Consumption Season

November 13, 2024

3-Item Status

Current location: Milwaukee, WI
Reading: On Writing and Worldbuilding: Volume 2 by Timothy Hickson
Listening: Only for a Moment by Lola Marsh

Quick Notes

Deep Breaths: I’m more than a little winded after this past week; I’m reminding myself to breathe, to focus, and to pull my attention back to the things I can control when find myself drifting into unproductive rumination.

New Work: This week’s Let’s Know Things is about Online Tutoring, and yesterday’s Brain Lenses essay was on Food Noise.

Question: This week’s question is about gift-giving.

(If you have a moment, reply with your own 3-Item Status and/or Quick Notes about what’s happening in your life.)

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Consumption Season

We’re headed back into Please Buy Literally Everything season, so here are some quick thoughts on consumption, gifts, and the like.

1. Many things (especially but not exclusively gadgets) get cheaper over time—the same model of phone (for instance) becomes more impressive with each new generation, offering snazzy new features, a longer battery life, and so on. That means the longer you wait to buy or upgrade, the more you get for the same money. Act accordingly.

2. Experiences can be gifts, and shared experiences can be mutually (and collaboratively) enjoyed gifts.

3. It can be helpful to make a list of the stuff you really, truly want (for yourself or someone else) leading up to a big sale so that your future self has a harder time justifying the purchase of pointless (but cheaper than usual) things, while still being empowered to save some money on the truly valuable (to you) stuff.

4. When we buy loads of things all at once, we sometimes perceive individual prices relative to the total we’re spending, not a single item’s objective monetary value. So if we’re already forking out $1,000, it’s psychologically easier to drop another $200 because it seems like a relatively paltry sum compared to that larger whole. To blunt this effect, I find it can be helpful to compare individual prices to the cost of other things I enjoy, like a weekend roadtrip with my partner or a nice piece of cooking equipment I use everyday. Within the context of this more value-oriented comparison, $200 feels like a decent amount of money that I shouldn’t thoughtlessly spend, because I could use it on something more substantial in the future, instead.

5. Consider investing in local businesses and indie makers-of-things when you can. It’s an uphill climb to compete with bigger players in any industry, and without such support we lose a lot of monoculture-defying options and offerings (also, speaking from personal experience, it’s a rough time for any but the biggest names in all making-things-related spaces right now—so your support is especially meaningful).

6. Finally, consider investing in things that help you (or whomever you’re buying gifts for) create, rather than things that merely enable more consumption. There’s nothing wrong with watching films or reading books or playing games, but most of us have a lot more (and a lot more casually available) options for consumption, already, and augmenting our (or a loved one’s) creative capacity will tend to bear more long-term fruit than purely consumptive alternatives.

If you enjoyed this essay, consider supporting my work by buying me a coffee or buying a book.

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Interesting Links

• Why Aren’t Smart People Happier?

  Spearman’s stats were sound, but his interpretation was wrong. He did not, as he claimed, observe a “continued tendency to success throughout all variations of both form and subject-matter,” nor has anybody else. It merely looks as if we’ve varied all the forms and the subject-matters because we have the wrong theory about what makes them different.

  We think tests of math, vocabulary, French, music, etc. are all different because some are about words and others are about numbers and others are about sounds. But psychology, like all sciences, is all about discovering the differences between seemingly similar things, and discovering the similarities between seemingly different things.

• Unparliamentary Language

  The Parliament of New Zealand maintains a list of words, and particularly phrases, that the Speaker has ruled are unbecoming, insulting, or otherwise unparliamentary. These include:

  • Members hated the sight of khaki (1943)

  • I would cut the honourable gentleman's throat if I had the chance (1946)

  • idle vapourings of a mind diseased (1946)

  • his brains could revolve inside a peanut shell for a thousand years without touching the sides (1949)

  • Member not fit to lick the shoes of the Prime Minister (1959)

  • energy of a tired snail returning home from a funeral (1963)

  • Could go down the Mount Eden sewer and come up cleaner than he went in (1974)

• New Evidence From West Papua Offers Fresh Clues About How and When Humans First Moved Into the Pacific

  Our study of animal bones from Mololo indicates people hunted ground-dwelling birds, marsupials and possibly megabats. Despite Waigeo Island being home to small animals that are difficult to capture, people were adapting to using rainforest resources alongside the coastal foods islands readily offer. This is an important example of human adaptation and flexibility in challenging conditions.

(If you want more links to interesting things, consider subscribing to Aspiring Generalist.)

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Question

This week’s question is about gift-giving.

More specifically, do you have any policies or habits related to giving gifts? And if so, what do they entail? What are the rules, what do you aim for, and do you have any habits or rituals related to this concept?

Consider sharing your responses and thoughts in the comments (or you can share them with me directly by responding to this newsletter) :)

I personally avoid doing much in the way of physical gifts, these days, but I’m big on taking people out to events, for meals, or to have some kind of shared experience.

I also sometimes opt for consumables, like snacks or coffee or whatnot—especially if there’s a small, local business or maker I can grab it from (or if I know they have a favorite food truck or café). Also: books, because books are awesome.

In general, though, I try to encourage people not to get me anything (I have what I need) and to let me know if they really need something specific, but to otherwise expect some kind of intangible gift.

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One of the (huge number of) beautiful works in this year’s Birds in Art show at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin. The artist is Marcel Witte, and you can see more of his amazing work by clicking here or on the image.

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Outro

Woof, that was a rough week. Which is honestly true of most election weeks, but since this one didn’t go as I had hoped, it was especially exhausting; I’m just now getting back into the right mindset to get some work done.

My girlfriend and I did have a nice roadtrip up to northern Wisconsin and over to Minneapolis, though, meeting up with some friends, checking out a lot of beautiful art, and generally just puttering around, eating our emotions and driving long distances through tranquil landscapes; enjoying each other’s company and sorting things out, basically.

It was helpful stepping away from everything for a few days, in part because it was a nice trip, but also because it made me want to get back home and get to work on some things over which I have control.

Planning on buying anything specific before the end of the year? Any gift-giving rituals on the horizon? Drop me a message and tell me about it, and/or take a moment to introduce yourself—I respond to every message I receive and would love to hear from you :)

Prefer stamps and paper? Send me a letter, postcard, or some other physical communication at: Colin Wright, PO Box 11442, Milwaukee, WI 53211, USA

Or hit me up via the usual methods: Instagram/Threads, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or shoelace guide.

The joy of clutter.