I actually love closer to 5, just guessing here. However – I do love scents, in general. My current method is to use them up one at a time, although I still have more than 30 perfumes, I only make a decision about once a week. Which perfume to start on after I finish up one. Even in that decision, I removed some exhaustion; whichever perfume has the least amount goes first. Using these up will get more challenging as time goes on, but it lets me reduce the overall clutter faster. Behavioural momentum!

Perfume is just one tiny area. That same clutter in different forms is all around me. it all distracts me, it all exhausts me, it all makes it even harder to focus. The odds are already against me when it comes to focus and follow through. Why have I created a living environment that further increases the odds against me?

There’s no guilt here, and no one should feel guilty for doing that same sort of thing. I’ve taken to looking at my behaviour critically, but constructively. To accepting and understanding how the perfect storm of society, consumerism, depression and the impulsivity of ADHD got me here. And it’s absolutely OK, because I don’t need to stay here. Recalibration is always an option.

That midway start.

It should be noted that I’m not the most eloquent writer, I use “I” far too much. Elipsises…I love them. My sentences begin with conjugations far too often, commas are overused, and loved, I’ll use semi-colons incorrectly. Things get disjointed, jumbled, and tangents will be all too frequent. I think hyperbole is the fucking best.

With that said, I want to begin writing about this journey I accidentally began, to have some sort of record, maybe even to help someone else that stumbles along here. I have to start somewhere and that somewhere seems to be a little background.

Two years ago I pulled a 180 on life. I’d spent a decade dreaming of settling down in the Pacific Northwest; I wanted that rain and the vegetable gardening that comes with it. I wanted mountains and trees and bodies of water, I wanted oxygen in my lungs. I wanted to finish school, to go to grad school. To own a home, a little farm, to improve a community. But, I never did it, I just puttered along through the motions of life. There was no satisfaction, just…going. I don’t have the right words to describe it. A nod to mental health is needed, through that entire time I wasn’t being properly treated for severe depression, anxiety, and ADHD.  My physical health was also atrocious until about a year prior to this 180 of mine. Looking back I was doing the best I could with what I had available internally at the time.

Out of the blue, a slew of things smacked me in the face. I’ll get to all that another time, but the culmination of shit getting flung my way opened my eyes. I finally made it happen, left behind the place I called home, all the people that mattered, a six-figure job, a support network, everything except my cat and a decent amount of my stuff. I moved across the country. Before doing this I saved enough to be able to quit working entirely for about 6 months. I planned on then working part-time for a year before heading back to full-time. That part-time work…minimum wage.

This move meant leaving a 5 bedroom house for a two-bedroom condo. Six months into that condo I moved into a one bedroom place. There was A LOT of downsizing involved. A LOT of letting things go. And far too much holding on, waiting for when I own a place, not wanting to get rid of things. And yet the entire purpose of the move, of the downsizing was to reduce what I had to care about, to make space within me for me. 

Anyway, now I’m learning about minimalism and the reasons for it. And the more I learn the more I hear other people speaking or writing in more depth about the thought process I’ve had over the past couple years. The more I learn the more motivated I become. Now, I’m driven to reduce not just for the sake of it, but specifically for the purpose of making more space for what I love, for what matters. This isn’t just materially speaking, it’s mental, it’s the technological world. It’s having to only check email once per day and only having emails that matter being in my inbox. It means using the time that I previously spent on mindlessly scrolling through facebook being annoyed at the ignorance, instead using it on writing, on reading, on finishing my degree. On actual art projects.

Turns out I’ve already been on a journey towards minimalism for a couple years without realizing it. Now it’s intentional, purposeful, and I want to write about it. Being far from a writer makes it difficult. I’m unsure of how to organize my feeling around this. Everything is intertwined, it’s difficult for me to tease out one part of my experience at a time.

Maybe with time, practice and purposefulness I’ll gain that skill.