My twenties were in a lot of ways about optimizing. I wanted to organize and reorganize. I could say, this was one of my themes since childhood. I wanted some sort of order, my own, something that would increase my comfort. It was also the time of productivity and lifehack blogs sprouting like mushrooms, it was easy to fall into this kind of religion — you improve, optimize, get things done, et voila, you are the winner. Sometimes, I have to admit, overattention to organizing does the reverse — it keeps you busy without much outcome. Form over matter. In any case, that’s where my writing about the things that make you feel at home come from — this particularity about some things that matter to me.
I haven’t felt a sharp need to organize in a while. Or, at least, I made small incremental improvements as I went, but I wasn’t spending so much time thinking about it. Until last week.
My good old Herschel backpack was getting less good and more old. And I started looking for a new one. I initially thought that I’d replace it with maybe a different color, and that’s all. But then, I thought, I often carry not even one but two water bottles with me (my own and my kid’s). It would be much more comfortable to have a backpack with at least one external bottle pocket. A simple request. And here’s where it all started. After a while, I was researching camera bags, external carry, learning a new abbreviation of EDC (not ‘eau de cologne’, but ‘everyday carry’), going as far as creating a comparison table of the backpacks that got into my shortlist.
Luckily, this project has been short, albeit intense. My research was good, but not too extensive. I looked into a few options, removed the ones that I didn’t like visually and chose from the ones that had the most features that mattered the most to me. I found something that looks like my ideal backpack, and ordered it. If it blows my mind as much in use as it did in its description, I might write about it sometime.
What do I want to say with this writing? I don’t know.
Maybe I want to share my surprise and excitement of finding a whole new realm of daily backpacks with enhancements and features. Technology isn’t limited to electronics and such, one can also find advancements in clothing and in everyday objects and in almost every sphere of life. Maybe I want to admire industrial design in its many forms. (I re-watched Objectified documentary about a year ago, when Hustwit made his films available for free when pandemics started). It’s impossible to notice all the changes that happen in the world, but everything moves on, and improves drastically. You have so many more options that what you think the defaults are.
Maybe I want to think about how you can choose between complexity (a space rocket of a backpack) and simplicity (a canvas bag with just one feature, being a bag) — and you can be happy with either of them. Depends on you.
Maybe I want to say that it all doesn’t even matter, and yet, there are so many games to play, if you want and can afford. You can pay attention to some things and disregard others. Your life, your games. Organic food or it doesn’t really matter? Latest phone model or whatever has internet? Obsessing over things is okay, I guess — as long as it’s something that doesn’t harm you or others and that you enjoy.
A few backpacks to get you started on this slippery slope if you’re curious about what I was looking at: