Black Friday: Lessons Learned

I begged my fiancé to go to black Friday this year with me. It was going to be the first year that the stores were going to open at MIDNIGHT! That’s 4 more hours of shopping! Plus I gave him the guilt trip of how we were in North Carolina last Thanksgiving and we weren’t able to hit all of my favorite designer stores, so he agreed to join me in this journey.

All of Thanksgiving Day I was giddy with excitement. I’ve been prepping for weeks to unleash my shopping skills on this day! I celebrate Black Friday, it’s my holiday! The anticipation, the sweat, the possibilities of endless savings and crazy amounts of spending. The housewives who trample each other in uggs and juicy sweat pants, it makes me happy. Yes I know I shouldn’t be so materialistic and need to buy myself happiness, but who is to blame for that? The endless amount of advertisements that make me feel like I need to have the newest and hippest things? The constant one-upping each other that society instills? I don’t care, I LOVE SHOPPING! It’s fun! I enjoy giving as much as I get. I love discounts, a good deal, the customer service, joy of watching people get something and enjoying their purchases. I love it all. Yes I can live without it, yes it doesn’t really make me a whole, complete, and well-rounded person, but can I just enjoy the design, the technology, and the beauty of things? Designers are artists too. Programmers are artists too. Inventors are artists too. These people should all be admired.  I admire them, their creativity, their use of color, shape, fabric, numbers, everything. I can appreciate the complexity of an I Pad to the intricate care and design of a Chloe handbag.

So all through my Chinese Thanksgiving dinner (we have duck and lots of non Thanksgiving fare), I’m sitting in anticipation for the clock to strike midnight. It’s my fiancé’s first real experience; he is tiered, cold, grumpy, and shocked at the line forming outside of best buy, our first stop. I am determined. We get in, it’s crazy and I’m not sure even what I really want to buy. We don’t need a new TV or game system. So we go through the store and look. We ended up with a bunch of CD’s, DVD’s, a new blue- ray player, and a DVD player for my mom. I’m thrilled and full of shopping adrenaline. Next stop Macy’s at South Coast Plaza. I run in we find that the name brand jeans are 20% off! MY DREAM COMES TRUE! Done. Then it’s off to grab some breakfast and wait for all the other stores to open up. It’s 3 am. We wait. And wait. And wait. Finally the stores slowly, but surely start to open up. The excitement is fading and the deals don’t seem all that great anymore, in fact the deals are not worth the zombie feeling I’m having. It’s that hour when my body starts to shut down and my mind is foggy. We manage to buy some things that we needed to get at full price and some things on sale that we didn’t need.  I’m starting to feel a little disappointed, not sure if it’s the exhaustion or that everything I truly want is just not on sale. I’m slowly realizing that all the designers I covet are not going to do anything to make it so that I can afford it. I didn’t expect them to; if they did I wouldn’t respect them. I’m also realizing, as I’m getting older, my tastes have changed. I’m not willing to buy things because they were cheap or a great deal. I want quality not quantity. I want something that will last. I want classic designs that are timeless. I want longevity. I want Chanel, YSL, Chloe, Prada, and Burberry and I’m willing to wait and save until I can afford it. Frankly I’m also just too old to be pulling all nighters anymore. It has taken me a whole day to recover from Black Friday. I enjoyed the rush, but I’m definitely paying for it now.  So lessons learned this weekend: It’s okay to know what you like and what you want and not be willing to settle for anything else; I need 8 hours of sleep; Staying up all night isn’t the fun it use to be; 12 hours of shopping all before noon IS too much; even I get tiered of shopping; I have an amazing fiancé who was willing to stay up all night with me and wait in incredibly long lines for me while I shopped, which makes him my soul mate; quality is always better than quantity in everything and it’s okay to wait for it.