Not Needing Much

Bought no new things today (or for the past six or seven days)

The last week has been my first long break from this blog (with the exception of my one "flowers" entry). I was at our cottage and not only were there no new things to buy but I also did not find myself thinking about buying things. I had a backlog of buying-related topics I'd wanted to write on but they all evaporated while I was there.

I did finish the book *Not Buying It* while I was at the cottage. Levine came to the same conclusions after a year that I'd come to after a month (hah!) But I'm sure she probably came to those conclusions earlier on. And she had a much much tougher project. The main point: she didn't need much. Today in the G&M there was an article on a guy who had lost his fortune to Bernie Madoff (a fortune ironically made on selling books about simple living). His conclusion: you don't need much to be happy. It's obvious of course. But we have *felt* the reality of that more from not buying new things than we did when we just knew intellectually that we didn't need that much.

Michal, who has been so good about not getting anything new, recently found out she won a (new) digital camera in a contest for a poster she designed. She receives it tomorrow. And so she is getting one HUGE and unexpected new thing in the middle of this project. She's excited about it. It's interesting to watch. Is it the camera? Or is it winning? Or is it both?