Quiet Addiction$

After making a good deal of money during the dot-com explosion, I realized, as many have already, that I wasn’t any happier. Not that I was sad in the first place, but money didn’t add to my happiness. The acquiring of things didn’t solve problems.

And then today a friend forwarded me this amazing blog:

Link: What’s at Stake

and this line:

“Addictions are addictions and materialism is no different.”

This made me want to write a laundry list of my own addictions, past and present, including materialism, just to force me to acknowledge them and hopefully, over time, overcome them. I’m not addicted to the more common alcohol or drugs, nor will I talk about those given addictions like television and junk food; my addictions are quieter, more subversive.

Collectibles

From comic books to baseball cards to Star Wars “memorabilia”, I realized that I was addicted to these things when I kept buying them even though I no longer had time to even enjoy them. As soon as I got home, the comic books would be bagged and stored in a “collectors” box, without my reading any of them. Same with the Star Wars stuff. If there’s any good that came out of those Star Wars prequels, one would be that they made me realize how ridiculous I was for still buying this crap. After watching The Phantom Menace, I took a really good look at my Star Wars collection, and stopped buying. I now have closets full of stuff that will soon be on eBay.

Buying books instead of reading them

This is absolutely a symptom of materialism. There was a time in my life where I would buy a handful of books and magazines, come home, then shelve them, never to read them. It’s as if the act of my owning them was the same as reading them. As if I’m going to “absorb” the knowledge through osmosis if I kept these things in my house long enough. Now that I think about it, the same happened with CDs and DVD movies. I still have a couple DVDs that are still plastic wrapped.

I feel guilty just thinking about this. As an affluent American, I thought that by buying knowledge, I could instantly gain it.

Golf

This is easily one of the best consumer-driven addictions around. I would begin by buying a set of cheap ($150) golf clubs, play with them without knowing what I was doing, think that it’s the clubs’ fault, then buy a more expensive set of clubs ($250), still suck at it, then spend hours and hundreds of dollars at the driving range, paying for buckets and buckets of balls, then pay $30 to absolutely suck at 18 holes, then pay for more buckets for more practice, more “specialized” clubs, and on and on…

I have since stopped playing golf, admitted that the only reason I played was because I loved to hit the crap out of the ball, and that I could do the same thing at a batting cage (baseball) for a lot less money. That reminds me, I should sell my clubs on eBay or a garage sale.

I’m tired and sleepy so I’ll stop now and resume later. Memo to myself–talk about How I Save Money Shopping Because I Don’t Give a Crap About Designer Labels, and Payless Shoes are really really comfortable.