I have a new idea for helping me get out more – both objects that I want to donate that reside in the apartment-mansion and to get out more – which is to have a tithe every time I want to go thrifting. Now that I’m back to work, working in an office, and having learned how to tie a tie for an interview, I’m now enjoying wearing ties, which means I want to go thrifting more.

The basic premise is rather straightforward, so I’ll give my-today’s narrative.

My-Yesterday, my Internet went out starting at 4pm. When I woke up this morning, my Internet was still out, so I couldn’t record the CHATS episode that we wanted to record, and my ISP gave the intended resolution time of 3pm. No use trying to wait around at that point, so I went thrifting. I was thinking of doing that my-tomorrow, having considered the talk show / podcast as the anchor point for my-today, so I went thrifting in a part of town I haven’t visited in years. This location happened to have three thrift stores in a small geographic proximity, so I was able to get a good grasp on what items were around, what the current tie prices are for this inflated economy thanks to shareholder greed, and decide what ties I wanted versus ones I kind of wanted.

Thrift store #1 contained two locations for ties.

Their first location was their “display” area, where they had an assortment of more business professional style clothing and there they had six ties, including one for the dumb/transphobic wizard franchise, and their other selection of ties wasn’t that interesting. I found some textures and colors that were interesting, but overall, they weren’t worth buying at all, even if their prices were cheapest of the three thrift stores. This is something I’ve learned through the Zeal project, which is to value quality over quantity when regarding materials that you want to keep and want to have last. If it’s some cheap food that you don’t care about the quality about, then, sure, cheaper food can be better than more expensive food. For example, “name brand” over-the-counter medication is the same as “generic” over-the-counter medication. They don’t cut diphenhydramine for the “generic” version, after all…

Thrift store #2 had expensive and unimpressive ties.

I did go check the rest of this and the other thrift stores, because if there’s one thing I enjoyed about my life before my disability, before realizing that my materialistic pursuit of objects was not making me happy, was that I liked looking at things more than owning things. I liked, for example, seeing a variety of records today even though I don’t collect records. I took many photos of many records, some of which I would have purchased years ago when I collected records, but now, I don’t see a point in collecting records if I’m not going to use them. At least with ties, I know that I will be needing them so long as I am living in a capitalistic society where appearance is always considered even if it’s not a big deal, because, hey, if I’m wearing a tie versus someone who isn’t, then some people will give me more credit and more credibility even if I am otherwise the inferior choice.

Thrift store #3 is where the tithe paid off.

In my example of a tithe, which I [think I] explained during the recorded bit before I started writing this essay, the tithe isn’t a 10% donation to any thrift store, but rather an instigator for me to get out more often. If I want to go thrifting to find new ties, then I should bring enough of a donation to receive a coupon for use when I purchase items. This makes it weird when I want to go buy something, as I did when I bought these six ties, because how do you go about getting the coupon without donating it to the “wrong” place. I went to three different thrift store organizations my-today. Three different businesses that each do not accept each others’s coupons. My answer for my-today was to put the ties away, go donate the donation bag, state clearly, “I’d like a coupon, please,” and walk in with the coupon, reassess the items I wanted to purchase, and go purchase them.

This is how I’m going to try to get more things donated over the next year…