The Cancel Culture We Should Embrace

It’s still legal to cancel your subscriptions

This isn’t some wild New Year’s resolution but for a long time I’ve found all the services I subscribe to mentally overwhelming.

I’ve doubted their ability to improve my life.

My goal is to never pay for what I don’t use and don’t need and I want a more honest accounting of what I earn versus what I spend.

I’m not canceling entertainment on principle. I like being entertained. Yet I have to come clean: it’s a luxury for those who earn — and sisters and brothers, this Medium calling is raining peanuts over here.

Your Money or Your Life

I’m studying a bestselling book called Your Money or Your Life, which has been around for decades. Each chapter presents a couple of steps to wrap your head around money and its meaning.

The purpose of YMorYL is to align a person’s values with their spending. The only way to do that is granular tracking of all purchases with the realization that money=life energy.

All this came about because Medium isn’t paying like it used to, so I’m back wondering if a “real job” is the answer. At the same time, I hate the idea of commuting again, dealing with office politics, and the kicker: I’m old, so ‘good’ jobs feel like they are laughing in my face while kicking sand in my general direction.

In addition, here I am spending $2900 for a month in a minimalist townhome so I can visit old friends, get a taste of city life, and enjoy the winter sunshine.

All these factors make me ask — what do I want to do with the time and money I have?

The Endless Entertainment

Like most people, I’ve built up a tolerance to annual and monthly subscriptions for various services that make life more convenient and fun.

I had no idea how much they were costing, but always justified my decisions based on a simple aphorism:

TV and newspapers are the cheapest forms of entertainment and information.

I would perform a mental balancing act, sans paper and pencil, to calculate how the entertainment I wasn’t getting, like Broadway shows or fancy dinners or even movies out, made everything else a “bargain.”

This kind of thinking doesn’t produce quality or accuracy in my relationship with money or reality.

Last week, I added up all the streaming TV, newspapers, books, apps, and sports, and a few others I justified for work. I was spending too much — but more menacingly, I had a grand total of 14 subscriptions (including non-entertainment) and I wouldn’t be surprised if I discover one or two more.

No one can reasonably be expected to keep track of that. Why is that much entertainment and convenience necessary?

The Embarrassing List

Compared to other folks, this list might be middle-of-the-road or even thrifty, but I like to think of myself as not consumer-driven and, you know, not like the other idiots.

The hard truth is I consume a lot, just in little dribs and drabs and delicate doses.

I’m like a snacker who only eats carob chips and drinks homemade Kombucha. It’s healthy and inexpensive, right?

And that is because, my friends, I live in a simmering soup of consumerism that gets deeper and hotter and crustier every year.

1 / TV channels

Apple TV Amazon Prime Disney+ (my husband ordered it 6 months ago with the intention of canceling after watching various Star Wars-related shows) Showtime (just purchased) HBO Max PBS Masterpiece Peacock Paramount / NFL Netflix

2 / Reading material

I’ve resolved to go to the library and get kindle books on loan. I had to pare down this list.

Washington Post New York Times Kindle Unlimited Medium (x2) Scientific American

3 / Other

In this category are all the subscriptions I forgot about or that don’t make any sense.

Calm (exorbitantly priced meditation program for my spouse) Adobe Stock (at $39.99/month) Real mahjongg (haven’t played in many months) Password manager ($36/month) Photolab Premium

The Rest of My Life

I also have other monthly payments for little luxuries. I pay for pickleball on the off-off chance I’ll show up and play. We store our teardrop trailer for $32 bucks a month when we could put it in our garage with some ingenuity.

All of the above — excluding Pickleball and parking — adds up to about $200 a month.

We agreed to save, and pared it down, keeping:

NYT, because I got it down to $1 a week Apple, because we have so many Apple devices Scientific American, because my husband can’t live without it Medium, because that’s where I write

The Worst Offenders

Of all the expenses, the one that blew my mind was Adobe Stock. I got it because my husband suggested it as a business expense to provide photo images with my articles. I never looked at how much it actually costs.

The service provided 10 free images but costs $40 a month.

I’m currently earning a little over $100 a month on Medium, after a long, sad decline over the last two years, so when the $5 a month cost (for the privilege of writing on Medium) is added to the cost of buying images, the result is absurd.

This puts my real Medium earnings down to $55 a month.

Writing on Medium is a hobby I’ve justified because I earn money, but at this rate, earning is a euphemism. The time and energy I spend here eat into a more realistic writing job.

It feels more like gambling: with enough time and money maybe I’ll hit the jackpot.

Medium has high opportunity costs. But since it’s emotionally fulfilling, providing a much-needed connection with others, I’ll write when I feel like it. As my earnings have slowly eroded, my will to write has lagged, as well.

I’m down to once a week. As a hobby, at least it isn’t costing me anything but time.

Final Motivations

Ever since moving into an Airbnb for a month, I’ve realized how much happier I am with less clutter, whether the junk is electronic, mental, or physical.

Having a limited number of outfits, toys, dishware, and hobbies felt liberating from the moment I walked through the door.

The stuff is less, the space is smaller, the visceral experience of being in this space is more manageable.

Junk isn’t only a physical phenomenon. I work hard to keep the garage at home mostly purged of useless items, but we now live in a world of information consumption.

Consumption of all types bleeds and blends together: food, drink, virtual reality, and material possessions all feel like filling a bottomless pit.

When overwhelmed, even my relationships become transactional, and I begin to unconsciously want entertainment, food, and information with every encounter.

Just being with another person is rarely enough. There must be food, drinks, and an “ambiance.”

There must be Wifi, phones, and maybe in the background, some TV playing.

De-cluttering, minimalism, and downsizing are watchwords because, in our culture, we are chronically overwhelmed and therefore disoriented.

I’m realizing that anti-consumerism is a constant battle that can only be won with awareness of how deeply consumerism has infiltrated our collective consciousness and my own life.

One tactic I’ve observed with all these subscriptions and plans is the “bundling” of services. We are keeping Apple, but Amazon Prime is on the chopping block. Prime offers free shipping and TV (with football!) and deals on Kindle Unlimited.

It’s so convenient! Conveniently, it helps us purchase even more services and stuff. We are considering — horrors! — shopping at Walmart and dropping Amazon altogether.

Fortunately, once I realize someone — an ad man, a cigarette company, a billionaire — is preying on me, I become highly motivated to tell them to eff off.

At this point in history, I still have a choice.

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Jean Campbell recently started her first Substack newsletter to laser focus on getting her book, City of Lies: A Street Hustler’s Omaha Journey published.