CONSUMER’S ANONYMOUS

This week was a big one for me. I got a job. After three or four months of applying, interviewing, not hearing back, getting rejections and getting discouraged, it finally happened. I got the news on Thursday and I am flying out to Calgary later today for training. I will be working for a major bank and my official title is Transactional Sales Manager. This means I can officially stay in Toronto after moving here from Montreal a few weeks back so I believe we should all take a brief moment and celebrate, well, me.

Now that we are done celebrating, let me ask you this. What do you think was the first thing I did after I got the news? That’s right; I called my mother. Now, what do you think the second thing was? All I can tell you was that it floored even me after I realized what was going on. The second thing I did after I found out I got the job was shop.

I am not anti-consumer. I like my things and I have plenty of them. That said, the last few months that I have been scraping by without work have given me a distinctly new perspective on my spending habits. I had to stop buying all the little gifts for myself that I rationalized as warranted all the time. It isn’t treating yourself if you’re doing it all the time. A treat is inherently something that comes along only once in a while after all.

Not working though turned groceries into what I used to know as treats. Yet here I was, not having received a single penny from my new employment and just moments after getting said employment, and I was falling back into familiar habits. I was justifying to myself that winter is coming and I need this new scarf despite the fact that it costs 50 bucks and that I could definitely find one that was just as functional and twice as cheap or that I already had two other scarves sitting in my closet at home.

I think what scared me most was how naturally or how instinctively it happened. The number one reason that I can think of for buying things I don’t need is to bring happiness, albeit fleeting, into my life. I had gone without buying things I didn’t need for months but I had not gone without moments of happiness during that time. When I realized this, I understood that consuming is nothing more than another addiction and one that I surely suffer from.

Some of you might be coming to the same conclusion about yourselves as you continue to keep track of your daily spending habits. Another great way to smack yourself out of this spending haze is to just look around you and add it all up. How much did all those movies cost on your shelf? How much did all those shoes cost in your closet? While I might be talking about my shelves and my closet right now, take your own look and see what you see in front of you. In the meantime, my name is Joseph and I am a consumer.

Note about the author:

Joseph Belanger is a Toronto-based writer who blogs about film at www.blacksheepreviews.com