Month End

Before I begin, 31 days worked so far this year. I've been falling behind on my regular postings. Anyway, what did I bring in this month and what did I spend it on? Two paydays this month, there's only two months with three. Anyway:
gross employment income: 2680
deductions: 563.61
take home pay: 2116.39
spending: 273.32
sales tax: 1.29
Loan payments: 225.91
Spending is a little higher because I didn't buy my bus pass in the previous month. 40% of my gross income goes somewhere, so I guess 60% was saved by the definition of saved that doesn't include the principal portion of loan repayments as saving. 10% of my gross income, 13% of net, was actually spent on stuff, not loans and taxes.
Until I'm in an actual independent living situation, I'm not sure what to think of my data.

Tragedy of the Commons?

I had an interesting thought while watching a documentary on consumerism in kids today. It got me thinking about two things, one is the tragedy of the commons. The general story is that there's some grazing land, open to everyone. Nobody has any incentive to go easy on it. The more livestock you have, the better off you are. It turns into a competition for resources where the more that's cornered the better you are. However, split the commons into private ownership and people then limit their herds to avoid over grazing and the land thrives again. We also see this in fish stock. When the catch is a quota open to everyone, it turns into a mad scramble to get as much fish in before the quota is filled. It winds up being not safe for the fishermen and floods the market resulting in lower returns for all.
While collectively every company and thus the economy as a whole will be better off with a wealthy consumer base, individually every company benefits from taking as many dollars as possible. Like the over grazing, the consumer base becomes over spent and everyone suffers.
This is an over simplification to the point of absurdity though since corporate profits pays payroll and investors. This personal income then becomes the consumer base that everyone is chasing. Also, the idea of splitting up the consumer base into privately owned blocks is absurd. Though if you ever felt like you live in a world of advertising, the consumer base being a common resource is one reason. In situations where there are exclusivity arrangements, those extend to venues, not individual consumers so marketers have an incentive to go nuts in hopes of influencing off venue spending patterns as well as overall total consumption.
The other thought. It talked about how marketing now pitched lifestyle to sell products. Individuality, acceptance, popularity, I wonder what my social values are. I should spend some time thinking about that.

Decluttering

Last night, I was reminded that before my infatuation with small boats, I wanted to compress my life down into two pieces of luggage and a carry-on item. Then airlines started changing their rules. Now I'm fixated on this idea of an open-10 cruiser. Granted open-10 never really took off after the around-in-ten race fizzled out. I might build one later on as a learning experience.

Interesting day. Went out to do laundry since my work stuff is too dirty and making the washing machine dirty. Forgot to bring detergent with me but hey there was a london drugs next to the laundromat and a big sale on laundry detergent. This brings forth the question of do I really get 42 washes out of a jug that says it has 42 washes of detergent in it. Maybe I should measure the cup and find out.
Anyway, cheap hobby, coin collecting. Due to a miss understanding at the laundromat, I got $8 of quarters as opposed to 8 quarters. 7 of them were Olympic quarters. I guess I can consider it a cheap hobby. The cash is still there and liquid, it is after all cash. Granted, doesn't exactly make me more amused or entertained. The novelty died well before my laundry finished.

Timid, but shouldn't be

The recent sell off has me tempted to shift my savings into my trading account, but part of me is reluctant to. I get the feeling that now is a good time. Illogically though part of me wants to wait till I have more money in front of me, so that I can buy in a preplanned spreadsheet specified fashion with a minimum of transactions. Though commissions are low enough that it'll probably cost me more to wait, unless the market takes a more serious tumble.

Shorter Work Week

Well, 24 days down so far. Another three this week. Two more weeks and then I'll be 20% through the year. Maybe I should count all the work days ahead just for fun. I have mixed feelings about that. I suppose it is about half way through Q1. I had two big things right now. I lost a receipt today, it was for my phone card so I'm out $10.50. Trying to shrug it off. Went a little nuts searching everywhere for it, but I'm trying to just accept it and get another one.
The other big one, back on the TV rotting your brain thing. I had an epiphany. A large chunk of my childhood misery can be attributed to someone along the lines somewhere assuming that I was autistic and ignoring any evidence to the contrary. It came to me while I was watching House and how they were treating an autistic patient. Autism might be going a bit far, but treated like there was something wrong with me. It explains the intensive work I had to go through on the basics while I was mastering much more advanced concepts at school. I also say this with many memories of being checked out by various psychiatrists and their conversations with my parents.
It explains things, however it doesn't excuse them. Personally, I wonder if it'll help me forgive. This doesn't change anything going on in the family at the moment. I suppose this changes nothing.

Life so dull

Four days off, and it really brings light how bare my life has become. I hardly know what to do, spend a lot of time sitting around wishing that I were still tired so that I could at least sleep through the dullness. Instead, I find myself sitting here wondering how far I should go to try to be happy. It's often used more as an excuse to just let go. Living fast and loose is often a very destructive process. I'm afraid some day I'll wish I didn't take so much time now or cross some point of no return.
Also, one of my worst limitations right now is that I seem reluctant to establish connections and go out and do things. Should probably do something about that.

Not My Finances But...

Today was a bad day at work. We had some material with a defect on the end. Instead of cutting just the bad part, 2 inches, some of it was cut as much as 17 inches. It was quite a mess. There were enough bad pieces that the supervisor decided we'd cut them all so that they looked kind of even. We had a meeting about it. The saw was set up. Someone got frustrated with it and set it up to cut the other end, the good end. The saw was set up again. Anyway, much time and material wasted. Boss says that we lost about 3.5-4.5K because people can't follow instructions.

TV rots the brain?

I was looking back at a few old blog posts and came to two realizations, 1) TV shows have gotten me thinking about a couple of very interesting things, and 2) I don't post as much as I used to. So, a brief list of tv shows that have gotten me thinking:
1) Intervention - The name pretty much describes it. The show is a reality tv series on interventions. I think it appeals to me because I worry about appearing detached from reality.
2) Wife Swap - It's hard to get a feel for what a good family setting is in my absence of one. This almost doesn't help with that, but at least it gives me a feel for how bad things can get. I guess I'm not alone in a lot of ways. Also gives me some basis for comparison when trying to figure out how bad things are for me.
3) House - He's insightful and often way out there with his thinking. It's also nice to see someone who doesn't pretend to be nice when being a jerk for a change. There's so many interesting observations about people and society in there.

So, yeah, small goal for the moment, post more frequently.

About to start another week

I feel strange. Life is an awkward cycle of days where I'm too busy to do anything followed by days that I don't know what to do. I wonder how long I'll be able to last. I've worked 20 days now, that's roughly a 10th of the year. I can't help wondering if I'll really be able to keep this up as long as I need to. Anyway, gotta gather food. Need more breakfast cereal. I like granola. Also going to prepare hot chicken curry.

More Questions than Answers

This week I find myself asking a lot of questions. One of them being why I suddenly and mysteriously have more energy than I used to. Unexplained sudden change worries me. It's a good thing that I feel more awake now, but what is causing it?
Also regarding my health, there's another spot on my back that I have no idea about. Part of me worries that it might be something serious. My dad started getting all sorts of spots when his schleroderma flared up. There's also the positive ana, and cold extremities.
I'm also starting to get a grasp of just how destructive a search for personal happiness can be. I'm sure there are many drug addicts that started off because they simply wanted to be happy and that was the quickest way. Bad things happen when we ignore consequences. I'm making a lot of big decisions and while I can recognize that there are no right answers here, there certainly are a lot of bad answers.
Later on though, I was reminded of Terry Fox. He had something that he felt would make him happy and it turned out to be something beautiful. Of course, one could also argue that he was in a position where there really weren't any more long term consequences to his life so he could do anything without regret.
I'm also reminded that most people say that you regret the things you didn't do more than the things you did. Anyway, I wonder what I could do better right now as I'm sure many of us do.