Unsubscribing from All the Things

I reside in the home of consumerism and have been swept up in the ease at which everything comes to me in this country and specifically in Seattle, the home of delivery.

In my ongoing quest to consume less, I looked at where I am exposed to advertising which has so much say in what I buy. If you say it doesn't then I call bullshit on that.

The answer was in email and on Facebook.

I proceeded to unsubscribe from every email sent to me by a business. This has had me realise that they lie and keep sending stuff to you over and over until Google mail helps you unsubscribe. Yes, they mark those jerks as spam.

The second avenue is Facebook. I've stopped liking my friend's statuses that mention a brand of any kind. I'm also leaving all groups that are selling me something.

This has changed what I read in a day. Lets see what happens in a week.

A week of not buying everything I want

Wow, is it difficult to not shop online constantly when you live in the US and work for Amazon?!

It's what the company I work for does best. Not just them but every online company in the US.

I can order everything online and have it delivered to my home with the only human inconvenience being dealing with my delivery guy (I joke):

• Instant groceries via Prime Now and Instacart, if I'm unwilling to wait a day for Amazon Fresh, Safeway and QFC;
• Christmas trees and people to pick up those Christmas trees when done;
• Petrol/Gas for your car;
• A massage at home;
• Organic tampons;
• Furniture. Yes, every single piece of furniture you can imagine; and
• Anything else you can imagine.

We live in the future and I want my flying car!

You think I joke, but I have pre-ordered two Star Trek: TOS Bluetooth® Communicators. One for my sister and one for myself.

We live in a time when you can get anything you want. My smartphone is more powerful than the computer that landed man on the moon. My speakers hear my commands and turn my house lights on and off , read me the news and tell me the weather or time if I'm too lazy to lift up my so smartphone.

It is so easy to buy. It takes a level of mindfulness to wake up after a goodnight's sleep and cancel that order of plastic garden flamingos. Yes, that happened last week.

People joke that we once had arguments about facts and now google (with a small 'g') everything and Snopes it on the spot. I extend on that and say that we have a conversation and can act on every whim and buy any damn thing we want.

But do we need those things?

This week, I have decided to not by anything that I do not NEED. When I say need, it must be essential to my survival or maintaining my basic standard of living.

In the spirit of a good Amazonian, I decided to keep a Wish List of A Week of Wants and refuse to buy anything that didn't go under the banner of essential.

I'm not saying I will buy them in a week but I am keeping a list of everything I would have purchased given the chance.

This will be both informative and confronting.

Would you face your inner consumer and not be disgusted?

Selling My Sole

Here is a guest blog post I wrote for a good friend's shoe blog.

Clothes Shopping in Darwin

I have money and I want to give it to you.

I'm not sure how much clearer I can be to the clothing shops of Darwin. My hang up and the thing that makes me the most difficult customer is that I want the clothing shops to give me back clothes that don't suck.

This afternoon my mother, cousin and I went in to the _biggest_ mall in Darwin to buy tropical work wear for my first day tomorrow. I gave myself two hours to achieve this and we went on our merry way. On arriving at Casuarina Shopping Centre, I went to the usual shops that would satisfy my needs in Sydney. Even with a willingness to throw money at the shop assistants, there was simply nothing to buy that would suit my needs.

I can see some of the logic behind why there isn't a huge selection. Only the tropical clothes are brought to the NT. Who is going to buy woolen business suits and dress jackets? Of course, I disagree. Sydney gets stinking hot and it still has a huge selection of clothes. My suspicion is that Darwin retail outlets that belong to big chains are disposing of their out of season clothes up here. The kind of arrogance that says no one here really cares about fashion so why bother, is more annoying than any over-pricing or bad service that you get from these shops.

Tomorrow I will attempt to shop in the CBD at lunch time, since I am working in that area.

So far, I have written four emails to different clothing chains saying that they are seriously missing out on money by underestimating their market up here. Of course, my cries will go unheard as the screams of those driven insane by the tropics.

Thank gawd for online shopping... not for clothes but for everything else.