The Last Mile.

 or "Romance & Finance."

So, I spoke with the HR woman at work, and today and tomorrow will be my last days temping here with this interior design firm. Last days for now, as school starts on Wednesday, and the reality is I'm really, really worn. The word I used to the HR person was "spare." That's how I'm feeling at the moment. In fact, I'm writing this blog at work right now, as I DID make my effort to get to work on time... then I realized that the Oakland bus system and BART are running on a Sunday schedule for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and so my reliable bus was not coming :P

But, I caught a bus, and made it in anyway. On my way in, I was reading from a book which shares the stories of people who have recovered from the insanity of financial woes, and the story I read really hit me. I realize that, with the upcoming influx of tax return and student loan disbursement, I'm right about to throw myself back into my own merry-go-round of financial problems.

All my fetishizing of having a car won't solve my problem. Taking jobs I don't want to take won't solve my problem, but not actually taking consistent and persistent action toward earning money in alternative ways won't solve my problem either. Luckily, last night, I got a call from a woman who is willing to help me walk through the steps I need to take to get clearer and freer from this roller coaster of poverty/manic spending/poverty/manic spending. Cuz that's my pattern. I am broke broke broke, in a panic, and then a miracle occurs, I have a job, money again, and then I start to live in magical thinking, and spend spend spend. And I'm back to where I was.

Now, it's usually not "all bad", so I justify it. It's been, in the past, a lot of spending large wads of money on parties for my friends, or a "gotta get away" weekend (i.e. I'm not taking enough daily care of myself, and need to blow a large wad on RAMPANT self-care. You know, TIME TO RELAX folks. It doesn't really work that way, I've discovered.).

I feel like things are going to turn. That these are the last vestiges of my best ideas about how to earn, save, and spend money. (I say "save" with only the most passing acquaintance with an ING account that's had $0.09 in it for over a year.) So, that feels good. That the sun *is* around the corner, and that I'm crawling the last mile on ragged, glass embedded knees. The last mile that I've had to crawl to see that I just can't fucking crawl anymore.

Perhaps I'll only have to turn this corner once, perhaps I'll have to turn it more than once. But I really do hope that things are going to shift for me. In the end, it's not at all about money. It's about my availability to my life. Being distracted by my money woes is a great way to stay small, and contracted, and constricted. And as I head into all these new adventures in my life, I would like to create a firmer foundation to stand on - and part of that is getting off this merry-go-round, and listening to how other people have walked from the soul-crush of financial insecurity into the hopeful, secure world of abundance and clarity.

It's also not about "making a lot of money." As, I've had wonderful salaries in the past, and still only have $25 in my ING account, which I put in last month.

Finally, it has occurred to me that my cycle of nothing then something then nothing looks a lot like my relationships with men. It's everything all at once, or it's nothing nothing at all. It's gorging on the love and intensity of a relationship, or it's like the lonely echo down a long well shaft. Remember what I said about the Italian? Burn hot, burn quick? Yeah, well my longest (also most recent) relationship *just* made it over the 7 month mark - and the one before that (about 3 years prior) was six months. (Embarrassing, but true, prior to that, my longest official "girlfriend/boyfriend" relationship was 6 weeks. ... 6 weeks with the alcoholic painter; 6 weeks with the alcoholic chef; and, oddly, firstly, 6 weeks with the non-alcoholic but tanning bed addicted jerzey guido ...)

Vicious "Everything or Nothing" wields its ugly head here too.

I truly believe that as I heal one, I heal the other. And I've begun healing both in different ways recently.

So, To letting go of my old and best ideas, which have led me to a temp job, zero "real" prospects, and exhaustion.

Bring on the corner. (gently please?) :)