Earth Day, Patagonia, and the World's Diverse Passions

Happy Earth Day, everyone! I completely forgot the holiday, but it's a happy coincidence that I bought a new Electra quick-release wire basket for my bike last weekend and a Patagonia messenger bag this week. Both I plan on using for environmentally friendly offices. I'm going to use the wire basket for conveying groceries from my local farmers' market and books from my library. It looks cute on my bike and is soooo fun to use!

The Patagonia bag is extra-special to me. I've wanted one since college. Patagonia makes high-quality camping, hiking, and bicycling products in an extremely earth-friendly way: they fund a lot of great causes, and pretty much everything they sell is either completely recycled or completely organic. They're a fantastic company, and I can't wait to tote my work computer around in their bag! I'm calling it a Happy New Job present to myself.  :) 

Finally getting a Patagonia bag is a big deal for me; their stuff is expensive (in part because it's meant to be used for decades without falling apart), so it's exciting to finally be able to afford one and to placate a consumerist fetish that I've been nursing for a long time!

Buying my bag got me thinking about people's unique proclivities and passions. Patagonia is an old one for me, and it's a passion that is unique to my geographic location, my class, my social situation, my values, and my temperament. It comes from being a former Enrivons member and a KU graduate and a Lawrence resident during the early 2000s. It's symptomatic of who I am and where I come from, just like my passion for bookstores and literature and education and vintage clothes and granola and pickles and who knows what else! Our loves and desires are created by more than just ourselves--they're organic outgrowths of our unique personal contexts, as well.

This has been on my mind as I learn about the students I'm involved with as an advisor. The personality types common to each of my academic programs are so distinctive from each other and often quite different from my own. Each day contrasts my values and understandings--those values and understandings unique to my background in the study of literature, writing, and the creative process--with those of my new co-workers and advisees.

I suspect that my job will be a great one for studying human nature and the variety of human passions. Whether it's service, professionalism, creativity, or knowledge that my students seek, I find it refreshing and fascinating to experience, at least for a few minutes at a time, how these lovely people perceive the world, themselves, and their career paths.

Gifting the Good Life

This weekend, I made my first, last, and only Christmas shopping trip to Wal-Mart, Dillons, and Sports Authority. To be honest, I wasn't really buying any Christmas presents for anyone. I was looking for a yoga mat for myself and a heaping mound of baking supplies. I didn't buy a damn thing for anyone else, and I have to admit, it felt pretty great!

I'm not Scrooging it up or anything, but I just didn't want to this year. I didn't feel like barreling through crowds at the mall or Best Buy or Borders. I didn't feel like agonizing over trying to make the people in my life happy by buying them something they didn't necessarily need or even want for themselves. I didn't want to deplete my bank account for gifts that could very well end up sitting around the house, collecting dust. Shopping just seems like a tiring routine this year, one that benefits corporations without really making the holiday any more enjoyable for me and my family.

So I straight up opted out. I took my dad to a KU basketball game for his Christmas present, which we both thoroughly enjoyed. I'm taking my mom for a short wine tasting road trip in January, which sounds like a blast for both of us. My mom's family does a white elephant-style gift exchange on Christmas Eve, but instead of buying something at, say, Target, I bought my gift from my farmers' market; not only did my gift directly benefit my local economy, but shopping there made for a really fun Saturday morning with a friend! My grandparents on both sides will get a pan of homemade cinnamon rolls, as will my friends (Sorry if I'm spoiling the surprise for anyone!). And that's it! I'm done!

Psychologists have discovered that people are happier when they spend money on experiences rather than things, and I hope this proves true for receiving gifts, too. This year, I'm doing my best to give experiences, not gifts: the experience of a basketball game or trying new things or enjoying a lazy, delicious, properly fattening breakfast on Christmas morning without any effort.

And along the way, I'm working on enjoying the Christmas season more, even as I spend less money and less time doing so.

The Peanuts kids, experiencing the Christmas season.