Cerebellum Chic

It’s a toss-up for the poor logical conundrum of the week; the way I’m seeing it, it’s neck and neck between me disputing excels calculations against my own, before I’ve even calculated them, or my plan to justify my exercise establishment mistakes.

In the spirit of talking about logic, I think the time I tried to out computer a computer by using a computer gets this week’s award.  From time to time, I like to conduct a retrospective budgeting exercise.  This is where I decide to calculate the cost of something I’ve been habitually buying, or doing, after I’ve bought it or done it, and add it all up to make myself feel bad.  There’s nothing I can change about it as *poof* the money or time is gone, but I can make myself feel bad about how unorganised and wasteful I am and ride on the coattails of that shame for a good 24 hours, whipping myself into better, temporary, organisational shape.

This exercise was slightly different, as I was convinced the activity I was indulging in was thrifty and useful.  It started in December when the month was presenting me with a few circumstances outside of my control, that were decidedly cancelling some of my better plans.  I suppose that lift me a little more inclined to seeking a ‘pick me up’ of some kind.  I found myself checking out a reselling website that I had sworn I would never use because it terrorized me on YouTube relentlessly with its campaign, preventing me from enjoying uninterrupted cat videos, wisdom from enlightened gurus or conspiracy theories in peace.

You see, there is the case of me having two items of the exact same coat from not checking the returns policy on the two sizes I tried.  Well, that’s not exactly why I have two.  That’s me trying to make this story sound a bit more normal and make it seem like I purchased them at the same time.  I was doing that on purpose.  If you must know, it was over a period of two years and reached me via a transatlantic relative as the shop didn’t ship to the U.K. (I just realized how environmental of me that was to combine my shopping by offsetting it with their flight).  When the transatlantic relative arrived with the first one and it didn’t fit (despite them being a male, 50 years older then me, they modelled it beautifully for me in the photos beforehand, I must say) I decided to try again, and waited another year for our next visit to try the next size.  Obsessive, did you say?

I did offer the one that didn’t fit me to my Mum when she was visiting, who took it for a spin the same time as giving me a lift somewhere, when I was also wearing the coat.  Given that it’s quite a shiny, distinctive piece of attire, I started to worry we might break down and look like two members of some emerging new cult, or that we were adopting a similar kind of ethos to the Amish but updated for 2022, where the women wear orange, faux fur, teddy bear coats.  She decided not to take it.

So, I’m looking on this site I’m reminded quickly why I previously decided that it is not worth me reselling things unless I’m actually going to be frugal. Like, if I’m not actually going to budget or more conscientiously watch what I do spend on things, reselling just feels a bit mean.  Give it to charity where they can actually calculate the usefulness of any money raised from it.

In the past, by the time I’ve packaged the sold item presentably enough so that the post office doesn’t think I’m trying to send a suspicious package, gone and cued at the post office, and kept hold of the little receipt that you need for the inevitable email you’ll receive saying “where’s my little pink bag” or “it’s more coral than pink, isn’t it?  Do you accept returns?”  It’s much better for me to just not buy anymore little pink bags that I don’t need.  Plus, by leaving the house I just increase my chance that on the way out of the post office I’ll walk past something interesting like, a laminator, and convince myself it would help me become a more enriched, ethical citizen, because I could laminate a manifesto to myself and stick it up in every room, and I could instruct myself to do things like “only buy little pink bags every time I’ve finished a Dostoevsky novel” or “Every time you want to watch an episode of Gilmore Girls, you have to read a chapter of Ulysses first”.  So then I buy the laminator and realise I lost the better part of an afternoon for a bag that sold for five pounds and I’m now down £40 and my life remains unchanged by my new laminator.  I mean, essentially if you have the inclination to resell (which I once did) great, but I decided I’m trying to simplify my life and honing in on my priorities, so I would let that one go.

Phew!  I was glad I remembered all that and was quickly moving on when the app outsmarted me and got it’s sneaky little notifications to nudge me.  It was a seller. While exploring it, I had clicked the little heart sign on a cute little shirt I had scrolled past and the app had informed the seller that all signs pointed towards my resolve being weak.  She contacted me.  She said “you know the pictures don’t do this top justice…the diamantes really are lovely for Christmas…how about I let you have it for £2?”  Before I have time to think, the app prompts me again “free postage for your first purchase”.  I feel bad.  This lady is prepared to go to the post office for me and send me a lovely looking top for £2.  It feels like unethical wages for the labour put in.  Munificently, I offer her £3, and say get to work!  And hope she cracks on with wrapping it up for me to beat the Christmas post.

The shirt arrives, and I’m thrilled!  Thrilled I tell thee.  What a high.  I tell everyone I know, take some selfies in it, and jingle my wrists at my husband all day to emphasise how charming they are with these little jewels attached to them, shimmering away.  I declare how great it is to receive £2 shirts, because you don’t save them for best, you put em’ on right away and don’t worry when you drizzle orange juice down yourself from the carton.  I leave the lady a 5 star review, publicly thanking her for the service she is doing and it all feels wholesome enough.  My husband is happy with my high and expects this is going to last the better part of a week.

Wrong.  I had got the bug.  Come evening time, I had reopened the app and my fingers were scrolling through categories like a shark unable to stop.  I started pulling things out of my wardrobe. “What are you doing?” my husband asked.  I told him I may as well look for replacements for everything I own on this app now, because it was just SO GOOD.

In nervousness my husband tried to level with the better part of me.  “Isn’t this the site you said you would boycott because it’s advertising campaign was so obnoxious?” “Shut up” I quipped back.  You think I hadn’t been through this?  Why would I cut off my nose to spite my face?  Who was I to boycott the sharing and recycling of clothes?  Overall, it contributes to a circular economy,  it’s got to be at least neutral in the broader move to a less consumeristic society (stop, I don’t need to hear any obvious flaws in my arguments, that’s not how denial works okay?). 

If I was struggling to reconcile anything about my newfound habit (which I wasn’t) it would have been my recent declaration about joining ‘the war against cars’ and the visions I had been pitching to friends and relatives about just how sad it is how much space we give up to traffic and vehicles “once you see it, you can’t unsee it” I’d been appealing to people the week before.  Now, I knew all too well a van was on the road rushing to get my ‘barely worn, bejeweled, heart print’ scarf to my nearest Londis for me.

At least dropping it to Londis is a collective thing, right?  I’m not encouraging the personal, home delivery of said unnecessary packages.  He drops off all the goodies for the rampant consumers in the area in one place and we, rightfully, put in the rest of the footwork.  Previously, I had been on quaint and genteel terms with the Londis owner.  He knew me as someone who popped in from time to time, grateful for his provisions of the various sundries I find myself in need of in the atypical hours he operates through.  I once sheepishly asked him if “other people also just make the journey here for a lone chocolate bar?” he laughed and said “of course!”.  Then there was the time I needed to use my card without realising I was under the spending allowance for using the card reader.  He politely informed me but then added “because it’s you, I don’t mind this time” “No, no, no” I insisted. “Let me buy a second chocolate bar” My blood sugar can incur the cost…

The days of this kind of polite refrainment between us, now feel long ago.  Quickly, he started to regard me busting through his door as some kind of pest that he was eventually going to have to report to the council.  Without looking up (worryingly, I think he’s now too busy from whatever admin comes from managing all these packages) he would call out “today or yesterday” meaning – when did I receive the notification that my package had arrived?  Impatiently, I would respond “today” as clearly, I’m there like an automaton as soon as I get that ping, I’m in there chasing that package high.  He then let’s me have access to this big bin marked ‘today’ which I practically dive into to rummage through while other more civilized shoppers have to maneuver round me as I’m head first in on my hunt.  He also got used to my passport name and package recipient name only matching on a middle name basis…something I can’t change on the app because if I go on the app to change it, well that’s just increasing my time on the app and the likelihood of me buying another package.  Despite the raised suspicion around my frequent attendance and repeated insisting “I go by my middle name, remember” he eventually stops checking my passport at all, as I think he can’t stand the sight of me.

One time when I had been rummaging for too long, he intervened and helped me look systematically by saying I could take all the packages out that weren’t mine and place them back in one by one.  Then there was the time I got two packages in one day.  I received the first notification and rushed over, “today” I called out before he could respond, and got stuck in.  But then I returned home and got another email.  I headed back but he was all locked up for the night, or hiding from me.  I arrive the next morning and he looks a little scared when I insist I need to see the “yesterday” pile, despite my being there “yesterday” (and all the other days).  Nonetheless, he takes me round the back of the shop and there is a mountainous pile of more packages.  Uncontainable by a single bin.  I start to feel bad.  “People don’t collect them, I have to send them back”.  Are they crazy?  I think.

Once I had conceivably purchased everything I could justify on the app, I moved on to other people.  My Mum mentioned she was going shopping for some new boots.  “What would you do that for?” “Don’t you listen to me?” “What did I tell you about shopping?  You need sumthin’ you come to me…”  I make her describe what kind of boots she would like. Who would the ideal maker of these boots be?  I get to it.  Now, the way this app works is a little bit like online dating. You’re encouraged to flirt with the items you like.  You put your little heart on it, and the seller comes forward with a little discount for you. Wink 😉.  I find these boots that look just like the one’s my Mum should have been looking for, and I send a message to the seller. “I see you mentioned they are a little too small…just out of interest what size do you normally take then?”  She ignores me, it was too intrusive, I suppose.  I tell my Mum I think I’ve found the ones for her, and she says to just go ahead and buy them, her confidence in the fit is high.

So as I do, the sellers finally responds, pouring their heart out to me. “I’m a size 8!  I loved them so much, I convinced myself I could make the size 9 work when they were the only pair available.  I ignored the obviousness in our unsuitability.  I had hoped it would work out.  Obviously it didn’t, and they’ve sat here like new waiting for an owner.  I’ve been courted so much on here, but with no serious offers.  People keep wanting me to go lower and lower in my price, when they are already a bargain…when you got in touch, I had lost faith and didn’t have the strength to respond”.  I told her how grateful I was to have found her boots, how they were going to my Mum, how they made not just my mother happy, but me as well.  I said I recognized their value, and her generous pricing…and she said my Mum was going to look “really cool”.  Then I wondered how I was ever going to get out of this conversation, as I had compiled all the above points for you and recalled them here at once, but these details had been arriving into my inbox singularly, line by line, for 48 hours.  This is the premium you pay.

My affinity for the packages naturally started to wean and I’ve found myself feeling much more balanced.  I have this diary where it asks you to write down your ‘goals’ and your ‘rewards’ for completing said goals.  When you have poor impulse control and low self-discipline, it’s often difficult to find what to put there.  Well now, I can put packages!  Complete X and I can go on the app and spend a couple of a quid.  However, I had sort of vaguely registered that the postage was ruining the £1-ness of my purchases.  I thought now I was nice and calm, and balanced, and had a diary with realistic goals and rewards systems, it would probably be worth my doing a little tally up of how much I had actually spent on my second hand shopping bender.

This is where I became an excel denier.  There had been a little moment where I had mucked up the formatting by inserting the £ and apparently excel doesn’t like it when you to tell it you mean money that way, so my husband came along and clicked a few things and corrected it so I could get the ‘sum’.  I didn’t believe it.  “Um, no.  You’ve not fixed it”.  Try again, I asked.  “Yes, I have, that’s the sum of all your figures”. “Umm, no, that’s impossible, it must be counting the column next to it as well”. “…no, no, I can tell just by looking at it that those figures will add up to that amount”. “No, these items cost between £1 and £10, they can’t make that number.”  Let me get a calculator and double check.

My husband leaves the room, prepared for the inevitable.  Now, I’m not going to tell you the figure here.  Rock bottom means different things for all of us.  But I was once again shocked by one of my retrospectives.  Now on to the runner up for poor logic, that I mentioned earlier, which I may even be able to shape into some form of logical shape that could help me ‘offset’ the above waste.  Let me explain.

From time to time, something strikes me as I walk past a yoga studio, or a gym, and I feel like just walking up to the receptionist and giving her some cash to stow away for the business.  I say “here you go” and they go “what for?” and I say “For nothing.  Nothing at all” I smile.  “Wouldn’t you like a membership?” and I tell them “Let’s cut out the role play and just be upfront here for a minute, we both know your business model depends upon people like me”.  You see, I’m actually doing the wider community a service by not attending, as this contributes to keeping the prices down for people who actually will attend.  However, sometimes I still talk myself into joining one of these establishments again by declaring it is my turn to be one of these people that goes to the gym.

So, I also decided this week to count the number of times I have been against the pay as you go price, cancel my membership and then figure out how many times I need to go before my final day as a member to not count this time round as a loss, again.  I call them, request to cancel, and also request to know when I joined and if they can confirm that I got the first month free.  They do.  Hurrah, one less month to recoup in retrospective attendance.  The price of a pay as you is about £11, the monthly membership is £48.  I think about it and decide, it’s not really enough to just attend enough times to have met the pay as you go price with your monthly fee, as the whole point of a monthly membership is to make that price lower, right?  So, if I’m going to behave like a normal person, I should probably double the number of the pay as you price into the monthly fee.  With me?

This works out as about 32 times.  That’s more days than there is in a month!  Help!  I’ve been 3 times in 4 months, what am I going to do?  I start panicking and involve my husband.  Like a beacon of logic that he is, he sets me on the right path. He is also not a fan of this retrospective thing I do, but if I am going to do it he wants me to at least do it properly.    He explains, that it’s actually “not a loss” if I just go the amount of times it takes to reach the equivalent amount of the monthly membership fee. See, there was no need to double it.  Are you following?  £11 into £48 goes about 4x (slight over, but let’s round down) x4 months and we are at 16 sessions.  Now, if I just go one more time, he tells me, then I am NOT at a loss. And I have figurately speaking not done that thing for the umpteenth time where I just hand the gym money for the exchange of a 5 minute fantasy of myself.  So there we go, 16 sessions to get in within the next month.  I’ll start tomorrow.  Maybe.