Always new stuff.

I guess it’s sometimes a post-holiday or back-to-school thing, where you have a bunch of new stuff all at once.  Maybe I just don’t shop a lot.  I don’t know.  But I rode to work this morning with a new Thermos of coffee in my backpack with my new planner, a new book, wearing a new vest, new socks, new gloves and being kept dry by new fenders.  The only thing I bought was the planner and the book, and those were to fill voids left by an old planner and all the books I’ve already read.  I feel spoiled somehow, like I don’t have the right to be toting around all this shiny new shit that I didn’t buy but instead just took out of a gift box.  The people I care about do give me some wonderful presents.  So maybe I am spoiled in a way.

And of course having a bunch of new stuff makes a lot of people (myself included) re-examine their relationship to material possessions.  I really love my new gloves and fenders and Thermos, but it’s the cycling in winter weather and not dropping five bucks a day to have good coffee at work thing that I really like.  I suppose that’s a healthy relationship to gear, right?  Using it?

I do have the tendency to pet my things though and often get very upset when a new scratch joins the dozens of others on my bike or when dust gets under the screen cover of my camera.  Then I think about my bike and not riding and my camera and not taking pictures.  Then, as Tyler Durden would say, the things I own end up owning me.

I’ve always struggled to have a healthy relationship to possessions, my body, my health.  You can’t just ignore your pains or bike maintenance, but you can’t get attached to them, either.  Tricky, I tell you.  Tricky.

Photo Friday: Meditation.