Of course, that’s only an approximation.
Did some calculating and realized I only have $354 to last me till the 25th. So either I overspent by a lot or this is an atypical five week month.
And there is no GST check to compensate this time. Next one is October.
I am pretty sure I didn’t radically overspend. I didn’t spend any more than usual. I didn’t make any extra purchases or anything.
So it must be a five week month. Fuck.
The thing is, I tried to figure out if it was, indeed, the dreaded Month Of Five last week and I thought I had figured out that it was not.
But the numbers don’t lie.
At least, not to me.
I need a more reliable way to figure out which months are the evil of having to survive for 25 percent longer on the same money.
Right now, I try to figure it out via the Windows calendar and, well, manually counting weeks. Which sounds simple enough, but it’s obviously too tricky for me.
I get so confused by the transition between months.
So that’s obviosuly no good.
The first site that I tried after I Googled “how many weeks are there between August 21 [1] and September 25 [2] ” made the extraordinary assumption that you were looking for a date in the future.
What the heck were they thinking? Boggles the mind. Why limit it like that?
The one I linked to above doesn’t even assume the dates are in this era. As in, it had a AD/BC selector. These are my kind of people.
Too bad the web design is so crude. But it’s results that matter.
And yes, according to it, there are exactly five weeks between those two dates. Dammit.
Let’s test next month. September 25 to October 23.
Four weeks. Phew! Plus a GST check, which will be nice.
As usual, I am not in any financial danger. I have savings. I’ll be fine. It’s the shock of it and the feeling that I have fucked myself over by not seeing this shit coming that bothers me and makes me feel insecure.
I am perfectly capable of rationally and sensibly managing my finances in a prudent and forward-thinking way…. if I have the right information.
Oh well. I have bookmarked that lovely little calendar calculator and in the future I will make a habit of using it to check the upcoming month every time I get my check.
Oh, and I know how I will compensate for my current situation. Tonight’s FRED dinner will go on my card and hence come from my card.
That, and some clever shopping tonight should make sure I have at least $100/week for the next three weeks starting Wednesday. That’s not much but I can make it work.
Luckily. stretching a dollar so far it violates the Geneva Connection is a talent of mine. And, worst case scenario, I can withdraw cash from the card to supplement.
So my savings will take a beating, but that’s what they are there for.
I will be back after the break to talk about pain.
The fear of pain, that is. Nociphobia. I have been thinking about it a lot lately. and so I thought I would put some of those thoughts to “paper” and see what crops up.
Refresher : I think the fear of pain limits people in deep and terrible ways. People ends up suffering terribly from easily fixable problems simply because they are incapable of choosing to endure a brief and temporary bit of pain.
Loads of involuntary pain rather than choosing a little pain. That makes no god damned sense no matrer how you slice it.
The absurd example I gave before was the pain of going from a dark room to a brightly lit room. In response to that pain, people close their eyes. But no matter how long they close their eyes, opening them will hurt a little.
There’s a lot of people in this world who choose to remain blind rather than endure that tiny bit of pain.
And the thing is, it starts off sensible : all living things seek pleasure and avoid pain.
But we are sentient beings, not paramecia. We can see that a little pain to avoid a lot of pain is worth it. And yet, so many people struggle to make that choice.
It is as if the comforts of modern society have somehow made us more primitive. Like I have said before, this inability to choose pain can only occur in the context of our modern lives, which we have made so comfortable and painless that there is nothing actually forcing us to choose pain.
We can avoid it. Sometimes to our own considerable detriment. We are never forced to learn to get over it and do what is in our long term best interest as we would have been in a less civilized era.
On the surface, it seems like a ridiculous thing to cause so much suffering. A relationship falls apart because neither party will endure the awkwardness and discomfort of talking openly about their innermost feelings. A man watches his health get worse and worse because he hates going to the doctor and refuses to go. A child endures bullying rather than face something far scarier : potential disapproval.
Those aren’t the greatest examples but you get the idea.
The whole “lean in” movement touches on this. What if our reaction to suffering is making the suffering worse? What if instead of freezing up when we feel pain and thus keeping ourselves in the painful zone for a long time, we “lean in” to the pain and get it all over with?
There has to be a way for us to learn how to override our instincts in our own best interests. I am not sure how that would work though.
Teach self-discipline in school? How?
I will continue to contemplate this thorny issue.
But I won’t touch the thorns, because ow.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.