Dim Black Friday

Black Friday. Literally dark in the windowless bathroom for the fifth time today when I remember the light switch isn’t working. The power went out this morning. And stayed off all day. Heavy snow on the lines. Already feeling under the weather and literally under the non working power lines, it was a good day to observe the alternative version of the Friday after Thanksgiving: Buy Nothing Day. Between reading and resting it was time for desk cleaning and paper sorting. Piles of catalogs. Despite signing up for 40pounds.org and other junk mail opt out sites and not actually ordering anything, some retailers persistently announce the arrival of each season (or it seems, semi-season; e.g., midsummer sale edition). I decided to call these catalog hogs directly to get my name off the most frequent mail box offenders. During these calls, in the dimming kitchen, on black-no-electricity-buy-nothing day I felt like a true celebrant of anticonsumerism. I’ll still get all their glossy holiday best as it usually takes a couple of months for the system to process this type of request. But it always feels nice to take a step away from the junk mail—whether literal or figurative—that tries to clutter our lives.