Consumed

Traveling for 3 months with everything on your back changes your perspective on things. Literally, on things. Or perhaps if you’re the kind of person which finds such a trip appealing, you already have a different perspective and just need the courage to act in accordance with it. Regardless, my return was greeted by way too much stuff.

One of my main tasks during my citizenship-awaiting hiatus from travel has been to dispossess myself. To get rid of all the things I don’t need. It turns out that’s almost everything. In the future I imagine I’ll breezily say how I “sold all my stuff and went on the road full time” just as I told people I rented my place and travelled for the three months. Simple words glossing over a great deal of effort and anxiety. And just as that was stressful, this bout of downsizing has turned out to be far harder than I anticipated.

You see, I still own way too much. My 5 sq. ft. storage unit is full and I had much more stashed in various corners of my condo than I remembered. The easy decisions have all been made: now I’m down to the objects which have made it through several rounds of culling.

All these possessions have begun to feel like lead in my mind. Each item demands decisions. Each decision is almost weightless but the sum of them all is wearyingly heavy. What to dump? What to donate? What to store and what to sell?

Letting Go

Each decision follows the same path. First my grasp on the thing loosens. I consider what it would be like not to have it. Things I bought and enjoyed. Things I might need again — or not. Everything is scrutinized. How vital is it? How meaningful this purchase or gift? Do I really care enough about this thing to pay for its rent indefinitely?

You don’t simply look at a thing and figure out if it’s useful or not and dispose of it accordingly. That’s old-school Jeremy Bentham thinking. Utility is part of it: will I need this again, and if so is the cost of storing it greater than the cost of selling and buying again. The harder part is all the emotional entanglements I have with my stuff. The memories of who I was and what I was doing when I acquired it. The different selves I was or was trying to be that identified with the object. The audiophile identifies with the super expensive Audio Technica headphones. The coffee nerd with the Chemex. Vestiges of the gym climber I used to be won’t let me get rid of my shoes and harness, untouched for 5 years.

So on top of all this work to let go of these belongings I might use again, I need to let go of the self they belonged to and the illusion that I’m still that person. It feels like a diminishment to put yet more space between me and all these hobbies and pastimes and interests. To give up these totems of versions of me-from-my-past which are faded and worn in my present incarnation.

Rehoming

As if the process of letting go wasn’t enough, once the decision to get rid of an item is made, more work awaits. Donation through Buy Nothing is simple, but it’s not effortless. Pictures need to be taken, posted, sometimes grouped in batches. Selling through craigslist and eBay take a little more work yet. Even storing requires organizing and labelling and consolidating. Paper gets the same careful treatment: I have boxes full of documents which are mostly unnecessary. These must be scrutinized and shredded and consolidated and, if possible, replaced with electronic copies.

Finally, moving everything to electronic versions and paperless work flows is also not without effort. Organizational systems need to be decided. Backups need to be solid and secure if there isn’t going to be bunch of bankers’ boxes full of paper copies to fall back on.

Payback

The exercise of going through this sequence for every item I own is profoundly tiring. I have an urgent desire to live more simply but am frustrated by all the work needed to get there. It’s like the thoughtless consumer I used to be is having his last stab at me. I never considered when I bought these items, whether on impulse or after obsessive consideration, that I was incurring a debt. A debt of disposal. And either the future me would pay it as I am doing now, or someone would inherit it.

Either way, paying back so much debt at once caused me much more stress than I felt during my entire trip in Asia. More than the $10000 check I just cut the IRS for taxes. More than the insane sums I continue to bleed from my extravagantly poor in investment choices. It has turned me occasionally into a minor asshole.

But that suffering is the gift: it makes it even more clear to me that getting rid of these accretions is the right path for me. No matter how much I get rid of, I haven’t yet regretted any of it. All that stress before I let go of an item of evaporates; there was never anything there to worry about. Despite that, the whole process continues to make me sad and tired. Why? I seem to need to learn the lesson that there nothing to worry about over and over fresh with every new thing in my pile.

It never seems to get easier.