I am such a hopeless consumerist shit that in honour of ‘buy nothing day‘ later this month I’ve decided to make November my own personal ‘buy (almost) nothing month’ – I’d recommend everyone else does the same. I’m seriously going to just buy next to nothing and invest some quality time in meditating and introspection – I mean November’s depressing enough – may as well make it really depressing.

I regard myself as an anti-materialist, and ok, perhaps I’m just more deluded than most, but since I’ve been keeping a detailed record of everything I buy for the last two months – it appears my practical consumption levels don’t actually reflect my understanding of myself as an anti-materialist – reflecting on the list of things I’ve bought is enormously depressing – here are some examples –

• almost £70 in September on take-out coffee – this hasn’t stopped in October – I spent £6 on the stuff today –
• £86.50 in Sainsburies and Tesco, in addition to £60 on my weekly organic fruit box – so £146.50 on food/ munchies – even though I have a productive allotment and I’ve eaten take out about 4 times this month and I’ve bought lunch at work most days.
• £173.55 on beer and munchies – I’m kind of hoping I’m paying more than my fair share here…although I do realise that if I was American, I’d probably be branded an alcoholic – thankfully I’m British, so that’s not the case.  
• So this means I’ve spent £389 on shoving food and drink down my gullethole – not one single penny of this was spent in a restaurant btw, most of it’s food and beer on the go – I’m just that classy.
• Oh and that’s excluding the £600 worth of clothes I just bought – but that was the first time I’ve been clothes shopping for about 4 years, so I’m gonna self-flagellate because of this.

What’s scary about this is how this has crept up on my since I’ve been working and earning a decent wage (admitedly we are talking a decade here) – This kind of extreme consumption has just become normalised over a period. I mean this is despite my supporting such wonderful ventures as ‘buy nothing day’ above, the anti-consumerist stance of those at LSX and the Church of stop shopping (perhaps I need spiritual intervention?), and adoring films like ‘No Impact Man’ – and the whole point of my having an allotment was so I could spend less.

This is a truly truly horrifying revelation and should be a lesson to you all, hence my buy nothing month – check consumption and then check your consumption!  

Of course when I say buy nothing, I mean buying nothing after the mortgage and all the other usual monthly outgoings and basic, basic food – hence buy (almost) nothing month (coughs) –  

The problem I’ve got is that November is the second most depressing month of the year – still, if ever I feel a little down I can look in the mirror and admire the moustache I’m growing for Movember, although there’s a risk that looking like a ginormous twatt might have the opposite effect and push me over the edge – still – I guess the dead, after the funeral, really don’t consume, so that wouldn’t necessarily be all bad… I’d rather be dead than consuming and unconsciously oiling the wheels of capital.