a moment in time i wanted to pause

there was a lot of sun to be savored this weekend. i love this time of day (3-4pm), on a sunday, cooking. i really look forward to spring and more and more days of open-windowed afternoons.

is my budget doing more harm than good?

at the beginning of this year, i started a budget. a REAL one, unlike the ones i kept starting and failing at at the end of 2019. i'm using the everydollar app from dave ramsey, and so far i love the idea of a 0-based budget, aka, giving every dollar a job. i have been doing great at logging my spending and now that i'm a couple months in, i'm getting the hang of how much i need to allot to each "job". by next month, i think i'll have it down pat.
however, i keep going back and forth on the idea of keeping a strict budget at all. on the one hand, it helps me stress less because i'm the type of person who feels the sting every time i pay for something; i just picture my bank account getting lower and lower, even though i know i'm not overspending. so having budget there gives me the freedom to spend it all, because i already made sure that it's not going to put me in the red. on the other hand, i am constantly thinking about how much i have less in each envelope. constantly remembering to log every purchase, feeling bad when i overspend in one area and have to move money around. but that's the point! it's not extremely rigid; i leave money for "oopsies" like that. i don't know, sometimes i just think it'd be easier if i paid my necessities when i first get my paycheck, then leave x amount to spend freely, and then not think of it again vs. having 20+ categories to worry about. maybe i will get there in a few months when i can get a good idea of how i spend overall.
so then i read articles like this and it makes me rethink everything. why can't i be more like keanu, or mary, who just doesn't worry about the dollar amounts so much, but uses money to really LIVE? after all, i could die tomorrow. it's just hard to balance "smart" money habits with using money as a tool to live your life and ENJOY it. i'm so very practical and careful and i'm wondering if i'm wasting my precious time.

death is long

sorry - i know this is weird.
i think it was this morning while i was driving to work that suddenly the realization came over me that i'm going to be dead for an ETERNITY. this perspective was brought to my attention via the welcome to hell world newsletter, where someone was quoted saying something like, "you'll be dead for an eternity, what's the point of rushing to die?". yes this sounds incredibly morbid but maybe i'm having a tiny existential crisis. dillon's life view is constantly on my mind (nothing matters, life is average at best, there are too many terrible things in this world, etc.) and maybe they're a little contagious. i almost always saw myself as an optimist but in the last few years the knowledge that life is dread has been creeping up on me more often. still, mostly i feel bad for dillon and want him to feel better about his whole existence.
ANYWAY.
i was just driving along and i started picturing what being dead for an eternity looks like compared to being alive right now. then my life suddenly felt very short and it actually made me kinda nervous. like that SUCKS that i will be dead for way, way longer than i'll be alive. life is pretty stupid when you think about it that way, but it also makes you want to care a whole lot about it and do something somewhat important.

please come back down to earth

the more i learn, the more pissed i get about:

GWYNYTH PALTROW

ANTI-VAXXERS

CONSPIRACY THEORISTS

GLUTEN-FEARING IN PEOPLE WHO DON'T HAVE CELIAC'S

ESSENTIAL OIL PUSHERS

PALEO DIETERS

MY OWN FAMILY MEMBERS

i wish i could be more articulate, i wish i could write a whole post about this and share it, i wish i could push back in real life when these conversations come up, i wish i could somehow be a part of stopping misinformation.

perpetually seeking

I opened this email from the Desk Lunch newsletter and it was like I had written it, especially these parts:

“This should be enough,” I tried to convince myself. I had an enjoyable day job that provided financial stability and time for creative pursuits. So what if I wasn’t fully convinced this was the right path? But the urge to seek only grew. I dug into personality tests like MBTI and Enneagram, journaled, meditated, and read self-help books—all things that I had explored in previous times of seeking and were incredibly fun to explore. I thought if “soul searching” were a job, I would do it in a heartbeat. 

Of course, it wasn’t a job in itself. But could there be something there? If the act of seeking was so enjoyable, could I make that my reason for being? Perhaps I would keep searching for what I was meant to do for many more years of my life, but I could learn to embrace the spiral instead of resenting that I hadn’t reached an answer yet. In the meantime, I could talk about my desire to keep digging and find other people similarly compelled to define and refine their career path in the pursuit of meaningful work. If the main constant in myself was a compulsion to seek, then I could make that the theme of what I would create.

how perfectly happy I would be if Seeker could be my job title! just gonna be thinking about this for a while and, in the meantime, earnestly following along with Modern Doing for some enlightenment.

spending a little money on myself

I made some room in my budget this month to buy some new things for myself. I've been wanting to be ~someone who wears rings~ so this is my first one. I got it on clearance but I think the quality is really good! I'm used to buying $12 rings that tarnish after a few days and I'm trying to get away from that. One day I will have enough money to buy myself nice jewelry, but for now I'll have to add to my collection very slowly.

thank your past self

i haven't been feeling my best this weekend, so cooking has become a burden in my mind. i'm going to take a second to thank Past Me for buying pre-made pizza dough for days like today. now that i have something in my belly, i might even have enough energy to make some crushed lentil soup for the week. i hate coming home and having nothing already made. see? already preparing Future Me to thank Past Me again!

saturday

i have taken a sunset picture from the dog park almost every time now. i don't know why it always looks so serene to me. maybe it's the open field and dogs enjoying themselves to death. 

it was a good evening; dillon came and we stopped at biggby first because i was in the mood for a little pick-me-up and dillon wanted a "treat". i love getting a coffee with him even though he gets tea. we enjoyed our drinks while we walked around, laughing at all the dogs. we tossed a toy football around until my toes got too cold so we left to go to best buy for a cable. how many more accessories will he need for his computer?? walking out i immediately noticed the full moon. it was hazy and snowflakes were falling and sometimes a dark cloud would move across it. i thought about being grateful for winter's unique kind of beauty 'cause i know the only way to survive it is to appreciate the quiet, the thin air, the white snow, and sometimes a very pleasant sunset.

the introvert goes out

last night i was invited to join the girl we subleased this apartment from at a brewery. dillon was getting ready to come with me and then decided against it at the last minute, so i went by myself. i consider that a scary thing that i accomplished (something i'm trying to do more of every day)! i am working on not judging the potential of friendship (or at least acquaintanceship) on all the little ways that people differ from me. i had a good time anyway and it's good that i'm expanding my friend zone.

on another note, never leaving sadie here alone is not sustainable. dillon sent me pictures while i was out of sadie just laying down staring at the door waiting for me to come back. they were obviously extremely cute, but i'm afraid we might have "ruined" her when we left her for our road trip. she whines when we leave her in the apartment. i don't *think* she'll bark, and i believe that she'll eventually be okay and lay down, but it's nerve-wracking to test it just because we share this building with 11 other units and i don't want to annoy anyone nor do i want anyone to be concerned with my dog.

a quick thought on vaccines

this news made me think of another rebuttal to anti-vaxxers: if "big pharma" is just in it to make money, why would they ever announce that a vaccine doesn't work and stop the trials?