Gierig (adj.): greedy, eager, voracious, avid (and complementary adverbs). I am snapping up all the interesting freelance jobs gierig.
You might be geldgierig, besitzgierig, or simply habgierig. Lately it seems I’m all three, spending money almost as quickly as I put my nose to the grindstone to earn it, dreaming of moving to the places I read about during working hours (Miami Beach, Portugal, Mars…). My main occupations during quarantine have been working and shopping online; altogether, I’m on screens for 10, 12 hours a day. Internetgierig. And happy for it.
Just this morning I assembled a new freestanding shelf with LED lights so my daughter can grow more plants; we are concertedly pflanzgierig. Amazongierig, really.
Gierig is thought to share a root with “yawning,” and doesn’t that make sense; a yawning desire, a cavernous space calling to be filled. What’s yawning in me is years lost to lassitude or indecision, months spent napping, days taken up with arduous tasks that saved a little money: mixing paint we’ll never match, making seedling pots from newspaper, Frankensteining fridge leftovers into less than the sum of their parts…
I don’t actually regret any of these things. They reflect a desire to use-what-I-have, an urge not to further burden the planet. But, during this shut-in time, I’m most enjoying the well tred, capitalist pattern of earn and burn, rinse and repeat and the accompanying buzz of receiving something brand new. Above all, I am zeitgierig lately: If having groceries delivered saves me 90 minutes, I take them and run. We’ll see how they even out, the greedy and the frugal. I know one thing: they’ll both relish using the hell out of this new Chinese plant shelf.
