on and on

In 2008 I was depressed so I started doing extreme couponing. Not, like, EXTREME extreme couponing, with the forty jars of mayonnaise and a year’s supply of Desitin for the baby I didn’t have, but extreme couponing nevertheless. I read the CVS circular the way I imagine other twenty-three year old women read Joan Didion, at length and with great attention. I was bored. I was looking for something. It was not six packages of oil-free Neutrogena wipes for a penny, but looking back I think I liked the weird obsessive logic of the endeavor—do this and this and this and this and this is what will happen. You will have something, you will have paid very little, and you will feel satisfied.

The other thing I did in 2008 was start this blog, and the two things feel connected a) because I used to TALK about my effing couponing here, as if that was the kind of thing that people wanted to read about, and b) because I think at the time it was satisfying to me in a similar way? The give and take of writing here and reading elsewhere, the click of my hands on the keys.

The point of all of this is that it’s six years later, I have two books under my belt that are happily not about couponing, I like to think that I’m generally less of a sad sack, but I still have a lot of other things to yammer about that are not fictional or my shopping habits (okay I want to yammer about my shopping habits a LITTLE). Most of all I miss making my home here, unwinding my words in this space.

I do this, and I feel satisfied. I am still here, if you are still here.

Plus if you’re interested I know where you can get some face wash WICKED CHEAP right now.