I had strategically chosen to begin the Ex-Consumer Project on New Year's Day, shortly after receiving a bumper crop of Christmas presents at the tail end of 2004. Now that I had an iPod, two pairs of cashmere socks, two new purses, several new books, and a new blue jacket, NOW I could start my life as an ex-consumer.

I spent the first few days, and then the first few weeks of the project wondering when I was going to want something, so that I could proudly deny it to myself as a declaration of my ex-consumer status. In this same period I spent a lot of time deliberating the fine points of my abstinence. Could I buy Advil? What about soap? Did I really have to buy anything at all? Couldn't I just find my food somewhere?

I will spare whoever has read this far the neurotic detail of my resolution making. Of course, the whole exercise was absurd; at the beginning of January I was still cruising on my Christmas gift high. I was also still basking in the beauty of the of Southern California springtime (which comes in January). Popular belief has it that the Native Peoples of San Diego were an exceptionally peaceful, unambitious lot; not builders of great temples or high powered warriors, they are reputed to have been the quintessential native savages; walking around in blissful nudity and eating ground acorn pancakes. Though I doubt there's much truth in this portrayal, there is something about San Diego which breeds contentment. I could walk out the door of my family house and down along the cliffs above the ocean any time I pleased. The flowers on the succulents and cactuses were blooming, hummingbirds flew between them. Something about this environment makes temple-construction, or large scale agriculture seem like a real waste of time. Likewise, there wasn't much cause for me to go shopping, since there wasn't much to need. The world outside was enough.

So it wasn't until my return to the Cambridge, and the drab grey of city snow that I realized the ramifications of my New Year's resolution. Getting stuff, I was reminded, was not actually about the stuff. It was about the getting. The act of getting gave me a reason to leave the house in bad weather, gave my forays out into the cold a respectable utility. It gave me a reason to work; earning money so that I could spend. By working I earned the right to my after-work shopping recreation. And shopping gave me something that was worth working for. Consumerism gave me something to look forward to, something to wait for in the daily mail delivery. It also provided an excuse; there was always one last thing that was missing, one last ingredient I needed before everything would be "just right" and I could stop procrastinating and get down to the business of my life.

Before the resolution, I read a study in the Wall Street Journal that said consumers bought more stuff when they shopped in multiple genres. (ie: people who get the J.Crew catalog, check out the J.Crew website, and go to the J.Crew store spend more money than people who do just one of these things.) I identified myself as this sort of shopper. I was really into the complete-spectacle aspect of shopping; I delighted in the way the visuals on the website tied to the look of the actual product, the coherence of color and image that is the genius of good branding. Shopping online, checking out the product in the stores, hoping beyond hope that someone would send me a mail-order catalog so I could thumb through it and imagine myself in the idealized catalog-world; shopping was a multimedia hobby I could pursue at home, on the weekends, at the workplace, and regardless of how bad the weather was.

Some sociologists (and I have no idea which, or when) postulate that shopping is the modern-woman's surrogate for her "gatherer" past, just as football is the stand-in for man's primal need for logistical, spear-throwing activities. And it's true. I am probably at my happiest while seeking and finding the missing ingredient needed to put together dinner. I can see how foraging could still be the natural, all-absorbing activity of my life, just as constantly searching for and eating food is the singular, absorbing activity of my neighborhood squirrels. Shopping, whether it be food or other, less essential items is a way of staying happy, albeit in a sort-of unthinking, animalistic way.

So it was a problem being stranded in the Northeast in winter, without my former, happy obsession. There wasn't any point in going downtown on the weekends, since the stores had lost my interest. There was nothing to work for (since I couldn't buy anything), and that was good, since there wasn't any work to be found. I lost my job. Unemployed, without anywhere to go, and stranded in the slushy, wintry mix of the city, I did the predicable thing; I sought out the cracks in my New Year's resolution.

By the rules I set for myself on January 1st, there were no restrictions on the amount, or nature of the food I could buy. So the love I previously lavished on other shopping ventures was easily re-directed towards shopping for cooking ingredients. If there is one place where the spark of a true foodie can be quickly fanned into a fire, it is Cambridge. I live in easy walking distance of two Whole Foods Markets, one Trader Joe's, one earthy Co-op market, several large supermarkets, and lots of tiny ethnic markets selling delicious smelling spices. It is all too convenient to become the worst sort of food consumer.

Like someone who gives up beer for Lent and spends 40 days drinking whiskey, the transference of my shopping habit from trendy clothes to couture food hardly seemed in keeping with the "spirit" of what I was trying to do with the ex-consumer project. A girl's gotta eat, though. And it seems stupid to be an ascetic for fun and sport; so for now, I'm still shopping for mini-peas and prosciutto at the local Whole Foods. When I go there, though, I can't help but feel the same, icky feeling of being preyed upon by consumer spectacle that I felt at Urban Outfitters. Tsunami disasters, foreign wars, polar ice cap melting; day in day out, the produce section at Whole Foods overflows with pristine bounty, not a bruised apple in sight.

I wonder about that. But for now, it is my Gap, Urban Outfitters, and Victoria's Secret all rolled into one.

Conquering the next frontier of Ex-Consumerism may be a project for February.

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