the money thing

I look at my loan status.
I look at my salary next year.
I look at my loan status.

Being in quasi-poverty for a couple years of undergrad where I was supporting myself without loans radically permanently altered my conception of what money means to living. I equate money almost entirely with time, selling yourself for under seven dollars per hour for various periods of life will do that.

One pair of jeans = twelve hours = almost two days.
One pair of jeans on sale = three hours.

The last couple of years have been an 'investment' in the sense that I stopped working part time, stopped budgeting obsessively and started adopting the 'young professional' lifestyle. As in, stopped trimming my own bangs on a whim and started owning nice shirts. Took trips and opportunities instead of working three jobs.

My younger brother, who has recently become 'employed' in something he was 'educated to do' told my mom that he now has the luxury of drying his clothes in the dryer instead of hanging them around his apartment, should he choose to.

I still have friends whose parents pay for everything. Who can demand a car for coming back to get a second degree, who get cut off for a month when they charge a couple hundred dollars in shots for the bar on the groceries-only credit card, who run out of money because they spent five hundred on jeans. I have to keep reminding myself that I own my degree and owe it to no one as a result of how it's been financed. That I have a pretty good sense of how the real world works, having worked in a lot more jobs than anyone my age I know, and that the scars on my hands are the purchase price for credibility. That I can tell you about social services, nursing homes, the medical system, unions, charities, pink collar ghettos, janitors, coffee jockeys, deli workers, secretaries and telemarketers because I've pretty much covered all of it from a bottom rung perspective.

But every once in awhile, I have to admit that I wish that I never had to look at those numbers again, and I wonder what it would be like to live like that.