No buy month - June 2008

It's nearly the end of June. And the tally for the no-buy month is as follows.

Things I didn't buy but wanted to: lots, including clothes, books, toys, tools.

Things I did buy:

• three books (mathematical finance, coding) £80
• cards and birthday presents for nephews £80
• two phone chargers (one utterly-useless one-off charger £5; one car charger and handsfree set £5
• one bottle (now) extremely rare whisky £21. I have no excuses for this one, except it's a one-off, there were only 2000 bottles made and hwsgo is very fond of it. And the last rare whisky I bought for £20 is now retailing over £100 per bottle. Investment, honest guv.
• Haircut £50.

Things I learnt about myself in the process:

• I have more resources than I thought, both mentally and materially. Case in point: the long dress. I needed a dress for a formal dinner. Usually, I'd go out and buy a dress especially for an occasion like this. But I already had a formal dress: a 1950s vintage gown that fits me perfectly (and makes me look like queen E circa 1950); what was driving me to go buy another dress was a misconception about how the gown that I already had looked. It was fine, it did what was asked, and I felt no guilt about playing mess rugby in it.
• I will often buy my way out of trouble. This is a bad thing. Case in point: I was planning to dig up some potatoes on my allotment yesterday but forgot to put a garden fork in the car. Normally, I would go buy another cheap fork; this time, I just didn't dig up the potatoes. Often there is a choice between planning and spending; I've learnt to plan a bit more, and build in a bit more contingency (like packing a few more clothes rather than assuming that I can always buy more if needed).
• I treated shopping as a leisure activity. This is bad. Example: I went to Edinburgh this week. During the sales. Now normally that would be good for a couple of hundred pounds worth of shopping. This time, I noticed the sales were there but ignored them.
• I buy things without thinking about what I already have. I have too much stuff: some of it is useful, some not. But some of it is repeated and exists in my cupboards only because I have a mental note to buy X without checking whether I already have X. And if the place is packed with stuff, it's more difficult to find out.
• Not buying things paradoxically makes you more likely to tidy through and get rid of excess stuff. Things have value. Not being able to buy more brings this value into sharp focus. Sometimes the value is financial: "I bought this, don't use it but it's too expensive to throw out" (for that, there's ebay: you won't recover costs, but you won't feel quite so bad about it); sometimes it's misplaced emotional value "X gave me this, I ought to keep it" (well, the point of a gift is that it's given, and once given, it should be under the control of the recipient, not the giver). Sometimes it's panic value "if I get rid of this I might not be able to get another one" (well, hello there; if you're not actually using it, then does that really matter?). My house is now a great deal tidier and lighter than it has been in a long time: I'm finally getting back to a simpler, tidier state of mind.
• Money also has value. If you don't spend it in large chunks (as in shopping for things that aren't food or small amounts of fuel), your perception of what is a large value changes. I've found myself spending less money on food, and planning more rather than accepting wastage (I now cook up a week's supply of food at a time and leave it in single-portion boxes in the freezer). I'm more likely to cycle to work , not just because the no-car week went well (it did), but also because I resent paying to avoid my daily exercise. I've also started asking for my money back, both small (checking and correcting shop mistakes), and large (buying a railcard, sorting out my overpaid house insurance and making sure I get receipts for everything on trips away).
• Quirky is good but rarely for long. If it's fun and quirky, a picture may be enough. If I can't wear something to the office (including casual Fridays), then I should seriously think about a) whether I need it, and b) how often I might wear it, and how long before the novelty wears off. And I don't have to be fashionable to be loved. I can just be me. Make an effort, certainly, but I have my own style and it's slowly starting to re-emerge from the heaps of stuff hiding in my wardrobes.
• And finally, I value security more than stuff. Just as I value fitting into the world more than the transience of pleasant foods. Like chocolate. Smelly French cheese. And air-dried sausages. Which find their financial parallels in flattering clothes, comforting textbooks and despair-reducing cosmetics.

I don't think I've finished learning things about myself and money yet (although in truth, I think I'm relearning several of them rather than learning them as a surprise for the first time). And although I promised to do this whilst less than sober, I am currently alcohol-free and still committed to this: the no-buy month is being extended to also cover July 2008. This should be a continuation of an interesting ride.

Not aching head

Have found energy again... isn't it strange how a couple of manic days can make life seem somehow more even again.

Aching head

I'm not sure what happened, but I ran out of energy yesterday. I discovered last weekend (via the canteen soup) that large doses of monosodium glutamate at the wrong times create an up (high for half a day) then down (low for a day) effect; I'm not sure if this is still a part of that, msg in wednesday's lunchtime buffet or just overstressing or overdoing it a bit on the exercise, but it was very very difficult to cycle home yesterday. So I got home, ate, fell asleep, and woke up this morning with the biggest migraine since my teens... a full-works, turn-the-world-down, flashing-lights, 3 sets-of-Migralieve monster of a migraine. I think I'll keep an eye on it. Or drink more beer so I have a better excuse for it happening.

End of an ambition...

Today, I cycled to a meeting. Not extraordinary in itself: people regularly cycle in the city, and it's a good way to get around. But it was an external (i.e. different companies) meeting in a faraway town, and on the way home I realised that it was more significant than I'd thought. For the last few years, I'd been moving slowly into management. I still did my technical work: the teams I had were generally young and not familiar with the technologies and techniques that were needed on my projects (I tend to pick up the more difficult, less charted areas of work. In fact, I can't remember when I was last asked to design and build something that had been done before; it's possible that that hasn't happened anywhere outside my education), so I'd teach them, pick up the bits that were too hard to learn quickly, and manage the workload as well. And so, reader, I tried to do all the things (except golf) that made me fit into the management miasma: wore the right things, went to the right meetings, fought my team's corner. Which in retrospect was a mistake: in doing these things whilst trying to do real work as well, I left myself wide open to management politics. And lost: which is all I'm ever going to say about that particular fiasco.

Anyways, I ramble. The significance of cycling today is not just part of my return to a simpler life (less stuff to worry about, more time to concentrate on work and play), it's also a symbol of my return to my techie self. My management politics days are over, and now I can get down to some serious work. I still dress smartly whilst there, but I'm no longer afraid of the image implications of turning up to a meeting on a bicycle. It's a lovely day out, I got 4 hours work in on the train instead of being bored witless on the M25, and I got some much-needed exercise out of it too. Period. And if anyone has a problem with that, they can ask themselves whether they'd rather have their systems designed by someone who genuinely thinks about them, and has thought about their impact on the world, or someone who just looks that way. And if they choose the second answer, then they really do get what they deserve.

Enough: I have life to sort and coding practice to do. With a small coda: a good manager knows how to tell their team what to do; a good leader understands what it is and gives their team the encouragement and space to do it well. We need more of those.