thursdayblogdayyay. Don’t
ask me why that’s all one word, and a full sentence, because I don’t know. If
you enjoy reading my blog, I bet your friends will too! Share it with them!
Ideas: the most meaningful Facebook status you will make in months, my blog.
That hilarious, witty tweet you’ve been holding out for, #myblog. The
screenshot on your iPhone that everyone is just dying to see on Instagram… My
blog. Anyways,
I’m in love…
With my car. In two weeks I
will have officially owned my little $650 Toyota Celica for two whole years. I
just gave her a bath for the first time in 10 months and unfortunately the dirt
is baked on. She’ll never be pearly white again; her age lines are starting to
show. As the name of my blog gives away, I am a slightly unfortunate person. In
almost any situation where the outcome could go either great or quite poorly, I
am that person that the worst almost always happens to. I see yellow lights a
hundred times more than my boyfriend right now (he’s in California, I’m in
Seattle, that’s about a hundred yellow lights a day, that’s not normal).
However every once in a while, extremely once in a while, lady luck is on my side.
When I bought my sassy
little Celica, now named Celicia, (see previous posts, as you should anyways if
you’ve never read them), I had just totaled my car that was eleven years newer
than the Celica, tried and failed to end a really long relationship, and was
about to graduate high school. The car I totaled was a 2001, with hardly 70,000
miles on it, and destined to run for many more years. I had spent all my money
from my 16th birthday on it and treated it like my baby. Apparently
I didn’t baby it enough because I totaled it in a preventable accident.
What I realized about a year after my accident, when I went truly broke for the
first time in years, was that I had just enough money at that time saved up to
cover my tow bill, pay the ticket from “Failure to Yield with Causal of
Accident”, buy a new car, and license the new car, all out of pocket.
When I turned 16 I started
working at a little Italian restaurant as a hostess. Becoming a hostess at 16
is like a gateway drug into the high of restaurant cash flow. After about 8
months of working at this little Italian restaurant, I showed up to work one
day to see them emptying out the place and the doors locked for good. The last
time I spoke to the manager there was the shift I worked two days before that.
In a frantic mess, I landed myself a new hostess job at a Greek restaurant down
the street three days later. Once again, so strangely lucky but so strangely
unlucky. I started waiting tables for brunch shifts at the Greek restaurant at
17, and watched eight general managers and 40+ employees come and go under a
terrible Spanish head chef who should not be named. In the midst of employee
turnover hell, I started supervising before I even turned the legal age of 18.
Every penny the restaurant had in cash including bank deposits, tills, and tips
came through my hands. I clocked 40 or more hours while going to high school,
and was making much more money than any 17 year old should. Because I had so
much free flowing money with hardly anything to pay for other than a cell phone
bill, car insurance, and gas, I fell in love with Nordstrom and designer jeans,
and learned nothing about self control in handling personal finances.
After the madness at the
poorly managed Greek restaurant finally drove me out the door, I started
working at the restaurant I still work at during the summers here in Seattle. When
the sun shines on Lake Washington, people drop dough. I walked out of the first
summer at the new restaurant with $12,000 in four months. At 18, I could buy
anything I wanted. I headed off to college in the fall to have no income for 9
months, at blew through $4,000 without blinking. My dad picked me up after
freshman year and I had $3.54 to my name. This was so new to me, and I couldn’t
wait to get "back on my feet" financially as I returned to the restaurant in
Seattle.
The weather had another plan for me. We had no sun for almost an entire summer. I saw clouds for 6 weeks straight
from May-mid June and walked out of my second summer at the restaurant with
$5,000. Do the math, that’s $7,000 less than I expected to make. That’s a good
chunk of money, but I had yet to learn how to be broke. I spent almost
everything I made that summer, hoping the weather would get better, saving
almost nothing. I started off the school year still broke, and in November of
my sophomore year, in a financial heartbreak of a moment that I know I blogged
about in November, dropped $600 on my car and $300 days later to be able to
register for classes dropping me down to $30 and no expected income. I couldn’t
work because finals weeks was right around the corner, and somehow could not
get ahead financially for the rest of the year. Running very close to
nothing for the following 6 months taught me something I needed to learn, fast.
Hold onto what you make because there’s no telling what’s around the corner. I
couldn’t shop, I could only buy what I needed at the store (meaning coffee and
bottled water, the bare necessities obviously), and that did not change for
those last 6 months of the school year.
Now that I am back at the
restaurant for at least this month, and the sun is shining, I am definitely
making enough money to spend a little. I could even shop if I wanted to, but I
can’t seem to force myself to do it. The habit of spending money has been
broken for me and I appreciate so much more every penny I have, and every penny
I can make. Being relatively broke, and I say relatively because most of the
world would love to have all I have being as broke as I am, is strangely okay.
I might not know when I’ll make enough again to feel like I can relax about
income, but that no longer stresses me out.
There are so many things I
would not sacrifice now to work that I would have years ago. A balance is
brought from being penniless. Life is peculiarly more fulfilling when stripped
of the chance to pursue things like money, clothes, and high-end objects. My
car has character, and is a piece of my hard work. Celicia may be embarrassing
at times, but she gets me where I need to go, and wouldn’t trade the
experiences I have had working hard for my money to have a nicer car bought for
me. Talk to me in 6 months and that might be different, just kidding.
Life
tastes sweeter when there’s no overload of sweets. Load yourself with sweets, and it suddenly tastes gross.
