Back to the bins

There are a number of reasons I’ve put off formally launching Hamper. In no particular order: it’s a lot of work. I was overcome with self-doubt. I was busy “healing.”  I was getting my mental health and meds and therapy and crap together. I was making friends that don’t feel sad and scary, just fun. 

I didn’t know what I wanted it to be. I wanted it to be too many things. I’d gotten too much garbage into my brain about what I’m capable of and what I should give up on. I believed others when they told me I was sloppy and lazy and careless and unprofessional and undependable. I believed I couldn’t do better. I believed I couldn't do it. 

I asked too many audio friends about podcasting and was overloaded with information about mixers and external hard drives. I compared myself to rich kids (and not rich kids) who I view as more successful than I am, and therefore, more hardworking and more driven. I questioned how driven I was. I questioned my own ambition. I wondered if my drive to do this project would ever reign victorious over the depression and fear and inertia. I still wonder this. 

I traveled alone. I went to thrift stores and yard sales and clothing swaps across this country and in a couple of others. I legally changed my name and gender marker. I helped my work unionize. Twice. I developed a volunteer practice and grew closer to my community. I fell in love and got my heart ripped out. Much more than twice. 

I felt lost and sad and embarrassed and shameful that I hadn’t already started it. I felt I missed out and lost time. I feared being cringe. I felt so much pressure that I had to prove that being a freak was worth it this whole time and that there are people out there who get it, and get me. I felt pressure to be wildly successful if I was not going to be married with a house in the suburbs. 

I refined my own style. I stopped buying new clothes. I made a commitment to seek secondhand first. I felt unable to ever be read as masculine as I wish I would be. I felt pressure to present performatively masculine as to rectify this. I felt bored and sad not having color and patterns and accessories and platform boots in my life. I realized I was a man in the way that some drag queens are men. I fell in love with Drag Race. 

I was moving into an apartment that was totally my own, where I could set the tone. It’s colorful but quiet. No yelling, no door slamming, no stomping. It’s OK to spill. It’s OK to accidentally break things. It’s ok if accidents happen. It’s not OK to violently throw them in an attempt to scare others or to express rage. But it OK to cry and to have big emotions.

It’s also ok to fuck up. 

It’s ok to start and to stop. It’s ok to try and fail. It’s ok to pick things up again. It’s ok to be scared. It’s ok to eat whatever you want whenever you want. It’s ok to play the same song 100 times on repeat. It’s ok to come in and to shed everything and leave it on the floor. It’s ok to be messy. 

This is, of course, not all explicitly related to the formal launch of Hamper, but it is all related to the tone we are setting. We make our own media outlets the same way we make our homes — to create a small reprieve where we set the rules. 

There are also many reasons why I’ve finally mustered the strength and bravery and mental prowess to finally launch  Hamper, which, transparently, I will write about in another post.

For now, I will say that going to the Goodwill bins always brought me inspiration and motivation. The colors, the shapes, the items, the people, the crowd, the seeking, the searching, the hunting. I love bending and reaching and grabbing and touching everything, looking with my hands. I like being forceful and rough. I like not having to worry about things falling off the hanger. I like everything being together and not having to think about things in terms of gender or size or even item. I like that its so cheap. It’s always been a great place for me to get art supplies and materials and in general low-stakes things that I paid $1.29 a pound for that I have no emotional ties to. It feels like freedom and redemption. It feels like possibility. 

One of the ways I am tricking/bribing/inspiring myself to do this launch is with trips to the bins. Well, thrifting in general. My new rule is if I buy it, I have to write something about it. This has made me want to go thrifting more, which is what I want to do all the time anyway, but also makes me feel less ashamed and more excited and like I could really actually launch Hamper this time. (I’ve been trying for 12 years.) 

I’ve been doing a weekly bins trip where I listen to audiobooks or music or sometimes nothing and walk around and just take it all in. I’ll go into these trips more. I’m about to meet a friend (a fun one, not a sad one) for a much-needed beer and time spent outside of my house, which I think I sometimes love too much. 

Going back to the bins, with the regularity I used to in college has brought back positive nostalgic feelings. Something rare for me, frankly. It feels like I still have my whole life ahead of me, that it’s the perfect time to make weird art, and that I can do anything I put my mind to. This is, of course, true whether you are 18 or 30 — as I recently turned. Yet, sometimes I need the reminder. Though, I’m needing it less and less lately. 

I’ve always been drawn to thrifting because I’ve always felt discarded. I love trash. I love give aways. I love other people's things and peeking into other people's lives and feeling connected to people you've never met. Wearing someone else’s clothes or decorating with someone else's things is so intimate. It makes me feel more connected to the world. It reminds me that it’s good to share. It reminds me that nothing is really mine.  I love second chances and new life and redemption arcs and trying again. 

Ironically, or I guess maybe, obviously, it would be my love of thrifting that would make me strong enough to pick up this project again. Going back to something from the past. Looking at discards and failures with love and hope. Knowing nothing is ever really trash, it just needs a new home. 

For now, this website is Hamper’s new home and I can’t wait to have you all over.