This Year, I Resolve To Be Enough

I don’t need to prove my worth with a long list of goals

On Dec. 30, I announced to my husband, two of my adult children, and my five-year granddaughter that my New Year’s resolution would be a “year of not buying anything new.”

We were at lunch, seated in a cozy booth and eating a variety of Po’Boys at the local Cajun cafe. The weather had dawned unseasonably warm, and I was surrounded by people I loved. A happy glow encircled me, and I felt confident.

I’ve got this, I thought. I can do this. How hard could it be to avoid shopping?

A look of doubt passed across my husband’s face, but I ignored it. He turned to look at the street, not saying a word.

“Really?” my daughter asked, biting into a seasoned fry and also avoiding eye contact. “What made you think about this?”

I noticed that she didn’t say, “You’ve got this, Mom!” or “What a great idea!” I shifted uncomfortably on the wooden bench.

“I mean, there are tons of thrift stores around, right? How hard can it be?”

My family picked up on the idea that I was serious and silently agreed to play along.

“I think it’s a great idea,” my son said, handing his five-year-old daughter a napkin. “I love thrifting.”

I beamed at him.

I could always count on my first-born’s support.

“Right,” I smiled, and bit into my grilled chicken sandwich. The conversation turned to another topic, but I kept thinking about my resolution.

How hard could it be? I don’t even like shopping. Unlike many of my friends, I view shopping as more of a chore than entertainment. Because I’ve never had much luck with online clothes shopping, when I buy new clothes I have to find the time to go in person to a bunch of stores and try stuff on.

Besides, I’d been feeling a nagging sense of guilt about fast fashion and potential child labor violations for years.

This was going to be a great resolution. And it would be fun. I’m sure I’d discover some new thrift stores in the process.

I tuned back into my family’s conversation. My daughter was discussing furnishing her new apartment. She’d recently gone through the type of breakup that required separating possessions from her former partner, and she wanted a fresh start.

“Oh, there’s this great discount furniture store just a few blocks away,” I started to say, then caught myself.

“Yeah, I want to go there, too,” my son, ever the bargain hunter, said.

But would shopping at a discount furniture store, one that employs kids leaving foster care and the juvenile court system, count as buying new? Hmmm.

I began to reconsider.

The furniture idea kept nagging at me as their conversation continued. I loved to sew and knit. What about buying fabric and yarn? Would I have to buy those items at thrift stores and garage sales only?

Then I thought about purchasing gifts. After the recent rush of looking for holiday bargains at the last minute, I’d already decided that I’d keep a running list and search for birthday and holiday gifts all year long.

I have four young granddaughters. Would I have to buy their gifts second-hand? What about my habit of impulse-buying cute outfits for them? Would I need to avoid doing that, too?

It’s one thing to avoid buying for myself. It’s a whole other ballgame to avoid buying for my grandchildren.

I bit my lip and concentrated on my food.

By the end of the meal, I had already given up my plan to avoid buying new items. Going through a year of buying only used goods, except for groceries of course, would take more planning than I had given it.

This would not be a resolution I could implement at the last minute. And why did I need to put that kind of pressure on myself, anyway?

I know I need a new pair of running shoes, and you really can’t buy those used. I also really need a new suitcase. Possibly I could find a quality used one, but a suitcase seems like a wise investment. I’d kept my last one for almost twenty years

My brief flirtation with “a year of no buying” made me understand something else about myself, a realization that I always tend to shove in the background behind some new and time-consuming idea that pops into my head.

I’m a busy person.

I don’t need to do all the things, all the time just to prove my worth.

I commute daily to my job as a high school English teacher. During work weeks, I’m out of the house for at least ten hours at a time.

And then there’s my part-time job working for the teachers’ union. I also help out my aging mother who is going blind from macular degeneration and needs me to run errands and do light housework. Then what about the regular stuff of life, like groceries and bills and yard work and vacuuming?

There are my relationships with my husband, my friends, and my family members. My writing. Church.

All of these things and people are important to me.

Where, in all of this life, would I find the time to spend hours in thrift stores, looking for something I could just pop into Target and buy?

So I let the idea of a year of “no buying things” go during the course of one quick meal, and it’s okay. I really do want to try this sometime, but now is not the time.

Sometime in the future, I may have more energy for an experiment that takes this kind of heavy commitment.

In the meantime, I’ll just resolve to keep loving my people well and to appreciate all the parts of my life that keep me busy and in the game.

So for 2024, I resolve to be gentle with myself and appreciate all the things that I’m already doing and being.

I resolve to be enough, just as I am.