man i feel guilty

Well Matt and I watched Capitalism: A Love Story. It's about the greed of Wall St and America and how corporations basically own us. And it's about Capitalism, our vicious cycle that makes it so if you don't have a job then you can't buy things, which lowers the profit for a company, which makes them cut costs, which makes them cut jobs, which means you can't buy things and so on and so forth.

This is my blog so I'll cry if I want to. The fat bastard known as Michael Moore may be a complete pandering showman that kind of exploits his subject's pain for his movies and way too anti-American for my tastes but I watch his movies and the dude makes some really great points. I love him and hate him all at the same time, you know? Seriously, you owe it to yourself to watch one of his movies and judge for yourself. And if it'll make you feel better, bro's a Catholic, so he can't be all that evil.

 Or can he?

It wasn't so much about consumerism but that's the part that I focused on.

And I have guilt. You try watching a bunch of people struggle to survive and live in their van and then look at your recently purchased picture frames and try not feeling guilty. You think about how a lot of your time is spent lusting after things you want and things you think about buying and how much time you've wasted lusting, just lusting. Which reminds me of the time when Scott Derickson was introducing the directorial award and on the cards, which I wrote, it says coveted award and he says "Wow, when I was at Biola, coveting was a sin". Makes me laugh.

Back to lusting.

It's gross. It's awful. It's me. I'm a luster, a buyer, a sheep, a corporate shill. In fact, I'm employed to help sell more products. Currently I'm selling something about the size of a tangerine that you do not need. And I buy things all the time that I don't need. I used to say to my uncle Rey, when I worked at KFC, which I would still totally eat at if I wasn't a vegetarian, after he had given me my paychecks that I was gonna spend money I didn't have on things I don't need. It was a funny saying I was known for that my Uncle would even quote me on. And that's American credit card consumerism. We buy crap and we get into debt and they own us for life.

Here I must also defend myself because well, all my innards are on display. Matt and I had our moneys analyzed by some financial dude and he told us we was doing good. The debt we had, mind you, the ONLY debt we have is the money we owe to Sallie Mae because they fronted us some dough to go to COLLEGE. When we use our credit card, which is to pay for everything we possibly can, we rack up points and then at the end of the month we pay it off in full. Finito. No finance charges. No charges of any kind. No credit card debt. We also have a fixed amount that automatically goes every week into our savings account without fail. We have not touched our savings account in approximately a year, maybe more and add to it whenever we can on top of the weekly savings.

But seriously? Who needs to buy all this crap?!!! We could have saved double the amount we have if only we hadn't oh say purchased a new TV or furniture or made all those repeated trips to Target I don't care if you were going to buy stuff for Liz's baby shower.

CRAP. That's what all the stuff I buy is. It's crap. Sure I need clothing, and I need food, those are legitimate. But how many pairs of jeans do I need? Do I really need to own all these flats? Why do I want to find that perfect handbag? Don't I have a bunch already? Why do I feel compelled to buy buy buy.

Of course if I make the effort to not be such a BAAA! this blog will be pretty boring. After all, as much as I find it hilarious how high and mighty the kids over at my favorite blog think they are (it's a subtle sort of superiority complex where you can almost hear the pats on the back they're giving themselves for being so awesome whereas I outright inform you and hand you amplifying headphones so you can hear my pats and also provide you with a recording device that will play back the pats in case you missed them the first time) they are giant purchasers and my favorite posts of theirs are when they buy something new. Yay! They fell for that ceramic chess horse head too that I totally would have purchased if Matt hadn't insisted it was ugly and refused to let me buy it!

It makes me think of the whys I buy all this stuff and why I want to buy this stuff. Theories. AKA Excuses.

1) Growing up I was poor. Single mom, five kids, bla bla. Now I have a job, a husband, a house, a job, a family, a job. Did I mention a job? A job that allows me to buy things if I want them unlike when I lived with my mom and siblings and was unable to buy things I wanted cause I had no job and no money. 'Cause I was a kid.

2) I am filling my empty life with stuff.

The second one is depressing. And it's not true. Obviously I have a full life with a beautiful family and good friends and wonderful weather. But I saw Confessions of a Shopaholic and sometimes I am guilty of such feelings of that one thing being able to complete you and change you a little bit. And you get that little high of coming home with the full bag of stuff and then the fullness extinguishes and you gotta buy more. If only the stuff wasn't so cute!

I often think about fires. As in, what if the whole house went up in flames, what would I save. After husband, cats, and dog. Laptop. Harddrive. Everything else can go up in flames because everything else is replaceable. Yeah, it would be sad and really inconvenient to lose your passport and marriage license but you can just pay to get another copy. And all the family photos, well most that matter are on my computer anyway. But I think about it. It would suck to lose everything I owned but they are just things. Things that in the long run, do not matter.

Still again I feel the need to defend myself.

Home is very important to me. Making a house a home is a very important priority for me. Partly because we moved around a lot as kids and even during college, every vacation time rolls around and you're homeless again. Having a place I can depend on to come home to and drop my hat off, yes I do wear hats, that's a big deal to me. That's why I spend so much time on my home. It's obvious it's important to me, come on, I have a BLOG devoted to it so that's not a shock. Does it shock you to know if I lost everything in it, I'd be okay with it? It's true. It's just stuff.

So what do I do with the guilt? Move my money to a credit union. Stop shopping big corporations. Give money to pennies for pilots.

I could do that. But I live in capitalistic America and that kid that rung me up at Target, he needs to stay employed so I will still buy there. But I will try to buy less.

Try really hard.

Because it is just stuff.