Over the last few years, the scarcity of paper and paper-based products has plagued the world over. I’m sure that someone’s brilliant solution to this shortage is, “go paperless.”
Nearly every bill I’m obliged to pay every month, practically begs me to “go paperless.” I tried this with a number of bills over the last years, with mixed success. I apparently need a piece of paper as a reminder that there is something I’ve got to take care of.
There are certainly many categories of things which doing less of or having less, is doable, if not beneficial to one’s personal economy, health, wellness, prosperity, or the public good. White sugar, animal fat, salt, smoking, inactivity, bad attitudes, hatred, bitterness, and all manner of strife, we could do with less of.
Less stuff has got to be better than more stuff. Piles of stuff are rather chaotic. As I cleansed an old rolodex on my desk, I ran across a little piece of paper with an apropos quote: “Peace means destroying the authority attached to chaos.”
I’m all about peace these days, so what say we take some authority over the chaos of stuff, and purge dear folks, cleanse, and breathe…. Speaking of purging, and considering less is more, there is the happy occurrence of being in your own home, braless. Braless is not just an historically feminist mantra of the 60s or 70s, but an annual summer necessity for many a modern woman of every shape and size, creed and color, ideology and political bent.
Back to the shortage of paper, our business requires it, specific kinds of it. It’s not as simple as the inconvenience I feel being out of paper plates on which to microwave my turkey bacon the way I’m used to doing it.
And there is my refusal to pay $8.95 at my favorite discount store, for a small packet of said paper plates. There is always Amazon, but dear Lord haven’t we given them enough business, already?
Seriously though, the paper shortage has become critical in printing-related businesses such as ours. Again, somebody out there is suggesting we go “paperless.”
Your suggestion has been noted. In fact, we heard your plea more than a decade ago. Digital downloads have been a part of most businesses of our type for many years. However, not to get too specific, method books for music teachers on how to play this or that instrument, are usually too voluminous to be accommodated by a digital file.
As mentioned above, if you do your personal business online, which many of us do, you have been offered paperless options for your bills. But, my peeve with “their” concept of paperless is that it’s paperless for them, but you usually utilize the Print tab on your computer screen and from your printer, obtain a paper receipt, if not in addition to the paper bill which you printed earlier. It’s never really paperless.
“Less,” as a suffix isn’t as simple as doing with less of something. Like, meatless, it’s doing without meat or whatever word precedes the suffix, less.
At this critical time, paperless for some businesses is trying to do with massively less than is necessary to conduct our business. We’re used to being creative with our resources but creativity can only make up for so much lack of supply.
The supply chain crisis, worldwide, seems to be manipulative toward the masses with a goal of conformity to a new norm. It’s a bit dictatorial if you ask me. That was rhetorical because I’m aware that nobody is asking me.
It’s like we’re living in a penal colony under a correctional system of government and we’re being punished and squeezed until we comply with the new regime’s vision of things.
So, just like sleeveless, shapeless, speechless, careless, fearless, ageless, breathless, lawless, useless, helpless, restless…., there is paperless. It’s not a meaningless thing.
Well, it’s probably endless to keep writing about how I can’t do without paper, but I just won’t do without sleeves; it’s a thing for me. And it’s rare for me to be speechless, although it may have happened once or twice in my life.
I forget to take care from time to time, but I don’t recall feeling helpless more than once. I have a constant need to stretch my legs, which I used to think should be called “restless leg syndrome,” but it’s not. I just need to move, because being motionless is torture.
So, I admit, I can’t “go paperless.” It just can’t happen. How about you? Bless you, by the way.