the cluttered life I didn't mean to create

And the one I did. (What I'm learning about overconsumption and love.)

I am looking through my old photographs. When the digital camera brought the opportunity to document of every second of my day, I seized that opportunity. I have folders and folders of photos - single cupcakes and restaurant menus and raindrops on windshields and bad haircuts. It goes on and on.

Flipping through these albums, I see clothing and objects that I no longer own and wonder, where did these things go? Did they simply disintegrate into thin air? I watch my weight fluctuate wildly, just like the thickness of my eyebrows. I watch my nieces grow up. I see, clearly, the passage of time and yet time feels unreal, spongy, overlapping on itself.

I have this thing about holidays, celebrations, the shifting of seasons. In part it’s about marking time, honoring life itself, finding the joy of the moment, but as I look through my digital library, I can’t help but see it as something else, as well— an excuse to engage in over-consumption.

My desire to celebrate the seasons, to create joy, to orchestrate events, has often led to buying an excess of plastic stuff. I have wasted resources in my life — the earth’s resources and my own — through the purchase of plastic stuff. Plastic stuff that will end up in landfills. Plastic stuff manufactured in inhumane conditions. Plastic stuff that sits in boxes in my basement right now waiting, I suppose, for me to die so someone else can throw it out.

A few years ago, I was making money and had a little more at my disposal than unusual. I decided I couldn’t bare the idea of bringing another cut down tree into the house for Christmas. It hurt my soul to think of a perfectly good and beautiful tree just living its life chopped down and dragged inside, so I shopped for an artificial tree and here’s the gruesome thing —I absolutely knew better. I knew it was ecologically and aesthetically a horrible choice, but I had ways of rationalizing the purchase. So I did.

This year, as I was putting Christmas decorations away, I realized it was over for me and that tree. It has white flocking that sheds all over everything, white flocking that none of us should be breathing. I felt nothing but shame and regret as I dragged it down the basement steps one last time, knowing I would at some point drag it back up and discard it—just like the shame and regret I was trying to avoid by going with an artificial tree in the first place.

I have not been a mindful consumer. I have shopped for pleasure more times than I could ever count, running my hands across cute pajamas and picture frames and novelty lights and holiday garlands and jersey t-shirt dresses that look exactly like the jersey t-shirt dresses already hanging in my closet, just to feel the excitement, the promise. I have purchased things and brought them home with the hope over and over again that these things will somehow save me or my loved ones or the world. These purchases will put things right.

The truth is, sometimes they do. There is nothing quite like the thrill of finding the perfect new thing and displaying it or wearing it or using it. Acquiring the new perfect thing can feel like reinvention, a fresh start, like love. As a collector of objects, I have been a collector of that sensation.

In the old days, I strolled around places like TJ Maxx, searching for sparkle, for zing, for salvation. Then Covid happened and I stopped going to big stores filled with people unless it was absolutely necessary. I replaced my discount shopping trips with my Amazon cart. Now that **gestures wildly around** has happened, and we’re boycotting Target and Amazon, I am left to feel my feelings and the consequences of my actions.

There is nothing to do but get to the heart of things, peel away the layers and sit with the truth…and sort through boxes of stuff.

There is no good in rehashing the past or wishing to rewrite it. The past does not exist any more than the future exists. I have this washed-out digital footprint to remind me of what was, what I wished for, and what will never be, but it is only that — a reminder, a map to some lost place.

I just washed and dried two teal towels that belong to my friends. I have them because these friends used them to wrap freshly baked banana bread which they brought to us. They just handed us this delicious banana bread and eventually (probably not today, but very soon) I will give the tea towels back with something wrapped inside. These exchanges are tender and meaningful.

I am fortunate to have generous family and friends who give me things, who send me things, who make things for me expecting nothing in return. It has always been that way.

I keep thinking about that — the exchange of gifts, the exchange of food, of simple kindness. I keep thinking about how we are all now, whether we like it or not, launched into this era of simplification, scaling back, pulling in. We have a responsibility to one another and to the earth and to the uncertain future, but that doesn’t have to feel like restriction.

I will always be a lover of things. I will always say yes to, “Wanna grab a coffee and go to the Peddler’s Mall?” When mail arrives and it’s an unexpected gift from a friend, I am overjoyed and grateful. These gifts are so much more real, so much more solid than the plastics I have purchased in search of a dopamine hit. I do love things and sometimes things are love.

I keep thinking about how clearing and organizing — ceasing to over-consume, means I can be more conscious with the things I give and acquire, acquiring (and giving) fewer but better things. It allows me to get straight to the meaning, the foundation of life itself.

Yesterday afternoon, I was struggling with online projects, and Tracy texted, Ya’ll should come out. It’s nice. So I scooped up Rocky and carried him outside with our blankets and we sat in our double seated camping chair (a purchase I one hundred percent do not regret) and watched the birds and felt the sun on our skin the way it only feels in March, when it is warm and cold at the same time. We just sat there, together, being.

It has always been this sense of being. That’s what I’ve actually been searching for.