20 in 2024: is it truly a possession if you don't feel possessed? (+ what i bought in april)
and a big win against not-buying a hot new item that totally consumed me
If you’re new here, “20 in 2024” is my attempt to only buy 20 non-essential items in 2024. Every month, I update on what I’ve bought (and haven’t bought) and how the project is going. Thanks for reading!
friends, country people, goblin folk. . . hello. it is the time of April showers (if you’re in New York City) and rage at the political unrest and genocide of the world and cowardly universities sending the NYPD after their own students.
in the past, it was easier for me to put my feelings into purchasing because purchasing is a “nice” (shallow comfort) “temporary” (all this plastic will literally cover our bodies for a thousand years) “comfort” (are the profits from the shit we buy just going to fund weapons).
I did buy a few things in April, but I had one pretty big “win” that I’ll talk about too.
the things i bought in april. . .
april was a less spendy month for me, in part because I went too hard in march. I mean, it’s 4 months through the year and I’ve already bought the majority of items I’m trying to buy for the whole entire year (which still has 8 months to go). Yikes.
Allowed item: new winter coat
I had this black DKNY thrifted quilted down coat that I bought about three years ago and I LOVED it so so much. I even had the zipper repaired in 2022. What was so great about it?
It had these cuffed sleeves that really sealed heat in, and it had two sets of zippers to really help you add layers of warmth. It also had this big, oversized collar that, if you zipped it up all the way, kind of hugged your neck and back of your head to provide warmth.
Well, I recently went to Chicago with said coat. And not for the first time, I noticed two things…
Whenever I sat down (on a plane, on a train) I noticed a small puff of feathers. This seemed concerning because they were obviously coming from inside of my coat to outside of my coat. But I didn’t think too hard about it.
After coming back to New York, I thought, “Hmm. This coat feels less warm than it has…”
I had inspected the coat for holes or tears and found nothing, but when I came back to New York I finally found a two-inch rip where all the feathers had been escaping.
I thought about getting it repaired again, but I felt nervous about where the down would come from—I try to only buy thrifted down products or down that is certified as being ethically sourced—or how the down would be evenly distributed throughout the coat. I realized, as I inspected the hole, that the down was not in small compartments — it was all one big envelope with a tear in it.
So, I made the difficult decision to recycle said coat and to look for a new one. (Thankfully, there is a “clothes recycling” bin near us that recycles fabric and also redistributes clothing items, so I dropped the coat off there.)
I found one on sale at that is incredibly warm, mustard yellow, and, in one big improvement from my previous coat, water proof (with non-PFC DWR).
Item 1 of April/17 of the year: Weighted exercise ring
I’ve been putting in a lot of time working out these days because I’m training for a 55-mile bike ride that’s just about a month away. (I’m nervous, for sure—can you tell?)
One thing I neglected to do last year was implement more serious cross-training sooner, which is useful because a) it lets you mix up your workouts so you’re less likely to injure and over-use certain muscles, b) it helps prevent boredom, and c) it helps prevent injury.
We have a couple of pairs of dumbbells, but one pair is very light and one pair is very heavy. I previously owned a kettlebell back in 2017 but in a moment of stress, left it with a bunch of abandoned things I decided not to take with me in a move. I miss the kettlebell, but kettlebells also present their own challenges. (Hard to grip, mostly good for certain exercises and less good for others.)
I stumbled upon this item, a weighted ring, which I LOVE. The one below is from Bala (that trendy pandemic weighted ankle workout brand) but the original price for the 10 pound/4.5 kg ring is a whopping $90, which, sorry, that is stupid and insane.
I found a used one on eBay for $30, which is about what you’d pay for a kettlebell, anyway, and I am glad to take it off someone’s hands. It’s been great, and I’m excited to use it more.
Things I bought that are on my “okay to buy” list and don’t count towards my no-buy tally:
Tickets to two concerts—Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney
Amtrak, airbnb, and campsite fees for a few trips I’m taking later this year—In a span of about a week, my partner and I went from having no real plans to having three trips planned, which I’m very excited for. I haven’t taken a vacation this year, so this will be great.
A virtual cooking class with awesome chef Julia Turshen to learn how to use up vegetable odds and ends
A bike fitting—this is where you work with a professional to adjust your bike to your goals, body, riding style, and it’s very exciting.
A pay-what-you-can haircut at my favorite hair salon/barbershop, Mutiny, whose website is (so delightfully) mutiny.gay
Big win of the month: getting swept up in hype and almost buying it, and then cancelling a preorder
As you might remember from a previous post, I was hung up on an e-reader switch I made in 2023 that I regretted.
Well, in the way that capitalism is constantly inventing new shit to want that you didn’t want till it existed (a marketing tactic I learned about in college)— a company released a new e-reader that let you annotate with a stylus on an E-Ink screen.
I have two e-readers now, my Kobo Libra 2 and my Kindle Paperwhite. I use the Kobo for library books and the Kindle for some other reading, like books I get via Netgalley as advanced reader copies.
When I saw this, I thought, “OMG COLOR ANNOTATING” and “I COULD STOP ANNOTATING IN MY PHYSICAL BOOKS.” But I also thought “I do NOT need this.”
Did that stop me from a weekend of truly obsessive googling and researching specs? The e-reader came out on April 30, and it was April 10 when I discovered it. This meant that while there were some teaser videos of people on YouTube or Instagram showing you like 45 seconds of the screen, there was very little information about certain features and usability.
the exhaustion of wanting stuff is suddenly caring about “features” and the feeling you need to look up MORE information for a thing you did not actually care about before
I’m not kidding when I say that that obsessive “searching” feeling some people who used to shop get took over me like a possession.
On top of that, I started having questions about the e-reader. . . was it easy to write on? Was it too small? Could it serve as a digital notebook, which some people mentioned?
This lead me to looking up digital note-taking tablets like the Remarkable, the Onyx Boox, and considering items that I truly did not want. I don’t want to replace my notebooks with digital notebooks. I don’t have any desire to be 100% paperless. I value the simplicity and not having to charge paper. I don’t want to have to buy and charge a stylus, or have a new case, or whatever.
But despite these things, I was convinced that this idea of being able to annotate in colored highlights and small marginalia would revolutionize my reading—and reading is one of the things that’s been sustaining me for the last six months.
I hit preorder on the item around April 13. So, three days of fixation.
Now, the e-reader itself isn’t the only cost, of course. You need a case, and a stylus, both of which are not cheap and add around $100 to $150 to your purchase (plus tax).
I spent too much time watching as many videos, reading as many reddit posts—one person in Austria or Germany received his Kobo Libra Colour early in an accidental shipment and was flooded with people asking questions with the same obsessive intensity I had.
I even saw tens or twenties of comments on these teaser YouTube videos that said, “OMG I don’t need this but I want this!” with lots of likes.
I felt this way, too, until I had a moment of realization. . .
I did not want this item until I learned it existed. The desire that had spun into a kind of possessive, hungry fixation felt less like desire *for* something and more like a desire to live a fantasy life—casual relaxation, fuzzy pastel couch cushions, highlighting and chatting with “book girlies”—and the kind of life that could be drastically improved by an object and spending $300.
Not the life I do have, at times rife with ennui, fears about planetary collapse, genocide, violence against gender expansive people, job and capitalist anxiety. . . all problems money can perhaps marginally impact, but certainly not solve.
A few days later, I hit “cancel preorder” and I felt myself relax. I also blocked YouTube for like three days so I wouldn’t obsessively watch it anymore.
One less item to pay for
One less item to worry about taking care of
One less item to charge
One less item to buy replacement stylus tips for
One less item to then sell on eBay to assuage my guilt for buying a newer model
One less item to have feelings and opinions about and worry if it will live up to my expectations
One less thing.
It’s freeing when you can realize that your feelings and fantasies are just those—strong, but temporary; illusory, and not always truthful in the long-term to your wants.
Like, sometimes I look at clutter in my apartment and I think, “Ugh sometimes I wish I could just burn all my stuff and start from scratch.”
But do I really mean that? No.
It is much, much less rewarding in capitalist means to simply sit with your feelings, discomfort, boredom, isolation, or whatever you’re (I’m) feeling than it is to buy a new shiny thing.
But it’s much more necessary to living the kind of life I want to live.
It’s also made me appreciate the two ereaders I do have and use. (Is two excessive? Yes, I think so, but I really like both and do use both of them, so whatever.)
Do you struggle with fixation on “the perfect” purchase? Wanting an item you didn’t want before? I’d love to know how you relate to this or any tips you’ve discovered to work around this!