Returning and Moving

So, since the last post....

Well, I moved across the ocean, and then across the continent. You can now find me hermiting in my lovely if totally completely too expensive but safe! and with a washer and dryer! apartment in sunny (all. the. freaking. time. it. drives. me. nuts) San Diego. I got a job, a car, over a sort of paralyzing fear of driving and a permanent eyelid twitch from teaching 7th and 8th graders at VVGJDS. Turns out that what was going to be my life mission is not so much a life mission as a recipe for ulcers and sleepless nights--not the most cheering thought, to be honest, so in my good little crunchy way, I meditate regularly (hello, Big Mind! Thank goodness for you!) and try to do The Work on habitual thoughts, and when that fails, I drink cheap French table wine by myself while watching the cheesiest science fiction TV I can find.

I am assured that this is a normal first year of teaching.

If that is the case, I cannot fathom why anyone would go for a second helping.

Anyhow: things that are good and different, not just different:

SDO thrift stores are putting a solid "hellzno" to buying new. I did buy a pair of running shoes yesterday on a great sale, and socks and a pair of workout pants, but other than that--the stuff people are getting rid of here? I'll take it! It's so good that I quickly developed a crippling thrift store addiction; note to self, thrifting is not thrifty if one spends upwards of $30 a week at AmVets. Unfortunately, my new hobby has not only netted me a fricking pretty as all getout collection of sundresses and platform shoes, it's become my version of self-medication. Most of my income (um, literally, pretty much 50%) goes towards my rent, and what is left must go to gas, paying off the credit card bill, food--you know, real essentials. Not the "oh, shit, nothing went right today, let's drive down to AmVets and see what new shoes they've got" kind of essentials. Priorities! Miss Bird, please think about real priorities! Like, idunnoknow, not being afraid when you check your bank balance!

At some point, I'll move to a different neighborhood; I have a month to month lease and am checking rentals in other nearby neighborhoods that I now know I like just as much as the HC. But, when I first landed in this fair city of hottie tattooed peeps (yesterday, I saw a guy with his head shaved and the most bombass paisley tattoo encircling his entire head, just where his hair would have been; it was like the most beautiful toupee ever), well, I had no idea where I was or time to figure it out. I literally had three days to rent an apartment, buy some furniture, and get my first car in three years.

So, I rented the first apartment that I saw that had what I figured was really key here: a permanent parking space. That alone probably added $100 to the rent, but is well worth it, as is the washer and dryer. Not to mention that my apartment is the apartment of an adult, not a student, for the first time in my life--even though I passed student a few years back and by all rights should be worrying about my 401k and thinking about whether or not my kidlets should be in Waldorf preschool or get involved in the local homeschooled network. (Am still child-free, but point-->I am still at the point where managing to save and simeltaneously pay off my CC is a major accomplishment, let alone figure out what organic green juice to feed my future babies or what I'll live on when I retire.)

I'm turning this here blog away from frivolous fashion to the great vision quest of fashioning my life in the way that best suits me. I'm not ever giving up on having clothes I love, but I'm not buying them new anymore--to save things from the waste stream as well as to save money. And that said, I'm not buying so much of them, either. And I want my hair to look great, and my car to be full of gas, and my house to be warm and pretty--but I am tired of panicking and bad financial decisionmaking. I'm tired of short-term thinking that nets me pretty things but leaves me unable to travel. I'm tired of prioritizing checking over savings; I want to double my savings in the next year. And I am done with credit card debt. I have $600 more to pay off, which in the grand scheme of American debt is a teeny amount. I want that off my shoulders, and I want the mantle of disciplined, value-driven living there instead.

I think that for the first time in my life, I might be able to get there. This is the journal of my asskicking vision quest from here on out. Welcome.