things i think about buying when my phone is locked inside the safe….
By: Kerry O'Neill
Tags: Social Media, Phone, Consumerism, Wind Chimes, Self Criticism

what fucking idiot would get a clear base

things i think about buying when my phone is locked inside the safe i bought to lock my phone inside of so that i will no longer be glued to social media where i am reduced to my most desperate validation seeking behavior in the endless scroll and cycle of instagram and twitter and sometimes facebook where i go to see the group i am in for my dog’s specific illness and where sick dogs often die and are tributed which only increases my sense of total dread and anxiety about my dog dying to the point that i question what percentage i am actively enjoying this precious virtually uninterrupted time i have with him during quarantine which makes me think if i could just get off my phone i would be able to be more present and enjoy not only my dog but the rest of my life which leads to me buying a safe to lock my phone inside of.

-a very big windchime. I reach for my phone to search for affordable but expansive windchimes, which I know don’t exist. A big windchime is going to run you at best a couple hundred at worst i mean is there even a limit? Somewhere in the thousands, hopefully under 10 g’s but potentially more. But my phone is locked inside the safe, so I just think about the windchimes instead of instantly looking them up. I think about the types of people that might have a sizeable windchime, what they think that says about them, what i think that says about them, what it actually says about them, if i would feel fulfilled had i purchased a windchime more substantial than the measly one the woman who lived in my house before me left up that i never took down but is too small for the wind to even move so the only time i hear it chime is when i water the pearl plant hanging from the same nail sticking out of the damp expanded wood that makes up the roof of my porch. I think about all the places I have seen big wind chimes and marveled at their pricetags — mostly roadside attractions up the west coast: in a stylish museum looking place i once stopped for ice cream at in big sur. In the middle of the redwoods in “bigfoot” country (everything north of ukiah is bigfoot country, even into oregon) at a place with about 700 small ceramic statues of garden gnomes doing karate kicks out front. I thought okay, if there’s garden gnomes karate kicking that big windchime has gotta be under $500. I don’t remember if it was $300 or $1300, in any event, it wouldn’t have fit in the car anyway and as i walked up to the windchime i sort of got intimidated and a bit afraid of what i would do if i looked at the tag and had deemed it affordable. Could i really take home such a huge windchime? Could i willingly spend more than $40 on a windchime? I can’t really answer those questions even now so sometimes when i’m reading a book a big classy windchime whose chimes are dark and sleek like graphite and have a texture to them that’s the perfect balance of rough and smooth will pop into my head. You don’t want a smooth windchime. A smooth windchime is fucking cheap.

-thinx period panties. I keep going back and forth on these maybe because i know i shouldnt spend any money right now because i made a list of things i have bought during quarantine and i was feeling a lot of resistance and embarrassment about how many things i’d bought just to comfort myself and had they even really ever comforted me? I decided that it’s human nature to want to lie to yourself and anyway some of the stuff really did and does comfort me. I’m so disgusted by how programmed i am to want to buy things all the time, even things that i’m not looking right at on my phone but that have popped up in the ads generated by my private conversations that my phone is listening to and i will go to the site and fill the cart and read the reviews and i think thats fun for me but really is that fun or am i just running and trying to escape actually looking at my dog chew a bone and being okay with the fact that one day i wont be able to watch him chew a bone and will i hate myself for looking at super hiphugger period underpants that you free bleed in because i probably need the money to keep my dog alive as long as possible anyway and then i think about the countless hours i’ve spent just typing “mid century” into craigslist furniture for sale and combing through every post, not applying any filters because everybody knows if you apply filters you run the risk of missing out on something truly great that might be misclassified or $5 north of what you wanted to spend but infinitely better. Even when i’m somewhere incredible i think about if i could have done anything to make it better or to go somewhere better. I know this is because of my phone so i did buy a safe to lock my phone inside of.

-I would have picked up my phone at 9:11 and 9:26. What would i have gone searching for and what would i have found? I wonder if i would even be off my phone by 9:26 if i had picked it up at 9:11 and i seriously doubt it. Why do i always want to punish myself? Everything i do to make myself feel good only leaves me with fleeting feelings that rub off or get turned into condensation in the sun that is burning my state and all my safe and calming places where i actually do put my phone down and don’t need a safe to lock my phone inside of but who am i kidding because when i am there i am almost always taking videos like sometimes when i went to the next campsite i would watch videos of the hikes i went on at the last campsite and think to myself wow i cant believe i saw that and i actually think that is kind of nice that i did that and i’m not going to judge that i wasn’t living in the present because if i wanted to take a few minutes to marvel and express gratitude at my previous surroundings and how fortunate i am then maybe i should let myself do that and stop trying to assign blame and negativity to my every move.

-linen sheets