Entry 17 || Impulsive

I've got a lot of problems. And I know for a fact that someone like you scrolling through Spacehey has problems too.

Should you take that as an offense? I won't blame you if you do, but rather, I advise you to take that as a reality check, because everyone's got problems and you should probably stop avoiding your own problems left and right.

And one of my big problems is my severe impulsive decision making.

I'll have to admit: 

I'm a spoiled brat, and a lot of the people I know know that about me.

My parents, despite financially struggling at the time, were really spendy people-- specifically spendy on bizarre item collections. Luckily, I didn't get parents who collected those creepy porcelain figures of baby angels that had to sit on a wooden shelf that came from grandma's house. Instead, I got parents who had a knack for collecting Mcdonalds toys, Hello Kitty products, and those vintage Ferrari minicars they'd get from gas stations for free.

Of course, that meant more toys to play with for little old me. So yeah, maybe I had it all as a kid. 

While we kept the Mcdonalds toys in a big plastic box, my mother displayed her Hello Kitty collection on a personal glass shelf. Among those Hello Kitties were a bunch of toys that she'd allow me to play with from time to time (along with a couple rules to follow), but I recall never being allowed to play with my dad's Ferrari minicars.

My dad's a Ferrari geek, so I remember him being really petty and cautious with that collection. Somewhere further behind the glass shelf he displayed his Ferrari collection along with my mother's Hello Kitty collection would be this huge remote-controlled Ferrari car that he never unboxed, even to this day. 

Surprisingly, both collections are still kept perfectly intact somewhere at my grandma's place (boxed, of course). It was funny when we unboxed them last summer with my little cousins who rushed to see the toys and collections they had, because no matter what our little cousins did-- ask, beg, or cry on their knees-- my parents were never willing to give away their collections to little toddlers who drooled from their mouths and had greasy, slimy unwashed hands to which only god probably knows for sure what they've held with those little sausage fingers.

So how the hell does any of this relate to my impulsive problems?

Once again, I'm a spoiled brat, and my parents' mcdonalds toy collections, along with their unhealthy spendy habits, were the root cause of it; mainly because I believe that's where I picked up this problem in the first place.

I know a lot of people who've shared childhood memories of their younger selves begging on their knees for their parents to get them a single mcdonalds toy or some other cheap plastic bootleg plaything, only for their parents to reply by either scolding them or promising them to "buy it another time" (those are usually lies). Meanwhile, all I had to do was act hungry, go to mcdonalds, ask for a singular toy from the mcdonalds toy display, and my mother would purchase the whole set.

So growing up, my parents would allow me to get a lot of toys-- hell, I had way too many toys that it was too difficult to keep them in a singular box that we had to get shelves to store them all (and I remember getting frequently scolded for not cleaning them up most of the time). It wasn't just my toy collection; it was theirs too.

They of course did have to wind down on toy spending as I grew older and older, and while it took a couple tantrums to teach me self-control, I eventually grew out of the whole toy thing.

But that never left my system, and I guess my parents' collecting habit had a huge influence on me and my current interests.

One of my first collections were pokemon cards, which had all started when a relative from the US gifted me a 50$ booster box that had a Charizard EX, and it only took me a couple more years to realize that these cards had financial value. And from there, the endless and impulsive booster pack purchases commenced, and my parents didn't mind one bit as long as I knew what I was doing and only spent a reasonable amount.

And I guess my definition of spending a "reasonable" amount warped from growing up with parents who spent big money on big toy collections.

It also definitely wasn't good of them to let me spend on products that were technically disguised gambling for children. I'd spend all of my summer money on pokemon cards that went nowhere, all because I kept buying from 10 pack booster cards from different expansions rather than doing actual research and purchasing a whole booster box that had good hit rates and high value cards (sorry, nerd alert).

I still collect pokemon cards to this day, but I've been spending on them less and less after my first full booster box purchase from Japan's Pokemon Center that didn't really give me the satisfying odds I was expecting (which, speaking of Japan, might blog about that sometime soon).

Also speaking of Japan, I managed to do something that I had never been able to do in my home country-- purchase Vocaloid figures.

And holy shit did that throw me into a huge rabbit hole (no Vocaloid pun intended).

(Nerd alert)

If you don't know, Vocaloids are basically voice bank synthesizers that you can manipulate and control to sing music mainly in Japanese. These Vocaloids come in different mascot characters; one of the most popular of them all being Hatsune Miku. And I put her name in bold characters mainly because I deem her extremely important not only to this blog, but to my entire life. I need Miku injected into my bloodstream asap. No, I'm not mentally deranged nor am I diagnosed with any psychotic illnesses. I'm just like this.

As you can see, I have a crippled obsession with Hatsune Miku, so yes, I impulsively bought every single Vocaloid figure I could possibly find during our Japan stay-- a Hatsune Miku Princess Mermaid figure, a Meiko window figure, a Kagamine Rin GoodSmile figure, and a bunch more that now sit on the top shelf of my study table.

Since then, I've felt really bad for just how much I impulsively spent during that trip since a lot of the money came out from my parents' pockets, and while they were pretty much encouraging to buy the stuff my sister and I wanted in order for us to make the best out of this trip, it still made me feel like a huge brat. 

So it only motivated me to actually earn the stuff I get, and with that, I managed to sell a couple things in school (as well as fulfill some of my dad's graphic design requests that were rewarded with well-earned payment), and I'm proud to announce that I have officially earned enough money to buy my own new Miku figure (specifically the AMP 2023 Birthday figure).

And this Miku collection definitely won't worsen into an impulsive addiction sometime in the future.

Overall, this was all just a huge ramble about my impulsive purchasing and unreasonable decisions, which I like to jokingly think that I picked up from my parents. 

At this point, the whole "collecting" thing just runs in the family now, since my sister has her own collection of tiny figures too. 

She was also another big influence on my spending habits; she was the one who introduced me to blind box figures anyway. Now I have a bunch of Azuras and Sanrio blind box figures that sit right next to my Vocaloid collection.

Am I proud of my impulsive decision making? Definitely not.

Could I spend money on better, more reasonable things? Probably.

But do my collections make me happy?

Absolutely.

And I don't think that'll ever change.