Money, of course. As usual. Poverty sucks.

Got VancouFur coming in a couple of weeks. Dunno how I am going to afford it. Had to pay for my bus pass on last month’s check. Now it’s a five week month just when I don’t need one the most.

Right now, I got around $317 to see me through the next four weeks (come Wednesday). That’s three quarters shy of $80/week. That would be a slight squeeze even without a con to pay for.

But as is…. this convention, for some reason, is going to last FOUR days instead of the traditional three. And while I can pay back Joe for the room over time, there’s still that little matter of not starving. Assuming we arrive Thursday afternoon or night, that means I have ten meals to pay for. Plus the con registration fee of $45.

Usually, I budget $20/meal. That would me that my convention expenses would be $245. Take that out of my 317, and you get the kingly sum of 72 bucks for, ya know, everything else that month.

Divide that by four weeks, and you get me living off of $18/week for four weeks. Yikes. It’s not like I would starve or anything… we are talking about somewhat disposable income here… but still. Yikes.

Actually, that’s not exactly accurate, because I will be gone for four days for the convention and I will not have to spend any money outside of the convention budget while there, so it’s more like I will be supporting three weeks outside the convention.

That inflates my non-convention (unconventional?) to a whopping $24 per week.

Oh my, better tell Mother we’re buying new China.

So all I can do is save all the money I can before the convention, and see where I am going into it.

And to be honest, $20/meal is not set in stone. That’s assuming I have every meal in a sit-down type restaurant, and I am sure I could scrap by with some fast fool meals in there, which average more like $10.

Heck, I can even bring food from home. Hopefully our room will at least have a microwave, so I can bring my microwave popcorn, and fresh fruit of the root cellar survivor type (apples YES, bananas NO), and we can make a Costco run beforehand and I will be able to invest some of that meal money into things like fruit bars and bottled fruit juice and such that make a good enough breakfast for us who prefer our morning meal be Continental style.

Maybe some bran muffins. Depends on how much they are charging.

So all in all, it will likely be okay. Just like most of the things I freak out over. Once I get a grip on myself, and calm down, I can usually figure out how to deal with things.

And it’s tempting to wish I could just bypass the freaking out part, and maybe some day I can. But for now, the freaking out and getting depressed is necessary because it’s how I work out the emotions till I can be rational again.

I keep telling myself : You don’t have to be reasonable. You are allowed declare some things non-negotiable. You can insist on what you want without having to justify it. You can work hard on being you without taking everyone else into consideration as more important to, or even equal to, your own concerns.

Everyone has the right to treat themselves as their number one concern. Odds are nobody else will. How could they? They have their own lives to deal with. So everyone is their own primary caretaker, supporter, secretary, and spiritual advisor.

Some people take that to extremes and act like it is a zero sum game with only two outcomes : you are either entirely selfish and refuse to take other people’s feelings into account at all (good luck with that), or you are completely selfless and give away everything to the poor and live in rags on the street.

Note that it is rarely the proponents of the second option who insist upon this binary.

The problem is, both sides have a point. That is the usual result of being mired in a false dichotomy. Both positions take genuine points and extend them to their logical extreme in order to vilify the other.

Disagree with the selfish position? Then you must want everyone to be poor and living in filth. Disagree with the selfless position, and you must be a heartless ogre who wants as many poor people to die as possible.

The truth, like Aristotle said, lies somewhere in the middle. Total selfishness is both evil and self-destructive. There is much to be gained via empathy and caring and compassionate acts. You will feel much better about yourself if you let others in and let yourself out. Being terrified of doing so because you think it will somehow violate you or even destroy you is a fool’s game that can only lead to being very cold and very alone.

Honestly, you will be surprised at how little you miss or even care about what is washed away in the flood. All it does is get rid of a lot of delusional trash that was never really part of you to begin with, and thus, your self is not only not violated, it is purified.

You will feel more like yourself than ever before.

As for total selflessness, that is impossible. No matter how hard you work for others’ benefit, you will still be a person, with needs and desires and drives of your own, and the more you ignore them, the worse things will get for you.

(As an aside, most acts of extreme selflessly are driven not by a desire to help others, but a desire to be seen to be better than others. Holier than thou, so to speak. )

You will always be yourself. You will always be in charge of yourself. You have the right to act selfishly sometimes. You do not always have to be the loser in every zero sum game.

But if you want to be happy, you will let the river of life flow through you, not around you.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.