I love the days that are special days.  I look forward to the coming day, planning events and getting all the perfect bits and pieces that make the day, the time, and the people, important.  This method of living through the calendar days requires accumulating “things.”  It is not these “things” that are important in and of themselves, but the people, the event, and the time that they are associated with.  Specifically, this year, as by coincidence, Mother’s Day and my brother-in-law’s birthday fall on the same day.  At this point, I am already half-way through thinking, planning, and purchasing “the things” that will fill this “double-day.”

More and more, I am attracted to those things that are more artistic.  I will buy a book full of words that are pretty and that tell a decorative story, rather than any story that is full of thrill and complex mathematical  problems that require suspending belief in the real world.  I prefer a few well-placed words, to a book that I can’t put down.  So, now, when I start the “accumulation of things” for “the special days” in the calendar, some, “tasteless, bland, white” card, figurine, book, and ecetera  is what I will look for, and usually it is what I get.

Part of my plan, which is a new criteria that developed only during the past year, is to try to fit the purchases of “the things” inside of a budget.  I wan to get to the day, with something that says, more “special, loved, and cherished” than any other day.  So, what I spend on the other deadline days in the calendar, should, not be able to compete with the “special days” and the amount I spend.  There is no way the money I spend can indeed reciprocate and represent the “specialness.”

How do I do this?  I have recently discovered “niche marketing” and the “niche market.”  I am finding more “hand-made” things, and “one-of-a-kind” things, in little shops that do not compete in anyway with giant marketplaces like William Sonoma and Crate and Barrel.  There, I can endlessly spend money, but rarely am I satisfied with the “thing” I have bought.

Being without a car, has led me to here, in my journey.  Because I have to walk, I try to fit everything I need to do, within a small radius of space.  And, I have discovered, the stores along those trendy streets, where the designers go, where the artists live and sell, and where things close to home are on sale, for a reasonable price, I can fulfill my wishes and desires… all in a small radius of a walk.

Also, I am a fan of those reality shows that average joe professionals host, and sometimes, compete with each other in.  It is a community that shows up on television at least once a week, and I am usually there, watching.

My hurrays for all the up-and-coming niche markets!  I feel I live a rich life and that I live it in reality.  I am comfortable and I am surrounded by all the comfortable things, which, for some reason, have to be earned through graduating from school and finding a way to make a living.  If this, is in fact, the real world, then, I give my hurrays again.  There are more and more…  One day, I too, will join with the “cottage industry” and end up on the trendy street.  I won’t only be giving on those special days, but I will also receive as much as I give.