I'm about to run out of stamps.  I'm probably the last person on earth who uses them.  Paying bills by check and envelope is soooo last century, and the little ritual helps me remember if I've done it or not.  Still, I've given myself over to working a little harder to learn to pay them online - I've switched about a quarter of my bills over already.  The paper saved with online statements and payments is a good Fix-friendly thing*, and obviously eliminates the need for stamps.  I love sending postcards and letters, though, and it will be impossible without stamps. 

I think this is a funny irony/conundrum: in the spirit of Fix, letter writing fits right in - it is an inefficient practice requiring intention and attention; by the letter of Fix (yuk, yuk), buying stamps could be a transgression.   When we buy stamps, are we buying a thing to affix to another thing, or are we buying a contract with the USPS?  Does this contract with the post office enable us to have an experience - and give an experience to someone else - that is utterly unavailable any other way?  I'm going to propose that stamps for things that can be done online or by fax qualify as stuff, and that personal correspondence is an experience requiring a service from the post office and therefore a stamp.

*A few months back, I wrote about switching my Citibank bill to "paperless statements."  They still send me a piece of paper every month letting me know my statement is online. (This is in addition to an email notification.) Gee, thanks, guys.  How paperless.

Well, almost.  I'm nearly through with the last of my deodorant.  I've been supplementing with baking soda but that's not so great for my mostly black wardrobe.  And I'm fine going without on the weekends but I would be so embarrassed if somebody from work pulled me aside to tell me I stink.  Sorry, principles.  I'm open to alternatives but wouldn't want to buy a bunch of things or ingredients that don't really work.

The shaving lotion is diluted down as far as it will go...I'm not sure I'm prepared to stop shaving my legs until January.  No Impact Man uses a soap mixture and a straight razor, but will that work for legs?  Maybe shampoo? I could get them waxed (a service) but I think the waste produced with that is much worse than what I'm doing now - a counterproductive and expensive solution.

Finally, my phone has been behaving badly lately - I wish I could chuck it out the window but that would probably cause me trouble.  A week in the mountains without service was such a pleasure: nobody else could talk too much and too loudly on their phones, either.  I don't have a land line, and my grandmother would be disappointed if I just communicated by letter and email until January.   The phone was the bottom of the line to begin with, and now it dies small, spontaneous deaths.  I don't think they repair these things.

Solutions?

week 1

week 7 

...if you haven't already.  Related to the conversation.

NYT article on Freegans.  Am I a Freegan this year?

Manufactured Landscapes.  Did you know that shipbreaking existed?  See it on the "big" screen at the Forum in NYC.

Fix and I are going on vacation.  That is, I am going on vacation but Fix is not coming with me.  I decided a long time ago that the project would be too hard to maintain with 20 friends in a country I've never been to and where I don't speak the language.  My trip will have an unexpected Fix-related component, though: I'm visiting a city that recently banned all outdoor advertising.  I think it's such an extreme and curious measure - I'm really excited to be going right now.

I won't go crazy buying stuff, I can't afford to.  We'll see if the break gives me the renewed enthusiasm I need for the rest of the year. 

When I run into someone I haven't seen in a while, they invariably ask, "how is Fix going?"  It's going all right, insofar as I've been reasonably adherent to my rules.  The first three months were easy: I didn't really feel like I needed to buy anything and I was creative and enthusiastic about finding solutions.   I learned a few things about cooking and mending, and the money I saved was awesome - I ended up with enough for a weekend trip to San Francisco. 

Recently though, I've been going through something of an adolescent stage, resenting the rules and wanting stuff.  I've had more than a few moments of "I hate this #(&%&$ project, why did I ever come up with it anyway?"  A friend and I discussed the possibility of quitting - after all it is an experiment and some experiments fail.   Maybe it's the change of seasons: the new summer dresses look so lovely and I've started researching possibilities for a new bike.  So far, I've managed to stay with it.  I don't want to give up right when it feels hard, and there is so much more I want to learn about, even though I feel a little overwhelmed by the amount of information on topics I'd like to look into. 

Overall, I break the food rule the most: I've been getting busier and rarely seem to have the time or materials on hand to cook.   I've bought only a few new things, and as I suspected, the ones that give me the least pause are items for artmaking/career.  And what have I learned?  I've learned that wanting-buying-consuming is very personal and deeply psychological: we each have a different schema wherein certain desires are ok and others aren't, even with material things.  The most important insights I've had have been about myself - what I crave, when, how, etc.  I've mentioned some of these in previous posts, and it's still too early too compile them into some kind of profile.  Stay tuned.

I paid visits to two awesome Queens organizations in the past week: Build it Green and Materials for the Arts.  They're both collecting stuff that people don't need and re-distributing them to people who want random crap. 

The first stop was Build it Green, a building-supply store in LIC.  They take surplus building materials from contractors and do-it-yourselfers and re-sell them.  I'm not exactly sure how much doors or moulding or toilets cost new, so I couldn't tell if they give you a great deal or not.  Regardless, they are helping keep construction trash out of the landfill, which accounts for an astonishingly high percentage of what gets thrown away.  The haphazard warehouse had lots of paint, doors, cabinets, toilets, and appliances, as well as thrift store-type stuff like furniture and books.  It was fun to hunt around for awhile, but didn't yield the paint or hooks I was looking for.  

Materials for the Arts is a program run by NYC's Department of Sanitation and the Department of Cultural Affairs.  They distribute anything you can imagine to artists and teachers working with qualifying arts organizations/schools.  I saw furniture, office supplies, gigantic wheels, hundreds of team patches for hats and clothes, buttons, a huge glass globe - the list goes on and on - while "shopping" in their warehouse.  My more experienced friend tells me that their inventory is completely different every time you go.  People and companies donate their unwanted stuff  to MFTA in exchange for a tax write-off.   It seems that nothing is too miscellaneous: a group of helpful sculptor girls from Pratt had carts overflowing with metal rods, paper, paint, and many other things I couldn't identify.  I'm not sure how great the ecological impact of this venture is in the end, but I love the idea of artists transforming the city's garbage into magic.  I was looking for file cabinets and furniture for my upcoming installation project, but got a little overwhelmed by the sheer possibilities in the place.  If anyone's got extra two-drawer file cabinets, please let me know.

As much as I enjoyed my recent adventures, the visits taught me a little about myself - things I wasn't too keen to learn.  I'm an impatient shopper: years of Home Depot and my own personal peculiarities made hunting and digging a little frustrating.   I love walking into a place, locating exactly what I need amongst a million choices, and walking out in no time.  This is really counter to what Fix is about -- exploration, adventure, the unexpected -- and I'm not sure my desire for efficiency is something I'll get over this year, if ever.  Is it people like me who are plundering the world's resources in the name of convenience?

I questioned recently if we really need all the soaps and lotions and shampoos and other potions we've come to consider necessities.  Now the plot thickens and I find myself in even more ambiguous territory - territory that really pisses me off.  I went to the doctor this week, with what most would count as a legitimate medical inquiry.  The dermatologist spent 5 minutes on the serious potentially cancer-related question, and 25 minutes convincing me that I have a host of other medical problems curable by five different prescriptions. 

Am I going to tell him he's wrong?  That he's a beauty-fascist, disguising the demands of the beauty and pharma industries as medical advice?   Of course I wish I had flawless skin.  Of course I wish I looked like a movie star.  But it seems wrong to pathologize my average gifts.  What about all the people who fall nowhere near our cultural standards of beauty?  And why does my insurance pay for this stuff but not other stuff that's clearly more medically necessary?  What about all of the people (like myself a couple of years ago) who don't have insurance and need real drugs?  Maybe we can set up a program where the cost of all the prescriptions we don't choose to fill can be donated to people who need life-saving medicine?

At the same time, it's obviously appealing to think that with a little effort and a lot of money I could be a little less average in this department.  The stuff probably works...and then I'll be buying special skin crap for years to come.  Maybe I'd start to need it, take a huge bag with me when I travel, freak out when the bottles are low.  One of the things they gave me as a courtesy for some botched scheduling cost around $80 for a half an ounce.  Dependence on that could seriously impact my life - imagine giving up my part-time job freedom for some face cream!   I'll try the samples they gave me...and wonder if these doctors are just making more work for their friends the psychiatrists. 

I've been adding books to the reading list here and there, and I'd like to bring your attention to one I'm particularly excited about, Peter C. Whybrow's American Mania.

Combining biological, economic, and psychiatric models, Whybrow creates a compelling explanation for the ambitious American role in what he terms the "Fast New World."  He argues that Americans are predisposed to seeking success and adventure at all costs, given the exploits of our parents (or grandparents, or great-grandparents) who chose to test their fortunes here.  The uniquely American (and possibly Australian?) drive for better-faster-more is fast exceeding the biological restraints on our collective lifestyle, leading to obesity, diabetes, and anxiety.   He also makes the case that our foundational models of the free market and the commons can't achieve their intended purposes today and ought to be reconsidered.  The case histories Whybrow uses to explore his theory are rich examples, but unfortunately lead him to prosaic, oft-repeated prescriptions.

I think I'm so excited about this book because a lot of the blogs and books I've been reading idealize simpler, easier, healthier, happier times without much inquiry into how our culture and expectations ended up where they are now.  I think this line of thinking is much more fruitful than nostalgic storytelling -- which American Mania does sometimes, too -- and might be more useful in the long run.  Despite its disappointing conclusion, I highly recommend checking it out.  (The NYPL has 17 copies.  Maybe we can come up with some prescriptions equal to Whybrow's otherwise-rigorous curiosity?)  And thanks so much for all of the recommendations you've sent me in the past few months!

I've been wanting a new pair of work shoes for a while.  I thought a pair I bought over Thanksgiving would do the job for the year but they're already pretty beat up and not so comfortable.  A few halfhearted looks at thrift stores didn't yield anything, and I missed my friends' most recent clothing swap.  So when a girl was selling her stuff on the sidewalk outside of my Saturday dance class, I had to stop and investigate.  I could tell these were a 7 and I thought they'd dutifully cheer up my all-black outfits (the picture looks a little dark - they're purple).  Shortly after she bought them, the girl decided to give up on heels - these had never been worn!  It pained me a little to pay $20 for shoes on the street, but hey - they found me.