New Year, New Challenge

My sister has officially let this pact expire, seeing as how it's 2012 and how I was completely incapable of blogging just once a month about my endeavors into low-impact living. But I'm still working within the frameworks of last year's vow to only purchase used items in my seemingly never ending acquisition of material items.

Let me begin by outlining my many failures last year. In a truly devastating series of events, I have been through four laptops since May of 2011. You read that correctly--four computers in less than one calendar year. Not only has this obliterated me financially, it's made it rather difficult to maintain my promise to buy used, especially when the clock is ticking and a new computer is the only thing that will solve the problem.

INCIDENT #1: To be expected. My four-year-old adorable white MacBook bit the dust. The logic board went south, and despite great attempts to rescue it and the contents of its hard drive, I had to give up the ghost. Problem was, I was finishing arrangements for a concert in Colorado... that was happening a week later.

I turned to the refurbished section of the Apple Store online and sent myself my first aluminum MacBook Pro. Sweet. Concert went off without a hitch (well, I did forget the music for my dad/guitarist, but luckily the pianist had the scores both in hard copy AND on his iPad--another score for tablets!), and I was the proud owner of a new, expensive piece of equipment.

INCIDENT #2: To be avoided. Computer issues seem to occur when there's absolutely no way it could be convenient or even reasonably annoying. That's generally true for me as my entire career (and, for that matter, my entire social life as I've recently moved to the opposite coast of the country while my beloved remains out east--Skype, anyone?) is on the computer.

So when my sweet, adorable, soft, loving, awful, terrible, want-to-kick-him-in-the-belly cat decided that in the five minutes I was away from the computer, conspicuously leaving my hard cider a foot from the keyboard--as I was PACKING TO MOVE TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE NATION--he was going to ruin my life, I was not prepared. At this point, my MBP was only six months old. And now it was dead. No choice on this one--if I was going to leave on time and arrive in Los Angeles with any semblance of my life in order, I had to have a new laptop and I had to have one NOW.

Hear that? That's the sound of my savings that I'd put away for the move being flushed down the toilet on another new MPB. No refurbs here--I went to the Apple store, cried while swiping my credit card, and walked out with a new computer. #FAIL

INCIDENT #3: Not to be believed. Making the move to LA was difficult enough, but what actually transpired put me in a tail spin I never expected. My housing situation was less than ideal, and although I was rooming with the friend of a friend, there were a lot more complications than anyone could have imagined. I was not sleeping because of extenuating circumstances in the house itself, and I was under tremendous stress because of all this.

Then, one evening when I was out auditioning, my roommate left the house for the first time in two weeks... and left the door unlocked. Guess what was missing when I returned?

The thieves did not take my roommate's MacBook sitting on her desk or her brand new iMac in her bedroom. They took my laptop--which I had recently sealed from water damage with a very expensive and difficult-to-intall military-grade plastic shield--and the purse (which had a MBP in it as well) of my roommate's friend who had left it at the house. Very, very strange.

But it gets better! Because the next day, again when I was auditioning, my roommate's employee left the door open and unlocked, and guess what?? All my jewelry and my pain medication (the only thing getting me through the day at this point) was taken! And funnily enough, nothing of my roommate's was taken. Nothing.

So in a matter of hours, I lost about $8000. And although the computer is replaceable, I also lost about 10 days of work that I hadn't backed up (public service announcement: BACK YOUR DATA UP DAILY!). Most disappointing, I lost all the jewelry I had just inherited from my Italian grandmother--pieces of hers and her sister's that they had kept safe during a brutal war which left my great aunt schizophrenic and my grandmother agoraphobic. Gone, gone, gone.

I asked a good friend who has unfortunately been ripped off several times--bikes, computers, you name it--what advice she had to share going forward. She wrote, "Sadly, the only advice I have is not to get too attached to material things. That and always back up your computer on a hard drive that you don't keep out on the kitchen table for those who meander through your front door (or window). Other than that, the only thing to do is practice letting go of the anger and fear and instead focus on the relief of having been robbed of material goods without any physical or long-term psychological damage done. But, oh, dear."

So all that is to say that my lessons in Buddhism are being met with fierce resistance. This should be the perfect opportunity to "let go," and all I want to do is grip tighter.

As luck would have it, when this all happened I was also writing music for an upcoming show, so it wasn't long before I was back in the Apple Store online, crying and looking for a refurb. A tech savvy friend recommended the Air this time, so I bought the refurbished Air from which I am writing to you now. There was a financing special available, so I took advantage of that. I may have another credit card bill every month, but at least I'm 90% finished writing my new show. A little worse for the wear, but recovering day by day.

I was able to escape the bad housing situation fairly quickly after this whole mess, and I found a room that's reasonably comfortable to stay in through the spring. It's been furnished by a Craiglist-purchased desk and an abandoned dresser. I coughed up $400 and bought a mattress* because the two weeks I spent on the borrowed air mattress--coupled with my lack of pain meds--was giving me migraines so bad I couldn't function. The best/worst part of the bed purchase is that it's my favorite place in the world right now. So much so that I don't want to get out of it most days.

I've managed to drag myself out of the house to visit some of LA's best thrift stores. I found three amazing evening gowns and three cute dresses, all used, for $150 total. I'll be sporting those frocks in my upcoming performances and my appearance at an awards show next month (at which I am a nominee). I'm doing my best to make good environmental choices. And really, what's not to love about vintage threads?

Maybe the lesson in all of this--the not-buying-new and the burglary--is a reminder of life's impermanence, both on a personal and a global level. Joni Mitchell said it best: "Oh, don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. They paved paradise, put up a parking lot."

*I bought the mattress new as well. There are things about which I simply draw a line in the sand, and where I lay my delicate head to rest each night is one of them. Plus, the whole bed bugs epidemic makes me feel creepy crawly all over just thinking about it. And then of course there's this side of buying a used mattress. G-r-o-s-s.