I managed to make it through Monday without buying anything! I joke, but really, I'm beginning to get a sense of how stupidly hard this is going to be. My brain is hardwired into associating new stuff with success, and therefore, no matter how ridiculous this might be, buying stuff makes me feel like a winner.

Which is dumb. New shoes are not going to make me a different person. I am not what I wear.

This might all sound like a cross between some horrible chick lit novel and Tyler Durden's anti-consumerist rants in Fight Club, but I hope it will help to examine the way I think and pull it apart, showing it to my conscious self as the crap it really is.

I fully intend to keep a diary of my progress in my Livejournal (and therefore, a syndicated diary through my Facebook). I hope that through this, I will be able to look back on this experiment and learn from it.

Considering I last went shopping on Saturday, I next thought about something I wanted, and usually would have made a note to buy, on Monday. I was wearing my hair down and sort-of-curly (I sleep with it rolled up so it's a false kind of curly when I wake up, on nights when I can't be bothered to blow-dry my hair before bed) with part of it pinned behind my ear on one side with a nice kirby grip with a daisy on that I found in my draw. I liked it, so I made a mental note to buy more pretty decorated kirby grips.

This was the point that I caught myself doing it. Whereas sometimes I'll stop myself thinking, "ugh, you don't have any money" this time I actually thought "you don't need that!" and I felt a bit ridiculous for having made a conscious decision to buy something I didn't really need.

A quick rummage through my draw turned up the partner to the daisy grip, plus a couple of gold coloured slides and a flat hair clip. Which is plenty, really. Plus a hell of a load of plain brown bobby pins which could be easily embellished if I so wished. I do own a lot of buttons and odds and ends of material, so it would be fairly easy to manufacture something new if I really needed to.

I made it a day before I wanted to buy something. This, sadly, hasn't really surprised me.

I also saw a sewing machine in Woolworths for £49 today. I want to spend some of my Christmas money (ostensibly already spent on crap I don't need, really) on this. The money was intended for my new computer fund, but since I got him some new RAM and a new hardrive (or rather, my Dad kindly did for Christmas), Hodges-the-laptop has been running beautifully, and I haven't had any of the annoying problems that were making me desperate for a replacement in the first place. But I kind of feel like this would be giving in. Despite the vow only excluding clothes, shoes and jewellery, to spend any money on something that isn't a necessity smacks of failure.

But on the other hand, a sewing machine is an investment, and not excluded by my terms. And it might also make not buying clothes easier to handle if I can make my own with some cheap, market-bought material.

Hmm.

I think I just had a revelation. Today has been divided between knitting, revising for my media law exam, and reading my new copy of Bust. This has been a bit of problem, because no where near enough of that time has been spent on the exam revision part, and the exam is tomorrow. Oops.

The questions that always plague me during a bout of procrastination have been whirling around my empty flat. Why do I leave everything to the last minute? Why can't I motivate myself? Why do I waste so much time doing nothing? This morphed into the usual pre-deadline self-hatred. Why do I spend money I don't have on things I don't need? Why, when I have a wardrobe that literally wont close, do I still buy new clothes on regular basis? Why, if left to my own devices, would I spend myself into bankruptcy with nothing much more than a box of barely worn, ill-fitting Primark shoes to show for it?

And I got to thinking, maybe all these things are symptoms of the one problem? There is something wrong with me. I'm sick. I need new things to feel happy, and when it comes to attaining my goals I am suddenly filled with lethargy. Then I punish myself, either by not eating for days, or through some other, more imaginative form of self-discipline, after which I console myself with something new. Something I don't need and can't afford. And then I punish myself, and the cycle starts again.

The fact that I am obviously addicted to buying things is obvious. I can control it to a certain extent- I buy things then feel guilty and return them, and sometimes I deliberately go, by myself, to a cheap shop like H&M or Primark and allow myself to buy one item, to get my fix without breaking the bank. But it occurs to me that this is a ridiculous way to behave. If it were alcohol that I was craving like this, I would have identified my behaviour as a serious problem a long time ago, but because it's shopping, and women with an addiction to shopping is normalised and made light of, I hadn't really twigged until now.

I'm hardly in debt up to my eyeballs with several maxed out credit cards hiding in the recesses of my wallet, but I can point to around £300 at least of unwarranted expenditure in my recent statements. And for someone currently sans-income, living off loans until May, this is unnacceptable, stupid, and verging on ridiculous.

I propose, therefore to kick the habit. I am going to go cold turkey on my most extravagent form of purchases: clothes.

Oh God. I'm dithering here at the computer now. The very prospect of stopping buying clothes fills me with dread. Ugh, which in turn fills me with revulsion. I clearly need to break this habit as soon as possible.

How long for? I want to say a year. I want to vow not to buy another item of clothing for a year, but my head is literally filling with images of pretty summer dresses that I look forward to all summer.

How sad is that?

Okay, no, a year will be too hard to maintain. Like a New Years Resolution that never gets past March. It's overreaching, and it seems like forever, so for starters I'm going to say three months to try and avoid feeling too defeatist about my chances. Considering I can't usually get through a week without buying something, this should be challenge enough.

Here's the vow, then. As the internet is my witness, I will not buy an item of clothing or footwear or jewellery until the 13th of July. Until then, I will make do with my extensive wardrobe. If the need arises, I will mend clothes rather than replace them, I will alter clothes that no longer fit, and I will make clothes if really necessary. I will borrow, and I will draft in the help of friends with sewing machines to make sure I stick to this resolution. I will avoid clothes shops as places of temptation with no real merit, and I use the time I would usually spend in them going through my wardrobe and removing things that I really will never wear or have never worn and getting rid of them.

This, my friends, is day zero.

I lost half an article in a computer spaz out at college today and had to type it again. I was so frustrated/irate/destraught that I stopped trying to make an effort not to swear in class. At the end of the day my tutor told me to get a swear box.

Do I really swear that much? I don't even notice it, but I think I hardly get through a sentence without swearing nowadays. I have no idea why it's so bad. But I really let rip today... I was so angry with myself and on the verge of tears after I lost my work that I really turned the air blue. Especially when some people from a news class walked in when we were all working. The classroom is off the common room so people just walk in to use the computers and don't seem to notice when we're actually in the middle of a lesson. I actually did that really horrible "yeah, okay, we're actually in a fucking lesson if you wouldn't fucking mind?" thing. The poor embarassed girl legged it... although at the time I wanted to punch her for making a noise when I was trying to concentrate.

This pretty much sums up the relationship between news and magazine journalists, I think. Certainly at our center anyway.

Fuck a fucking swear box, though. Fuck it up its fucking arse.

I wrote my article in the end though. It's meant to be aimed at a business audience, so I wrote about the Beijing Olympics and about how we shouldn't boycott it because it's fucking hypocitical and besides, we don't want to give anyone ideas about boycotting ours in 2012. Oh and blah, morals, blah, leading by example, blah.

I don't agree with China's human rights back catalogue, and I don't agree with their actions in Tibet, but I don't agree with the war on terror either, so who am I to be jumping on them "they're soooooo much worse than us!" bandwagon.

On a lighter note, I have been listening to some really good new albums lately, which I would like to recommend you.

The Raconteurs' second album, Consolers of the Lonely, is better than their first. It's less pop hits and more The White Stripes. Let me explain. The drums are wilder, the song formats are less conventional, and there's more of a retro 70s-rock feel to the whole thing. There's also a nice country/folk influence that adds depth. Broken Boy Solider was alright, but a bit too safe and no where near dark enough for my tastes.

Blood Red Shoes- Box of Secrets was a super long awaited first full length album release, but now that it's here it's sure to be the cream of the indie rock releases for this year. A more garage punk influenced indie sound with louds of stuff that'll sound sweet on the dancefloor as well as some nice vocals. I'm not much of an indie conoisseur so that's all I feel I can really say... Suffice to say it's good shit.

I also had a listen to Camille's new album whose title I forget. It's sort of Goldfrappy, slightly off-kilter stuff. Some beautiful, husky vocals and some good hooks as well as unconventional sounds looped in there. Camille's obsession with her ability to hit the kind of high notes Mariah Carey would be envious of gets a little bit annoying though, as does her cutesy, "French Karen O" schtick. Having said that, there are a couple of really lovely, enduring songs on here!

OH also I updated my Rainlendar desktop calendar with some cute new skins. I now have one that's, okay, French, but displays a different piece of sushi on my desktop every month. How cute is that?!

Le sigh. Break over. Back to work. I have three more articles to finish today!

Ugh, do you ever have those weeks where the universe seems to be ganging up on you and you just want to hide under the duvet until it goes away?

Yeah, of course you do. Who doesn't? Well, this week is my week:

- I started my new short journalism course thing and it's a bit slow so far. We're only two days in but I failed spectacularly at an impromptu we-need-your-classroom-for-an-exam-so-go-away excercise in going out onto the street to find a news story. I cannot find news. I am hardwired to find the world boring and mundane, apparently. I found a good feature but sadly since we were looking for news, I failed. And then felt really bad about it and started doubting whether I'll really be any good as a journalist at all. Except, of course, I don't WANT to be a news reporter. Never have. Hmm. Hopefully I'll do better when it comes to the feature writing section of the course.

- I'm moving house this weekend and I hate packing more than anything else in the world. It never fails to make me ridiculously depressed and therefore make all other things seem so terrible, far out of proportion with the very small amounts of terrible that they actually are. My god that sentence made no sense.

- My Creative Zen mp3 player died on me. I think the battery's gone, most likely. Very upsetting- see above. I think I'll try and send it off to the manufacturer to be fixed...

- I have just had two periods in a row thanks to being sick two weeks ago and fucking up my pill-taking and biological cycle or whatever. Seems to be ending now, but really. A two week period is Not Fun.

- I'm stressing about asking my Dad for money. Which I shouldn't, really, because he asked me to tell him how much certain things were going to cost me so he could give me the money for them, but I hate asking for money and it's driving me crazy.

- I'm commutuing to London this week. This is expensive and uncomfortable and boring since my mp3 player died, and makes me very tired and cranky.

- I'm trying to sort out work experience at a magazine but I'm stressing constantly that I'm not cool enough or I don't know enough about music or fashion or art or cinema or politics to work at any of the ones I'm applying for. Why oh why do I have to be the person who knows a little bit about everything but a lot about nothing? Why am I such a stupid fucking idiot? Why am I letting myself get this stressed out?

At least the following things are good things:

- I am moving out, which brings, yes, more stress but is also a positive step towards... uh... not living here any more.

- I am listening to the new Hot Chip album in demo form and it sounds brilliant. I am also doing the same with the new Cat Power and it too is fantastic.

- I'm struggling with a third, here. I have Cadbury's Caramel in bar form and season two of Buffy on DVD in my room for later on, when I can't resist the urge to hide under the duvet any longer.