Black Friday Failings

Welcome to the Offline Online Podcast.

My name is Andrew.

Thank you for joining again.

Coming up to the Christmas period, and today I wanted to talk about my experiences with Black Friday.

Now, this channel and this podcast is mainly going to focus on intentional use of technology through digital intentionalism or digital minimalism.

However, part of the whole intentional living thing is actually ensuring that you don’t unnecessarily purchase things.

And if I’m honest, I kind of failed at that at this Black Friday.

As I mentioned in the introductory episode, this is a journey.

So as part of that journey, you have ups and downs.

Now, I wouldn’t call this a down, but it’s definitely not the ideal goal I had in mind when I started looking at stuff for Black Friday.

And I wanted to be open and honest about my failings as well as my successes.

So at the start of Black Friday, I definitely had a goal to not overspend or spend on things that I didn’t need.

I think that’s a general goal that we probably have if we’re trying to live intentionally, but I definitely have my issues.

I know that I am definitely a sucker for shiny and new.

I do like opening a new toy, playing around with it, getting to know it.

It’s something I enjoy.

But that does mean I acquire a lot of things.

And if I look around the room right now, there’s definitely a bunch of items that are not used as much as they should be or not used at all.

And I just need to actually get rid of it.

But that’s another story.

Coming back to Black Friday, I had a few ticket items that I wanted to buy, some presents for Christmas, but I didn’t have anything else for myself that I was looking to buy.

And in the first week or so of the Black Friday sales, I was pretty successful.

Side note, when I say the first week of sales, Black Friday used to be really a day and then it kind of spread out into Cyber Monday, so it expanded out through the weekend.

Now it seemed like those sales were going on for a month.

Crazy.

However, that’s a different story.

So for the first week or so, I was pretty good.

I did have my weak spots.

I personally enjoy listening to music and I do have a personal audio player and wired headphones when I really want to listen to an album and not be distracted.

However, with all hobbies, you look at other things that are available and you think, oh, that’s a better audio player or they’re better headphones.

And so with the sales going on, there’s a lot of that stuff that came into play.

And to be honest, I got really close to actually buying a new audio player.

The one I have is very good, but it’s a small and fairly inexpensive model that I bought many years ago.

And the idea of purchasing a higher quality model with better audio quality and more powerful amplifiers, for some reason, intrigued me.

Maybe it’s because more is better and I have that kind of mindset.

Maybe it’s just something new and shiny again.

Something new to play with and set up and explore.

However, I did manage to avoid purchasing that, although I did get really close.

It was in my cart and I did think about finishing that up.

But avoided that, that was all good.

My big ticket purchase for the year was a phone for my daughter.

My daughter’s going into high school next year, as we did with our son.

When they go into high school, we buy them a phone.

Bought them an iPhone, bought her an iPhone.

It was a refurbished model.

One of the things with Black Friday, big box retailer had their refurbished models on sale, was able to get a good price, save myself some money instead of buying a new phone.

So that was a success.

Outside of that, for the first week or two, maybe a couple of small items, but nothing major.

Come about the third week or so, I started seeing some deals for some handheld gaming PCs.

Now I’m very much a casual gamer.

I enjoy it, but I’m very casual gaming.

And I’m very much focused on Nintendo because it’s quite simple.

I love my platformers, I love Mario.

So I have a Switch or a Switch Lite that I play still.

I have a couple of 3DS devices that I use to play old 3DS games.

I even have a Sony PlayStation Vita if I want my old PS1 or PlayStation library fix.

So I don’t game a lot, but when I do, I do enjoy it.

I haven’t had a need to get a handheld gaming PC though.

I don’t play that often.

In the past couple of years though, I’ve been very interested in the new handheld gaming PCs led by the Steam Deck.

For those who don’t know, these are Nintendo Switch like devices, but they’re bigger and more powerful to handle much higher quality games.

And when I say quality, I mean graphics quality, not quality of the game itself.

So I’ve been intrigued.

There’s one called the Steam Deck that I’ve been looking at for a while.

But until now, I’ve resisted the urge.

Coming up to the third week of Black Friday sales, I start seeing some of these handheld gaming PCs go down in price.

And they get into the price of the standard Switch 2.

Now the Switch 2 is not something I was looking to buy at this point.

I’m happy with my current Switch.

There’s no games exclusive to the Switch 2 that I’m interested in.

But if there were games to come on that platform, that would be something I would be investing in.

But when I started seeing some gaming PCs or handheld gaming PCs get to that price, I got intrigued.

And after a lot of deliberation, a lot of looking, a lot of searching for different deals and actually questioning whether it was worth my investment, I did end up buying one.

Now the details of what one I get isn’t really the point.

The point is I spent my money on something that I didn’t really need.

Now I can go on and try and explain and justify my purchase.

And I am enjoying the device.

So in that way, it has been worth it so far.

I expect I’m going to continue to use it.

I’m still not a heavy gamer, but I do enjoy using that and playing games on it.

But it’s not something I needed.

And it is another cost that I didn’t need to buy.

And it’s yet another device in a bunch of devices that is occasionally overwhelming sometimes, if I’m honest.

So that’s my story around Black Friday and my failures really.

Now you can say it’s a failure and that’s a very negative way to look at it.

And initially I did feel quite guilty of buying yet another device.

But I’ve decided to use this as a point to re-evaluate my consumerism and the amount of stuff that I have.

So based on that, I’ve actually got off my butt, reviewed everything I have and I’ve actually put a bunch of stuff for sale.

And I’ve even sold something this morning as I record this podcast.

Now, is that redemption for purchasing something I didn’t need?

No.

However, instead of getting bogged down and beating myself up over buying that one thing I didn’t need, I’m going to use it as something to drive how I live my life and how I look at what I’ve got currently.

And use it as a trigger to get rid of stuff I don’t need.

To get rid of all these devices that I’ve used in the past but I’ve moved on or gotten something else and I just left it in the cupboard.

To actually dispose of a bunch of things and to give them new homes so that they go to someone that will use them.

So that’s my Black Friday experience.

As I said, not as successful as I would like it, but going to use that failing as a driver to move forward.

I’d love to hear any of your stories from Black Friday or how you’re planning to be more mindful this holiday season.

So in the show notes, I’ll have links to get in contact and to the webpage for the podcast.

I’d love for you to get in contact and I will respond as soon as I can.

In the meantime, this will be the last episode before Christmas period.

So I wish all of you a happy Christmas for those who celebrate.

For those who don’t, have a happy holiday break.

Hopefully you’re able to take a bit of rest, a bit of time with family and friends and enjoy the holiday season however you celebrate.

Thanks for listening in and we’ll see you on the next episode.