A Domino Effect

Well it’s a mystery to me
We have a greed with which we have agreed
And you think you have to want more than you need
Until you have it all you won’t be free

Society, you’re a crazy breed
Hope you’re not lonely without me…

When you want more than you have
You think you need…
And when you think more than you want
Your thoughts begin to bleed
I think I need to find a bigger place
Because when you have more than you think
You need more space

Society, you’re a crazy breed
Hope you’re not lonely without me…
Society, crazy indeed
Hope you’re not lonely without me…

Lyrics to ‘Society’ by Eddie Vedder, written for Into the Wild (2007).

Image above from here.

Image above from here.

Last weekend I thought my way into a bit of a funk.  The kind that begins with something small, like realising there are no teabags left when you really want nothing more than a good old-fashioned cup of builders’.  Everyone knows the drill: it starts with the teabags but an hour later you find yourself on hands and knees in the kitchen, sobbing over the unfathomable meaning of life.

Have I just shared too much?

Anyway.  I was lucky that last weekend my melancholic moment was indeed only momentary.  But this weekend I wanted to make darned sure that the same thing didn’t happen all over again.  Enter my own personally curated list of strategies for de-funking.  Share yours in the comments!  I’m back in teabags now but you never know what fresh hell is just around the corner.  And guys?  These are designed for low-maintenance bouts of ‘meh’-ness where we’d rather stay in bed and watch Disney than get dressed and face the day.  No one is suggesting that a pedicure and a chocolate brownie will solve all the world’s ills.  Keep it in context, yo’.

Scrub up.  I’m the first to admit that I’m not much of a beauty queen.  I don’t have to remind myself to brush my teeth at night or anything, but I’m really not one for prolonged pampering sessions or anything that involves putting clingfilm on my head (seriously, wtf?).  From time to time, however, a little exfoliation is just what I need to put myself right again.  This weekend I gave myself a mini facial, I painted my toe nails and I steeped myself in a lavender scented bubble bath for almost two whole hours.  On Saturday night.  Did I not mention it was all rock and roll round these parts?

Tick boxes.  Sometimes I end up in a funk simply because I just don’t got my sh*t together.  And for me, chaotic surroundings beget a chaotic, disgruntled mind.  Luckily, this kind of problem doesn’t take a lot of solving: all you need to do is set some time aside to tick a few boxes.  This weekend I re-capsulised my wardrobe, I hoovered my flat, I photographed a bunch of stuff for listing on eBay and I finally got round to donating my old bike, a to-do that’s been nagging at the back of my mind for months now.

Make something.  Like with your actual hands.  It’s therapeutic, it’s productive, and if you do it in the kitchen you’ll likely get something good to eat out of it.  This weekend I made Polish dumplings from scratch.  I’ve been craving these little potato-filled doughy balls of goodness constantly since I first experienced the real thing.  It felt really nice to create something so intricate: to use my hands to knead and roll the pastry, to rhythmically peel and mash the potatoes and to pinch the edges of each little parcel together, one at a time.  The result?  Soothing on the mind and utterly joyful to the taste buds.

Plan something adventurous.  A big trip, a weekend away or even an interesting day spent doing new stuff in your own town.  Make yourself a plan you can look forward to.  I’m off work this Thursday and Friday so I spent a little time yesterday figuring out what I would do with it.  The result is a two-day itinerary taking in everything from giving blood to lunching out to sanding and re-painting the frame of my bedroom window.  I’m ridiculously excited about that last part, obviously.

Give yourself a break. Nine times out of ten I work my own way into a funk.  I have a rather amazing ability to respond well to tough self-love, but the line between constructive criticism and a little too mean proved to be just too thin to tread last week.  So this weekend I made every effort to be kind to me.  I went out for tea and cake alone, I spent time reading and I switched off my computer early on Saturday and Sunday and spent the time bathing or lounging infront of the TV instead.  Sometimes it’s good to remind ourselves that being all things to all people all of the time is unattainable.  Better to slow down, do the best you can with the tools you have and, above all else, be good to yourself.

How do you rouse yourself from a funk?  Any ideas to share?

Image above from here.

I was recently told a story about a person who earns more than £40,000 per year complaining that she had no money.  I was shocked.  £40,000?  A year?  Perhaps it’s all the time I’ve spent inwardly fizzling over bankers’ bonuses lately, or perhaps it’s because I’m still reading this book about Africa, which makes me feel more humble and more embarrassingly, ignorantly rich with every page I turn.  Whatever the reason, it really riled me to learn that someone in her early thirties with no dependants could possibly a) consider herself broke and then b) actually consider that a reasonable thing to whine about to other people.  Wuh?!

I understand that the way you perceive your financial status largely boils down to the way you choose to live, and the everyday spending decisions you make as a result of those choices.  If you choose to buy new clothes every month, to drive all over the place in a high maintenance car and to eat out three times a week as standard then sure, I guess you would pretty quickly find that you didn’t have a huge amount of cash left over each month.  On the other hand, if you shop infrequently, cycle everywhere and consider eating out a treat to be enjoyed once in a while as opposed to a rite of passage, then a 40K salary soon begins to resemble what it is: a lot of money.

I’ve always found a thrill in living on the underside of my means.  As pathetic as some might think it sounds (and I don’t think of it this way at all), it really pleases me to know where my money is and how much of it I can save: to shop according to meal plans I’ve constructed around what was already in my fridge, to squirrel away small change in a piggy bank and to actively seek out life’s free sweetnesses: taking a long walk in the drizzly February rain, fashioning new cushion covers from an old pair of curtains or sitting cross-legged on the floor of the library, wondering which of the pile of books I’ve selected I want to begin reading first.  Living in this way has been, and still is, one of the biggest contributing factors to my personal sense of well being.  I think of the enjoyment I’ve discovered in learning how to penny pinch as a real blessing in my life, and it continues to sadden me to think that for many people ‘fun’ and ‘money’ are interlocking, inseparable constructs.

It was the satisfaction I gleaned from my thrifty lifestyle that prompted me to create this blog over two years ago.  So I’ve got a lot to thank it for.  Although I’ve moved on from writing exclusively about personal finance, I still live with the lessons I learned back then rooted firmly in the forefront of my mind.  I budget religiously, I save where I can and I make every effort to remind myself that on many important levels it really doesn’t matter how much cash each one of us has in our back pocket.  Once our basic needs are catered for our individual senses of happiness and well being become our own delicate puzzles to figure out.  Money and the things it can buy can certainly distract us along the way, but having a wad of twenties in your wallet will never cause you to win the race.  In fact, they might even conspire to slow you down.  As the saying goes, if you have food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of the people in the world.  It’s true.

Image above from here.

Still on the subject of mornings, Saturday is my absolute favourite of the week.  I love waking up to silence instead of an alarm clock for the first time in six days.  I enjoy lingering over two or three cups of coffee while catching up on email, blogs and the news.  I love thinking about the day that’s stretching out before me: the knowledge that I can do with it what I choose, the peace that comes from knowing I can go to bed at whatever time I like, with no looming Monday morning to dictate to me otherwise.  Saturday mornings are novel.  Optimistic.  A taste of an unregulated expanse of time lying ahead, where self-imposed curfews and laundry exist only in the back of my mind.

What do you do with your Saturday morning?

Image above from here.

What a beautiful truth.  Happy Fridays, everyone xx

Image above from here.