Doesn’t have to be a thing you bought. Just some thing you didn’t have but then once you did it expanded your scope of actions.
The first obvious example that comes to mind is a car. Plenty of drawbacks to prevalence of cars, but being able to go where I want when I want, and far away, is very transformative.
I’m interested in other examples of things that aren’t just useful, but that open new possibilities.
stopped getting fussed over things outta my control
A low-powered zoom microscope. I can again look at and work on tiny things, fix jewelry, electronics, remove splinters. Use it WAY more rhan I ever thought I would.
For anyone interested, just Google “stereoscopic dissecting microscope used”. The ‘used’ part is to makes it less expensive. They can cost a lot. I used to use my lab sonicator water bath to clean my jewelry, and our dissecting scope to check the jewelry to make sure all the skin crud is gone from every crevice.
Moving to a city with a tool library. For an annual £20 fee I can borrow any of a myriad of power tools. Currently using an orbital sander for some DIY, previously borrowed a hedge trimmer for the garden, it’s freaking great.
Learned to code. Most profitable hobby I’ve ever had. Crazy fun.
When I figured out how to run computational chemistry software on my home pc. It entirely changed how I saw chemistry because I could tinker and experiment with (virtual) molecules on a grand scale. Being able to run five maybe ten thousand simulations significantly increased my understanding.
