'Tis a gift to be simple, 'tis a gift to be free, 'tis a gift to come down where you want to be…
I am going to be living cheaply and working a lot for a while in order to save up the money I need to for the Phoenix move. But, you know... that's all right.I may become intimately acquainted with rice and lentils, but it's good enough to be a staple for large portions of the world's population, and at the end, I get to move to what's nearly my dream region and move in with people I love. (Though I'll also be leaving behind some people I love, and I do rather regret that.)
And besides, living cheaply is a good skill to learn. It's something I aspire to - living cheaply and owning little. If I can do it for the four months before the move, maybe I'll be able to do it for the four months after, and if I do it for the four months after, that'll be eight months and maybe I can round out the year; if I can do it for a year, maybe I'll have pulled myself into a habit I can sustain for the years coming. If I can live cheaply and work hard, I can save up money for the really important things - plane tickets to see my friends or to bring them to me, an eventual Earthship, paying off my school debt and possibly, eventually, getting that certificate in massage I still want.
I was talking to kerpami yesterday: we were sitting on the couch eating lunch, as she'd generously shared her pasta,-egg-and-veggies dish with me. And I realized that, you know, even with my bank account basically at zero, even knowing I couldn't order in pizza or hop in a car and go to the store and buy a big steak, even though I was frantically trying to figure out all the things I needed to for this move, even looking at leaving a job I love and driving four days by myself to a new city, an unfamiliar area, even not being sure what, precisely, my job prospects were and being exceptionally nervous about sending my resumés and cover letters out there, even... even... even... ...life was good. I can't say I've got no regrets, but life's still good, and that wasn't a factor of how much money I had or didn't have, how many luxuries were at my fingertips.
Someone, and I can't remember who, did a study comparing income to reported quality of life. It found that after one's basic needs - food, shelter, health, etc - were taken care of, there were only very minor increases in quality of life for fairly large increases in income. And all my basic needs are being met.
So I will enjoy my lentils. I'll look into how to make mujaddrah again. I will do glorious things with the cheap frozen chicken breasts I get at Hy-Vee. And I will make it down to Arizona in as little debt as I can and hope to keep up the cheap life as I get a full-time job. It'll be grand.
And besides, living cheaply is a good skill to learn. It's something I aspire to - living cheaply and owning little. If I can do it for the four months before the move, maybe I'll be able to do it for the four months after, and if I do it for the four months after, that'll be eight months and maybe I can round out the year; if I can do it for a year, maybe I'll have pulled myself into a habit I can sustain for the years coming. If I can live cheaply and work hard, I can save up money for the really important things - plane tickets to see my friends or to bring them to me, an eventual Earthship, paying off my school debt and possibly, eventually, getting that certificate in massage I still want.
I was talking to kerpami yesterday: we were sitting on the couch eating lunch, as she'd generously shared her pasta,-egg-and-veggies dish with me. And I realized that, you know, even with my bank account basically at zero, even knowing I couldn't order in pizza or hop in a car and go to the store and buy a big steak, even though I was frantically trying to figure out all the things I needed to for this move, even looking at leaving a job I love and driving four days by myself to a new city, an unfamiliar area, even not being sure what, precisely, my job prospects were and being exceptionally nervous about sending my resumés and cover letters out there, even... even... even... ...life was good. I can't say I've got no regrets, but life's still good, and that wasn't a factor of how much money I had or didn't have, how many luxuries were at my fingertips.
Someone, and I can't remember who, did a study comparing income to reported quality of life. It found that after one's basic needs - food, shelter, health, etc - were taken care of, there were only very minor increases in quality of life for fairly large increases in income. And all my basic needs are being met.
So I will enjoy my lentils. I'll look into how to make mujaddrah again. I will do glorious things with the cheap frozen chicken breasts I get at Hy-Vee. And I will make it down to Arizona in as little debt as I can and hope to keep up the cheap life as I get a full-time job. It'll be grand.