Frugal in the Fruitlands

I’ve Paid For This Twice Already tagged me for the “six-word memoir” meme, which is exactly what it says it is: six words that describe your life.

My instinctive reaction to this prompt might seem nonsensical at first:

I’ve Come Through the Storm And

My memoir is apparently a sentence fragment! In truth, this conveys the sense that my life is a work in progress. This can be good and bad - it’s good when it means I strive to make myself a better person. It’s bad when it means I spend too much time “waiting to live” while I imagine that some single event or thing is going to make me happy.

Unfortunately this is most often the upshot of this kind of thinking. When I was in high school, the Big Moment was supposed to be when I Went To College. After a fabulous first year at college, and a less-than-stellar summer job, the Big Moment was supposed to be the return to school. When that Big Moment failed to reappear, I sunk into a depression that went untreated for several years. Around about when I supposed to graduate - another Big Moment - I was wracked with morbid thoughts, unable to enjoy this rite of passage because I was too focused on the thought of my own death.

The next Big Moment was my first job, which I expected to be my dream job, but which was a disappointment in so many ways. Then marriage - which was surprisingly free of painful realizations - and buying a house, which was eye-opening in financially painful ways. Here I learned that the wisdom I’d been taught about home ownership was turning into a myth, and I am still learning to cope with the responsibility of this house and property.

Someone asked me recently, “What’s next for me?” and I didn’t know how to answer. I’m approaching the point in my life where I’m running out of landmark “life script” moments, and I’ve already rejected some of them (like having kids). There we run straight against that dangling “and,” asking me how I’m going to pass the days of my life when I haven’t got another goal to rush toward.

I see now, too, how my “early retirement” planning has really been another rushing-toward a landmark action. It struck me one day that with all this planning ahead, what if I never reach retirement? It will really stink, then, to have pinned all my hopes on that Big Retirement Date in the distant future. I need to make my life the way I want it now.

But while I’m doing that, I still have to live with what I’ve got.

In conclusion, I tag…

• Retirement: A Full-Time Job (hahaha, got you back for the Four Things meme!)
• Give Me Back My Five Bucks
• Taking Control of Our Money
• Just Make It Better
• Millionaire Mommy Next Door

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You can blame Retirement: A Full-Time Job for this meme sheepery. I guess I should have listened when some of you told me personal finance bloggers were bad influences on me ;)

Four jobs I’ve had
- My first job was shelving books at a used bookstore in my home town. The owner paid me in book trade.
- In college, I worked at the Computing and Information Services Help Desk, helping students and faculty with their computer problems. This is where I met the Boy, by the way, and also where I learned I never wanted to do tech support.
- One summer while I was in college, I worked at the Adirondak Loj in Lake Placid. It was basic grunt work. I got paid minimum wage, cleaned toilets, made beds, and lived in a tent.
- I worked for a month over summer break in college for a fulfillment company in Wilmington, MA. I spent a lot of time stuffing envelopes, entering postcards into databases, and re-reading all the Harry Potter novels.
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