Let’s go shopping! About this time last year, I wrote the post, Undeferring Deferred Maintenance (September 2023). I had a breakthrough, or a breakdown, or whatever but I found a way to launch into some chores that had been deferred for too long, in some cases over a decade. That was the maintenance. This year is the shopping. The shopping is happening because I sold the house that I did the maintenance on. Hello, cash. Hello, moving. Hello, realizing it was finally time to replace a few, ha, a lot of things. Relief? For sure. An education? More than I expected. Lessons? Yep.

I just glanced at my hands while I paused typing this. Age and time change things. My skin has a few more wrinkles. Age spots have shown up. Surprisingly, some youthful scars are gone. 

It isn’t much of a surprise that it is time to replace worn-out things. We pesky humans can complain about aging, but we regenerate, at least partly. 

You will be spared the list of everything I bought, unless you want to zoom in on this picture. Soon after moving into my tiny house (mytinyexperiment.com), I taped a sheet of flip chart paper to the bathroom door. I realized the list of things to replace was so long that I had to take notes. As ideas came to mind, I wrote them down. The list grew and isn’t done. As things were bought, they were crossed off the list.

My lifestyle has improved.

My cash has diminished, but not much compared to what I made from the house. Most of the house proceeds went into buying my tiny house, about as much into investments, and as much into cash to possibly pay taxes (True Tax Relief). Compared to those buckets, the purchases are small. Compared to what I had last year, the purchases were impossible. 

I guess I am not a geek’s geek because I didn’t turn the list into a spreadsheet. I have saved all of the receipts, though. A quick estimate of the expenses is about $10K. That’s a lot of money, and it’s not.

Some of the larger items: computer, phone, washer/dryer, nice toaster oven, induction burner, etc. Plus a few major maintenance tasks: tree trimming, kitchen faucet, 100,000 mile maintenance. Let’s make that about $12,000.

For some folks, $10K to $12K would be like getting an extra job without having to go to work. For some folks, it’s the roundoff error in their IRA, which could be positive or negative.

For me, it is a reminder of how close a better lifestyle was, as well as how far away. It was tantalizing, as in Tantalus’ torment in Hades. 

Things work better now. I spend less time rigging up patches as fixes, knowing they are temporary. My equipment is much more capable. I’m using them as before, but I’m also practicing with their new features as they open creative possibilities that I’ve seen others exercise. Stay tuned for more videos and photo essays.

Things are also more difficult, now. Even my washer/dryer is run by an AI! Each machine could warrant a class, or at least a good owner’s manual, but at best I find a link, and sometimes only a QR code. Falling behind in upgrades also meant falling behind in the incremental educational lessons for a decade. (And here I pause as I hold myself back from venting about companies that mistake New for Improved.)

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Shopping.

And the deliveries.

It is tempting to imagine buying all of those things all at once. Instant Gratification. That’s what shopping malls were good for, one-stop shopping. Or Amazon, one-stop shopping in the biggest mall in the world, and maybe next-day delivery.

I slow that down. Pick what’s most urgent, or at least convenient. Ideally, buy a thing, wait for the thing, get the thing, unpack the thing, learn how to use the thing, then buy the next thing. Pacing. Of course, with some small things, it is okay to buy a few. Luckily, I’ve never had the UPS, USPS, and FedEx deliveries collide. 

Currently, I’m waiting for the bulk delivery of my newest book, Fire Race, the sequel to Firewatcher; and while I wait, I ordered some storage bins for my tiny house. After that comes a camera, and …

And, soon, the list will be largely complete. Ten years of deferred shopping has convinced me of how little I need. Doing without becomes a habit. But it is nice to quit trying to convince a ten-year-old laptop that the internet has changed in the meantime. (Zoom calls can be so embarrassing at the time and entertaining in retrospect.)

So, stay tuned as new books, photos, and stories come along. If only I can figure out the arcane language that alludes me when I try to Search or Find what I’m looking for. Is there an Index I can highlight with a pen and plaster with post-its?