2005-12-12

Money

I love being 30.

I love that I feel like I have all the time in the world. Right now, there's nothing that I feel like I can't handle. I mean, that's not entirely true - my financial situation has not improved and it won't for the foreseeable future. The bottom line is that there is nothing I can do to change it, at least not immediately. I barely have the cash to cover the things that I owe and to be able to go out and do things. That's really it - there's barely anything left right now and the fact is that until the dui is paid for, there isn't much left for things like going out to non-free places.

And the thing is, while I HATE it, I know that there is nothing I can do about it until it's done.

And when it�s done, I am going to step up to truly running my financial life with an eye toward the future and with not a little bit of caution.

I totally accept that this is my situation, that there's no fairy godmother to sprinkle some magic dust and make the cost of that horrible event go away.
It is what it is and I'll be done paying for it in July.
In the meantime....

I'm stuck in several key areas where I don't like to be stuck.
I'm getting lectures that, out of self-preservation, I can't respond to.
I'm seeing things that I will be doing over the course of the next year and I
know that I've got to stick to it and be patient and not be so damn sensitive to the well-intentioned, if ill-informed plans that people like my mom show to me.
See, Sarah?
You really can do it!
I know I can.
But in order to do so, I have to cut further into a food and gas and pet budget that's already been cut by more than half for the year. I don't even want to admit how much money I still owe for December 19, 2004 but I do want to make it clear that I am doing the very best I can, all things considered, even though I have to chose between a full tank of gas and going to the Rainbow Grocery Outlet vs. half a tank of gas and blessed, blessed Safeway.

Where is this coming from, anyway? My landlord is having the property appraised and I have a very bad feeling about the whole situation.
I can't imagine taking on anything more - I'm in such a delicate and fragile balance that having to make a change in residence is a puzzle that I can't even visualize, let alone set out to solve.
Financially, I need the status quo or to have more coming in.
While I am working on getting more coming in, things can't change for me at all.

Having to move right now could conceivably be catastrophic, not because I couldn't somehow get creative and actually pull it off, but because I've gotten myself to be so comfortable and so accepting of my retarded little checking account and the way it chugs along paying off paying off paying off, with the singular and tangible goal of having MAJOR results later in 2006; because I'm now at "less than a year" for living in my little hovel and having my primary entertainment be the dog park and my neighbors and library books and cable TV... because of all of those things, I am begging for mercy and for just a little more time.
Just a little more time, you know?
I am so close to having negotiated my way out of a financially stupid youth and I'm still young! I will be free and I will be YOUNG.
And I�m SMART.
I can DO THIS.
I can finish this. I am chunking of pieces of dui scab and the skin underneath - it's healing alright. There might be anything more serious than a slight deepening of the lines around my eyes, you know?

But I need just a little more time.
I need a little longer without any addition in obligatory expenses.
I can do this, I can make it but I need a little patience and a little luck and a little finesse to keep things moving forward and ever closer to financial completion so that next summer, when it's all done- the youth and the dui?
I'll be able to really embrace everything I have learned about budgeting and money and apply that not to paying down, but to investing up.

It's not like I am going to go out and buy stuff and have a bunch of cash but god, just to not have the weight of this burden... for that, I will hold on and hope that the people who love me hold on, too.
It�s not that far away.

arizonasarah at 9:25 a.m.

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