Practicality and Creativity Will Save the Day...and Some Cash

I would consider myself a fairly practical gal. I own few possessions, and the item I own the most of are books, which I have recently began purchasing on the cheap at thrift stores or for free on the Kindle or borrowed from friends and the library. I have a select few clothes that I wear regularly, like a few pairs of jeans, some simple shirts/tops, a couple pairs of shoes that I will wear to the bone, and some hats or scarves bought for $0.50/each at my favorite thrift store. I don't wear much jewelry, I shave my own hair in a GI Jane-style buzzcut, and I tend to enjoy the simple things in life, like learning a musical instrument, writing, reading, taking walks, painting, playing Nerf Wars, and sitting around a bonfire with some cheap alcohol and good company.

Damn... I'm gonna need a bigger eraser!

And yet, I still haven't managed to pay off my debts. I'm approximately a whole $6,000 in the hole with credit cards and a loan, used for a couple of surgeries. $1,700 here, $2,000 there, another $2,300 over there, and that's not including my approximately $5,000 school loans that are still in deferment. A lack of brutal budgeting has led to my seemingly permanent procrastination in paying off these debts. Though I know there are thousands of other individuals and families who are in far deeper debt, the debt that I have accrued still holds me under just enough to occasionally gasp for breath. I keep kicking and flailing, trying to break free of this hold that bars me from doing the things that I think will add to the quality of my life -- travel, see new places, visit the people that I adore.

I also had a CoxHealth bill that was preventing me from working toward paying off my credit card and loan debts. Recently, I went ahead and paid the rest of the $300+ bill off and scratched it off my seemingly eternal "To-Do" list. Immediately, I noticed a shift of the burden on my shoulders. I felt lighter, a little closer to the surface of the ocean of debt. I liked it.

I liked it so much that I decided I would budget my income and place paying these bills off as my number one priority. I will attempt to use $500 of my monthly income (roughly half of what I make per month) to put towards paying off my debts, one at a time. In order to do this, I need to go out less (for drinks and food) and buy basic foods in bulk for home-cooked meals. In a time of microwavable meals in a matter of a few minutes, this will be a challenge for me. I've spoiled myself with expensive daily trips to the supermarket for Steamables, Rockstars, and 6-packs of Carona or Boulevard Wheat. My cooking skills consist mainly of tossing a pre-cooked meal in the microwave and waiting impatiently for 2-5 minutes for my steaming soggy supper.

I have become complacent with how I indulge most of my whims when it concerns food and drink. Now I have to relearn how I think about food its preparation. This will be difficult at first, but I think it will be beneficial overall. On top of saving money, I will probably end up losing some of the weight that I've gained while satisfying my urges to drink anything except cheap coffee and tap water.

Grains and legumes in bulk, my new best friends

This should prove to be an interesting and most inventive journey. If anyone has any tips on cheap, healthy food recipes where I can buy the ingredients in bulk, I would be ever so grateful for your shared wisdom!

The Due Date

You never quite realize how much time and energy is spent on such mundane things until you remember that neither are as expendable as you've been treating them. There is a limited amount of both; a deadline that you will eventually approach, and once that date hits, the only thing you'll be hoping for is that the product of all that time and energy spent will have been decent enough to make some kind of mark on the world, like a novel, a novella, a short story, or just a lonely blog caught in the cyber time capsule. You won't be wishing that you spent more time on Facebook reposting the same pictures that at least 12 of your other "friends" have already shared. You won't be pondering all of the most updated pins on Pinterest that you've missed in the last three hours off the computer. You won't be wondering how one of the worst characters in the world, Ted Mosby, ended up meeting his wife as you follow obliviously along with the laugh tracks for your cue to enjoy a joke. That is, unless your last moments of conscious thought are annihilated by some kind of feverish delusional state of mind.

The moments that you are going to recall with a sense of wonder and true contentment are those when you are freed from the burdens of a strictly web-based social life. They're going to be the moments when you first learned a new trick or how to completely play Mary Had a Little Lamb on the piano without looking at the book or your hands. They're going to be the moments when you were exchanging laughter with loved ones and you can't help but smile when you recount the freedom of childlike amusement. They're going to be the times when you escaped into a world of curiosity and discovered for yourself revelations that only few others have encountered before in their lives. Sometimes they're not the most productive moments, and sometimes they're not long-lasting, but they're the moments that make the struggles in life well worth the effort, and they're the moments that compile your personal story.

Trust me, you don't want to hit that deadline and all you have to show for it is a pile of disorganized scrap paper with scribbles and frequently repeated lines carelessly scratched into them with a pen that ran all out of ink well before hour zero.