modding video games to curb my shopping addiction
ive started to notice as of late how my shopping addiction has been rebounding. theres a couple big ticket items ive purchased recently (namely the weighted blanket but also a couple of powder makeups). its probably in response to Current World Events or some shit - when i get really anxious and listless i start buying shit for myself and for others with reckless abandon, and suddenly I’m knee deep in the debt. with my roommate gone for three months it does ease up my expenses a bit, but. yknow.
i think, though, the difference between this binge and others is that im taking a crumb of scrutiny towards said purchases - oh, I bought this foundation as a powder instead of a liquid because i only really use concealer anyway and powders last significantly more than liquids and creams. oh, i bought this weighted blanket because my anxiety is ramping up bad and it calms me down and helps me sleep at night.
however, fact of the matter is that no matter the justification, im still putting myself in a hole. im no better with this than my mother, who drowns in her debt smothered by a stash of credit cards thick enough to be a playing suite. although i have significantly less debt, debt is still debt, still money taken out of my current and future pockets. and the seeds of using purchases to self-soothe is there.
anyway. ive been watching a bunch of beauty youtubers that are a little bit more conscious of their purchases. and that got me thinking, right.
i used to watch the sims community at an arms length - mainly because theyre toxic as fuck holy shit - and a lot of people in the community enjoyed downloading mods for the sims games. modding is pretty much part of the reason it (and MANY other games, ie skyrim) has any relevance years after release.
anyway, there was a reoccurring thought process.
modding is like shopping, except you don’t pay a dime. sure, the stuff isnt real per se, but like. your sim/dragonborn/sole survivor/tav or durge/etc gets it. and besides, the actual thing you might have gotten may have ended up being as ephemeral as that cute outfit mod you found for the sims 2 and youll forget about it. except its not taking up space in a closet or rotting in a landfill. its just rotting on your SSD instead. and its usually a helluva lot more environmentally friendly to delete a file than throwaway liquids and creams you bought a year ago that have gone bad ;)
i redownloaded oblivion and baldurs gate 3 on my desktop recently for this very purpose - when i want to buy something, i’ll hop on nexusmods, download a couple mods, and throw em into MO2.
its not a cure-all, of course, but man does it feel good to work on the gamer equivalent of a bonsai tree