Dopamine Diaries
Add to Cart, Add to Self: When Reinvention Looks a Lot Like Retail Therapy
Lately, my life feels like an open tab I keep forgetting to close. Every day looks like the last: coffee, anxiety, job boards, overthinking, emotional buffering with Netflix, and oat milk. And when that starts to feel like quicksand, I do the one thing I know will make my dopamine spike for exactly 5minutes: I shop.
Not recklessly. I’m unemployed, after all. Just little things. A water bottle, I pretend, will make me a new person. A candle with a name like “Soft Mornings.” A lip gloss called Cherry Sweet. And for those few seconds of “checkout now,” I feel in control again.
Of course, every purchase comes with a second item I didn’t order: guilt.
Because rent doesn’t care about my need for serotonin.
And healing, apparently, doesn’t come with free shipping.
But distraction wears many outfits — and not all of them are from my cart.
Like the keyboard piano I found in someone else’s trash, left out on the street with a sign that read “free.” I told myself, “Maybe I just need music. Maybe learning an instrument will give me rhythm again — in my days, in my body, in my soul.”
Spoiler: I played Mr Bean’s Theme Song twice and haven’t plugged it in since.
The week after that, I rediscovered painting. An old love, now reborn in chaotic watercolors on cheap paper. It was messy. Honest. Kinda beautiful. For a moment, I felt like someone I used to know.
A new hobby here.
An old obsession there.
All of it keeping me just sane enough to function — and just insane enough to still feel alive.
Some people chase dreams. I chase dopamine. Preferably under $100 and available with next-day shipping.
This week, I went to the same electronics store four times to look at the same camera — a camera I do not need, cannot afford, and am 94% sure I’m romanticizing simply because it has “vlogger” in the product title and I’ve had too much time alone with my thoughts.
Was it inspiration… or a symptom?
A creative rebirth… or just a delayed breakdown in 1080p?
Each time, I touched it like it might whisper back. Imagined future me using it to document my glow-up — the one that hasn’t started yet, but definitely will as soon as I find the right lens.
And in between camera pilgrimages, I somehow managed to feel guilty for ordering one iced coffee.
As if my iced coffee obsession is the reason there’s nothing in my 3. Säule.
How is it that one camera can feel like salvation, but one 9.- drink can feel like financial sabotage?
Why does a purchase feel like progress… until you open your banking app and remember rent is due?
And why, for the love of espresso, did I decide this week was a good time to stop drinking?
Apparently, my liver is evolving faster than my career.
Progress?
Maybe.
But if clarity is what I was after, I should’ve known better than to search for it in retail lighting.
But I had to wonder...
Was I evolving… or just emotionally redecorating?
Was I filling my days with color, or just afraid of sitting with the blank canvas of my life?
Is starting something new a sign of hope — or just the most elegant way to avoid finishing anything at all?
The keyboard, the paint, the camera — none of them were the solution, not really. But they were something. A tiny protest against the feeling that I was falling behind. A glittering distraction from the truth that I don’t know what’s next — and that uncertainty is starting to feel like a roommate I never asked for.
And when everyone else seems to be sprinting toward their future while you’re googling “how to feel purposeful without a job,” it’s easy to wonder:
Can you build a life on borrowed joy?
And how long can you pretend you're okay before pretending becomes the whole performance?
Do we reinvent ourselves because we want to, or because we’re scared no one likes the original draft?
Some days I feel inspired.
Other days, I feel like I’m curating chaos and calling it healing.
Maybe I’m not figuring it out… but I am accessorizing the confusion remarkably well.