Yesterday I celebrated my birthday. I kicked the day off by getting up early to work in the garage on my next guitar build, per usual, but I took advantage of being off and worked for quite a bit longer than usual. Then my wife made me breakfast with the BEST biscuits I have ever had. Seriously… She made them from scratch in a cast iron skillet and they blew me away. I had another this morning and it still was fantastic. Then we got ready and went out to do a little Christmas shopping before going out to an Italian restaurant that has been highly recommended to us recently. The rest of the day was pretty chill. I played some basketball, did some reading, and just hung out and kept it relaxed, which was welcomed after running around earlier in the day.
It was a great day, though there has been something weighing on my mind since we were at Target yesterday. As I mentioned, we had some gift shopping yet to do. As we were walking through the toy aisles, something we really haven’t done much as this is only our daughter’s second christmas, I suddenly felt, for lack of a better term, disgust towards consumerism. Seeing all of the knick-knacks, all the different variations of the same toy that will inevitably be trashed or tucked away in some cluttered closet, all the plastic, and all of the people’s carts full of this stuff…
Now, I know that may come off as hypocritical, and to be fair - it is. We have bought a few things this year that I just bitched about. Fortunately, my wife and I feel the same and definitely have always kept our gifting more modest. My hopes are that we can keep it that way as our daughter gets older and we don’t find ourselves with a whole new toy room’s worth of junk year after year. This may mean having some semi-difficult conversations with family members, which is fine by me.
I’ve admitted my hypocrisy. Where do you stand on your feelings towards consumerism and your own actions?
As for a cigar related paragraph - I smoked a Joya De Nicaragua Antano Connecticut Corona Gorda this morning. These are super cigars and super underrated. This blend has a ton of flavor and body, and is one of those cigars that I don’t know that I would believe was a Connecticut if I was blindfolded. I really don’t know why more people don’t talk about Joya’s stuff, especially this one.
-Trevor