r/nonwild: why shopping on the internet for self-esteem is probably a mistake.

DISCLAIMER: i’ve been writing this post since september, and actually changed the date to october when it took me a month to get it even half done. now it’s almost february. the cliff’s notes version here is that i’m sad. i’ve been sad for a while. i’m feeling a lot better, but things are still sometimes confusing and hard, and i haven’t been writing because i couldn’t. i know that’s not funny, or snarky, or even interesting, but it’s the story of why this post took me almost 6 months to write.

october was a pretty shitty month. i would venture to say (save for that year when i got divorced), that this october was probably the shittiest month i’ve had for a long time. and while no one big thing went awry causing the downward spiral (time to break out the NIN), it was more of a 10 car pile up of tiny awful little things combining into a juggernaut of unstoppable sadness, and self doubt, and too many days spent curled up in my bed with my dog playing internet scrabble and praying for sleep.

i am not prone to depression, not even a little. usually, i’m a joke cracking, bright side finding, pollyanna-grade fucking optimist. i don’t get sad, ever really.  so on the very rare occasion that everything decides to crumble into dust for a minute, sad is this foreign intruder who busts in, makes himself comfortable in my bed, demands snacks, and refuses to go home. i’m paralyzed. i’m useless. so, sad and i curl up in bed together, call my mom, and try to wait it out.

tax time: the agony and the ecstasy.

once upon a time, online tax software was not readily available, nor was being online. in my tiny cockroach infested first apartment, i could barely afford to eat- let alone pay for a dial up internet connection (which back in ’99 was all a single girl could dream to afford).

well, when my mom pushed me out of the nest after college, doing my own taxes was part of the deal. but not having preparation software, or even the luxury of being able to google how to do taxes, i was essentially BONED. i had to go to the LIBRARY and pick up paper forms and instruction booklets.

i distinctly remember having a panic attack over my futon full of forms and manuals. gross adjusted what? but i pushed through, did what i thought was probably right (cried on the phone to my mom for an hour or so), and got myself a refund of $500. well, actually $250 after the IRS corrected my copious errors. but it did it! by myself!

after the trauma of paper taxes, the next year i found myself a friend with internet access and vowed to e-file, no matter what the cost. as it turned out, being single renter who had yet to start paying off her student loans (now a distant utopian memory), and was making roughly $20,000 a year (less utopian), was actually an ideal situation. i could file the 1040EZ, and that meant that there were numerous free filing options for broke jerks like me (and there still are).

i chose turbotax, and it was best arbitrary decision i ever made.

so what’s this groupon shit anyway?

last year when groupon really busted onto the scene in maine, i must have gotten like 48 emails from friends and family members telling me that i should think/write/talk/pee my pants about it.

so i checked it out… and frankly, it left me a little limp (boner analogy intended).

now conceptually, i think it’s a great idea: 1 deal, limited time, limited avialabilty… the deep discount IS seductive, as is the fact that there needs to be enough people taking the deal in order for it to be valid.  but for some reason, i was expecting to be completely blown away, and i just wasn’t.

for example, today’s portland deal is a discount car wash.  i’m sure a lot of people are really enthusiastic about this with the salt/slush tornado that’s been going on here lately, but me, not so much. i suppose with a site like this, it is a bit optimistic for me to expect that the daily deal to appeal to me even the majority of the time… but to date, there has only been one deal that has even vaguely interested me ($10 at barnes & noble for $5). groupon just doesn’t have what i want.

that said, i should be thanking groupon for being so exceptionally copy-able. groupon clones have been shooting wildly from every orifice of the internet for the last year or so, and some of them actually do give me the discount boner that i so deeply desire (although many of them [sorry loonEdeals] could sill use A LOT of work). but what i’ve realized in the last year as i have slugged through the symphony of variations on groupon, is that for me, it’s not about the format that makes a site desireable to me, it’s what they’re selling.  groupon might be the most elegant of the deal sites, but if it only offers car washes and pricey spa treatments… i’m never going to buy.

i’ve made a small list of online deal sites below (of various ilks) that i’ve been enjoying lately, but there’s so many out there! what am i missing?