This is a blog about Stuffocation. I wrote about the book here which was recommended to me by Chris Navarro, a friend and colleague of mine who is clever enough to see farther than most.
So let me set the scene with xmas trees and at all times I write these posts as messages and prompts to myself. This is not a rant at anyone else, I'm trying to navigate my own stormy seas.
Alison and I decided not to have a xmas tree this year. It is a hassle and on the face of it it seems pointless.
Hillsides in Scandinavia are cleared of trees and onto trucks to be transported to container ships to be shipped across the North Sea and onto more trucks. Eventually they reach us and we buy them from the supermarket or wherever and buy a stand and put them up in our rooms with a new set of lights, because last years don't work, and new baubles because last years are out of fashion (and we can't have people coming round and seeing un-trendy baubles).
The tree stays up for maybe 2 weeks and drops needles all over the floor and it has to be hoovered around 3 x a day. Soon it looks a bit sh#t, trees are supposed to live outside, the branches droop and when the presents are taken from the bottom, it's a bit depressing.
Then we take them down. A miserable job. After which we take them to the dump.
Go to the dump this week, I dare you. It is an awful place of human excess. The worst bit though is the skips full of xmas trees, at least being recycled after we have had our fun.
Returning from the dump our cars are full of needles from the trees so our car needs cleaning inside.
And so the fun is done.
Another year, another tree, more cementation in the minds of our children of the fact that if we don't buy into this idea of xmas we are letting everyone down, so best keep it going and make it a bit bigger again next year.
We didn't have a tree.
Funny thing is, it didn't make xmas worse. The kids hardly noticed.
We still had decorations and lights, many of the decorations the kids have made over the years, really lovely.
We had log fires (can't have those with a tree in the living room).
Alison came to me today and said "guess what you are delighted with today.......no tree to take to the dump". She was right.
A long introduction I know.
The fact is that the more electrical things I buy (and I have been the biggest gadget baby) the more frustrated I become at the ones that don't work, or the time I spend updating or the huge amount of time needed to learn how to use them properly.
I don't need the new Apple TV, I have 2 of the originals and they work fine.
The more stuff I put into my life the less life I have for the stuff, but the stuff just keeps on coming.
In James Wallman's blog he touches on the principle of miswanting. This is a concept where we think having something will bring us joy or happiness but we are wrong or low in our estimation of the benefits. There is good science in this, we are all doing it all the mtime.
This happens to me a lot. The disappointment of getting something that wasn't what I thought. The never reading the instructions of the complicated thing I am lucky to buy.
On reading these posts back over the last couple of weeks I sound like such a bah humbug, anti-xmas sceptic but I'm really not.
I just want more life in my years left.
"...got exactly what I asked for wanted it so badly, running, rushing back for more, I suffered fools so gladly. Now, I find, I've changed my mind". - Madonna - substitute for love.
(And I haven't sent a xmas card for some years now and my friends still seem to talk to me.)
Blog Post Number: 1174