Mindfulism: Cutting Spending = Cutting the Internet

It's been one month since I began my No-Spending Challenge and the results are pretty great actually.  Beginning in September, I printed two calendars for the month and started writing down every time I shopped and every time I actually spent money.  Now it may seem a little redundant, but it was actually really helpful for me to identify my pattern of stressful event->shopping->two to three days of shopping->buying something from those days.  I discovered that I would shop until I found something and then my brain would start to obsess and justify until I finally bought it.  If I didn't shop, I didn't obsess.  Living without that has been incredible!  

It turns out, if I don't shop, I don't buy unless it's something I really need.  I don't obsess over needs, I just fill them and move on.  The act of shopping for me creates the desire as I will look and look and look until I finally find something I want and then it feels like it's all I can think about until I get it. After looking at these calendars and connecting the dots, I realized there was only one way to actually cut out spending for a month--cut out shopping.  And the only way to cut shopping is to cut out the place where I do all my shopping--the internet.

How often have you gone to a store and found something lovely, then turned the price tag over, gasped, and walked away?  I never spend as much in-store as I do online.  Never.  For some reason, online shopping has always encouraged me to spend more.  Then there's the weeks of waiting and anticipation building for the order to arrive.  I remember a particularly low point in my life, very lonely and isolated, when I ordered something every single day because I needed something to look forward to and get excited about and that daily trip to the mail box to see what surprise was waiting was all I had.   It was sad, just sad.  But it was also easy, because for some reason, internet shopping pulls us in in a way that brick and mortar shopping just doesn't.

I realized a long time ago that I find the internet a very boring place.  The only thing I really do on here is shop.  I don't socialize or research, because I prefer books for research and face-to-face socializing.  And, let's face it, if I want to watch something entertaining, I have a t.v. and a ton of old movies and television shows, because nothing worth watching has come out in over a decade.  So, since I didn't want to spend money, I decided to cut the internet.  The first thing I did was delete all the shopping apps from my phone that way I couldn't shop during the day.  I did that in September to help ease me in to the shopping-freeze.     The next thing I did was to only use the internet for the blog, emails, and the occasional YouTube, but I made a rule that it could only be something funny, not a product review.

Turns out, I don't really miss the internet at all.  Of course I had some impulses to shop, but I told myself I really didn't need anything, just had endless wants.  I also reminded myself of all the time I had spent getting rid of stuff and how I didn't want to do that again.  After that brief moment of contemplation, I always made myself get up and go do something.  Spoiler: it was usually cleaning or studying for my finals, but those are both needful things, so it was always beneficial for me to not be distracted and actually get something done.  

After a month of no internet shopping, here's what I have concluded:

1. My life is better without the internet
2. My life and home are more organized without the shopping
3. My stuff means more when I have less
4. Freedom is a feeling that is beyond compare