"Cancer, Friday, 19 June 2009
As we approach the solstice, we find you getting ready to leave a limitation behind you. Like someone who has been practising a difficult manoeuvre, growing slowly more adept at a challenging task, you're now ready to put your skill to the test. Might you find the theory rather different from the practise? Well of course. That's bound to be the case. But it doesn't necessarily follow that you will fail, even if you make a few preliminary errors. You're doing something brave for the right reasons. You have to get the right result. The Solstice this year is due to have extra special potency. Be ready for several months of amazing opportunity. "
Well, GOOD.
That person would be me, and that project would be 6 months of no buying nothing. Grammatically incorrect but pithy sentences aside, are there any preparations I should have done? I'm itching--ITCHING--to jump back in my car and head to AmVets on the flimsiest of pretexts, just to have the high that only thrifting brings me. (Yeah, I know this necklace/ shoes/ picture/ pitcher/ dress is the bomb, and for only 2 bones? You know you're jealous...) Was last Monday really really my last day there for 6 months? I'm kind of screaming inside thinking about that...
Here's the thing: I love new. New-to-me, brand-new, Target, Anthropologie (which is the very highest of the high end for me), street vendors, flea markets--my magpie heart and needy soul make no distinctions. I can tell you, and probably will, as I use these months for an ongoing therapeutic dialogue between my inner spender and my honest revulsion at how much shit I have in my life and how little I really have to show for it--I shop to fill in all the empty places that crop up in my life. I shop to make hard days worthwhile, I shop to have something to talk about, I shop to give myself something to do.
And, frankly and somewhat repetitively--I have SO MUCH. More than I could ever justify, more than I can reasonably use, even if I dressed like a stoner boho granny for the rest of my life. Shopping my closet is going to get me to my yoga teacher training program, it's going to get my jewelry sideshow up and running again, and maybe it can even do the impossible: help me pay down and keep down the credit card debt that keeps scaring the shit out of me and up at night.
It needs to happen. It really, truly does. So here's my plan: shop my closet. Shop my toiletries--my never ending collection of pinky blushes and nudish lipglosses. Don't buy anything body care-esque till it's all used up and gone, regardless of the sale. Channel all the money into a $1000 emergency fund. Debt Snowball the credit card. Cut up the store cards. Journal a lot. Commit to journaling every time I want to spend on something beyond food and yoga. Go to yoga classes as often as I can. Be financially aware and get used to checking the checking account daily.
I feel the same thrill I feel at the beginning of every project--the same thrill and determination that I felt at the beginning of my 5 months of veganism, the same I felt as I tried to commit to 40 days of Bound Lotus (before I KO-ed my right knee and had to stop), and honestly, the same I felt as I've tried to commit to this same path over and over and over again. (I've tried in different time increments: a week! a month! no, it needs to be a HUGE commitment to get me to really make it--make it a year!) I honestly can't tell you if I'll make it, just the same as I can't guarantee that tomorrow little green people won't plummet to earth singing opera arias, the world being the uncertain in-flux place it is. But I will be honest, and I will document every outfit and every purchase and every solution and every $100 saved, and look, I promise I'll try to be a little funny about it all, if I can.
Today's Outfit (pics to come when I find my camera charger):
Jockey wifebeater
Thrifted Charlotte Ronson sundress
Thrifted necklaces
J. Lo giant Lucite cocktail ring, from a splurge occasioned by a nasty nasty letter from a parent
Red Worishofer sandals
Today's Savings:
$128.35
No comments:
Post a Comment