The Triple G (Great Gear Guilt)

Without spiraling too much into introspective psychoanalysis, I’m curious: does anyone else feel guilty about having nice stuff?

I’m not a professional musician, but nothing I own collects dust, and at this point in life, I can afford high quality stuff so long as I move other items and avoid redundancy. But I recently bought a very sweet class D head from an extremely nice fellow TB’er, and after a few days, I developed a really bad case of buyer’s guilt. I'm asking myself: why did you think you need this? I feel silly having it even though the head and the cab underneath are both portable and very high quality. I feel like I’m not good enough yet to have it, that I’m not worthy.

It’s the kind of guilt that makes the very act of playing miserable, and in addition to listing both the head/cab for sale yesterday, I swung so far in the other direction, I briefly put my beloved P Bass up for grabs. For a moment, I felt pretentious having a birth year bass, felt silly for having an emotional attachment to an instrument, and I had decided to sell most everything just so I wouldn’t have the pressure of possessing things beyond my caliber.

Am I alone and crazy? Has anyone else found themselves in a cycle of seeking nice gear but feeling disillusioned when they actually get it? I feel like a flake posting stuff for sale here in classifieds only to take it back down, but this is the reason why. I didn’t grow up destitute, but we were definitely a paycheck-to-paycheck household. I’ve never really grown accustomed to enjoying success as an adult. I see a lot of gear flipping here, and I wonder if others maybe feel the same way.

 

Yeah, I should lighten up and get a grip. The more I play through it, the better I feel about it.