Spring Cleaning

Sometimes you have to step back. look at the tangled mess of weeds that make up your life, and haul out the weedwacker. For me, it seems to be that time.

A good look at my email: every morning I delete 90% of my new mail without opening it. It's become such a habit that I don't even think about it anymore. Today I took the time to open each one and unsubscribe from everything that I don't need (which is pretty much every subscription list I've ended up on.) I don't need news alerts pushed to my email - I read the newspapers online anyway. I don't need weekly specials from my spa - I only go there once every three months or so, and never for anything they have on sale (I don't need a BioMeridian Stress Analysis, thank you.) I don't need every store I shop to send me weekly specials, especially since I'm now on a budget.

Yes, a budget. Don't laugh.

Just because I've never been on one before doesn't mean I can't handle one. It's long overdue. It's also harder than I thought it would be.

The easy part was figuring out what bills I have to pay every month. I don't really have many, compared to most people. I tend to pay cash for everything, so I don't have any loans, and I only have one credit card (which did get run up a bit with wedding purchases, but I can pay it off by the end of the summer.) So...student loans (yes, I've been putting them off,) auto insurance, cell phone, web hosting....that's about it. The harder part is planning how much I am going to spend on living: groceries, gas, entertainment.... Entertainment. DVDs, pop CDs from Japan, travel...I'm not going to be able to do this off the cuff anymore. I'm actually going to have to plan.

I've never had a plan before.

I'm not going to be able to just spend $45 on a first press Gackt CD, or $30 on a new T.M. Revolution single. I'm going to have to save up and have money put aside for these kinds of purchases. Pizza will be a once in a while thing rather than a "meh, I don't feel like cooking" thing. Just thinking that makes me want a slice.

It's time for me to be an adult, but the growing pains are more than I bargained for. Still, I think the benefits will far outweigh the discomfort. Who knows, maybe I'll actually get some satisfaction from ending the month with money in the bank instead of eating ramen and rolling coins for gas money. Stranger things have happened.