Conscientious consumption

I’m posting this early, but it feels important.

I am not participating in Black Friday or Cyber Monday at all. I am totally down with Giving Tuesday: http://givingtuesday.org/, and I support the idea of Small Business Saturday, though I have already done my shopping, and that’s what we are getting into today. There will be parts of this post that scream “Geek!’ I’m aware, and we covered that yesterday.

I think about social responsibility and helping others on a regular basis. I apologize for the feelings of shock you may be having now.

My sisters and I try to favor local businesses over corporate chains, but also to think about frugality and conservation and not being wasteful. One thing that had come up was how to contribute to the economy, and some articles that I had read made me feel like the best strategy would be purchasing personal services: get your haircut, get a massage, and hire a babysitter. These are often the people who see their business fall away the most in times of recession, but also it feels good getting these services, and often they don’t have very much overhead, so more of it gets invested in the community. Ordering a plastic trinket that was made in China and distributed through Amazon is not as helpful.

I decided that the next best purchase would be going out. Go to a restaurant, or to a club, and go with friends. The impact on the local economy might not be as large as when you purchase a service, but the time shared can strengthen relationships and the sense of community, and again, it is an area that people cut in a recession.

I have found one more way to spend money now, and I am really enjoying it.

I guess it started with the music writing, and it was percolating with my feelings about people not paying for music. The plan was that I was going to start buying more anyway, because I was listening to more, and I was going to actively seek out things I liked via Spotify, then purchase via Music Millennium and EM.

At the same time, Twitter was speaking to me loudly on the topic of comic books. I had always intended to get more Flaming Carrot books, and then an article on Unwinnable.com had a picture from Halloween Eve that really pulled me in, and someone else retweeted an announcement about Memorial, and it ended up being a very impulsive thing, but on Halloween itself I ordered all three of those from Things from Another World (tfaw.com). I felt so giddy about it.

I’m not a really acquisitive person, and I have become less so. I mean, the reason I was thinking about buying anyway was because it is important for supporting the arts. Royal patrons are hard to come by now, but the arts don’t need to suffer for it because we can be totally democratic, and support what we like, essentially voting for it. And comics and music are bargains! The prices you pay for what you get are amazing.

So there was that mental part of it where I was deciding to contribute to the economic good of these artists that I like, and these businesses that I like, and that was fine; I get that. I in no way anticipated how excited I would be to place that order, and to get that order, and to open that order. I kind of know how fun it can be from shopping for the toy drive every year, which totally does make me feel like a kid, but this was for me, and that was cool.

I thought the way things would go down was once a month I would get some comics and get some music. With the music I would trade off between buying CDs at EM and ordering digitally from Music Millennium, and if at rare times I could make it to MM in person, great. For the comics, it would vary depending on what I was getting, and I just sort of started a running tally of what I wanted so I would know what to get. If there was a month when I didn’t need anything, then I can always go browse and Heroes and Hobbies and see what Max has. It was a plan, and it seemed like a good workable plan. Obviously, things have not been going quite as planned.

The music has gone well. I went to EM Saturday. My list said All-American Rejects (not ruling out a hard copy of Kids in the Street, and I never got their third one—it came out during my black hole year), Cirque Survive, Fall of Troy, Gin Blossoms (I don’t have No Chocolate Cake), and Fall of Troy. I ended up finding Losing Sleep by Parachute and In the Unlikely Event by The Fall of Troy. It occurs to me now that EM is almost always used, so it is supporting a record store, but not the band as much. And I feel bad because the Parachute CD is signed inside, and someone just gave that away!

So, the music part is going to have to evolve. For one thing I know eventually I am going to have to go more and more digital, and I’ll have to adapt to that. And, I still need to think about being good to the bands. I did buy some ambient music directly from Cy Curnin. The page admitted I might find it cheaper, but this helps keep the lights on. How could I resist that?

I may be out of control on the comic books. It may be just be some early issues that will even out. I had my Halloween order, and even then I was thinking maybe the period needed to be longer than monthly, like every six weeks, because it takes time to stay caught up. So I definitely was not going to order before November 30^th, but then TFAW had this Grey Friday sale, and I ended up ordering Swamp Thing Annual and Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite, and I tweeted for their contest, and Alec Holland himself ended up marking that tweet as a favorite. (Yes, I know Alec Holland is a fictional character. I assume someone at DC is running the account. Still cool.)

Okay, that doesn’t sound out of control yet, but I started wondering about some of the others that I am interested in, because the sale kept going on, and I saw that finding Van Von Hunter in stock anywhere is going to be kind of difficult, so I ended up having another order in November, and since I had also ordered some things directly from Becky Cloonan on Halloween, I am in fact ordering at twice the rate that I intended, which is a concern as I am neither a wealthy person nor a person with a lot of space.

So, perhaps I should skip ordering in December, and pick up again next year, but I know that I am going to want to get a hard copy of Breakfast of the Gods and I am almost certainly going to want Ultransylvania. There are always new things coming up. And it is getting so exciting discovering how much of a comic scene Portland has. I’m starting to understand how we can support both Stumptown and Rose City conventions—everyone lives here! They don’t even all work for Dark Horse!

(Yes, that is a bit of an exaggeration, but still, there are a lot of artists around here. Good ones.)

Anyway, I may need to even out a little, but I’m sure it will be fine.