TREND Americans rethinking their frenzied schedules

People are becoming less materialistic.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
You can't wait to bring home a new flat-screen television for your kitchen, a fancy sink for your bath or the new super-fast Porsche, but you're working so hard, you haven't time to go shopping. It makes you wonder, whatever happened to your personal life?
Welcome to the universe.
Americans are becoming so burned out by long work weeks and frenetic schedules that they are starting to rethink their passion for the expensive status symbols and modern toys their frenzied labor buys. They are becoming more willing to give up stuff just to live their lives, says Marita Wesely-Clough, trends expert at Hallmark Inc. in Kansas City.
Longing for leisure
"Materialism is losing its momentum," she writes in her recent report for 2004. In a powerful counter trend to acquisition, people "are longing for leisure," she says.
From Wesely-Clough's perspective, almost every major cultural trend is traditionally counteracted by an opposing movement, and in these times of instant communication, technology, "social diffusion" and a "willingness to accept -- or inability to escape -- new ideas," the cycles are moving much more quickly than ever before.
Some of the other trends she identifies include an embrace of anything big, mega, oversized. Think three-car garages, larger homes (with theaters), megamalls and double rolls of toilet tissue. But at the same time, people are scaling down, going to micromini cars, town houses and neighborhood stores and shedding possessions, Wesely-Clough says.
A raging cynicism is confronted by optimism. Technology such as "smart" homes and clothes goes against a search for natural solutions.
One trend that appears scarcely touched by an opposing movement is the celebrity craze. (Think reality television and "Sex and the City" obsessions.) Well, maybe a rolling of the eyes qualifies, Wesely-Clough says.