always thought money automatically spent itself in the "right" ways, that a middle-class lifestyle was a pre-ordained, default result of having an income between brackets X and Y (say, the 33rd and 88th percentiles). When I was living as a

all burghers looked alike to me. I thought aping them would be the easiest thing in the world.

was wrong. The transformation from a "me" to a "them" requires

and my "primitive" lifestyle has ill-prepared me to make them.

lot of the products I need to buy make me feel guilty, because they're environmentally harmful, or manufactured under

Merely to commit a purchase requires making all sorts of moral compromises of which I had been blissfully ignorant during my

And the process of shopping itself is dehumanizing and confusing. Stores are generally overlit and mirror-covered. They're like casinos, designed to overwhelm and disorient. There are stairs, risers, and ramps in unexpected, irrational places. There's scarcely a shopping session where I don't trip and tumble into

I feel especially inept because I don't know any standard consumer techniques, like ignoring snotty clerks or glaring wickedly at potential line-butters.