Pivotal Purchase is an ongoing series highlighting a watershed shopping moment — the thing you bought that made you feel like you were financially stable, that changed your perspective, that made you realize you were really, truly, finally an adult.
When I took my first job straight out of college at a small town daily newspaper in Pennsylvania, I agreed to a paltry annual salary of $22,500.
That comes out to about $10.80 an hour before taxes, and that’s if you’re working only 40 hours a week, which I never did. (What adult does these days?)
Almost all of the money I earned went toward several very important things, like rent, food, loans, gas, and the occasional therapeutic box of wine.
I’d been able to furnish my lackluster studio apartment with a hodgepodge of free, non-matching stuff from my parents and siblings. And as janky as my setup was, I had the essentials taken care of.
This included a tiny, antiquated TV that had been passed down to me during my college years. The screen was 20 inches at most, but it was boxy and really heavy. You could easily throw your back out just from attempting to move it, and the image quality was poor to say the least. It didn’t even have HD capabilities.
SEE ALSO:
When I wasn’t covering the occasional meth lab bust or dick-measuring contest masquerading as a school board meeting, the TV was usually on. I’d alternate between live sports, news, and weekly episodes of shows I loved, like Lost, How I Met Your Mother, and fine, I’ll admit it, The Bachelor.
Because I didn’t know anyone in this new town, I was home — alone — a lot. No matter what I was doing, I kept my TV perpetually on as background noise. Something about the slight din from that metal box filled a space in my apartment that I wasn’t ready to deal with just yet.
Late one night that trusty device suddenly shit the proverbial bed for good in the middle of an episode of X-Files. I had been cooking up a stir fry in the nude (you do weird things when you live alone) when suddenly the screen faded to black, a slight sizzling sound still hanging in the air until finally all was quiet. I felt a sinking feeling.
I realized almost immediately how important a TV was to me, even though I don’t attentively watch all that much of it. (I still haven’t seen past the first season of Game of Thrones, which may actually disqualify me from writing for this publication.)
All my life I’d had siblings and friends and roommates around, to the point I rarely had any alone time, unless I purposefully sought it out. It was difficult for me to be solitary with my thoughts, especially at that time in my life, when I was working in a volatile, uncertain profession and adjusting to full-time work. Too much time by myself would lead me into negative thought spirals, the anxieties I felt about the future keeping me from living in the present.
I needed something to distract me. I needed that TV.
I stopped with the stir fry and tried everything I could to resuscitate my trusty friend. When it became apparent that it was beyond saving, I went online to do some research about the kind of TV I wanted. Then I did some online banking to figure out whether or not I could afford one without incurring some sort of financial crisis.
The next morning, I transferred some money from my savings to my checking account — something I’d never done in my post-collegiate life.
I could have spent that money the way so many millennials do: on a trip to some exotic place where I would document every flashy moment via Instagram. But I reasoned that a TV would be a better investment. I would have it for years, and it would bring me sustained joy, while the pleasure (and “likes”) from a vacation would only be fleeting.
I went to a Best Buy situated next to a Texas Roadhouse in one of the town’s few shopping centers, near one of its only “main drags,” and it was there that I quickly fell in love with a 46-inch LG flat screen.
I’d heard good things about the brand, the picture was crisp, and it would actually display my shows in HD — it was also just barely in my budget. I took it home with me that day.
Making the choice that was — in my mind — more sensible, made me feel responsible. I was already 22 years old, but getting that TV made me feel like a real adult.
Nine years later, when I now look at my TV — which is on less often than it was back then — it makes me think of how far I’ve come. How I’ve grown to be okay with occasionally spending more time alone. And how even though I’m still anxious about my future, I’m more confident in my ability to keep moving forward, and less dependent on things that distract me — like old episodes of X-Files.