My inability to plan for planned obsolescence doesn't get old.

Not a meta-joke. I genuinely can't see these things coming.

The clip that holds the spool in the weedwacker - I go through two or three a season. Just ordered more. The plastic bracket just loves to peel off and die.

The cap covering the height-adjustment bracket on the new lawnmower isn't an essential part, but it fell off the other day while I was doing the work and now it won't go back on. Turns out the chintzy little plastic sleeve it caps just gave up for no apparent reason.

My everyday sneakers were chafing my heel. The water filter went. My chair has a split forming on the edge where I sit. The microphone preamp I use for work has a weird hum that shows up randomly.

Now, let me be clear, I don't expect things to last forever. I’m not one of those people, especially when I accept and embrace a “garbage cans are just holding what they will one day become” philosophy.

I don't expect most things to be around very long (unless I buy them for that purpose, and I do buy things for that purpose). What I’m trying to say here is - I have a strange relationship with the overwhelm of too many things failing at once, with that specific feeling of short-lived-ness stacking up until you notice what hasn't given out on you.

The desk I'm typing on came from an office building closing down a few years ago. Probably 20 or 30 years old. The stool to my right was in my wife's grandparents' house, salvaged from a family restaurant. The hutch to my left was a baby gift and still works perfectly.

Maybe the problem isn't that I can't plan for things obsolesencing. Maybe the problem is that some things just escape it - and I clearly can't predict which ones those will be either. I like craftsmanship as much as anyone. But some things are just weird. There's hardly a pattern to what holds.

I swear my last version of those everyday sneakers lasted 2 years. Why did this pair go so much faster? And why did it inflict bizarre damage on my heel all because I tightened them up to wear at a block party?

I don’t know.

Which probably means the problem isn't with the things. It's with my expectations and attachments to them.

There's a life metaphor in there somewhere. But right now I have to replace some of this crap before everything breaks at once.