The Unrivaled Beauty of ‘Unsubscribe’

Recently, I have been hitting the ‘unsubscribe’ button with great frequency. There is a practical reason for this, and at first that was my only thought on the subject, but I’ve found that the more I do it and the fewer promotional emails I receive, the lighter I feel--seriously.

Project Unsubscribe started as an effort to tidy up my inbox. I already have ‘Social’ and ‘Promotions’ folders (thanks, Gmail) but they were getting out of hand. I’m one of those people who has to have a tidy inbox at all costs, so clearing out the advertising emails several times a day was a compulsion. The thing about promotional emails, though, is that you start getting them because you’ve purchased something. This tips off the marketing department at whatever company from which you bought the thing, and they start trying to coerce you into buying more things.

Let’s face it--it usually works.

I am only human, and, as such, am not immune to the dulcet whispers of words like ‘SALE’ and ‘BOGO’ and ‘X percent off’. A deal is a deal, amirite? But here’s the thing: it’s seldom really that good a deal, and when you get a new one each week you’re more likely to splash out because “there was a coupon”! And you sit there and you think, “I don’t have to buy things. I can quit anytime I want!” Eventually, though, you realize that you definitely have a problem, and an awful lot of t-shirts.

I started with the worst offenders--stores like Old Navy and Target. They send several emails a day with different ‘deals’ and whatnot, sometimes five or six of them. It’s ludicrous. Of course they try to keep you on their distribution lists with cutesy graphics and sappy “Is it really over?” type blurbs above the ‘Unsubscribe’ button. Honestly it smacks of desperation, though you know full well that losing one subscriber to their emails can’t possibly have the potential to make even the tiniest dent in their prolific profit margins. The loss of those particular incessant sales plugs was fabulously freeing, let me tell you. I don’t miss them at all, and at no time in the last however many days since I’ve stopped getting them have I thought, “I wonder how much shorts are going for at the moment?”

The next to go were the slightly less frequent ones like Amazon and ModCloth and Discount Dance Supply. (Hey, dancewear is expensive.) Amazon and DDS were fairly cut-and-dried in their approach to unsubscribing. They didn’t even have a secondary “Are you sure?” page, just one click and “You are now unsubscribed.” The simplicity was almost alarming. ModCloth on the other hand was vaguely melodramatic and asked about six times if I was absolutely sure I didn’t want to receive emails from them any more. “You might miss something!” “Nah, I’m good, thanks.” “Okay, but we have different distribution lists for different things. Don’t you want to stay on just a few of them?” “Nope, not really.” “Why don’t you love us anymore?!” “Please stop clinging to my leg, you’re making a spectacle of yourself.”

After that it was just a few smaller mailing lists, and those went away quietly, with dignity. You could learn something, ModCloth. I’ve kept myself on things like job alerts from Indeed and Glassdoor because that’s just sensible and no one is asking you to spend any money, though I did toy with the idea of unsubscribing myself from literally everything just because the sheer reduction in inbox clutter had been so delightful. I may still do that, but not just yet.

It may seem like a small thing, but it’s had a HUGE impact on my day-to-day. Not only am I spending significantly less time deleting useless emails, but the siren song of “Buy more t-shirts, come on, you know you want to...they’re cute...and look, we put them on sale…” has dwindled to a vague wisp of what used to be.

...That was ludicrously poetic.

Really, though, it’s a vast improvement. I don’t think I fully realized just how oppressive all those stupid emails were--even if I didn’t take the time to look at them, I was still deleting them several times a day just so the backlog didn’t become insurmountable. I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing this before. It’s such a simple solution! It just makes it go away, and when it’s gone, you don’t miss it at all. (My bank balance certainly doesn’t miss it, either.)

It’s funny how the weirdest little things can make such a difference.

I feel so free! ::skips around chucking daisies everywhere::

Everything is Terrible and We’re All Going to Die

I am currently in the process of Getting My Shit Together Like A Proper Adult.

Okay, I guess I’m in the process of being in the process of getting my shit together. It involves a whole lot of question answering and list making and goal setting ::VOMITING NOISE:: and I know I need to do it but I don’t wannaaaaa… Yes, I know that having a tantrum about it won’t help, but I’m going to have one anyway. Estate planning and wills and trusts are tedious and boring and expensive and they remind you just how much longer you’re going to have to keep yourself in the workforce in order to maybe, possibly retire. Someday. Maybe. If you’re lucky, and you do all of this planning ahead of time so that you have the funds to support it.

I have never been one to bank on what I like to call ‘imaginary money’. Bonuses from employers are imaginary money. An inheritance is imaginary money. Social Security is imaginary money. These kinds of things are the chickens you’re not supposed to count before they hatch--the eggs you’re not supposed to put all in one basket.

Has anyone ever noticed how many avian-themed idioms the English language employs? Good grief.

In an attempt to allocate some funds to a managed account in order to allow my nest egg (There it is again! More birds!) to grow into something that will help to provide for me in my dotage, I’ve been banging my noggin against a questionnaire from the company that holds the accounts my parents use for the same purpose. This thing is giving me a complex. I’m trying to answer the questions seriously but each one simply gets more farcical.

Q: At what age do you plan to retire?
A: Um, 67, I guess? That’s the standard right now, isn’t it? ::consults Google:: Yeah, okay, let’s go with that. But, I mean, that’s thirty-something years away and you have no idea what can happen in that amount of time. Maybe we’ll repeat 1929! Oh, crap. Maybe I should plan to retire at 120, just in case. That ought to cover me, right? Right?!

Q: Let’s think about your long-term family goals. Are you planning to get married or add to your family? Have you started a plan for your children’s education?
A: STOP TRYING TO FORCE ME INTO A 1950’s NUCLEAR FAMILY, FINANCE PEOPLE.

Q: O...kay. How about your current investments? Are they adequately saving toward your goals? Do they reflect your values?
A: Reflect my values? It’s cute that y’all are trying to make finance and philanthropy exist in the same realm. Let me tell you a little something, darlin’s--IT DON’T WORK THAT WAY.

Q: ::flips page on legal pad with a grimace:: How about your health? What are your thoughts regarding your possible future long-term care?
A: My thoughts on possible future long-term care are that I would like to be dead before I require it. (<--This is 100% true. I’ve experienced that whole getting old and dying thing enough times now with other people to know that it sucks for everyone involved, and I hope that I recognize when I am starting to deteriorate enough to have to consider anything other than an independent living arrangement in a senior community so that I can shuffle off my mortal coil on my own terms, thank you very much.)

Q: What about your home? Are you planning to stay where you are or move? What about a vacation home?
A: ...You don’t read the real estate listings, do you.

Q: And work? Any planned changes there? Are you making the most of your company-sponsored 401(k)?
A: It is literally part of my job to yell at people who don’t make the most of the company-sponsored 401(k). And I do a lot of yelling.

Q: If you had more time and money, where would you spend it? Travel? Restaurants? Taking up a new hobby in retirement like golf?
A: Could you be any more stereotypical right now? Anyway, in the current economic climate it’s likely that if I do get to retire at all, I’ll be alive for all of twelve minutes of it, and I’m sure as hell not going to devote those twelve minutes to golf.

Q: Monetary gifts? Maybe leaving a legacy of your values?
A: Oh, yeah, actually. The Elizabeth Fazzio Scholarship for Junior Cynics. $10k a year to some teenage asshole who’s just as jaded as I am so that they can go to college and really learn to hate the world and everything in it.

Q: ::pinches bridge of nose:: Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

So...yeah. I will attend to my estate, such as it is, because it’s The Thing I’m Supposed To Do, but I’m seriously wondering why I’m bothering.

“Ogres are like onions.”

TL:DR

Introspective vomit ahead

Proceed with caution


***


For those of you who have been following along at home, I am trying really hard to work through some shit right now. I even have a workbook. (Yes, you read that correctly. That is, in fact, a thing.)

And actually, that’s what’s giving me a problem right now. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an excellent tool and I’m glad I put on my big girl pants and gave it a decent try, but this next chapter is giving me a complex.

It’s about coping mechanisms.

Now, the thing you need to understand is that ‘that one thing’ wasn’t the only thing that landed me in the mental quagmire in which I exist on a daily basis--not by a long shot. My house was not the easiest environment in which to grow up, and a goodly number of my coping strategies started there. The options were figure out how to survive, or...well, I guess that was the only option, really.

The thing that’s giving me pause is this; if I unpack and pick apart all the ways I bolster myself to get through the day, the week, life, I’m not sure what’s left. I have no idea who I might be without all these layers of protection. I’m like one of those Russian nesting dolls, except that last one is a total mystery. She’s safely tucked away inside all the others--so safely that I don’t even know her.

I’m going to go vaguely Descartesian for a moment. “I think, therefore I am,” right? Well, I know I exist and how I exist based on a miles-long laundry list of things I do to keep myself intact. What happens if I rip the bandaid off? Will I disappear in a shower of glitter and entrails? Poof into oblivion? It puts me in mind of a passage from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

"The argument goes something like this:

'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'

'But,' says Man, 'The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'

'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.”

My therapist assures me that I will not, in fact, cease to exist if I parse out all of the things that I do to keep myself from coming completely unglued. Obviously she’s right, because science, and obviously I don’t really believe that I’ll turn to dust and blow away if I do the healthy thing and take a proper look at how I cope, but...it’s hard, ya know?

To begin with, there is a certain stigma attached to the concept of the coping mechanism. It’s something you do to help yourself through something unpleasant, but because it’s stemming from the survival instinct it’s not necessarily thought-out and can ultimately be just as damaging as whatever the unpleasant thing is that you’re trying to cope with in the first place (though likely in a completely different way which doesn’t make itself apparent until much, much later). In the moment, it’s a matter of preserving yourself. When it becomes a way of life you’re going to have to do an awful lot of work to undo it.

Before you ask, yes, there is such a thing as a good coping mechanism. Most of us employ them.

I had a really stressful day at work, therefore I am going to have a long bath and a glass of wine.

I’m sad for XYZ reason, so I’m going to listen to my favorite song and have a silly dance party all by myself.

I can’t deal with reality right now, so I’m going to read a book/watch a movie/play a video game.

Self care, amirite? These are all pretty reasonable things to do when something is bothering you.

The problem is when they become more hurtful than helpful. Some people purposely injure themselves. Some people cope with food; binging and purging, or not eating at all. Some people seek reckless thrills. Some people turn to pills or the bottle.

If you’re me, you simply shut down. You close the roads. You block everyone and everything from coming near you. You build a no-man’s-land between yourself and the world, because you are the only thing you can control. You watch things happen from behind the bastions.

I can see you out there. I have been assured that not all of you are made of bees. Some of you are made of lovely, fluffy clouds. Some of you are the embodiment of a basket of puppies. Some of you might even be trees under which I can take shelter.

But I’m stuck over here in this tumbledown tower with about sixteen miles worth of dirt in between me and the barbed wire, and that dirt is so full of mines and complex booby traps and tiger pits that have been there for so long I’ve lost the map. I don’t know if I’m supposed to cut the blue wire or the red wire.

And that’s without all the rabid attack marmots patrolling the place.

But all of those pits and traps and mines and marmots make up most of what I know about myself as a person. Is there even a person left underneath all of that, or has she been snuffed out by years of suffocating self-preservation?

Honestly, I’m not sure if I really want to know.


Also, who the fuck thought that rabid attack marmots were a good idea?!
Oh.
That was me.


Well, shit.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

I live in a condo. (It’s so tiny, it might as well be an apartment, but never mind.) There are sixteen units total in my building, three other units in my immediate portion of the building, and two directly across attached by a staircase. It’s an odd layout--the six-unit sections are offset and attached to the four-unit section by the corners. There is a courtyard in the center, and every unit has at least one window that looks into it.

I feel as though I could be explaining the layout better, but I’m honestly not sure I can, short of drawing a diagram, and I’m sorry but I can’t be arsed with that at the moment. Just know that there are sixteen units in my building (out of the sixty-four total in the complex), we all can see the courtyard, and the residents, myself included, know each other by face if not any further than that.

I have lived in my unit since 2014. This February marked the fifth anniversary of my purchase of the property. It was meant as a starter property--a two-to-five-year property--but I quite like it and don’t really want to move any time in the near future, so I’ll sit on it until something necessitates my leaving. This is the longest I have lived in one place since I moved out of my parent’s house to go to college back in 20::COUGH::. I have seen neighbors come and go--there are a decent number of renters. I have been watching the guy who owns the unit across from me let it out as an Airbnb in direct violation of the HOA bylaws but never mind. (It’s annoying. We can’t seem to catch him at it in a way that would let us really take him to task for it.) I know my directly-upstairs neighbor. I know the lady across the courtyard at the top on one side.

We all try to look out for each other. It’s not as though it’s a dangerous neighborhood per se, but we have a substantial transient and homeless community at our end of town, a large number of them with substance abuse issues, and things like car and mailbox break-ins and non-residents using our laundry facilities and people sleeping behind our storage sheds aren’t exactly uncommon. (And there’s also the raccoons, but I keep telling everyone that they’re more afraid of you than you are of them and if you just act big they’ll skedaddle.) Anyway, we all tend to do our best Gladys Kravitz impressions on a regular basis and make sure we all know if something out of the ordinary happens.



We actually had a weird thing happen the other day. I could hear voices outside my door--two male voices--and they seemed just to be hanging out there, which was weird because the only thing out there is the mailbox and the stairs, neither of which are particularly interesting. One of them was doing the ‘hacking up a lung’ cough, too, which was more than a bit disturbing. It went on for about twenty minutes, and then my phone pinged. It was an email from the lady across the courtyard at the top.

“Who are those guys outside your place?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to go check.”

I popped my head out the door and could still hear them, but not see them. It sounded as though they might be up on the first landing. I was torn between going to see and just calling the local non-emergency police line, but then my immediate upstairs neighbor came home and flushed them out. Long story short, it was kids smoking weed and trying to stay out of the rain, but still, a bit of nosiness and communication can go a long way towards keeping people informed...and getting teenagers and their horrible, smelly pot to go indulge elsewhere. (Seriously. This is California. There is no excuse for skunky weed.)

Of course, all of this is an extreme departure from how I grew up. We had neighbors, yes, but there wasn’t exactly a sense of community. Everyone mostly kept to themselves unless there was something wrong with one of the wells or the county was coming out to pave the roads or whatever. That distance was definitely assisted due to the fact that all of the houses sat on 1+ acre lots, which meant that your neighbor’s driveway could be a bit of a schlep.

These days, my neighbors are quite literally on top of me. It’s odd, though, how even when you share a wall with someone you might not ever see them. I have never seen the man who owns the unit directly next door to mine. Not once. I know he exists because sometimes I hear his front door, and other neighbors have reported seeing him, but to me he’s still a complete mystery. The same goes for the man who bought the unit across and up top--never seen him, either, but I have it on good authority that he is, in fact, a real person.

I was expecting the ‘mystery man’ syndrome to continue with the fellow who just bought the unit upstairs-and-over-one from me, but as luck would have it, I saw him getting into his car yesterday when I got home from work--and I know it was him because I know which carport belongs to that unit on account of the fact that I was good buddies with the person who used to live in that unit before her landlord decided to sell it and completely ruined my life!

Now I have no one to feed my fish and get my mail when I’m away. No one to toss my packages over my fence into my patio. No one to go out to breakfast with every so often. ::sniffs::

I wonder if I could just convince the new guy that it’s his responsibility now because there was a hidden clause in his contract saying that he was in charge of vacation fish-feeding for the strange lady downstairs. Might be worth a try?