Picking up the tools

The first tool they “lay at our feet” in DA is tracking; carefully recording all income and expenditures.  It is pretty easy to track total abstainance, but in a program for something you absolutely have to use, tracking becomes very important.

I had some money in my pocket since I got paid for a little side gig I do, so I set out to go buy the little spiral notebook they suggested I get so I could write down everything I spend and everything I take in.  Of course I only became willing to go shopping for the notebook after trying out 7 different home accounting software programs and finding that none of them were magical.

I couldn’t stand the idea of a little spiral wire living in my pocket to I took the suggestion of someone else and bought index cards.  If you’re going to have index cards you need something to put them in so I bought an expanding card file.  I know there are pens around here somewhere but you can’t be too careful, so I bought pens, too.  Picking out a pen took 20 minutes.

By then I was hungry.  I hadn’t eaten dinner yet, so I bought a salad, some snacks for at work.  I decided that K2O Special K water is going to be just the thing to magically take off the weight I’ve packed on since I started on the “I’m so poor I only eat carbs” diet.  $35 later I walked out with the index cards I went in for.

I got home and there were 2 bills in my mailbox.  They totalled $2,700.  I got to work the next day and my boss wiped 24 hours I’m supposed to work this week off the schedule.

And while I’m at work I hear a radio commercial for Happy Fish, a local sushi bar and trendy alcoholic emporium, and they’re naming and describing all these drinks.  On the radio.  And they get to to one that’s made from Godiva chocolate and Stoli and I just KNOW I would be SO SEXY on those. My god I want one of those.

I shared all of this at DA tonight, along with the fact that my bed hurts me so much to sleep on that I’ve taken to sleeping on the wood floor.  It’s less painful to get off of.  I shared that and I shared the fact that myspendingplan.com suggested, after I told it my expected income and my rent, that I set aside $41 per month for food.

After the meeting some well meaning jerk tried to tell me about some mattress pad that “isn’t very expensive.  You wouldn’t have to save for long to get one,” and I wanted to punch her in the face.

I want to run.  I want to jump on a motorcycle and hit the road.  I want to write bad checks everywhere, get drunk on chocolate martinis, get high, get laid, and disappear. I feel terrible writing that, but it’s true.  It would probably all end the same way for me that it did for Sam Nelson, just 2 blocks from where I had my moment of clarity 20 months ago.

The only progress that I’ve made is that I’m actually tracking my spending now, and at the moment it is making me feel even more hopeless than I felf when I was just in denial about the situation.

I picked up the tool, damn it.  I want to feel better now.