Gotta give material, to give love?

Okay.  So one present I’m giving this year is entirely hand-made.  I pulled it out of my ass with stuff lying around the apartment.  A few involved some involved hunting.  Several took a lot of time to “plan.”  But I’ve definitely arrived in my 30s displaying some weird belief that fancy gifts are the way to show the people that I care about how I feel about them.

Maybe it’s a MAN thing?  Like how we don’t “express” ourselves or something?

Even the pile of presents (Okay, the two piles of presents) for Charlotte from “Santa” smack of the, “I love you; so I bought you this,” Christmas.  Where did that come from?  Sure, we had presents out the ass when I was little.  But we had a huge family Christmas party on Christmas Eve and Santa and cookies and church and togetherness.  It was a lot more than presents.

I blame working at the mall my last two years of college.  I worked at a bookstore, and we ran the calendar kiosk.  I was famous for being able to “man” that huge display all day without getting sick of it.  Well, there was this terrible non-religious Christmas “music” they used to play.  I think that shit messed with my brain chemistry.  Seriously.  I still can’t look at calendars, especially not ones with dogs or trucks on them.  And last weekend, the mall had NO MUSIC PLAYING, and I felt like going batshit the whole time.  It was eerie.  The weekend before Christmas, and the place was packed.  And I was creeped out because I thought it was too quiet.

Yes, it was Towson Town Center that make me a present whore.  That’s it.

Really, though, my gift to myself was a bottle of Jack with matching glasses thrown in for free.  Seriously.  Because who can’t use some help getting through the holidays?

Merry Christmas Eve.  I am off to shower, drink coffee and watch A Christmas Story with my cuddly wife.

Cheap Field Notes, with free shipping to boot.

I’ve worked with manufacturers/purveyors on promotions (usually review copies/products) on the pencil blog, but never on this blog in its nearly 8-year existence.  But Kishan from Maxton Men has an offer that’s too good to refuse.  Maxton Men is a new online shop featuring gifts for men that has free shipping and is just starting out.  Anyone that sells Field Notes with free shipping has a place in my bookmarks.

Buy anything from the “Office” section and use the promotion code PRAGMATIK to get 15% off until the 20th.  So what? you say?

Field Notes, brothers (and sisters), 15% off, free shipping.  They even have a few special editions and only charge $9 for regular ones.  (Also Le Pens, which seem to be making a welcome come-back.)

Go forth, and get the best deal on Field Notes I’ve seen.  And tell ‘em who sent you.

(For giving  you the deals, dear readings, one of you should send me a pack of the American Tradesman edition for home improvements at the house we’ll be purchasing in the coming months.  Just saying.)

We are at the new pad.

Almost everything is unpacked. The internet works. The [sound of angels and a choir] central air conditioning works. Books are shelved. All is well. We haven’t hung/hemmed curtains yet (except Charlotte’s, of course) or hung anything from the walls. But it’s all coming together.

Pictures soon.

I’m lucky enough that my family and my very good friend helped immeasurably in the move. Small thank-you presents and home-cooked meals are tiny tokens after an entire day (and, in the case of my Dad, another evening and afternoon to boot) spent watching Charlotte, lugging boxes, running errands and etc. We’re trying, though, to thank folks the best way we can.

Charlotte woke up at 5:45am on the first morning here and flipped out. She didn’t know where she was. But now she’s used to it, has her stuff and knows she’s home. Her walls aren’t blue anymore, but her room is much cosier now.

Consumerism and compulsion are not a healthy mix.

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.

One version of a simple fix.

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Remember one time you were truly and absolutely and completely, even unabashedly, stupid about your possessions.  Remember what you were stupid about.  Remember your life without that piece of material and how it still works, how you still sleep and poop and laugh, how maybe even your life is better now.

Your pretty red Ford Focus in 2003: You parked at the bottom of parking lots away from other cars that might ding it, only to be in it when an SUV totaled it.  That chocolate stain was meaningless forever then.

That new cell phone in late 2007: How you worried about scratching the screens and getting lint in them?  How it got dropped from a bicycle multiple times and how it’s cracked in half at this minute, with bits of its guts spilled out now?  How you have a new phone that will also hit the street a few times in  your time with it.

Each new camera: How you lose photo opportunities for the sake of the pretty screen’s life.

That new bike in 2006: How you worried about it’s pretty looks and the integrated headset, only to crash the damned thing in 2009 anyway.

That cool mug you got when you finished your Master’s Degree, that you hand-washed to preserve its Thoreau quotation, only to find it broken from when someone dropped the box it was in helping you move.

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Because, if  you’re like me, you forget how stuff is just shit that will leave you one day and that  you will, in fact, continue to live a fun life without.  And, if you’re like me, you might need to remind yourself in ways that are relevant to your life, i.e., times when a piece of plastic or metal or glass or etc. drove you crazy, only to disappear one day anyway. When someone says, Oh, it’s just stuff, man, don’t worry so much, that is not helpful. Well, I want to say, You worry about your car and your shoes and your X, so go learn yourself some peace before you get up in my face with your pseudo-Zen routine.

I will not feed you such puppycock today.  Instead, I will suggest to you, if you’re like me, that you think about times you were stupid, not times someone else (like me) was stupid.

Unless you’ve never been stupid about possessions and have never been possessed by them, owned by what you own or been the tool of your tools, in which case, you should please teach me your secret.

(More on PERFECTIONISM from 2005.)

[Pictured simple fix: A $5 bracket from Planet Bike for getting your rear bike light onto your rack. It's one of the best bike gadgets I've ever seen. Ever.  If there were a simple fix like this for materialism, well, wow.  Wow.]

Everything is a slipping seatpost.

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I’ve fallen into the rut of letting my worrying about all my shiny possessions get the best of me again. My new bike’s seatpost slips. After messing with the quick-release and grease and etc., I am nearly positive it is because the seatpost collar is a poor design that doesn’t work.  Not the end of the world, and I wanted to replace that quick-release anyway, having had my seat stolen before.

Friday: I call the bike shop, and when they offer to order me one, I say, No thanks, I’ll be in later to get something anyway. But I never make it because I get mad at the idea of crushing my frame (as if steel is not stronger than that $5 part or as if I’m even that strong!). My phone rings. I don’t recognize the number, and I throw it. Hard. It explodes on the floor, and I almost have a melt-down because of my shiny shit. I mean, I’m fucking shaking, as ashamed as I am to admit it.

Then the messenger bag that I had sent away for a warranty repair (which was itself a replacement for a very very defective bag and on which I have spent $55 in shipping to date) came back un-fixed, after they told me they fixed it. I was even madder. Tried to call them to yell at them (which I never do), but they were not there even though they were supposed to be.  So I sent them an email at the end of business Friday. An angry email.  When I left to go to dinner at Golden West, though, I felt better. Shit is shit, and fuck it all, I thought. It felt fantastic.  I didn’t give a fuck or a shit or a hill of fucking beans about anything material and ate spicy food and washed it down with Pabst and had a very relaxing weekend.

Then I let my seatpost woes ruin my week again. Have I ordered a new collar yet? No. That would make sense. Can I plainly see that I have not, in fact, wrecked my frame? Yes. Am I losing my fucking mind over this? Possibly. I mean, I should cut myself some slack. I did go three months off of a bike, and my three bigger injuries (hand, wrist, foot) bother me regularly when I cycle. But still. I am getting distracted at work reading about slipping seatposts on forums at lunchtime, instead of my favorite lunchbreak activity (taking off my shoes and reading for an hour).

Perhaps the solution is to burn all my shit? Heh heh heh. Tempting.

On the bright side, I’ll get a new seatpost collar, it will probably work, and all will be well on that front. My new phone comes today, and I was due for a new one anyway (and it was free). And the company in question responded to my pissy email with a, Pick whatever bag you want, and it’s yours, response.

And I’m going to Washington DC to see Tori Amos this weekend, an early birthday present from my sweet wife.  A long weekend in DC and then a little shindig Sunday for my Dad’s 60th birthday.  Not bad.  A normal person would be excited about this and not worried about a piece of fucking metal.

Oh, and I turn 30 four weeks from Sunday.  That, I’m not happy about.  I wanna skip this decade and just turn 40 — it seems like more fun.  I’m afraid my 30s are going to be another decade of doing stupid shit and worrying about stupid shit and so missing out on awesome shit like my 20s have totally and completely been.

But, I guess,  you never know.

The basic truth about SHIT.

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The basic truth: that shit is shit and is prone to being imperfect to start with (my bike was scratched when it was new, and it bugged me for an hour because I am stupid and forget these things) and that it only gets worse. And when you view things/shit/stuff as ends in themselves, you drive yourself crazy because you forget this. I forget all the time. Or I don’t know it in the correct part of my brain.

Always new stuff.

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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.