No spending on things I don’t need, because I want to pay off credit cards with all the money I can. This is my goal, my purpose—with clarity and strictness. I don’t want to waste my money. I want to get paid up.
It’s a personal challenge of sorts—keeping track of my spending keeps me occupied. But more than that, I feel I’m gaining on my debt, lessening the weight on my shoulders and my spirit, and that feels great, certainly better than it feels to buy a new book I don’t have time to read with money I don’t have to spend. That’s how I had to get it through to myself: I don’t have money to spend. I have it to save.
Another way to put it: Instead of going into the stores and looking around and resisting the urge to buy, I just don’t go into those stores.
Also, I wrote in one of my notebooks recently how another year has passed and I haven’t done any more fiction writing (well, just a little bit). That’s true—no novel’s in the works.
But look what I did do, see how I did change over the last year: vegetarian, small farm, etc. Lots of new thoughts about farming, environment, energy, etc. My whole attitude about health, lifestyle, economics, questioning the status quo and questioning authority. What I want out of life—to live in the country, grow my own food, not go to regular employment, maybe even home-school our kids. I recently did a lot of growing and changing—and maturing—this year.
And I got engaged and began planning my life with Nano! [my nickname for M] It’s neat—we grew more and more together in our values and beliefs about lifestyle, economics, politics, etc.
[From journal of 20 Jan. 1999, Journal 25, page 14-5]
MonkeyMoonMachine 