Iszy's Depth Year

 Wow, so I caved on a couple of things this month.  I had debated for a while how I was going to handle my birthday and if I was going to allow myself to "treat myself" to something.  The decision got taken out of my hands a little bit.  My cell phone has been slowly dying, and I was hoping it might last until the end of the year.  I already started my depth year with a new computer for working from home (old system being about 10 years old), and what a depth year with both a new computer and a new phone!  But a cracked screen wasn't the only issue, for some unknown reason, it started kicking me off wifi every 10-15 minutes, and the only way to reconnect to any wifi was to do a hard reboot.  A couple of weeks of that, and I was ready to justify a brand new smart phone.  We are definitely calling that a necessity!  The other big lapse was a mattress topper.  I have been debating whether or not I should buy a new mattress for at least a co...

 As August draws to an end, I've started to have some growing wavering.  Mostly because my birthday is this week.  I'm debating whether I should be allowed a birthday-break from the Depth Year, and if so, how to control it so it doesn't just start a downward spiral from here through the end of the year.   There are things that I have not bought that I have not missed.  There are things that I've not bought, and I'm like waiting down the clock, and I'm probably going to buy them on January 1st.  I didn't read anything when researching Depth Years about what that might mean.  If I've been drooling over an unnecessary item for 6+ months, am I missing the point if I buy it when my "year is up?" I understood this to be an exercise in reducing commercial intake, to appreciate what you already have and not constantly shop and buy unnecessary items to try and use it as some kind of psychological crutch. So what does it mean if I go on a shopping spree ...

I think things are begin to wear on me a bit more now.  It might be the prolonged quarantining is also wearing me at the edges and making everything a little bit harder.  I started looking online for sleep shorts or yoga shorts.  So far, I have been deterred from buying anything because it seems my options are to either spend a ridiculous amount of money for something that, pre-COVID I could buy in a thrift store for under $5, or comb endlessly through completely unrelated listings on ebay.   (For the record, I do not recommend you type the phrase "silk boxer shorts" into the ebay search engine.  None of the things I saw, many of which I would consider horrifying and traumatizing, were either silk, or boxer shorts, or shorts at all.  I had a similar problem typing in simply "yoga shorts," and boggled at who were these listings exactly marketing to?  Certainly not women looking to do yoga, I am sure of that.  Also, to continue along this rathe...

So far I've made it 6 months doing my Depth Year.  4 of those months were under lockdown due to COVID here in NYC.  The city is slowly starting to open up, but thankfully my job is in no rush to risk its employees.  (It is a factor that we share a floor with a vaccine research NGO that has shifted their focus to working on a vaccine for COVID, and our leaders are basically agreeing to follow and go along with whatever their experts say.  Their experts are saying not before September, at best.)  So, folks in the City may be rushing to their favorite bars and restaurants on the first day of Phase 2 like it's all better now, but I will be continuing to sit my happy little butt at home and watch and wait.  I will listen to the medical research community over politicians, thanks.  I know it's a great privilege to be in such a situation, but I don't feel like throwing it away by being reckless.   That said, I do think after 6 months, and summer now...

May has come to an end and summer has finally showed up in New York City.  The Depth Year is going pretty smoothly, though I've come up across my first puzzle about clothing. Please pardon as the next paragraph is my rambling stream of consciousness, which can be a bit scattered at the best of times. I have plenty of clothes in general, but my wardrobe wasn't built with quarantine in mind.  I'm probably like 70% work appropriate clothes, 10% pajamas, 15% "fun" weekend clothes, 4% costumes, and <1% workout clothes.  I literally have 1 pair of sweat pants for the gym (not the fuzzy-lined lounging kind), 2 pairs of yoga pants, and 1 pair of mid-weight leggings.  The thing is, I have started doing yoga every single day; and, as advised from elsewhere, I have been very good about changing out of my night time pajamas into "day time pajamas" (which is essentially something I can do yoga in).  So I've been rotating through 4 pairs of pants for 10 weeks n...

Of course in January, when I decided to attempt my Depth Year, I had no idea we'd all end up isolating ourselves during a global pandemic. In some ways, I think this has actually helped a bit with any temptation I might have had otherwise.  I did buy a new computer this month.  I had talked about that in an earlier post that it was already sort of planned out before I decided to do a Depth Year.  My system is right around 10 years old, and since I'm now working from home every day, a more reliable and updated system seemed like a necessary splurge.  Yes, I do have a work laptop, but I didn't bring my docking station home, and working without dual monitors isn't particularly ideal for my kind of daily work, either.  Aside from the computer, the only other incidentals have been for the garden.  I ordered a batch of tomato, pepper, and eggplant plants for the garden back in early February set to be delivered the last week of April. All things considered, e...

Well, things really took a change this March, didn't they?  As far as Depth Year goes, I don't think this is making it any easier or harder, really.   And since Depth Year is (at least to me) about stuff and things, not budget, I have been diverting the money I got refunded from my canceled trip to Puerto Rico to helping support my favorite local bars and restaurants.  I already talked about donations clearly being exempt, and I'm putting gift cards to help keep my favorite Brooklyn locales from closing permanently under the same banner.  I've also increased the number of artists I'm supporting on Patreon, too.  I feel like I'm in a very privileged position, and while I can't give to every single cause, I feel like that at least the money I was going to spend on a private vacation could be diverted to help others out. And since food and drink were never a part, I'm also diverting more money to spend even more at my favorite local butcher, who has ju...