Anti Consumption Behaviors

I don't know if I know anyone that is thriving, so to speak, these days. The state of the world feels increasingly hopeless, and it feels like anything I could do on an individual level will be painfully insignificant compared to the few that have taken over. Alas, I have compiled a list of changes and adjustments I have made in my life. I have tried to break them down into bite sized pieces, so that no change feels too big to start. I have pulled inspiration from the people around me because everything is better with community. Ultimately, these are things that have helped me feel better and more sane, despite everything.

I want to be someone who creates more than I consume. I want to be involved in an active community that continues to inspire and encourage each other. I want to invite whoever is reading this to share any small changes that have improved your quality of life or mental health in recent months. This is meant to be an ongoing list and conversation.

• Collecting CDs and cancelling my music subscription. The CD collection began when I left San Diego as a way to carry my friends with me, and has only been growing since. Cancelling the subscription was hard, and took months to commit to. It has felt integral to my identity since my youth, and feels like a pillar of this blog. But I rarely even used it anymore since switching back to CD and radio, so it isn't even always reflective of my current taste. It has been so fun to listen to albums all the way through, and I've discovered so much good music this way. When was the last time you HELD art in your hand, not through a phone screen? What if we stopped having access to everything at our fingertips all the time? What if we weren't meant to live that way?

• I got my library card. I was too nervous and overstimulated to actually check anything out on the first visit, but I will continue to use their resources because that is ultimately one of the places I want my tax dollars to go to. From language classes to a seed library, I am so excited to become more involved in this aspect of my community.

• In direct juxtaposition to my point about the library- I refuse to become someone who is reliant on or flippant about AI. It is incredibly wasteful and discredits the work that people have done to make information and resources accessible to the community. I don't want to lose my ability to think critically. I refuse to become someone that has a question and immediately turns to AI, instead of reading a book or doing my own research.

• Reading books! Watching shows and movies! Puzzle club! Trying to fix my attention span! Allowing silence and stillness in my life!

• Educating myself on the political issues relevant in my community. People I care about are concerned about the school voucher bill that just passed, therefore I am concerned about it.

• Deleting social media, slowly but surely. The bird app takeover was probably the first, when I realized I did not want to be on a platform that rewarded bigots. I deleted the big time thief the day of the ban, which has not allowed me any opportunity for relapse. I deleted my earliest form of social media, which I have been on since middle school, which honestly created a weird sense of grief. But good god, kids should not have social media and being raised chronically online has done my brain some damage. 

• Enforcing time restrictions on my remaining social media. I want to whittle away at them and reduce my screentime, but I also crave connection and expression. I have also had a phone in my hand for most of my life, so I assume that this will be a difficult habit to break.

• For the social media I do have, following accounts of people I want to learn from and places I want to support. As long as I continue to be on certain sites, I want to utilize it strategically, instead of using it to waste time and numb my mind. Social media is a tool for me to connect with my community, and I need to stop using it for doomscrolling.

• After following a nonprofit on social media for a while, I decided I wanted to become a volunteer with them. Not only do they work to adopt pitties, but they also speak up about legislation regarding bully breeds. So many of these bullet points lead from one to another, and eventually feel like a snowball effect.

• Buy nothing groups. If you know me, you know I’m obsessed. They made moving A BREEZE, and it feels infinitely better to give things to real people, instead of a corporation that just seeks to maximize it’s profits. This has also helped reduce the need to order things from the website I gave up. It may take a little more patience and planning, but I refuse to be sold convenience.

• Getting craftier in the kitchen. While I enjoy cooking, I rarely have the energy for it. I need easily accessible meals so I have been prioritizing anything that is high in protein and can be scooped with a chip. Cooking was rarely done in my house growing up, so this really feels like something I have to learn now.

• Learning how to strategically buy in bulk and utilizing dry storage. It has made cooking so much more fun to always have ingredients and spices on hand, and not have to go to the store to shop by recipe. Again, I don't really feel like I ever learned how to do this.

• Reuse/upcycle everything I can. Toilet paper tubes for seed starters, paper scraps to make paper, old clothes into cotton rounds, glass bottles and jars in the kitchen. It has been so fun to see what creative uses I can find for things and it feels good to reduce my waste.

• I gave up buying new clothes. Sometimes I just think about how everything I need already exists in the world. It feels like it has become an unspoken rule to ask on Buy Nothing and check the thrift store before I even consider buying it new.

• My previous roommate would often hang dry her clothes, so it also became a habit of mine. My current house doesn't have a clothes dryer so everything gets hung out to dry in the garden. Sure, it sucks having to plan around weather and think ahead, but it is a peaceful activity and reduces energy usage.

• Sending letters. This is something I've loved since I was a kid and similarly to the library, I want post offices to be a resource that is invested in. As much as I love communication in all forms and sending a silly little voice note, it feels so much more intentional to take time out of the day to hand write something. It feels very thoughtful. Choosing to live slowly in the age of convenience feels radically counter cultural. Anyone want a pen pal?

• Surrounding myself with people who have similar values. You adopt traits and habits of the people closest to you, and I’m so thrilled to be surrounded by so many brilliant and savvy minds right now. My roommate has the most insane garden, it’s truly beautiful to see how in tune with the earth she is. My manager at work collects DVDs, which feels so special to be able to bond over our growing collections. Another coworker wants to take first aid classes together and grow our emergency response skills, which creates a sense of accountability and motivation. I live near one of my lifelong best friends, who has offered me support and help every time I ask, except when we play chess. I have so many wonderful connections and resources that I am so excited to learn from.

• Accepting my own internalized ableism, and finally calling my depression what it is- a disability. Depression inhibits every aspect of my life. It affects how I show up for my friends and job. Life feels impossible at times, but the little moments of good are reason enough to keep it up.

I feel like I come out of the woodwork every few months and spew some nonsense about discipline and whatnot, but I swear this time I mean it! I get so in my head that everything I post has to be profound and meaningful and life-changing. I also feel very perfectionistic, which is hard when writing about your own thoughts and feelings. This is something I have always loved doing and that has brought me a lot of joy, but also a lot of insecurity and self doubt. It is hard and scary to put your thoughts out there but I am proud of myself for always coming back to it and am grateful for my little community of supporters. 

Bisous!

Ken and Cerb

Art by Jonathan Hinds