My husband and I were talking about all the things we needed to get done around the house (okay, maybe I was talking and he was nodding and smiling while watching the television). The list started with things like “tidy the garage” and “fix broken tile in bathroom” and ended with things like “get a quote for full bathroom renovation” and “suss out how much garage door automation costs”.
“It would be nice to have some shade up near the pool” became “buy large umbrella” became “phone Adrian to get the number for his landscape designer”. We (I) were only talking for about an hour, but by the end of that list we were redoing the bathrooms, adding a verandah to the balcony upstairs, getting new plantation shutters, completely landscaping the backyard and talking about “phase 2” which vaguely involved doing an interpretive dance while we threw our money into a firepit.
I can’t help myself – after years of successfully avoiding the whole consumerism craze (working in corporate marketing made me jumpy about buying stuff) I’ve caught the dreaded neverenoughitis and suddenly I neeeed things I don’t need. I waaaaaant things I don’t really want.
We entertained a bunch of people in the backyard this past Australia Day and we had a fabulous time, but I just know that a kitchen right next to the barbecue, a new outdoor lounge set with Marimekko cushions and a $15,000 water feature would have made our party so much better.
“The place looks great,” a friend enthused.
That’s the sort of expression one generally reserves for the plain girl who “scrubs up well”, I thought miserably. “The place” – like it’s a dead-loss of a home, but we’ve made the best of it by tricking up the place with fairy lights and candles. Good for us.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” my husband chided. “You’ve totally lost the plot!”
“It’s my illness,” I said pointedly. “Neverenoughitis leaves me feeling entirely unsatisfied no matter how good things are. You should try living in my shoes for just one second – but don’t get excited, they’re only from Steve Madden, not Jimmy Choo.”
He rolled his eyes. He does that a lot. Neverenoughitis doesn’t seem to infect men in quite the same number as women.
I want to knock through the kitchen back wall and put in bi-folds to enhance our indoor-outdoor connection. “Just go outside,” he says. I want to put skylights into the hallway to bring in more light, sweet light. “Flick the switch on,” he says. I want to refurbish the pool and cover up the pebblecrete. “Close your eyes when you’re underwater,” he says.
It’s all want, want, want and I don’t need, need, need. I can’t decide if I’m as unsatisfied as I think I am or if I’m just feeling left-out because everyone else seems to have nicer stuff than me. Gosh, I really need to be careful – the deadly compareandweep virus can be a secondary infection of neverenoughitis.
Do you suffer from neverenoughitis or compareandweep? What do you really want but know you don’t need?
