No-Buy: A Weekend in Glastonbury

Hey guys! I'm feeling pretty positive on this current incarnation of my shopping ban, and I've surprised myself a couple of times so far.

My first weekend on the shopping ban was actually a really big challenge, as we spent two nights in Glastonbury, which is chock full of temptation for me. When we originally planned the trip I confess I'd been looking forward to a Glastonbury visit with no shopping ban in place, but as the time came closer I could feel myself getting worried and uncomfortable. The thing is, I've been on so many big blow-out spending sprees over the years, I know what the aftermath is like, how long it takes me to get back on my feet financially if I overdo it, how guilty I feel having to shovel everything in my wardrobe to one side to make room for new. The high doesn't last. The repercussions do. 

All that said, there was of course still a part of me that wanted to shop. It's the same part of me who compares myself to other people, who wants to be noticed for the way I dress, for whom no wardrobe ever feels like enough because there's always this underlying sense of lack. But I know now that if I stop shopping for long enough, that feeling of something missing mysteriously dwindles away. It's imaginary.

I rocked up at Glastonbury's big Medieval Fayre feeling trepidatious. In all honesty I hadn't been able to decide how I wanted to handle this, and I spent the first hour or so on tenterhooks, waiting to feel those pangs of want!, for my contactless card to start flashing about. But that's not how it went. I looked at everything on the market. There was a necklace I liked. I couldn't afford it, so I didn't buy it. I had a cup of nettle cordial. It was pale pink and delicious. I started to relax.

We watched a joust. Dai tried his hand at axe throwing. We sampled lots of free mead. I was so bowled over by my absolute lack of desire to buy all the things that I ended up almost in a daze. Eventually I bought a blackberry lip balm for £3 and had two sparkly hair extensions put in for £1 each. Perhaps it would be more impressive if I'd stuck absolutely and totally to the letter of the ban, but I really feel like this was a big achievement for me and I'm happy with it. It didn't even take a huge massive effort not to buy piles of clothes and accessories. It didn't feel like any kind of sacrifice at all.

The people-watching, which is always on another level in Glastonbury, reminded me that I do love beautiful things and unique styles. But ironically, hiking backwards and forwards across town carrying a tired three-year-old also reminded me why I like to keep my look fairly low maintenance nowadays. I'm not afraid to try new looks and get a bit weird with it - my makeup over the weekend ranged from the full face with flicky eyeliner to nothing whatsoever to smearing some bio-glitter under my eyes and calling it a day - but I'm tired of worrying about what other people think of me. If I want to wear an antlered headdress or a flower crown then I will - but at other times I'm a shoeless scruff with mud under my nails or salt in my hair, and it's hardly photogenic but I'm done competing for the Best Dressed Weirdo Imaginary Award.

On our last day we took a walk around the shops. I love seeing displays and all the unusual things for sale, I'm still not the perfect anti-consumerist, but in all honesty there wasn't much I actually wanted to buy. I got some new candles for my altar and three books. Again, not perfect in ban terms, but for a whole day spent walking around shops filled with my every woo-woo hippie desire, I decided to cut myself some slack. Mostly I just enjoyed the sunshine and walking around with the Spud, watching the people and smelling the incense. It's quite nice that my days out no longer come with the sickly desperate feeling that accompanies spending hundreds of pounds on a whim. I'm so proud of myself for not buying clothes, I can't even tell you. (However, I am now over the book budget I set myself at the beginning of the year, so it'll be cold turkey for me from this point onwards!) 

A sidenote: I didn't actually tell Dai that I was doing another shopping ban, which I guess is a bit weird of me. I think where historically I have failed a lot at these things I wanted to see if I was going to actually stick to it before making any grand announcements. And sometimes it's easier to crack on with things if people aren't watching you and analysing your odd behaviour. Plus, around the time I started this ban I was also transitioning to vegetarianism, which had kind of unsettled Dai, as we have previously enjoyed his roast dinners or steaks together on many an evening. I suppose I didn't want him to think I was gratuitously punishing myself. (As an adult I've mainly been vegetarian or vegan; when my last long-term relationship ended I also started eating meat (several close friendships also blew up in a big way around this time - in hindsight it was possibly some kind of breakdown, let's gently gloss over that), and was still doing so when I met Dai. But I'm not comfortable with it for ethical and environmental reasons and it feels like a weight off my shoulders to just not. Dai worries about this because of my history with disordered eating, but I don't connect vegetarianism with disordered eating at all, it's not about weight or restriction in any way for me, I just don't want to eat animals.)

Overall throughout my first week I felt really good about the challenge. All the things I relished about the experience the first time around came flooding back, as I found myself less distracted, less self-conscious, more present. I found that when the urge to improve myself by making purchases came bubbling up, as it sometimes does, a bit of experimentation with make-up or a creative change of outfit could generally assuage it without difficulty. I felt more clearheaded, able to see items in shops as analogues of items I already have - oh, a necklace? I have necklaces already - rather than things I needed to accumulate to be whole.

MoonCon 2022: The Anti-consumerist Druid Book Chat

At the beginning of this month I was lucky enough to have a chat about my upcoming book with fellow Moon Books author Rachel Patterson, as part of the two-day free online event MoonCon. I was nervous (really nervous) as I'm much more of a writer than a talker, but in the end I actually really enjoyed myself! 

Turns out I'd written my notes so small that I couldn't read them (!) and I couldn't figure out how to see the live comments on my screen, but in the end I think I said 99% of what I had hoped to say and didn't utterly disgrace myself.

We covered all kinds of ground, such as consumption in the Pagan community, shopping bans, communication with goddesses and the importance of DIY. You can see the recording below - thank you to everyone who came along and watched live, and thank you Elena for your comments and support!

My New No-Buy Year

At the end of April this year I could feel myself spiralling back into old behaviours. I was checking Instagram dozens of times a day even though it reliably made me feel crappy, browsing Pinterest, hitting up Vinted again and again for that 'one last thing' I needed. My rewilding project for the year was going out of the window, and the Spud and I seemed to have started watching daytime telly, which historically I'd always avoided. 

At last I decided it was time to break the cycle before its grip on me could tighten any further. I was actually feeling nostalgic for my previous shopping bans. They had been challenging and difficult, but my life had felt fuller. I'd made more things, talked more to my friends, learned to cook, turned my journals into a memoir. 

I'd been so adamant that I wasn't going to ban myself from anything in 2022, but I could sense that the progress I'd worked hard to make was in danger of coming undone. Then I watched these two videos from Hannah Louise Poston, which really clinched it for me:

This video really hit hard for me. The way she describes "wanting to want", always looking for a new item to obsess over, using shopping as a kind of palliative faux self-care to paper over the cracks - that's me. And a lot of other people I know, actually. 

One thing I've learned from being open about my struggles with compulsive shopping is that most of us in this late-stage capitalist society are screwed up in one way or another about shopping. Older generations would probably consider my age group greedy or spoiled, which - to be blunt - we are, compared to the people who have to actually manufacture the stuff we buy. But we're also deeply conditioned to behave in this way by the society we live in, as Poston says in her video.

I've had some really interesting conversations with friends since starting my shopping ban, which have convinced me that the majority of us are completely screwed up about some combination of the following: money management, self-image, self-worth, compulsive buying, the gap between our values and behaviours (e.g. we know about sweatshops but can't give up the Primark habit), and many more issues swirling around the money/shopping vortex. 

I've spoken with friends who thought of shopping problems as a women's thing until they compulsively spent hundreds of pounds on kitchen equipment and then looked a little closer at their own habits. Friends who earn good money but have burned through it all before the next payday and had to rely on colleagues to bring in lunches for them. Friends who received a large payout and spent the lot without noticing because they are too edgy about money to ever look at their bank statements. Some who have multiple kitchen appliances stashed in their garages because the first three didn't quite match their colour scheme. Who describe themselves as broke and are always worried about the bills, but still make time for a weekly manicure and can never have enough cosmetics. 

I started my no-buy year thinking that my shopping was disastrous and everyone else was living within their means. I'm coming to understand that there are loads of people who really, really, don't have a handle on this shit, and in fact it's totally normalised and even encouraged by our culture. I'd been hearing myself for years making excuses for why I needed the most frivolous of items when I knew I couldn't afford them, and somehow I'd never noticed I was surrounded by other people doing the same. I know that some of those people read this blog, and I wish I could persuade them to go on this new shopping ban adventure with me, but I guess it's one of those things that you have to choose for yourself when you're ready. (But I'd love a ban buddy or even group, hit me up if you want to give it a go.)

I really love Poston's list of things to do that aren't shopping, and again this was a big factor in why I decided to give the no-shopping year another try - I was doing these things, and I was loving it. I was getting so much more value from what I already owned, I was feeling good about myself, I was learning new skills and having a really good time. I was being more creative than I have been in years. Then I started to slide back into the social-media-and-shopping life, and those activities started to gather dust once again.

I wanted to think harder this time about what rules I'm going to put in place, because as per the video, I know there are times when it will be harder for me to stick to my rules. Last time I gave up social media cold turkey, which I think made it easier for me to keep a clear head, but this time I probably can't do that - at least not until after my book launch - so I'll need to think really hard about when and how I use it, as well as what I do immediately afterwards. 

Holidays and days out are also huge weak points for me. I find it really hard not to think of trips primarily as shopping opportunities, so I need to get some guidelines in place for how I'll handle these - whether I'll allow some purchases, or go cold turkey. I also have a day out planned that is specifically a shopping trip with some girlfriends, but I know I'm already overdoing it with clothes, so I may choose to focus more on the beaches-and-cafes aspects of that trip, or make a list of items I could possibly buy (I have loads of jumpers but not many summer tops or dresses, for example). I can't decide how tough on myself to be this time around, so feel free to weigh in with your thoughts.

Meanwhile, I hope you find these videos as interesting and inspiring as I did! I'll let you know how things pan out this time around...

My Clothes Don't Define Me

Recently I started feeling annoyed at the amount of time I have spent thinking about my clothes. How many hours I've wasted on Pinterest trying to build a blueprint for the look I really want. I've tried to use my wardrobe to express and to define my essential self, even when I didn't really know who that self was. It's been enjoyable at times, but at others deeply frustrating, as I've learned that clothes, on their own, don't make a personality. I've treated 'the wardrobe issue' as a problem to be solved before anything else. I'll write this book once I've sorted out the wardrobe issue. I'll be an artist once I look artsy enough. Everything the wrong way around, as I try to make my clothes speak for me, to define the limits of my character and interests with exactly the right garments.

Pinterest is a time eater and no mistake. Five more minutes quickly turns into an hour of blankly browsing through other people's faces and outfits. This is not the way I want to spend my life.

However, much to my surprise, I learned through Pinterest that I love what the kids are doing with fashion these days. If styles like fairy grunge, goblincore, cottagecore, adventurecore, earthcore and dark academia had been around when I was a confused ex-goth looking for new ways to express myself, I would have had such a good time trying all these out and rummaging through the charity shops for new pieces. The little gremlin voice in the back of my head (I call him Keith - go away, Keith) tells me I'm too old for goblincore, but I remind it that I've been into these aesthetics since 90s styles were 'in' the first time around. (I'm glad 90s clothes are back. I liked them then, I like them now. I just wish the bigger sizes would start making their way into second-hand shops. Mumma wants some baggy jeans please kids.)

When I was a teenager, there were really strongly drawn lines between subcultures and the mainstream culture. You were a 'chav' (or 'townies' as we called them where I grew up) or a goth or emo, and that was pretty much the entirety of your options. Whichever box you fitted into, you were supposed to hate everyone in the other. Nowadays, as far as I can see, the boundaries between what is mainstream and what is alternative seen to be much more fluid. There's a lot more scope for individual expression, and even in my small town I have noticed much more variety in everything from outfits to hair colour. Is fairy grunge alternative or mainstream? Do these distinctions still hold relevance?

I've spoken before about what it means nowadays to be 'alternative', which I think has changed a lot since I was young. I still have friends who feel very strongly about their allegiance to alternative subcultures (and one or two who refer to people outside their particular scene as 'normals', which makes me cringe), but I do wonder exactly how alternative it is to simply shop on different websites - Attitude instead of SHEIN, Killstar instead of New Look. I wonder if now, having radical politics, building a style from sustainable, ethical or second-hand clothing, or choosing a lifestyle such as veganism or going off-grid is perhaps more alternative, in this era of clothing abundance and tolerance for bright hair and body modifications, than choosing to belong to a subculture. How much are we actually defined by our clothes these days, now that most of us in the global North can buy anything from anywhere and adopt any style as fast as it can be shipped out to us? Is darning your socks a greater challenge to popular culture than wearing nothing but black?

(Brief tangent: Gothic Charm School, a blog I followed avidly back in the day and still enjoy, recently-ish touched on the white, pretty, thin homogeny that has become the image of goth on social media. I noticed this myself when I browsed #goth on Instagram for some outfit inspiration, and was both disappointed and unsettled by it. The blog post is here if you are interested, and I LOVED reading all the comments as well, being reminded of what it was about the goth scene that spoke to me in the first place and causes me to linger forevermore around the outskirts of all things dark and spooky.)

If the sheer vast size of the clothing industry has caused even alternative fashion to lose its meaning, why are we still so obsessed with fashion? Perhaps more so than ever before? Will supply and demand ever hit a ceiling, or will it keep forever growing until we abruptly discover we can't actually live on shoes? (Eating a pair of leather shoes will keep you alive for about a week, according to a book of facts I read once, but it'll be a horrible week, I'd imagine.)

At the other end of the spectrum, I have been increasingly alienated from my friends who enjoy wearing trendy clothes and keeping up with what's fashionable. I'm the awkward lurker in the group chat when the girls are discussing L'Oreal foundation and new dresses from SHEIN. Do I weigh in and talk about animal cruelty and sweatshop labour? Sometimes, yeah. And everyone says, yeah, wow, that's terrible, the atmosphere gets a bit stilted for a minute, and then we all go right back to doing what we were doing before. I don't want to constantly be a downer - that person who only pops up in the chat to tell you why you're wrong, yikes - but I also don't have anything much else to contribute. I was genuinely surprised at a friend's house when she received several parcels from Boohoo. In the little bubble I've created for myself since I started writing this blog, I'd kind of assumed that since we learned Boohoo use modern slavery to make their products, people would have just stopped shopping there.

After that visit, during which my friend tried on several stylish Boohoo dresses to choose an outfit for a wedding, I found I was really missing the particular feeling of cheap, abundant fashion. The haul. When you buy more than you need, just to try it, because it's so cheap. I used to run around Primark just throwing things into my basket. I didn't ever expect to miss that feeling, because I know full well that it's a signifier of exactly what's wrong with the fashion industry. But there I was anyway. Luckily I had a brainwave - I downloaded the second-hand shopping app Vinted, and spent an afternoon using up all my data browsing fast fashion that other people didn't want. I bought four items for £20 and felt sated.

This post has rambled around a lot, which is a not-inaccurate portrayal of how it feels in my head when I think about my wardrobe. I even have strange, nostalgia-tinged, longing dreams about dressing up in miniskirts and fishnets, my pre-baby body miraculously restored. I enjoy the ease of casual clothes, but miss the admiration from more complex, unusual looks. I also realised recently that I am more affected by body image issues than I thought, which is why I feel uncomfortable and awkward when I do dress up - I feel like I'm too chubby and un-pretty to be able to pull off those looks any more.

I really need to get my head together. I can see that I'm still giving clothes way too much importance, and trying to make them define me when they don't, and can't. That's not what they're for.