Blow-out

March so far has been a blowout month. By that I mean that I’ve been steadily blowing my budget by binge and compulsive shopping. Only one item has been deliberated over and that is only because it was a present for a friend.

I’ve come to the conclusion why hubby can never find gifts for me: I don’t wait for people to buy me things. I just buy it myself. I can’t bring myself to wait and ponder over the reasons why I would need or want that particular item. If I like it and I think I can afford it, I will purchase it on the spot. The only time I would deliberate over purchasing an item for myself would be if it cost me around or more than RM1,000. Items that cost anywhere within the range of RM200, I will think about for oh, probably 30 minutes or so before I decide to buy. So you can imagine the amount of clothes, shoes, knick-knacks, accessories and what-not I have strewn all over the house. You can find my bracelets chucked into a shoebox here, some CDs tucked into the bookshelf together with my horde of books, my long forgotten scarf hidden in an old handbag, an earring forlorn without its partner squeezed into my makeup bag, cash in a concealed pocket of a once favourite sling bag. I should hold a treasure hunt featuring items I can’t find. Just to illustrate the amount of junk I have which I’ve collected over time.

I’ve justified and consoled myself over this month’s purchases by telling myself that I’ve held out the first two months of the year. I’ve been good. It’s my birthday month; I’ve got a sizeable commission coming in sometime end March or early April. I should go ahead and splurge. But I can’t kick that niggling feeling at the back of my head. It keeps telling me, “You really should not spend on all these frivolities; what happens if you need the cash suddenly?” Yet I continue with the binge.

I’ve added several items to my collection which I wonder if I should have at all:

1. Naf Naf bag


2. Tribeca bag


3. Bead bracelets from Tribeca


4. Two tops from Zara (Same style, different colour. I got the additional after I wore the first to work and decided it was not only suitable but comfy)


5. Earrings from Moripin (3 pairs!!)


6. Revlon lipstick


7. Books from Kinokuniya

What I have on my wish list is currently a Nikon D70S, a digital SLR. It costs around RM4,000 (probably less, depending on which dealer I get it from). Being more than RM1,000 this explains the deliberation. And it is a heavy investment because it means I will not only have to fork over the moolah for this item, I’d also have to invest in time and effort to make sure it is put to full and good use.
I am not the most patient person in the world. In fact I have the shortest attention span of any sane adult I know. I could very well buy the DSLR, use it diligently for a few months, fiddle around with all the features and try to learn up as much as I can. But knowing how my fickle mind works, once it gets tough or if it involves too much learning and referencing, it will kick into, “gawd, this is so tough!” mode. It goes downhill from there where I once took it everywhere with me, to specific outings only until the DSLR will one day end up in the farthest corner of my wardrobe, behind my old underwear and worn out socks.

At the start of the year, I told myself that I’d give myself until March to decide. March has come and is happily strolling along now. Very soon, it’d have morphed into April. I am dragging my feet but the more I go into Flickr, the more I feel I should make this purchase and make the effort to be good at this. When I was having drinks and lamb stew with a certain friend from the advertising industry, he dangled a very fat carrot in front of my face by telling me, “Actually, you have an eye but you lack the skill.” I put a fair amount of weight to what he says because well, he’s in the industry and I like what he’s done with some of his portfolios. Now if what he said isn’t motivation to take that “eye” to further, higher levels, I don’t know what is.

Who knows, maybe one day, I’ll be able to get people to pay for my prints!

A girl can still dream. In the meantime, the blow-out month continues…