I love my job but I'm only making $8 an hour and 20 hours a week. That comes out to $160 a week, $320 biweekly, $640 a month without all the taxes getting taken out. I'm paying off this camera monthly at $200 a month. That leaves me at $440 a month. My free ride in Dave's house is over. I now have to start paying rent at $490 a month. That leaves me at -$50 a month. Now I need another source of income to cover food and gas. This also means I'm going to have to sacrifice some luxuries. I don't know how I'm going to decide all that. No more drinking and no more going to the movies for me. My dad said he would help me out but I really feel like I've got to do my best to get this done myself. I recently got some investment funds transferred over into my name but my dad stressed not to use that money because the market has bottomed out and has nowhere to go but up. Each account has $6000 and $27000 in it respectively. But this isn't money I can just pull out of the ATM. I can't imagine how quickly I would blow through it if I could. All of this number talk has already got my head spinning. I wish we would just switch back over to the barter system. I give great back rubs.
In addition to feeling like I have no money, I've got death on my mind. You know those people who say they aren't afraid to die? How do they know? Right now I can say I'm not scared but that's because the notion of dying seems impossible. I recently heard a story on the radio about a guy who killed a bicyclist in a car accident and wrote a book about it. I found the story touching but also haunting. It made me think about how it is so much easier to die than it is to live.
These feelings warped me back to a time in elementary school. We had a guest speaker. She had every one in the class do an exercise where you would wear a hand puppet and through the puppet you would express your greatest fear. I guess this was to prevent you from feeling embarrassed about saying it out loud. Going around the room, kids only said one of two things. Dogs and the dark. Finally, it got to me. I truly was afraid of the dark but I didn't want to say it because so many others already had. I was anxious about being called a copycat. My answer was drowning. My response derailed the exercise. Both the guest speaker and the teacher started to talk about how it was natural to be afraid to die. Them making such a big deal about the issue didn't soothe things. If anything it made me more anxious.
It's not as if death is all I think about now. It certainly became more real though. I wonder a lot about how I'll die. What it would be like if I died right now. How it would affect my parents. What would become of all my things. Whether there would be a memorial. How long until everyone would move on.
I don't think I'm being morbid. In fact, I say thinking about death keeps me humble. It keeps me appreciating what I have to live for.
"Once upon a time there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. And they grew next to each other. And every day the straight tree would look at the crooked tree and he would say, "You're crooked. You've always been crooked and you'll continue to be crooked. But look at me! Look at me!" said the straight tree. He said, "I'm tall and I'm straight." And then one day the lumberjacks came into the forest and looked around, and the manager in charge said, "Cut all the straight trees." And that crooked tree is still there to this day, growing strong and growing strange."
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