lazygood4nothinbum
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2006
- Messages
- 3,895
i am guilty of giving over some power of self-control to money. money never used to faze me. certainly it didn’t rule me. i didn’t go after it; it had little influence over my career choice & no influence over my choice of friends. i figured out how to pay my bills and save for a rainy day and life was good enough.
over the years i’ve made friends from a television star to a homeless person, from a pulitzer prize winner to a hooker. i’ve played on 100-ft yachts and had even more fun on my 14-ft sunfish. i’ve been inside estates on tropical islands and inside slum apartments in harlem. whether i’ve had more money than i needed in my pocket or just enough to get by made no difference to my mood or capacity to enjoy & explore life, nor did my favorite activities depend much upon it.
granted i lived a somewhat charmed life on other people’s money growing up. i never had to pay to charter a yacht, i just hopped aboard someone else’s. and when we had a boat (no, not a 100 footer, but 40 footers), we invited others aboard with us. my partner and i even used to pick strangers off the seawall to party with us for the day. very fun.
whether i was being served cocktails cruising down the intracoastal or hanging out on a rock with a cooler of beer by a lake in the woods, money isn’t what altered my mood. it was the beer. it was my friends. money wasn’t on my mind.
money always came easy enough. first i got allowance for chores, then i started working for it outside of the house. my parents helped when i didn’t earn enough earlier on. eventually i learned to make my own way. i never felt unsure about money but neither was i motivated by it. yet now that i’m not getting allowance, now that i’ve stopped working, now that i have inherited my parent’s money, i have never before been so insecure about it.
the money at hand has power it never held before. it determines how careful i am during the day and how well i sleep at night. when i see my net worth go up it makes me happy and when i see it go down it makes me nervous & sad. i disappoint myself that i have given up so much power over even my mood to the dollar. this is very unlike the me who i’ve known and i do not like this me.
how easy to think the world will end tomorrow when in a bad mood. how easy to think the world goes on forever when happy. how easy to let our thinking be affected by activities and conditions outside of ourselves and beyond our control. of course we need input to make good decisions. but if i let outside circumstances like losing a little net worth get to me, i might just start to think that the world will end tomorrow, when i know, inside, that it goes on forever.
over the years i’ve made friends from a television star to a homeless person, from a pulitzer prize winner to a hooker. i’ve played on 100-ft yachts and had even more fun on my 14-ft sunfish. i’ve been inside estates on tropical islands and inside slum apartments in harlem. whether i’ve had more money than i needed in my pocket or just enough to get by made no difference to my mood or capacity to enjoy & explore life, nor did my favorite activities depend much upon it.
granted i lived a somewhat charmed life on other people’s money growing up. i never had to pay to charter a yacht, i just hopped aboard someone else’s. and when we had a boat (no, not a 100 footer, but 40 footers), we invited others aboard with us. my partner and i even used to pick strangers off the seawall to party with us for the day. very fun.
whether i was being served cocktails cruising down the intracoastal or hanging out on a rock with a cooler of beer by a lake in the woods, money isn’t what altered my mood. it was the beer. it was my friends. money wasn’t on my mind.
money always came easy enough. first i got allowance for chores, then i started working for it outside of the house. my parents helped when i didn’t earn enough earlier on. eventually i learned to make my own way. i never felt unsure about money but neither was i motivated by it. yet now that i’m not getting allowance, now that i’ve stopped working, now that i have inherited my parent’s money, i have never before been so insecure about it.
the money at hand has power it never held before. it determines how careful i am during the day and how well i sleep at night. when i see my net worth go up it makes me happy and when i see it go down it makes me nervous & sad. i disappoint myself that i have given up so much power over even my mood to the dollar. this is very unlike the me who i’ve known and i do not like this me.
how easy to think the world will end tomorrow when in a bad mood. how easy to think the world goes on forever when happy. how easy to let our thinking be affected by activities and conditions outside of ourselves and beyond our control. of course we need input to make good decisions. but if i let outside circumstances like losing a little net worth get to me, i might just start to think that the world will end tomorrow, when i know, inside, that it goes on forever.