I’ve decided to participate in a posting meme for the first time in nearly 3 years. For the month of November, I will be posting every day for NaBloPoMo
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Despite promising myself that buying the iPod Touch would be my last impulse purchase of the year, I took an early lunch break Tuesday and got What I Really Wanted, an iPhone. I could say that this moment came after much deliberation, study and careful calculation of future expenditures, or that I had any number of moments during my trip to California which both revealed to me the nagging shortcomings of the iPod Touch as an internet communication device and suggested the undeniable potential utility of a full iPhone in my life, but that would be just clever excuses. The truth is, I’m a gadget nut, and what’s worse, a relentless upgrader. This gets me into trouble constantly.
I hate the idea that I’ve somehow not optimized my choices in every thing I buy—no, not just things I buy, but every thing I do—or more truthfully, I can’t stand the idea that I might have overlooked an obvious flaw in something and therefore settled with something less than what I can optimally achieve/acquire. I don’t want the middle tier device, I want the one that does everything, or the newest model, preferably both. I don’t want to just meet the expectations of my superiors at work, I want to impress them in ways they didn’t know they could be impressed and outdo myself every time. I am bored with/quickly lose interest with/don’t want the girl who is interested in me/with me/in love with me, I want the one who is just barely out of my league, one whom I could conceivably get with a heroic exertion of charm and effort.
It would be tempting to think of this urge as a terrible personality flaw that only adds dissatisfaction and futility to my life, but as much as it drags me into the dirt with petty competitive materialism, seemingly out-of-nowhere romantic curveballs, and strange fixations on things I “need” but really don’t need, it’s also the force that compels me to do what I do well, and to strive harder when I’d otherwise just indulge in self-satisfied inaction (another subject for another time). So much of my personal success academically and professionally has been the result of this need to do it better, to push yet another notch every time, to constantly want the next higher rung, to be constantly upgrading everything in my life, that I can’t say it’s a bad thing. Without it… well, it’s hard to imagine what I’d be like, honestly.
I’m going to have to think about this some more.
