When does it become socially unacceptable to wear little girls' dresses from the thrift store? Hmmm...about 5 years ago? Probably.


I had completely blocked out that teenage phase of my life where I once wore Birkenstocks everyday for an entire summer, until I found this today. If I ever try to act cool, just remind me of my "Birkenstock phase." I actually have to give credit to friends from wrenching a few folk festival inspired ensembles away from me.

For anyone younger than me reading this, you just wouldn't understand the bad outfits of that era. We had pagers, not cellphones. This was pre-The Strokes, pre-Arcade Fire, pre-hipster dance nights. In high school, I had two pairs of non-sneakers, one pair of brown flats and one pair of black flats, because I thought anything else was unnecessary. Anytime someone from way back when sees me now they either say "Wow, your hair's so long!" or "You look like a girl!"

In Florence, I think:



Complaining is boring, but I don't like bad days at all. I'm just too stressed right now about various things. It's hilariously self-indulgent to be sitting in a coffee shop getting all emo because sad and folky songs are playing on the radio.I always feel vaguely guilty about feeling sad, especially when there are so many people out there with bigger problems than me. I mean, do relationship problems really matter? Financial problems? Life questions? Feeling inadequate because I'm not pretty/successful/cool/intelligent/wanted/outgoing enough? Ever since I've been, you know, of age, I've tried never to voice insecurities because it's just so boring and self-involved.

Of course, I feel the same way sometimes, but whenever someone complains about being too unattractive or something like that, I can't help but think that they should get out of their own head and think about something else.

I'm lucky to have these so-called "problems" of mine.

It is funny that, in North America, we wallow in our own minute problems which most other people would love to have. I mean, when I'm having a bad day, I go buy myself a vintage dress, an old record or an old romantic movie, some Chilean wine, an old book with yellowed corners, materials to make vegan chocolate chip cookies, and usually, that's enough.

Problem solved (or at least forgot about) for under forty dollars. You know you don't have real problems when that's the case.

I do wonder why we still have bad days....maybe happiness isn't a sustainable feeling, or, more likely, most of us have elevated, unrealistic definitions of "happiness". Maybe stability could be happiness. Making someone else happy could be happiness. Comfort could be happiness. Being loved could be happiness. Doing the right thing could be happiness. Religious or political freedom could be happiness. A roof over your head and food on the table could be happiness to most of the rest of the world.

The Economist Spin on Happiness:

"One way to get a handle on consumerism in our society, is to look at the results coming out of recent 'happiness' research which is starting to have a lot of impact in economics profession. Some of this research results are sort of unsurprising, for example, they've discovered that people in wealthy industrialized societies are on average, happier than people who live in poorer ones. And its not hard to imagine why. With greater wealth comes greater ability to satisfy our needs and desires, to alleviate suffering and illness, and to carry out our life's projects. From this, we might reasonably conclude that economic growth is a good thing.

Unfortunately there's an unexpected twist in the story. While economic development has been shown to generate a steady increase in average happiness levels, after a certain level of development has been reached, the effect disappears completely. The rule of thumb developed amongst economists, considering the subject, is that once GDP reaches about US 10,000 per capita, further economic growth generates no gains in average happiness. In North America, we hit that level long ago, so despite spectacular economic growth since the Second World War, there's been no overall increase in happiness. Some studies have even shown a decrease, in the United States in particular.

So there's something very puzzling about this. It would not be surprising to find that as a country becomes richer and richer, additional economic growth generates increasingly smaller improvements in average happiness levels. That would be just a diminishing margin of return. What is shocking is the discover that growth ceases to produce any improvements at all. Every year our economy pumps out more cars, more houses, more consumer electronics, more labour saving appliances, more restaurant meals, more of everything. Furthermore, the quality of these goods increases dramatically year after year. Looking at a typical suburban home the most striking feature is the sheer abundance of material goods. But how could all of this stuff be and why are people buying it if it fails to please them? Of course, in the middle of all this wealth the middle class continues to complain about feeling squeezed economically. People are working harder, have more stress, and find themselves with less free time. No wonder that they're not especially happy. But how could wealth bring about such consequences? Now that we're richer, shouldn't we all be working less?

So this is what we identify as the problem of consumerism. We try to develop a relatively neutral definition of the problem. Usually when people define consumerism their definition sort of presupposes their pet critique to it. Whereas we try to come up with this idea that, look, the basic problem of a consumer society is were busy busy busy producing and yet it's generating no satisfaction. So the question is why this compulsion a character of our consumption?Now one hypothesis that we find most persuasive to explain this is the one proposed with greatest clarity in the 70s by Fred Hersch in his book called 'The Social Limits of Growth'. Hersch observed that in the very poor countries, the basic problem is that people lack material goods. Economic growth is able to expand the supply of these goods, it allows us to manufacture more food, more housing, more clothing, and so forth, and thus growth generates lasting improvements in people's welfare. In our society by contrast, material scarcity has been almost completely eliminated. And so the typical consumer's income is spent mostly on what Hersch calls 'positional goods'. Or goods for which access is determined not by absolutes but rather by relative ability to pay."

-Joseph Heath

Of course, it's hypocritical of me to talk about North Americans wallowing in their problems, when I ramble on with my silly thoughts on the Internet.

Expressing all of my thoughts feels fairly self-indulgent and presumptuous that people would want to read it, which is why I don't exactly promote this.

But, self-indulgent bad days still make me wish I could get a puppy in my apartment to cuddle with. At least last night I got to see Friday projected in the backyard of a house that held 4 day old Boston Terrier puppies, which made me all giggly.

Some people might get maternal, but I get pet-ernal (corny, seriously).


I also wish people would stop stealing my bicycles. I should probably stop getting such pretty ones. No more vintage cruisers. Something a little more function and a little less form.

I also wish that someone would write an etiquette book which would stop me from accidentally going on dates that I think aren't dates. I have no idea how to distinguish between platonic and non-platonic invites. There should be some kind of book with chapters dedicated to decoding innuendo in text messages. Kidding. I actually think that dating today is somewhat symptomatic of the decline of our civilization, but that's a whole other topic.

Does anyone want to be my pen pal? I'll send you rambling one-of-kind seriously off-topic letters that I will bang out on my own typewriter after a couple of glasses of wine, hahah. Unfortunately there's no spam folder in slow mail. I'm really not cut out for today's world. I'm like a 65 year old inside. I need to stop watching cute black and white movies and get with 2008 and learn useful things like why it's important to do virus scans on your computer more than once every two years.

But, anyways, enough with my self-indulgent North American thoughts. I still do need some cheering up, so think good thoughts for me, and hopefully the weekend will be good. xoxoxo.