The Challenge

 

I've never been one to make New Year's resolutions and yet I have already decided what I would like to try next year: I will set myself the challenge ideally not to buy ANY new clothes or shoes for as long as possible, ideally the whole year. Every month without buying anything (other than replacing things that break where I don't have a backup) will be a success. I don't actually think that it is that difficult and am already looking forward to a) rediscovering things in my substantial "archive(s)" and b) finally tackling all those sewing projects that I've been meaning to get around to for, ahem, years actually.

This idea is a "byproduct" of my recent e-mail purge when I unsubscribed from so many marketing newsletters. I do most of my shopping online and it is often triggered by nothing more than boredom and attractive offers that feel too good to pass by. I will try to resist the urge and not seeing those e-mails will definitely help.

I mentioned my plan to a colleague who is less than half my age recently and she told me she could never do that herself because "I can only wear my clothes 3 times max. There is this energy that prevents me from wearing them more often". Erm, okay. I definitely don't have this type of problem and actually love combining things I have had for decades with more recent acquisitions. 

And, no, I am NOT planning to stock up on things before January first, either, like a friend thought I might do ;-)

OMGEEE

 

They say that mothers immediately forget the pain related to childbirth once they hold their newborn baby in their arms. Maybe this is the case with all painful/disturbing/uncomfortable experiences? On my recent e-mail-folder-purge I came across newsletters by retailers promoting their clever ways to provide a comfortable and seamless online shopping experience during lockdown and also many e-mails reminding me (as a ticket holder for an event for example) what "G-rules" were in place at the venue. In Austria, the Gs stood for "genesen" (recovered from the virus, i.e. you got naturally infected) "geimpft" (vaccinated) and "getested" (able to show a recent antigen or PCR test, depending on which was required). 2G meant it sufficed to be recovered or vaccinated, 3G meant that on top you also had to have a valid negative test result.

I actually had to google what the difference between "G and 3G was again (wasn't sure if the test or the vaccination were the critical third element) and also couldn't remember for a hot minute what those more accurate tests that I took dozens of were called again. How can this be when it dominated my life a little over two years ago?!? Last week was Highflyer's and my second wedding anniversary and we were still a little anxious that our wedding with around 100 attendees would cause a Covid cluster. Luckily quite a few people had Coronavirus shortly before and we don't know of a single infection in the aftermath, phew.

I decided to keep a handful of those e-mails as a reminder of those crazy times anyway.

Expectation Management

Last Saturday I saw Coldplay at the stadium in Vienna where Taylor Swift was supposed to play 3 weeks earlier when all her shows got cancelled due to an attempted, but thankfully foiled, terrorist attack. I felt for all those people (in particular those who travelled from other countries or who returned from their summer vacation abroad earlier just for the concert) who had tickets and were disappointed despite the fact that saved lives are the most important thing, obviously. It made me realise once more that ever since the Pandemic when so many events got cancelled at short notice I always have the possibility at the back of my mind that what I am looking for might not take place in the end. I still consider myself a very optimistic "glass half full" type of person and don't see this as something negative at all. It has just made me more resilient to disappointment, I would say and this, for me, is definitely something positive.

 

Unlocking New Memories

I spent the greater part of last week at the house that my grandparents lived in when they retired and where I spent many summer and winter holidays and most Sundays as long as I lived with my parents. When my grandparents bought the half finished two-family house it became our holiday and weekend home and my parents finished and furnished the top floor. I have fond memories of quality time with my grandparents and other relatives and of summers cycling to nearby lake Ossiach with my mum and winters with cross-country slopes right in front of the house. These days are long gone and the house has been empty ever since my grandparents died. My mother inherited the house and tries to visit at least once a week, but she stopped staying overnight since my father's health deteriorated considerably this February. Since 2020, I have spent part of my summer vacation with Highflyer and his teenage sons there and we started new routines, such as eating our meals on the large terrace that we hardly ever used when I was a child. We even got new lounge furniture for it and it has become quite cosy. Overall, there is a bit of a "camping vibe" as the stove is old and there is no dishwasher in the house anymore ever since mum got rid of granny's old one. My parents didn't cook much in our apartment's kitchen back in the days as granny insisted on cooking for us and we enjoyed spending time with my grandparents. It was quite a novel sensation for me to be the "woman of the house" there and to see the village and its surrounding tourist attractions with the eyes of, well, tourists. In the past 4 years I visited places I had never been to before and developed new routines. Part of me misses spending my summer break exclusively in Klagenfurt as I used to as an adult, but at the same time I enjoy this new family life at the old - happy- place of my youth.

 

The Comfort of Familiarity

So after extensive research and comparison I ended up booking the same hotel as last year for my seaside vacation with Highflyer and sons. It turned out to be a good idea that everyone approved of. We already know that we like it here, have tested most of the local restaurants and know where the best pizza (what the men eat most of the time) can be found and where the local supermarket is. You can step right into vacation-mode, no time lost. I call it the "Nice effect" since I have been to Nice more than ten times and love the familiarity of it. I haven't been there two summers now and would not mind a little Cote d'Azur refresher, but until then, I am thoroughly enjoying our "copy/paste" approach in Croatia.

 

Situationship

 

The first time I heard this term, I instantly knew it was the perfect label for the non-relationship I was in on and off for about a decade (!). The other "party" called me out of the blue last week as I was eating lunch with a colleague and when I called him back we had a nice enough chat. It's funny how I can have a civil and entirely non-emotional conversation now with somebody who used to cause so much agitation that I would have spontaneous nose-bleeds and be close to nervous breakdowns several times. I guess I just grew up eventually and it is definitely among my proudest achievements not to obsess over lost causes. As I was clearing up my e-mail inbox (see previous post) I also went through my "Drafts" folder and found one draft from 2018 when I had written a long e-mail to said person explaining how much he had upset me by sulking on MY birthday because I had the audacity to answer congratulatory messages right away and spend too much time on my phone for his taste. He had  ruined the evening for me and I was as livid as I was disappointed. Well, I never pressed "send" on that novella of an e-mail and it is now deleted forever. Well done, me! Learning that you don't always need to have the last word, get what you think is closure and sneak your foot into a door that is best closed and kept locked definitely took years, but I did learn it eventually and it feels really good, let me tell you that!

Purge

Last week, I got rid of almost 20 GB of cloud storage by deleting videos from Google Photos and newsletters in bulk. Some of them went as far back as the early 2000s and the stores have long since closed down. While I was at it, I also unsubscribed from most newsletters. It felt quite liberating and was also an interesting trip down memory lane. I randomly opened some order confirmation e-mails and could not remember half of the things I had bought. In other cases I wondered what had happened to the shoes or clothes in question. Did I gift them? Sell them on a classifieds site? 

Amazon e-mails will be tackled next and definitely must amount to at least one GB alone. I first ordered there when I still worked at Coma HQ and they still gave you generous vouchers when you bought there. Seems like another lifetime, back in the golden days of online shopping.