IT'S BETTER TO TRAVEL ALONE THAN WITH A BAD COMPANION

How does that William Morris mantra to minimalism go again? “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful". (Great advice dude, but there are some people out there that think their room full of beanie babies is a beautiful thing, just saying.)  Granted, my idea to take a camera around more often as a better way to make use of my downtime was exactly what I needed (my DSLR is great, but it's not very practical to carry around day to day), but it seems my go-to point and shoot impulse buy from a couple of years ago is an awful piece of gadgetry...well, that is to say it works but doesn't come close to what I want out of a camera. Maybe I'm too picky, but it's decided - I don't like it and we're not friends.
As photography is pretty much my primary hobby, updating to a better point and shoot has been on my to-do list for a while. I am not a big owner or consumer of any type of gadget (mostly because they upgrade everything from one weekend to the next and I have terrible trouble committing) but I probably could have talked myself into paying full price for a new model micro 4/3. Because they rock pretty hard. However, my non-consumption challenge forced me to fully think it through over a week or so.

Ultimately I decided that I didn't really want the stress of carrying an overly expensive shiny new camera around with me all the time. At the rate models get upgraded, it means there are a lot of used units out there in auction-land. Long story short, I eventually decided on the Panasonic GX1, and got a body still under original warranty, a leather case, an EVF and a classic 20mm f1.7 lens for under AUD800, still a fair chunk of cash but probably around 2/3 the cost of buying all these items new, and under half what I would have paid if I'd bought one of the new model bodies.

So I finally received my used lens today!
But will I buy something new tomorrow? Probably not.