Blogs and Wealth
Warning: I got maybe three hours of interrupted, unsatisfying sleep last night and am a little wacky today.
I’m having a hard time finding good blogs to read.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve unsubscribed from the few fashion blogs I was still reading. I’m not counting stuff like Advanced Style and The Locals (it doesn’t hurt that dude’s name is Søren), which I still read. I’m talking about stuff like hi, I’m a person and I take pictures of what I’m wearing and post it on the internet.
My problem with these types of blog is twofold. First, honestly, most days, I’m not sure how much I really care about what I’m wearing and, now that I think about it, I don’t care about what you, a total stranger, are wearing. No offense. Second, and I hate to admit this, but sometimes fashion blogs trigger what I’m finally ready to admit is a shopping addiction. (See discussion of “Tangent” below.)
There was one fashion blog I kept in my Google Reader, mainly because I liked the author’s writing style so much I couldn’t quit her. Until she posted an outfit that included a fur jacket. That just made me sad and gave me the push I needed to unsubscribe.
I’ve also cut out all blogs that ever contain sponsored posts or product reviews. That’s a lot of blogs! I hate sponsored posts because they’re boring and always come off as inauthentic. I’m not interested in product reviews because they’re boring and I don’t wish to buy products. I’m not going to buy what you’re shilling and I have no interest in reading about it.
What’s even worse is that sponsored posts erode whatever trust I had for you as an author. For example, a blog I used to read did a series of sponsored posts for brand that makes what I think are ugly accessories. Then I noticed these accessories popping up in supposedly “regular” non-sponsored posts. Then I realized that the blogger probably gets some type of compensation for mentioning products even in non-sponsored posts. The end result is that I no longer trust her because she’s shilling ugly crap, she’s probably shilling even when it’s not obvious, and I can’t really trust the judgment of someone who’s willing to shill ugly crap even when she’s not shilling ugly crap. Plus, and perhaps most important, I just don’t give a shit about ugly crap and/or shilling. (By the way, here’s a good post about sponsored posts.)
So I turned to what I refer to as “simple living” blogs. Unfortunately, I burned through lots of these a while ago, when I noticed that many simple living bloggers end up writing a book they want to sell you, which really goes against the whole concept of simple living.
Some simple living blogs get way too financial for me. I’ll be honest. My financial situation is pretty jacked right now. It doesn’t make me feel good to read a blog that’s always answering reader questions like: “I’m 22 years old and graduated from college last year. I make $80,000 a year and have $20,000 in savings and $500,000 in my retirement account. My car is paid off and I have no debt and am awesome in every way. Do you think it’s okay for me to buy an Ikea bookshelf and maybe get a dog?”
So what does that leave me? I like blogs that don’t have sponsored posts or product reviews, don’t try to sell me anything, and aren’t addressed to exceptionally financially savvy readers. I don’t like reading about religion or meat. I like nice photos but not too many of them. I like regularly updated blogs written by normal people with whom I’d like to be friends about their normal lives. I’ve found a few of these, but I wish there were more.
Tangent: I’ll tell you more about my shopping issues soon, in addition to updating you guys on my spending fast, which was great for about two months but then became a complete failure. I’m getting back on the horse, though.
I’ve realized I need to take a more radical approach than just a spending fast (although that is itself kind of radical, at least to me). Hippie alert: I have to attempt to completely reject consumer culture. What I mean is that — it’s hard to say but I’ll try to start. In some ways, I was raised to think it’s good to have money and a nice house and nice things. It’s not that I was taught to be blatantly materialistic, but in subtle ways, things were ingrained in me, like: money is good, money is important, shopping is fun. I think those might be lessons many of us learn directly or indirectly from our parents who maybe were children of immigrants and made lives for themselves and their families that were “better than” what they had, with “better than” being equal to “richer.”
Trying to reject better than = richer and having more and/or better things might be one of the big struggles of Generation X. For me (and I’m still working on it) this involves completely redefining my understanding of wealth.
Here’s the thing. I often fall into the trap of comparing myself to other people. Usually, those other people are more well-off financially than I am. So I get bummed out because I don’t have a super-cool place in a super-cool neighborhood and I don’t take exciting, exotic vacations and I don’t go out to dinner all the time and I don’t have every new Apple product the day it’s released. It took me a long time to get over that feeling of being “less than” and realize I have other things, things that aren’t as easy to, well, show off. I have time, lots of time, because I don’t work long hours. I have a husband who doesn’t work long hours. We have low-stress jobs we generally enjoy. We have a good enough house with a low mortgage payment in a good enough neighborhood that’s close to everything we do. We have a good amount of time and a good amount of positive, non-stressed-out energy to spend with our kid and each other.
I’ve always valued time more than money, which is why I never went to work for a big law firm. I am absolutely unwilling to work long hours or be overly stressed about my work. What I’m getting at here (finally!) is that for me and my family, “wealth” doesn’t mean money — it means time. And I know there are some very lucky people who have both, but more often than not, I think most of us get one or the other. I’d rather be on the poor side than work 60 hours a week (or more!) or have a husband who’s always at the office. Time isn’t really something you can put on Pinterest and have people gush over how beautiful it is, but for me, it’s what really matters. And realizing that makes me realize it’s time to stop spending money on, well, anything that isn’t necessary or at least very important. Necessary or important might be new glasses or an iPhone every two or three years, but it’s probably never another handbag or a sequined shirt or pair of fancy heels.
I hope this doesn’t make me sound like a smug hippie, or that if it does, it’s understandable because it’s been hard enough for me to realize I need to change my way of thinking about wealth and it’s going to be even harder to really put it into practice in everyday life when I’d really like to buy some more shit from Etsy. Money doesn’t buy happiness and things don’t equal happiness. Duh. Did I really need this many years to figure that out?
