Guilty Pleasures
August 22, 2011 * * * * * Posted by: Ginnie 
Did you know that some of our "guilty pleasures" are actually good for our health and well-being!
I'll never forget the day I walked into a hospital a few years back and saw the poster, "Chocolate is Good for Your Heart," hanging right there on the wall. The caveat was, of course, dark chocolate, at a minimum of 70% cocoa. And in moderation.
Don't you love it when we have "professional permission" to indulge!
Most of you know that I moved myself, lock, stock and barrel, from America to the Netherlands in early December of 2009 to follow the love of my heart. I had spent the entire year getting rid of everything I owned except the few treasures of my life that could be packed into 2 TruckPacks, 4'x4'x4'. It was harrowing but invigorating. I lost 10 pounds, reaching my 115 from high-school days.
It so happens that I had a "guilty pleasure" for many years of my adult life that stood me in good stead for my move. I have no memory from whence it came but I got into collecting sheets of USA stamps. By 2009, I had almost every sheet produced back to the 1930s, hundreds of them in myriad albums. I would buy them off of eBay or at stamp auctions, one sheet at a time, usually between $3-10. Like I said, it was a guilty pleasure.
Little did I know I was collecting those sheets of stamps for my move to the Netherlands! Religiously, relentlessly, I scanned every sheet, uploaded them to eBay, and sold every one, often at 10 times their face value. They alone gave me enough money to buy our new car outright once I moved. Someone asked me if I hated to see those stamps go. Are you kidding me?!
Besides the stamps, I sold electronics and books and DVDs and anything I could get my hands on. I LOVE eBay and Amazon.com. They were my saviors, adding much-needed money for my move. After the estate sale in November and then selling my car, it all was done.
Here I was, sitting on all that money earmarked for moving to Europe and buying the things we would need to set up a new home. Astrid, too, was downsizing after her divorce. We would need to consolidate what we salvaged from each of our past lives and build something new that represented us.
Now, if you're still following me, here's THE guilty pleasure I'm getting to. Once I stopped all the packing and selling and was finally breathing again before the move, I mentioned to Astrid that I was toying around with the idea of buying a macro lens. It had been on my "want list" for a long time. But how could I reconcile doing that before the move, knowing every last penny would be important, especially considering the dollar-to-euro conversion. I knew the lens would be cheaper in America, but ...still!
With adamant "professional permission" to indulge from Astrid, I just did it! Blow all caution to the winds, right? What she said made sense: "Ginnie, call it your reward for what you've just been through the last 12 months!"
Funny thing is, I didn't start using the lens till this past month! The above image is one of the first I took when I had no clue what I was doing. It's been a steep learning curve but it sure has been fun, as any guilty pleasure should be!
So, you know I'm gonna ask you: What is your guilty pleasure? HA!
Chocolate
Reader Comments (25)
As if I am going to share my guilty pleasure, haha... no, I recognize your story and think I will go with you on this one.
Ah the guilty pleasures....I suppose mine was buying my wide angle zoom lens. My current camera was my 60th birthday present to myself but the wide angle lens was something I had wanted for years. I scoured the internet for weeks and saw the prices and thought I just can't justify that sort of money. Then I found the sigma one and it seemed like a good buy. I found various test reports and then looked for the best price. with trembling hand I placed the order. It is still a lot of money but I love using it and one day I will confess what it cost.
My 'guilty' pleasure? Why - it's dark chocolate..of course!!! I think we all need and deserve something that we truly enjoy - free of guilt - in our lives. That you bought yourself a macro gift - Astrid was right - was well deserved. Indulge...enjoy...have fun!!!
Great post Ginnie and such a beautful shot! I think you're doing wonders with your macro lens, keep up the good work! My guilty pleasure, besides dark chocolate of course (and ice creams), will hopefully be in the next future when I'll be able to gather enough money to buy myself Lightroom3 - depends on my prints sales :)
Coming from a medic, a few guilty pleasures....in moderation ;) never hurt anyone! So welll done to you on acquiring more glass and clearly from your posts on SC, you have learnt fast.
What is interesting is that while growing up, in secondary school I had a stamp collection which I ended up selling for next to nothing. I had only been collecting for about 3 years, so not an extensive collection but a decent one with stamps from all over the world. I gave up the hobby for something else, can't remember what now! Poor judgement, one could argue, maybe I could have been a rich man judging from your experience :)
What is my guilty pleasure...hmmm....I'm not sure I have one actually.....or that I feel guilty about it......I guess I can be a bit of a couch potato, with a bagt of nuts and some pinot!...Ah too much said!
Loved the article anyway :)
Hmmmm, good question and do we admit :) - mine is dark chocolate with orange or ginger. and i will divulge a secret: for a very long time my sister used to send james and i care packages that always contained several bars of Green & Blacks dark chocolate. she had somehow got it into her head that james was a lover of dark chocolate. hah..... that was me, he only eats milk chocolate. but did i tell her??? hell no!!!!! i only came clean about a year ago :)
oh and delicious chilled white wine, but i am not at all guilty about that :)
I'm sitting here thinking as deeply as I can on a Monday morning about what my guilty pleasures might be. I can't think of anything!!! Red wine? Buying shoes? Buying handbags and scarves?? The thing is, I don't feel guilty about any of it!!!! lol!!! I do love professional permission to do things though -- and I seem to disregard the part about "in moderation"... Loved your post and I'm glad you bought that macro lens...Astrid knows a thing or two!!! xo
would you believe dark chocolate..........and an ipad.
Oh dark chocolate is definitely the top one, followed closely by a glass of red wine, and the two together, well, that is just heaven...
good for you, it sounds like you definitely earned that reward. I think we do need to allow ourselves something special every so often. we deserve it.
The moment you mentioned the lens, I told you, 'DO IT' and now you did the same with me, I had some money saved from all the overtime we had had work, many days we worked for 10 to 12 hours in a row.
Yep, I bought a Nikkor 18-200 zoom lens.
Chocolate, I mean a bar of chocolate in once and smile when it is gone, NO I don't feel guilty at all.
Ice cream when we pass the Venezia Ice Cream here in Gorinchem.
Some times a long hot shower, I know I should take shorter time there, but it feels so good... I do feel guilty though (ha, you did not know this one, did you :) )
I love your post and every time we drive our Granny Towanda, we are the most luckiest people in the world.... (I know the incorrect English, but it tells you how lucky we are) all that 'just' from stamps.
I do love your macros, I am glad you did buy the lens!!
My kids....anything for my kids. My time will come
too many to mention! i did buy that lens last year. it is my favorite.
super post.
This is a test. I have been having difficulty leaving comments. I switched browsers to see if that might be my problem.
That's such a great macro shot!!! Besides loving taking macro shots, I'm not 100% sure what my guilty pleasure is. Either daydreaming of photo hunts in Switzerland or dark chocolate! But I'm sure you already knew that! Great post!
Ah yes... my guilty pleasures are too numerous to mention! One is reading your blog posts when I SHOULD (don't you just hate that word) be doing other things... and chocolate is HIGH on the list too. :-) Thanks for sharing your guilty pleasure with us and encouraging us to indulge our own. You've also given me an idea for what to do with my stamp sheets... collected over the years at random times whenever I thought about buying some while at the post office. (not nearly as religious about it as you were but I do have a fair number in pristine condition taking up space for no good reason)
I was showing friends a few images of mine on my iPad at a party yesterday and I happened to have the first two images that you sent me awhile back, the one here of the chocolate and the one of the sea shells (that I thought were snails)... my friends liked both but especially the one you posted here along with your write-up on guilty pleasures! (I'll visit In Soul later when I have time to luxuriate over the images... am off to do my half-mile swim at the Y now before the working stiffs get off work and crowd the pool.)
My guilty pleasure was buying my new camera for my 'becoming a certain age' birthday last year. I have had loads of fun with it so I don't feel so guilty now ;-)
The recent purchase of my macro lens is an extension of that, and I am still exploring the possibilities :-)
70% + dark chocolate is one of my favourite indulgences. Only a couple of squares at a time are needed :-)
Divorce and all the losses does make one hunger for some guilty pleasure. I put in new wood floors, bought a new camera, and chocolate is just a given. But now I need to tighten my belt (so to speak) and go smaller with things like cut flowers, scented candles, and using the china and crystal dishware I inherited from the mother. Nice work with the fisheye. I'm looking forward to seeing your future photo explorations.
Considering what an important part photography plays in your life, I should think there's no reason for guilt to be attached to that particular pleasure. You of all people deserve all the lenses you can get your hands on!
Haven't been here since the design change - it's lovely and clean and simple. I like it a lot! Congratulations to the creator.
I'm trying to come up with my guilty pleasures, and I guess I have some. Reading in the middle of the day, perhaps. Napping! Not chocolate, but cheese. Playing Spider Solitaire, just two games a day. And clothes, although I'm a cheapskate. So ordinary, all of these things, but that's the way I get my little thrills. .
I have thinking about guilty pleasures the whole day and I decided to come clean:I absolutely love white chocolate! It rarely comes in the house, but when it does, It disappears in a flash. Other than that I'd have to say anything to do with camera accessories...Since they are right now totally out of reach, I am safe ;-)
Beautiful photograph, Ginnie
My guilty "pleasure" was a quick shopping trip on Sunday after the garage sale of awesomeness. I bought a Roots (canadian clothing company - you may recognize them because they do all our Olympic clothing!) hooded sweatshirt, a Roots leather purse (gorgeous and been wanting for years!), a new immersion blender and a new mascara. That is all I needed that I had never let myself indulge in because they were frivolous and expensive purchases, well the mascara was a necessity but I bought it using the points I had collected at the department store - so it was free!
I love the downsizing topics, they are hitting so close to home!
...you didn't use it for a year! LOL That is so funny to me. Guilty pleasures... yes, my horse is coming this Friday (a QH for my girls) and ANOTHER one I am buying for myself ... I believe it will be a half Friesian. I am so in LOVE with those horses.
Ginnie, you didn't use it for such a long time? Wow - HOW did you do that?
My guilty pleasure... many (chocolate, cheese, wine). But one very special one - my two Adirondack charis. I had dreamed of having my very own Adirondack chairs, and they had to come from LLBean. Very expensive, so I was dreaming for a long long time. Then I inherited a small amount of money - just enough to buy those two Adirondack chairs and a footstool each, in red, from LLBean. I never forget the day the UPS truck stopped in front of our house to deliver those big boxes. My wonderful husband assembled them and I have been enjoying them ever since.
Two posts about chocolate in two days...hmmm...I think I need something dark and sweet:)
Wow, I love your image and the post. Can't believe you bought a car with the money you've got from stamps... Cool!
I won't tell all my guilty pleasures, but I know, one day I will have the same one as you: macro lens. Now I just need to find the reason to reward myself with it ;).
Thank you to look at this from a different angle.
Oh, my. No question. My guilty pleasure is time stolen from work to write. Being both management and labor, it can be easy to simply sneak away when an idea strikes - and believe me, sometimes there was more guilt than pleasure, especially when Mom thought I was at work and my customers thought I was taking care of Mom!
But now - something to think about. I found three albums filled with full sheets of stamps that belonged to Dad, and they're in the closet. Perhaps I shouldn't just give them to the Boy Scouts stamp club, eh?