I find myself stuck more and more these days not even on products I might want to have or use — long ago I lusted after a Dickie’s messenger bag, got it, used it, loved it — but to brands.  There’s a new Moleskine?  I need to have it.  I realize I might need to keep a binder at work?  I need to get the expensive Moleskine one.  I need to.  Anything bag related?  I need a Timbuk2 and even a very heavy diaper bag that I can pass onto Charlotte later for travel/school.  Because, you know, a bag has to be made of a material that was designed for flak protection in WWII to be worthy of a bag, right?

This could be my relatively boring life.  I never go camping as much as I used to, or travel.  So I sit and obsess over backpacks and messenger bags and what sort of gear I’ll need for my imaginary solo trip around Europe and the near East (which I’ll not only never get to take, but also don’t really want to take; my wife is a great travel companion as well as life companion).  When I was in my teens and camped more, I never really thought much of gear.  I had (still have) a framepack from 1990, and that was that.  My sleeping bag still has a cigarette burn from October 1995, in the mountains of Western Maryland and probably hasn’t even been washed since.

So I sit and read about bags to do things I don’t do.  Look on Flickr at pictures of Moleskines and other tools of writers, while I never write anymore.  I read adventure and manly books to imagine myself doing it.

And I don’t do anything.

I used to convince myself (even until this morning when I noticed a few meaningless broken threads on my precious custom Timbuk2 bag — one of FOUR I own!) that I really just needed to be able to enjoy my stuff, to love it so much that I didn’t care about the universal flaws that things which are made of material always exhibit (namely, never ever being or remaining perfect!).  That’s crazy.  The only entities worthy of being loved beyond their flaws are people and maybe your country.  Not your damned messenger bag that was made in San Francisco just for you or notebooks that have freakin PVC in their covers and paper that’s really, let’s face it, not great.  More properly, I need to regain my love of things like hiking and camping and traveling so much that I don’t care what beat-up piece of crap I carry all my stuff in.  I’ve been actually planning on buying a backpack to take to the mountains this fall.  Why?  I’ll just sit there worrying about and thinking about it.  There’s no point in spending a lot of time on it.  When I was a teenager, my journal was just a big spiral notebook I never needed for classes, and then the books people would give me as gifts.

I’ve gotten to the point where I would be ashamed if the people whom I admire were to learn about my sick ways.  When my dissertation director was here last month, I hoped I wouldn’t slip and admit how much I’d read about the little backpack I had with me at the time.  I’m not quite sure that Thoreau, Hemingway or Chatwin would own four Timbuk2 bags or even that any of them would get anywhere near a Moleskine, especially now that there are better and cheaper alternatives that do the same thing.

There was a time when the only things I was obsessed with were Space Pens, and I just wrote and traveled and camped and enjoyed activities and experiences.  This wasn’t that long ago, merely months before I started blogging, maybe a year.  I need to get back to that.  I don’t think I need to somehow learn to deal with accepting the imperfections of the stuff I am already obsessed with.  I think I need to get rid of and no longer buy the things I’m obsessed with.  Things that don’t obsess me don’t bother me regarding their imperfections.  Hell, I love shit that’s broken in!

My consumerism even extends to how I spend my time online and why the hell I even own a digital camera anymore, but that’s another post for another dark lunch-hour.