✩ ✩ Buy Nothing Day: Friday, 11/27/09 ✩ ✩
1. Break a comfort zone. For the most part, we exist safely in the parameters of our comfort zones. By design, they don’t challenge us. Year after passing year, growing boundaries can keep us comfortable– but should that be the goal of our time here? Today I’ll have a meaningful conversation with a stranger, parallel park a car until I can do it blindfolded and strip the decorative but concealing shawl off the facts and face them.
2. Clean up. Swindle one of those huge industrial-sized garbage bags that my Dad coveted from his job, in bulk, before his retirement and perpetrate a massive turnover on… stuff. Clothes, shoes, books, etc., etc. Fill the bag and donate it. List bulky items on Craigslist. Collect a box for the old women packrats down the street who host weekly curb sales come Spring. Give away one thing you love; learn that it holds no bearing on your life, that you’re resilient. You’re not ruled by inanimate objects but the emotions you insert in them… which look much better elsewhere.
3. Give Yourself Away. Online. Complete and submit two assignments from Learning to Love You More. Send in your closetal skeletons to PostSecret. Share your journal. Start a blog to tell the world how you feel; disable the comment function so you don’t have to hear what it thinks in return.
4. Make something. Make an iTunes playlist: be specific: songs I’d date if they were people, songs I’d meet with in secret behind the backs of the songs I’d date if they were people, songs that know me better than my co-workers, etc. Empty those sentimentals brimming from your bottom desk draw and incubate them for the test of time: make a time capsule. Combine “make something” with “clean up” and find a recipe for that almond flour you bought for $7.00 but only needed 2 tablespoons of a few months back. Make a pact with a friend to supply evidence of the afterlife if you’re the one to go first, and vice-versa. Start making Valentines for senior citizens in a home nearby. Make love. Make a smoothie. Then make the bed.
5. Simplify. Remove your name from the Direct Marketing Association’s national mailing list, stopping 75% of the 50,000 monthly direct mail pieces they supply. Print stickers for remaining junk and return to sender. Go here to stop unsolicited credit card offers from all three credit bureaus. Unsubscribe email subscription sale alerts. Whew, that feel better. Remember, if you don’t know that a handheld garlic mincer with a vacuum attachment exists then you can’t spend money on it.
6. Archive the day. There won’t be a day like this again- ever. Record its highlights for prosperity. Photograph your face every quarter-of the hour. Strap a tape measure around your waist, your bicep, your neck. Ask everyone you know the same question and graph their responses. Accrue as much data as possible. Make this an annual tradition and reflect on the previous years’ results with a loved one (or several).
7. Write a letter. I like the concept of Thanksgiving, pilgrim and ButterBall bullshit aside. A day to give gratitude to those in our complicated lives who makes things easier, to whom we tacitly burden with a portion of our well being. This help comes in so many forms, some as elusive and self-serving as a idealized memory: a face to a feeling that feels good to feel sometimes. And others in the very tangible: the reach for the goods high in cupboard which my tiptoes fail; the synergy of another’s words and thoughts against my own, growing like new life. This unspoken condition often goes unthanked, maybe because we are simultaneously reciprocating, maybe because of other things. Today, write a letter, a real one on paper, to say thanks.
8. Love. It’s so easy. Free. Rewarding. It’s what all the movies and the songs are about, don’t you know? Today, let yourself love what you love without shame. Those people, places and things that hide in the striated muscle of the heart’s walls, bring them out. Watch cartoon hearts expand and burst, like bubbles, and rain down like those little hammers that the Hammer Brothers throw in Super Mario Brothers or like the end of a Flaming Lips show. Love every noun you have the heart for. Just call to say ‘I love you’. Keep these loves in mind for number 10.
9. Budget. For some darn reason most of us have to spend 5 out of 7 days a week working all day, all of our lives, much to the sacrifice of our hobbies, loved ones, creative energy and personal sanity. To ensure this is not a total waste of time and energy, get the most from your buck by divvying it up. Budget your income to the dollar. Tally your credit expenditures and cry at their utter uselessness and frivolity. Pay down those debts to increase the pool for your discretionary spending (e.g. thrift store wall plaques, $7 tree nut cheeses, Sailor Jerry Spiced Navy Rum).
10. Make a list. Ten things to do instead of shopping. 100 Things to do Before I Die. Little Things List of Things I Love. Little Things List of Things I Love, Part II. Purchase Incubator list. Groceries. Netflix. Then do it.
