Thankfully I only new one set of clothes for the workday and jackets aren't required. If that ever changes I'll just retire and sell knives as needed for food money.
I was bad with this as a competition shooter. I would buy and buy thinking it was going to make me better. I got older, took a step back, and realized that I was getting beat by old guys with worn out guns. Basically they spent their time and money on ammo and practice not debating with strangers on the internet which trigger was better, blah blah. I'm working on being that way. I've sold off or given away a bunch of guns so I can focus on the ones I like and enjoy. Same with knives, lights, etc. I traded/sold a bunch of knives and now I have a Microtech Combat Troodon. It's a lot of money tied up in one knife, but I like it. And it's actually cheaper than a drawer full of $50-100 knives I don't like or use. I need to purge again and will soon, I'm sure. But I want to focus on the things I like and enjoy, not just what I think I "need". since adapting this, I haven't changed my carry set up in 3 years. Hidden is a shield PC with TLR 6. Not caring about printing is a Baer TRS. Both in nice leather. Both full of good ammo. both used hard at the range for the last 3 years. I shoot both of these better than other platforms, even though the shield is the older design and the 1911 is 100 year old design at this point. rather than chase some ideal, I'll practice with what I have until I shoot them better than Joe Instagram with whatever light/laser/RMR is cool this week. although I am still following Shot show threads, so I guess it never goes away fully...
I did that with tennis racquets in my younger days....and with guitars & amps. Once I started practicing more & buying less, it was amazing how much better the same equipment I had traded away became...
I've always had a special place in my heart for anyone who shows up to anything with a worn out old piece of hardware and then just kills it with pure skill.
I think the Internet has ruined most kinds of hobbies in that way. As long as you're working a desk job and have a computer connected to the www, you can sneak off bit of your time looking at stuff online. You can't practice guitar on the job, but you can hunt down a dozen boutique pedals that will make you sound like James Marshall Hendrix. (Who used only three pedals of terrible quality). It gives you the feeling to advance in your hobby because you improve the gear. Which can actually be true. I trade in watersports where I often see young people that just kill it on the water with patched and bent gear - which looks so bad because it gets used so hard, while those youngsters don't have the monetary resources to buy the latest stuff. At the same time, potbellied family daddies ride around with the best material money can buy, the stuff that enables them to do all the freestyle tricks in the book - if only they had the ability. But I must not sneer - those daddies are the ones that keep my boat afloat, because these are the people that bring the cash into the business. In a way, they are the ones that keep the whole business alive and advancing, buying new gear that has gotten better for freestyle tricks they will never even attempt. These people usually live a two hours drive away from the coast and can only do summer evenings and weekends. Monday through Friday is used to think about how to optimize the gear, discuss in internet forums and calling their dealers. It kind of provides an escape from the 9-5 thing, even though buying and owning gear is not the same as practice.
mine are the bookends. Top has 3k+ through it and the bottom has something like 30k+ rounds through it. High res pictures show the wear much better than this blurry one.
For me, this nails it. Also in order to justify the purchase to myself, the perceived upgrade must be worth the outlay, which is happening more rarely these days. I'd recommend this article - Confessions of a recovering magic bullet chaser - it's written (very entertainingly, IMO!) for the world of analogue photographic darkrooms, but it's applicable across many fields.
Ok so here is my honest reply. I am always looking for ways to improve my tools mostly to be more productive at all times. So whether it is an EDC Light or Knife or a different compression crimper for Coaxial Cable I am always researching and debating a better way to do things. Often I can not really tell with out trying the new device a pretty simple concept clearly to anyone. So if after consideration,which might vary widely time-wise I often find and try using the new device. I am really slow to adopt most new tools in every category. I seem almost as reluctant to sell the ones that I have tried and that have elected not to EDC. But a lot of these are also like Money in the Bank too depending on how I bought them and so I know that I can usually turn something back into cash as needed. Thats my strategy and I am sticking with it. As far as you know.......yeah right.
It always fun to watch someone play something on little kids "my-first" type instruments or something along those lines and just nail it. The old folks who lived through things such as the Great Depression and WW1 & WW2 knew how to get blood from a turnip. Not just a drop, but enough to attract Dracula. Seriously though, it scary sometimes. What they lack in money, they make up 10 fold in sheer skill and ingenuity. I feel for humanity when that knowledge is lost. Ain't that the ugly truth. Life is too short to be hanging onto gear we don't like.
GAS is real, this is how i am with some recent firearms acquisitions, I talk my self out of it by remembering diminishing marginal benefits and opportunity cost from my econ 101 class, I can only have so many until it actually becomes a burden or starts to cost me other opportunities . Instead of buying more stuff, ive tried to make the most of the what i already have, of all my knives i really do prefer my endura but hated the stock clip spyderco gives you so i upgraded it to titanium. Just little improvements and maxing out gear I already have.
Different tools for different jobs - at least that's the excuse I tell myself to justify buying new stuff. And to a certain extent this is true. My kits (pocket, IFAK, tools, travel, hiking, etc.) are mostly stable - but not all are at a level I like them to be. So I keep looking for a better something ... and I used to buy stuff as I think it would fit the bill / be superior to what I have, but often found it to lack other features I wasn't aware they are important so even new stuff ends up in the drawer. Need to do a purge (donation, gift or sell) to get rid of it. Tried to cure myself - started to read a lot more (like EDCF) before hitting the Buy button again. But some things one needs to try, especially if a new area of expertise, which likely starts another cycle of want - buy - test - find out what I really need - buy other stuff. Seriously, I don't think "GAS" or whatever you call it will stop completely - but I'm confident I can slow it down and make wiser (buying) decisions to save money and have less stuff I own and becomes a burden. In my dreams I have a perfect minimalist kit which can do whatever I need to get out of it to complement my skills. In order to get there I need to raise my "SAS" (Skill Acquisition Syndrome) ...
This post really resonated for me. I think many people use buying the gear as a proxy for participating in the sport or hobby. The reasons are either they don't have the time, opportunity or talent but indulge in online purchasing to feel involved. A lot of purchases are simply aspirational. This is especially true of outdoor and active gear. if you actually start practising your sport or hobby, you recognise what is important:and it's rarely the state-of-the-art or premium expensive gear. Camping and EDC gear is a good example because it's pretty clear what you regularly leave at home and so obviously don't use for its intended purpose. My collections of pens, guitars, knives, flashlights seem to reach a critical size that covers most functionalities and then stall at about 16 items. If I'm honest I use (rather than simply toy with) maybe 10% of them within a 6 month period. tbzbbt
Everyone in music sooner or later finds out that buying more instruments/pedals/amps will not result in a better player since the main part of the sound is in the fingers. Top artists mostly use top gear, but they'd sound terrific on cheap stuff, too. This applies to most hobbies. Someone with a ton of practice and talent, but with old and bent gear will outperform someone mediocre with the newest and best stuff known to mankind any day of the week. The funny thing with EDC gear is, that it somehow dodges this argument, at least partially. An engineer (let's call him Paul) with a big understanding of how things work, a steady hand when it comes to applying this knowledge and a knack for handiwork will most likely yield better results in fixing something using a Leatherman, a can of WD-40 and a roll of duct tape, than me (I'm good in the understanding and knowing department, but not as good when it comes to transfer that knowledge into results, using my hands), even if I was in my fully equipped and tooled out garage. That much is absolutely true. But the topic of EDC takes different aspects in account. Let's modify that example and make Paul a non-EDC person. Let him carry a keyring, a smartphone and a wallet and place him somewhere where the problem's solution starts with unscrewing a Phillips 2 screw or even a 10mm nut that sits tight. Much like the best guitar player in the world will loose a guitar battle when he has to play the air guitar against an amateur who brought his gear, Paul will have to succumb to a simple screw or nut because neither his house keys nor his smartphone will be of any assistance whereas my Leatherman will tackle both screw and nut. My advantage here lies not within my talents or abilities, but simply in my carrying around stuff that he does not. So it is basically twofold: a) the decision to EDC some kind of tool and b) the process of informing oneself about multitools, making a decision which is best for the particular needs and buying it. Process b) might actually involve buying stuff and field-testing it to see what works and what seems like a good idea on the spec sheet, but is not in real life, and it most certainly involves clicking around the internet a lot to look at things that might be EDC worthy. I have seen pocket dumps on youtube where I'm not quite sure what possible scenarios this person had in mind - because dumped on the table was an arsenal that enabled them to fight back an onrushing army while repairing complex machinery at night in heavy rain - and half of their gear might fail because there's a backup for everything essential. I myself tend to carry light. My pocket space is valuable. I try things out and see If I use them regularly. If not, they get either demoted to a space in my bag which I don't carry everywhere, or they move to the garage or even get sold off. That entails that a) I walk without jingling and will not drown instantly when I fall into water deeper than 6 feet and b) that I'll be thoroughly lost when I have to face an onrushing army while repairing complex machinery, even on a sunny afternoon. Everyone is the best judge for what items get carried and what Items get admired on the internet, but never bought, since EDC is a highly personal thing. You can't really compare two EDCers like you can with musicians, anglers, shooters and whatnot - there's no scoreboard, there's just everyday life.
To use a risk analogy what is the probability of occurence vs severity of consequence? I watched a youtube video of a guy that carried a...skewer thang that was intended to drill a hole in a person's throat to allow them to breathe were they to get a blockage.....That is assuming they recovered from the shock of an enthusiastic EDCer jumping them and drilling a hole in their throat before they had time to cough... tbzbbt
Well, that seems to be a point where the EDC community is kinda split down the middle and two philosophies apply. One is the simple task of 'being better at life' as you may call it. That's where people who need a pen quite often in their daily routine start carrying a good one with them at all times and skip the 'searching one because every time you need one they are all somewhere else' bit entirely, thus making life a tiny bit easier to master. I know quite a few people that started carrying one item because they've experienced the benefit of doing so and this led to other items - but these Items share one thing and that is frequent usage. The other one I'd call 'being prepared for as many scenarios as humanly possible' where pocket space gets used wherever available, and the aspect of emergency situations plays a bigger role than the everyday use aspect. Of course these two are often entwined and intermingled, blurring the lines from one to another - with the person that carries as little as possible, trying to yield maximum efficiency from a minimum of things on one end of the spectrum and the person that has to add a PFD to the gear because it's so heavy it's impossible to swim with it on the other end, and most EDC'ers between those extremes.
Guilty as charged and to make things even worse: both extremes apply to the same set of EDC equipment but for different parts. Example: carry a SAK Classic SD as a small utility blade but add a CAT TQ to cover a full size trauma. And, the setup changes depending on when & where to go (risk-based analysis), which makes it an effort to grab the "right stuff" before leaving the house which sometimes (well, often) drives my wife crazy and puts stress on me I try to overcome this by keeping different pre-packed kits and a rucksack (more stuff, longer journey, higher risk) as well as a small shoulder bag (less or smaller stuff, shorter trips, less risk) - which works pretty well.
Well hopefully I am never done learning which is all that this EDC hobby is about for me anyway. Again it is all in your own point of view. What I can't grasp is why we need to pigeonhole these things and decide where it is right o start and stop with any of it,it is not relevant to anyone else what I decide to do at all. There is no simple or complex way to look at this it is a personal thing period.
Risk = probability x impact EDC = ((probability x impact x quality x versatility) ^ personal taste) / (size x weight x cost) ...and very much a personal thing.
