Being an adult is hard :(

I just made the first payments on two of my loans, $221 total. $221 of my precious dollars = a whopping 0.0043% of my loans paid off. And I'll have to make another payment at the end of this week to a third lender.

Can I go home now?

At the very least, I can consider myself fortunate to have convinced the fourth (and most formidable) lender to give me another 12 months of forbearance, but when you consider all of the interest that is going to accrue during that year it's really not as great as it sounds. *sigh* I am fortunate to have a college degree, but find myself wishing sincerely that it wasn't so expensive to get.

Also, I have a bit of a spending problem. I made a valiant attempt in August to create a budget and balance it, but then sort of stopped - the way I do with a lot of things (weight loss efforts, I'm lookin' at you). It was stupid to do because six months later, I realize that I've been completely and utterly OUT. OF. CONTROL. the past half year. I've saved absolutely nothing and bled myself dry financially numerous times. Aka, doing everything I swore to myself I would not do when I reached adulthood and maturity and all that other grown-up shit.

But, here I am, with practically nothing to show for six months of solid work. Except some nice clothes, great makeup, pretty jewelry, several awesome movies watched and a ton of food (good and not so good) consumed. But I can't live like that if I want to do practical things like, I dunno, save for impending disasters? I have enough clothes. I have enough jewelry. And god knows I need to stop spending money eating out or grabbing high-calorie coffee beverages. But it's so difficult to factor in the big picture when I'm on my lunch break in the middle of the week and it's cold and I have nowhere to go except this nice, invitingly warm coffee shop where everything smells so good...

Blah. I'm not necessarily terrible with money, I can save when I need to. But I have the same problems with money as I do with food - incapability to say no to my impulses. I know in the back of my head that getting chicken strips after I've had a coffee and Wendy's at the mall is not a good idea, especially when I haven't worked out in 4 days due to a combination of familial invasion and a touch-and-go immune system, but I ate them anyway. Because I wanted to. And the same thing goes for spending money - I know I don't need another pair of pearl earrings or two new books when I've got a thousand at home unread, but I wanted them.

It's time to grow up and separate need from want. If I can't learn to control my impulses and say no to my spoiled inner child, I will always be broke and unhealthy.

I am going to start off fresh with this new month, February. I've had a good time in January implementing workouts and healthy eating into my diet, but it hasn't been enough. It's time to fully commit, 100%, no holding back. And budgeting must go along with it, because can you guess what my most out-of-control spending went toward this past month? Food. Most of it on-the-go crap from places I know won't provide the nutrients and fulfillment I need each day. Just crap, crap, crap. And that simply won't do :)

I'm afraid tomorrow's scale reading won't be a good one, but I'm not going to freak out or get upset. I'm just going to get back on the horse, like I did last week and prevail.

PS: See The King's Speech if you get a chance - it's marvelous!

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The good, the bad, and the best

Things I am bad at:

Leaving voicemails
I am a nervous talker, and nothing makes me more nervous than trying to talk to silence. Especially on the phone. I hate the phone, as most of my friends can attest to. I don't like calling people, even those I know and feel comfortable with, because it's just too awkward and weird and oh god, what are their facial expressions? I DON'T KNOW BECAUSE I CAN'T SEE THEM!!!!!!

*ahem* Anyway. Voicemails. I attempt to pretend I'm simply speaking to the person I'm leaving the message for, but that rarely works and instead I end up babbling on and laughing like a crazy person.

Making Decisions
I'm good with, say, bagel or croissant but deciding how to handle tough situations and make the right choices gives me hives and an extreme case of the shakes. I usually try to solve this by going to everyone I know plus a few of their grandmothers for advice, then making a nice pie chart or diagram with my options and finally blindly choosing something that seems like the right thing to do from the lot. Usually things work out in the end, but not until there have been tears and much hair-pulling on my part.

Conflict
Some people are able to say whatever they want to whomever they wish whenever they feel it necessary. Some people can speak up when the person behind them at the movie theater is kicking their seat or talking on their phone. Some people are able to call their landlords and demand action or order pizza without writing out an extremely detailed, word-for-word script. I am not any of these people. So, when faced with the need to confront someone I usually spend more time beforehand trying to figure out what to say and how to say it... and more time afterward fantasizing about what I could have said (but didn't). Or I just try to get out of it through any means possible, including hiding under my covers until it goes away.

Anything to do with math, especially counting money
I am hideous at math. No, really, I am. Long division perplexes me, and I usually have to double-check any addition or multiplication on a calculator just to be sure. I can't add things with more than two digits in my head without major difficulty, and I constantly find myself losing track of anything I'm counting. This is bad when part of my job description requires that I count out two drawers of money at least once per shift, if not twice. And being nervous about doing it wrong doesn't really help matters much, which accounts for why I've had to recount at least two-three times almost every closing shift I've had. Arg. Least favourite part EVER.

Which leads me to things I am good at:

Writing
Ever since I was in third grade and my teacher told me that my story about a trip to the zoo to see the (fake) dinosaurs was good enough to make me an author someday, it has been my goal in life to write for a living. Though I leaned toward the creative, fictiony side of the fence for a few years, I soon progressed to journalism, and finally the technical and academic writing I am so fond of. Though I'm certainly not the best writer of all time, or even a fraction of such a person, I am overall pretty good.

I like taking on the label of writer, and I love that the term "writer" can encompass more than just the traditional creative and journalistic efforts most people think of when they hear it. I love that the people who write the employee training manuals for various companies and the people who write the product descriptions for different companies' online catalogs use just as much creativity and technique as someone writing a poem or a novel or a newspaper article. It isn't often appreciated, but where would we be without the people who instruct us how to use our remotes? Pressing random buttons in increasingly desperate frustration, that's where.

And that love has led me to something quite amazing: a new job!

No longer will I have to pretend I am a retail goddess, bravely marking down items and counting registers badly. Instead, I will be joining the corporate world this Monday as a copywriter at a company smack dab in the middle of downtown Syracuse. I am beyond thrilled!

Because it was such late notice, I was rather nervous about telling my manager at the jewelry boutique, "Um, hi, I can't work for you anymore. Byeeee!" I didn't want to completely leave them in the lurch because, hey, they gave me a job when nobody else would. At the same time, no way I'm passing up an opportunity like this to keep working part-time at a mall. Duh!

So after consulting practically every person I know, I called her and left a simply appalling voicemail, really one of my crowning achievements as far as bad voicemails go. She called back, we talked, and all was well. Despite me shaking like a leaf throughout the entire conversation (and for about twenty minutes after--I told you, I'm not good with confrontation of any sort). I'm going to continue working weekends for the next two weeks and then I am out of there.

And so marks the first real job I've ever quit. All in all, I didn't do too poorly. And I have a new adventure to begin on Monday!

This was supposed to be posted yesterday, but when I came home after spending the day browsing some shops with a friend, I ended up on Mint.com for SIX HOURS being super adult and making myself a budget and goals and what have you. By the time I called it quits on that, I was too tired to put together a comprehensive sentence. Oops!

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