Stumbled onto Black Friday during lockdown

 

Quarantine has generally been a time for numerous, possibly useless online sales for me. I say possibly because I don’t see a reason I won’t be able to wear my new All Saints dress to the local grocery store once quarantine is over. Or why my new lipsticks wouldn’t show, just because I’ll be wearing a face mask on top. I think as a society, we have grown beyond mere eyesight and can sense other people’s make up. I imagine we were all pretty bored and looking forward to some sales event and some new, affordable additions to our households to revive this stale feeling of purposeless existence. Too dark? However, here is how the lockdown made this Black Friday interesting to me. I found myself unable to assess what I needed and allowed myself to obsess over price fluctuations for way too long.

I suspect this won’t be relatable to everyone. I know there are busier people than me and much more able to prioritise. Nonetheless I did do everything wrong and felt I should share. Let this be proof as to why I am not the best gift buyer. There were two things I needed; a new coffee maker and a new set of glasses. There were two things I wanted; a liquid blush and a new TV. Instead, I bought some new clothes and make up that in no way can be applied on the cheeks.

I will begin with the situation regarding the TV. My current TV is actually 15 years old. She was an excellent purchase back in the day (yes, it’s a she) by my older brother and I remember, as a youngster, being in awe of the quality, the size, those funky backscreen lights it had. Also, my brother is a tech wizard and had managed to connect this TV with the room’s PC through two different adaptors, which might be less convenient than directly signing into your Netflix account on the TV itself, but not that much of a bother. Things were going great; I had even failed to notice that you can practically see the edges of each pixel on the screen and the funky, accompanying lights had settled for a permanent, boring yellow hue. But then the somewhat younger PC died unexpectedly. Okay, expectedly, because it might have been younger, yes, but was still quite old. I certainly didn’t expect it because, as we have established, my assessments are terrible, but no one else was surprised. The current problem is this TV is old enough that about four generations of adaptors are needed to connect her to my laptop. I decided this Black Friday was my best chance to replace it. And then, I set up an impossible equation. I decided to find the largest possible size for my furniture, with the absolutely most recent technology, from a brand I know and trust, all under 200 euros. And obsessed over it for the duration of the sales. Obviously, this economic angel does not exist and my trusted 2005 Philips will remain in my care until November 2021. Along with its external digital receiver. It’s all very retro.

There isn’t much to my make up purchases, other than they are certainly redundant, regardless of the lockdown. I surely have enough of it, even though it never feels like it. And I certainly won’t be wearing it anywhere any time soon. Although I do have some epiphanies where I paint my whole face, dress up, lie on the couch and discuss the second season of ‘Succession’ with Baymax. However, as a rightful victim to capitalism, I want to try anything that sounds like something I don’t already own. And I know I do not own a liquid blush. But the make up industry is such a black hole that I ended up with new lipsticks, lip balms, brow products and skincare and my new blush craze sort of evaded my Sephora basket. Maybe it’s for the best, maybe it would be good for me to simply dream about a fresh, rosy cheek that can be achieved with products already in my possession, but won’t; if nothing else, as a reminder of this unfair omission of mine. Glasses I never even looked at, I think I have grown used to this humbling fuzziness that shows up when I stare at my screen for too long. Plus I can claim that any spelling or syntax mistake in my blog posts are due to increased short sightedness that has remained unaccounted for. In all honesty, I have minimum short-sightedness; I should just look away from the screen every 45 minutes and I’ll be fine.

I did, however, get the new coffee maker. It is a beauty. It is red. That’s it, really, that is its only redeeming feature. That and it makes coffee without the need for manual labour. Simple enough, and therefore cheap enough. But no, nothing was simple anymore. By now, I was starting to feel that I hadn’t taken enough advantage of this opportunity. I wanted to make sure I made the most out of this Black Friday. So, while this coffee maker was about thirty euros worth, less than the aforementioned unwearable All Saints dress, I wanted to get it cheaper. I checked the site every day. There was a discount alright, but I just felt like they could do more. I thought I’d wait it out, cheat the electronics store and wait until the very end for my purchase. I would squint my eyes to the screen like a cowboy, defying it to make the first move. Until it did and posted the ‘Limited stock’ tag. I have never made a purchase that quick. I folded. I yielded. I embarrassed myself. But I did get three extra euros off, and if that doesn’t count as a Black Friday triumph, I don’t know what does.

Please do not see this post as a sales guide. Do not see this post as an indicator of December content. Hopefully, it won’t be. See this post as it is; proof of my decay into MADNESS! I feel like we have learnt all we can from Covid and now it officially needs to stop. We all took up meditation, we learnt to appreciate the little things, we all watched Tiger King, we all started and abandoned a YouTube workout at home, some of us started eating healthy (which is disgusting), sleeping better, we saw our carbon footprint and how we have been suffocating nature. Lesson learnt. Can we go out now?