One thing that I’m starting to really feel about this depth year is that a year isn’t actually enough. It’s been like a detox – a cleanse for my relationship with consumerism. It really just feels at this point here like I’m starting to feel the benefits and there’s only a couple more months left to go. By the time you read this we’ll be into November, and there are only two more updates to come. I know this has been a positive experience but weirdly I find myself wanting more – not more ‘things’ but more ‘depth’.
I think this dovetails into a question I’ve been asking myself a lot of late – how does one live a depthful life. As is probably obvious from earlier posts in the depth year diaries, I’ve accumulated a lot of possessions over the years. As we get ready for our move to Sweden, I’m finding great satisfaction in giving them away. But the thing is – I’m not necessarily a particularly gluttonous consumer. Generally I buy things when they’re on a deal, squirreling them away like nuts for winter. I try to live as frugally as I can within Capitalism. I buy relatively few video games on their release date – I pick them up instead through bundles. I buy most of my digital books on Kindle’s daily deals. I’m engaged in something of a preventative accumulation of distraction. My ability to grab bargains though dramatically outstrips my ability to make my way through them.
That means I end up with a lot of things that ‘sounded good at the time’, but the awkward part of life is that you don’t buy time when you buy possessions. What I need to work out is how to have a kind of ‘just-in-time frugal capitalism’ – where I pick up bargains only when it’s time for me to move on to a new thing. Either that or work out some kind of buffer system that means I complete more than I acquire. I’ve spoken in the past about moving to a ‘One in, two out’ system or similar. I’m not sure that seems like enough though. Perhaps I need to cultivate a different kind of mindset – one that sparks curiosity based on what’s available as opposed to hoping that curiosity can withstand a cold winter, or more, of disinterest.
All of this is to say – I’m not sure I’m ready for my depth year to end.
At the moment though, it’s easy to say that because I’m in a phase of jettison. Every time I think about buying something new, unless it’s digital, I get anxiety. It becomes a potential new thing that just needs to be packed away.
We could probably take everything with us when we move, but we’re not going to. And in the process of deciding what to take and what not, I’ve discovered a lot of things about my book and game collections – namely, they were big, but they weren’t well curated. The single bookcase of books I’m taking with me is of astonishing quality. A collection of truly tremendous titles. Not a dud in the lot. They’re either books I have read and loved, or textbooks of real, lasting utility. And every time I look at those shelves, I get a warm glow – a kind of radiation that comes out of concentrated quality. The other shelves – those containing books to be abandoned – gives me nothing. I understand now sort of what Marie Konde means when she talks about things ‘sparking joy’. Now the value most of my other books have is the joy I can hopefully spark in others by passing them on.
There’s a really important aspect to this – it’s not just the will to get rid of things but also the incentive. There’s still much for us left to do as part of our move and a lot of it seems… ‘bitty’. I’ve been replacing a lot of my lower-tier books (the ones that don’t justify a physical copy) with ebooks as and when they appear for 99p. I’ve been selling things off on ebay. It seems so inconsequential but it’s really part of the critical path analysis of doing a big move. If we were taking everything it would be easy – just point the movers to the shelves and stand back. Downsizing a collection comes with a need to upsize how much time you spend thinking about it. We’ve given a lot of things away to a lot of people and there’s still more left on the shelves than has gone. But until we clear the bookcases we can’t give those away. Until we give away the bookcases, we can’t get the house painted. Until we get the house painted, we can’t sell it. Until we sell it, we can’t get rid of its mortgage. That’s why I’m spending time fooling around with ebay instead of doing anything more substantial or useful.
I’ve spoken in the past about feeling somewhat imprisoned by my possessions, but it’s never been so tangible as it is now. I’m trapped in a logistical puzzle caused by my own excesses. This, more than anything else, is instrumental in adjusting my mindset. We’re in our new flat for a year, but leases in Sweden are rarely for very long until you actually get a first-hand contract. That means we’ll very likely be moving again in a year after this and as such – yeah. Each of the things we own is a perpetual anchor. Even now I’m looking at the shelves of things to come with us and asking serious questions about whether I genuinely need or want them.
I’m thinking a lot of the near future, as you might imagine. We move to Sweden in less than a month (argh) and with that comes a whole new set of things to concern myself with. I’ve been thinking a lot about my future research agenda, Mainly how I’ll look to bring in funding that works for Meeple Like Us and also for some wider pro-social projects aimed at leveraging the positive aspects of board-gaming. At the moment I’m thinking through the arguments I’ve made in the past regarding gaming as a way to address issues of social isolation, but bound up in all my future thinking is the issue of living a more depthful life. There are so many things I could do, but as the saying goes – if you chase two rabbits, you’ll lose them both. Wrapped up in the future research work that comes along with my new position is the lessons I’m learning as part of the depth year – to really accomplish something, you need to focus your attention on it and work towards it.
I wish that was something I could say I’m learning from our current political leaders in the UK, but it seems they’re determined to squander every minute they have in the pursuit, or rejection, of a Brexit settlement. Brexit fatigue had infested me from skunk to trunk a long time ago. When I wrote the bulk of this diary it was still unknown whether there would be another extension to Brexit. Thankfully there has been and it has had an enormous impact in reducing some of my low-grade stress. I’m now in the position of being able to move into a phase of ‘Brexit Disinterest’. I didn’t want it. Still don’t want it. But in large part I’m escaping it.
Truthfully – I’ve shifted into an intensely selfish mindset. I have, my entire life, voted for what I thought represented the greatest good for the greatest number of people. I’ve always considered my vote to be for society, not for my own self-interest. For a long time, it would have been best for me to have a Conservative government in Scotland. We’re not wealthy but we’re in a sufficiently advantageous financial position that, say, reducing income tax on high earners would increase my salary at least a little. Since Mrs Meeple and I don’t have children or draw much in the way of public support, we are a net contributor in tax. Policies aimed at improving the quality of life for middle-class professionals are very much in our self-interest wheelhouse. Policies aimed at the poorest in society aren’t.
Neither of us have ever voted Conservative though. In fact, when income tax was raised in Scotland on high earners I thought it was a good plan. I was willing to pay a little more to improve the quality of life for others. That is, pleasingly, a very Swedish attitude. Much like me, they don’t resent a tax spend that goes towards making life better for the community.
But man, Brexit has really knocked that out of me. I’m so tired of it all that if Johnson’s awful deal passes I’ll find cause for celebration. This is an attitude I hear repeated back to me in conversation with people. I think Brexit has made many of us a lot more callous – the damage it’s done to our national psyche may very well be impossible to heal. I don’t want to become one of those people that votes for what works best for their life situation. I will continue to fight against that impulse. There’s no denying though that if I had a vote on the Brexit deal, I’d probably side with the government just to get the damn thing over with. I’ll be in Sweden. The consequences for me would be minimal.
I used to say that there was something in a hardcore conservative that suggested they were missing some fundamental part of their soul – the capacity to sacrifice their own self-interests in favour of increasing the life prospects of the common whole. I know that’s an unforgiveable generalisation, but it’s been true of a lot of Tories I’ve known over the years. I’ve always found it an attitude impossible to understand, but wow – I understand it now.
I hope this is only temporary, or I’ll become exactly that which I have always hated. I would hate to think that one of the depths of which I had become more conscious this year was of my own self-interest.
Okay, enough of that. At this point in the diary, we look at the wishlist and see how it’s changing. Here’s where it was at the end of last month:
- Cadence of Hyrule
- The Joker
- Avengers Endgame
- Return of the Obra Dinn
- Good Omens
- Captain Marvel
- Into the Spiderverse
- The Outer Worlds
- Astral Chain
So, Mrs Meeple, when she was off running her Chicago marathon, went to see the Joker and said it was amazing. So, that one definitely isn’t coming off the list. Cadence of Hyrule though – meh. I can take it or leave it. Sometimes the taste for doing something doesn’t last very long and I’m no longer feeling like I need to continue my Crypt of the Necrodancer experiences beyond where they terminated. That’s coming off. All the Marvel films stay on, as does the Outer Worlds because people haven’t stop enthusing about it since its release. Astral Chain though – doesn’t seem to have set the heather on fire so I haven’t thought about it at all since last month. It can safely come off.
Slipping on to the list though are the movie Midsommar, which I could probably justify watching during 2019 since it’s about Sweden. It is… far from non-fiction though. I suspect I won’t learn enough about real Swedish culture from a viewing to really justify making an exception, so I won’t. It looks bananas though, and just my kind of thing. I fully expect, when traveling around the quieter parts of the Scottish highlands, to end my days staring out the head of a wicker man. It would be nice to find some way to port those fears over to a Swedish context.
El Camino, a Breaking Bad movie, was released and I adore Breaking Bad. It is, I think, the greatest television series that was ever created. And as you might imagine, I’m champing at the bit to sit down with El Camino. It can wait though. I haven’t even made my way through all of Better Call Saul so I’m obviously not that invested in the wider franchise. It’s hard to say you need more sustenance when you haven’t eaten everything already on your plate. Onto the list it goes though.
Disco Elysium was released this month, and friends of mine have been telling me how it’s exactly up my alley. It almost certainly is too, but I’m making an effort to avoid learning too much about it. The enthusiasm people have for the enthusiasm they think I’ll have is propelling it onto the list on a sea of frothy endorsement. We’ll see if people are still talking about in 2020 though – this is the most tentative of the new entries.
That gives us the following wishlist:
- The Joker
- Avengers Endgame
- Return of the Obra Dinn
- Good Omens
- Captain Marvel
- Into the Spiderverse
- The Outer Worlds
- Midsommar
- El Camino
- Disco Elysium
Interesting here, like it always is for me, is how little after a year I’m actually enthused about. I’ll crunch some proper stats in the last diary of the series but there are only ten things (after ten months) on the list and I could work through eight of them over the course of a lazy weekend. Is this representative, do you think? Does being a patient consumer mean that your ‘todo’ list could become this manageable?
Perhaps that’s the simple answer to the question I keep asking myself. Perhaps the proper way to engage in ‘just-in-time frugal capitalism’ is simple patience. I’ve already noted some occasions over the year where a thing in which I was interested came my way without making an effort. The thing about waiting a year is that everything is pretty much guaranteed to be cheaper anyway because the new shinies are out there. I need to consider whether the solution to my need for sustainable depth is simply to cultivate a garden of opportunities in one year and harvest it the next. Maybe 2020 should be the year of exploring all that 2019 had to offer, and in 2021 I’ll catch up with 2020.
Something to consider then as this whole project winds up. Only two more months to go. How time flies.