"Only the individual taste, in the end, can truly create style or fashion, since it is not concerned with following in the wake of others. Hence whatever an individual taste may choose, be it a stepladder or a wicker basket, it must always be based on a deep personal choice, a spiritual need that truly assesses and gives value to that particular ladder or basket...It is on our selection, after all, that we betray our deepest selves, and the individualist can make us see the object of his choice with new eyes, with his eyes."
It's this kind of quote with its promise of superior selfhood through aesthetics and a love of beauty that has left me, at 26, living in a basement in Norwich, surrounded by in a crushing sinkhole of debt and for all my fancy degrees, little to show for my work except for a wide selection of really exceptional stepladders and wicker baskets.
Theory:
Practice:
Hello. I am called Becky and I'm going to sell my life on Ebay.
No, really. You can have it. I want you to. For years I cherished my glorious clothes, my voluminous personal library (over 1,000 books and counting), my fantastic knick-knacks and personal doo-dads. There's a dedication in one of these books from one of my very good friends, Chris, who wrote the excellent Young Adult clone 'n' heartbreak novel Mark II, and it reads:
"Dear Becky, please do not sell this book on Ebay. Instead keep it with your precious things. Love, Chris."
Chris, you're safe. For now. Thing is, non-existent readership, is that the majority of my awesome stuff came from Ebay in the first place. I'm mildly obsessed with it and have been for over a decade. I rarely buy anymore as I can't afford to, but I realised recently that what I love about ebay in particular is the tiny narratives that are bundled into every auction: the language, the eccentricity, the chance to snoop around somebody's house from within the limits of their cameraphone.
Simply put, I am not addicted to stuff as I am addicted to the stories within the stuff.
This all works out very well as I am thousands of pounds in debt to HSBC and those people don't accept snappy autobiographical Sloane Crosley-esque copy as debt replacement.
Solution: sell the stuff, keep the narrative. This blog will be a repository of all the precious things I am letting go so that, by the time I'm 30 on 1st October 2013, I can be debt free with my life recorded and filed, and me filled to the brim with a zen-like readiness for the next big thing. Either that or writing wide-eyed articles in Grazia about how to execute home manicures whilst renegotiating your IVA and sobbing in your pyjamas.
Incidentally, and as side projects, I also plan to have won an Eric Gregory award, third prize in the Bridport and had Miranda July clasp my hands and meet my eye in a gesture of loving simpatico. If there's time, I'm also going to look into getting a pony.
"The more you have, the less you are." -- Karl Marx
"Beck, can I sit down? I think I wrenched my spine." -- my mother, moving my 10 year-old Vogue collection.
And so it begins: Buy My Precious Things
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