Shopping 2009

I don't think I'm quite at the level of needing to attend a Twelve Step Program (Hi. My name is Holly and I'm a shopaholic), but I'm close, especially if I'm not working in my studio.  I have in my DNA a need to look for things, to hunt, to find, to search out.  In a primitive society I would have been the one tracking the deer, calling out the alarm when warring tribes came to destroy the village, sniffing the air for fire or rain. But I wasn't born in a primitive tribe in the Amazon, I was born into the most affluent culture the world has ever known, chock full of things to be hunted down.  

So that's what I do:  I hunt for bargains, sales, things that I usually don't have any need for but that are  pennies on the dollar.  It's exciting when I start shopping, and often I find wonderful things, especially at thrift stores:  bicycle jerseys, shorts, and shoes; bikes, boxes of ink jet transparencies (20 boxes for $2 each), Dansko clogs, large rolls of printer paper, an opaque overhead projector, riding breeches.  If I'm not practising my hunting skills at real stores, then I'm doing it online, Craig's list being my favorite. At times, as I sift through hanger after hanger of clothing that I don't particularly like but is marked down 75%, I wonder just what the hell I'm doing.  It worries me.  And as I continue to shop, I think of all the things I could be doing that would make my life and the lives of others better.  What redeems me is knowing that once I start working in my studio, this powerful need to find things gets channeled into the making  of images and the solving of problems that have to do with those images.  It's the same attention and focus, it's just much more intense, lasts for longer periods of time, and I don't have to worry--at least for awhile-- about finding the right Twelve Step Program to join.