Best purchase ever

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment
Daily writing prompt
What is the best purchase you have ever made?
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I try to not get too attached to items and keep them replaceable.

I grew up in an environment when we couldn’t really own anything expensive. One day, my parents brought home beautiful fake adidas pants with three stripes (I think it was abidas or something like that). I went out with it and a kid pushed me down during play (probably on purpose) so my pants got torn. I learned by that mistake and the next fancy thing (a sweather) my parents brought, I didn’t wear at all. Then there was a birthday party and I wanted to put it on, and it was already too small. I outgrew it. So that didn’t work either.

Later in life, I had a chance to experience shopping stuff I need and want, I need and don’t want, I want but don’t need, and even stuff I neither wanted or needed. I it was around my mid-30s when I established some stable principles and conclusions about purchases.

  • The satisfaction you get from a new car and from a new book is not too far out but the car is far more expensive
  • Storage space is a limiting factor for the things you want but don’t need. Space management requires a good sense of minimalism. Once you learn how to throw away things, you get attached to items even less and no longer buy as much as before
  • You can’t be cheap on stuff you’ll use for work, and some of the hardware that frequently fails, I keep fallbacks. I have multiple backup glasses, some kept at specific locations, multiple headphones, countless chargers, cables, connectors, a battery that can recharge my computer and so on.

So with this philosophy, the items I buy are replaceable. Even my book collection is fluid, with a constant outflow of books that get donated.

If I can nominate one item that was life changing and at the same time inexpensive and easily replaceable, that’s my Apple Watch. It keeps me walking.

Sozopoli

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We spent a week in the Greek village of Sozopoli. Greece has hundreds or thousands of such places. I’m yet to find one that isn’t nice.

Sozopoli, in particular, is beautiful but has a bit of a problem with stray dogs. My step count plummeted because strays are territorial before being fed in the morning and barked at me when trying to do my morning steps. Locals seem to go out in the evening but my internal clock complained and I went down to something like 4k steps/day on some days. I tend to be more productive when starting the day early.

The first photo shows a road with a guardian.

Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

This is my fourth book in the recent months with a strong taste of weirdness. It was clearly written this way so it’s a feature, not a bug. I read None of This Is True earlier and liked it very much. These books are told in a way that we have a central awful and terrible event that’s uncovered through eye witnesses who live their normal lives. So it’s mostly ordinary stuff that happens but then here and there we have extremely unsettling and definitely not ordinary events and problems. Like horror story red flags randomly thrown in innocent conversations.

The plot goes around the disappearance of a highschooler and the devastation dealt to her family. The mom doesn’t give up on trying to find what happened to her daughter but does she even have any contribution to the story? And what really is the story here? It’s not at all that clear.

I gave the book 4*/5. Similarly to the books by Freida McFadden, I do not feel particular satisfaction reading weird books but at the same time appreciate the ingenuity. So I’d be happy to check another book by Lisa Jewell but may need a gap of a few months or years before I do so. This book was exhausting.

I finished it last week and damaged the book a bit. I hope the library doesn’t mind and accepts it as a donation. I would not like keep it on my shelves or remember about it.