Ok, so today's venture was one of desperation. Unfortunately, my parents had to cancel their trip out this weekend, and with them in Arlington stayed all my furniture. SO, today it was off to Swedish/Chinese furniture giant, IKEA, to find a desk.
Now, I know what you're thinking, and don't worry, I'm still thinking a bed is more important than a desk, but the desk just happened to get ahead on the queue somehow.
Anyways, to put it mildly, IKEA was overwhelming. It was a nightmare. I mean, it was neat but it was so big and full of so many things! I don't know. I had trouble wrapping my head around the whole thing and could only focus on things like how hard it was to find the escalator and why I couldn't get from one side of the building to the other without going all the way around.
So, I went through several desk types, looked at some other things like hanging shelves (awesome) and pencil cups (awesome), went out to measure my car, looked at more desks and chairs, went out to measure again, came back to look at desks one more time then bit the bullet and bought the Expedit desk with a chair that I don't remember the name of. Needless to say, after all that deliberation I made the right choice. It is fantastic and is now sitting proudly in my living room, already adorned with books, computer stuff and a wire-mesh pencil cup (awesome).
And now for the philosophical portion. As my brother was comforting me and advising me through this IKEA journey, the subject of beds came up and he said something like "You don't have to get the most expensive bed. When you get a real job you're going to want a nicer one anyways. Trust me." This statement did not sit well with me. I love my brother to death and back and he was only trying to be helpful, but it was in that moment that I realized I'd been pushed off the edge and into the pool of American consumerism. I feel like I'm up to my neck in it, trying to figure out how to swim. Will I always desire more? Things have always been so easy because hand-me-downs have been provided. I've never had to worry about how much I want to spend on a bed, or which model I desire, or whether I should upgrade. It's always been clean-cut: I have this twin bed from home and that's it; I have this desk from home and it's great. done. But now it's like, well, will I want a better bed later? And how bout after that? Maybe a better bed. Maybe one with a fancy iron head-board or the latest in trendy platform beds. I can see this snowballing into something awful. Not just beds, either. I want to be financially responsible and I sure don't want to be spending money on myself all the time just because I might want a better bed. Thoughts? Comments?
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