If you are in the relationship category, then the awful days are perhaps even more important. The awful days come for couples, hopefully not too many of them, and they also help us see the great days. One difference for couples is that if you can look back—together—on the awful days, that likely means that you are still together. If you can handle the awful days, provided that is not all you have, then you have a good chance of making it for the long haul. There will hopefully be many good days, but when the awful ones come along, try to think of them a little differently. If you can’t, or don’t want to cherish them, at least realize the potential they have for making the great days that much better.
Try to cherish them. I know that sounds weird, but I think it’s important try to cherish the awful days that we all have. For the single among us, there are good and bad days. Hopefully there are more good than bad, but bad days do come. And then there are the awful days. I know that those are the days that none of us want, but they come to us all. So why on earth would we cherish them? Because without the awful days, the great days will not be great. I know some people don’t like dichotomies, but I think this one makes sense. If we don’t have some awful days now and again, then we won’t ever know if we have great days. And the fact that we can look back on those awful days means that we are through them. Awful days are a bit like physical scars—they show how we have lived and overcome.
If you are in the relationship category, then the awful days are perhaps even more important. The awful days come for couples, hopefully not too many of them, and they also help us see the great days. One difference for couples is that if you can look back—together—on the awful days, that likely means that you are still together. If you can handle the awful days, provided that is not all you have, then you have a good chance of making it for the long haul. There will hopefully be many good days, but when the awful ones come along, try to think of them a little differently. If you can’t, or don’t want to cherish them, at least realize the potential they have for making the great days that much better.
0 Comments
Part of doing math is balancing equations. I don’t remember a lot of my math classes, but I do remember that much. Well, life is a math problem that has to be balanced. There is not really any way around it. You can borrow money until the cows come home, but at the end of the day (or when you die), the accounts have to be settled one way or another. So if you have future beneficiaries you would like to leave holding the bag, then you can probably not worry about balancing your personal financial equation. For the rest of us, there is work to be done. I have blogged before about how we used to borrow lots of money and pay on credit cards every month. That was such a blast I think I’d rather have a couple of root canals instead. Now we use cash, as I have also blogged about, and as I just wrote a couple of posts back, we actually have money in the bank now. Amazing how ditching credit cards and working on having an equation that works (more income - less outgoing = money in the bank) makes life easier. So for this part of the diatribe (some of you are thinking that’s what these posts are. I can’t totally disagree), I want to talk about balancing the equation of wants and needs. Now some people, and it’s probably the same group that won’t get off the couch because “their time is too valuable,” think that everything they want is actually a need. “Oh, but I need a new smart phone. I need to get my nails done, or get new shoes (making pair number twenty), or get my haircut at the expensive stylist.” As the Brits would say, “What a load of tosh.” I use clippers at home to cut my hair, and I haven’t paid for a haircut for going on twenty years now. But that might be a bit extreme for everyone, so let’s get a little more moderate. Needs are things that you have to have to survive, make a living, exist. Reliable transportation is a need for most of us. Having a fancy new car that costs hundreds a month in payment is not a need. That’s what I would call stupid. We own three cars outright, and if we need another, we will troll the used-car lots until we find an acceptable vehicle we can buy for cash. I’ve been there with the “I have to have a new car,” so I know that I don’t have to have a new car. Mine is twelve years old and runs fine. We all have to eat. That is a need. Food is necessary, steak is not. If you are someone that has to eat out, or buy expensive everything at the grocery, you may not get the whole math problem thing yet. Chicken legs are typically a dollar or less a pound, as opposed to that juicy ten dollar a pound steak. If you make a lot of money and want steak, have at it. But for most of us, chicken legs will work just fine. There are other things I could list, but I think that the point is made. Don’t get caught up wanting everything so badly that is becomes a need that you cannot afford. That is a surefire way to create problems for yourself and for those around you. I promised more, so here comes some more. Life is a math problem that many folks don’t seem to understand very well. For example, there are any number of people that say, “My time is worth more than…”. I have been one of those folks before. My time is valuable. I’m worth a lot of money. I deserve a lot of money. Sound familiar? As I said, I’ve been there. Typically when I have heard this idea (or thought about it) it goes with, “I won’t get a job there because I am worth more than they pay.” That sounds great on the surface, but remember that I am talking about math here. We’d all like to get paid more. We’d all like to think that we are worth a mint. So why bother looking for a job that might pay minimum wage? That’s for lesser people, mere mortals that can’t find something better, right? Well, how much do you get paid for sitting on your couch? I said in my last post that I am currently working two jobs, and one of those jobs is a minimum wage situation. Why did I take it? I have previously worked for as high as $50 dollars an hour. That was awesome. I couldn’t get enough of that kind of money. I think most people that get to that level or higher would agree. That was great money. But here’s the thing—it didn’t last. Work situations change with alarming frequency. So now I have a job that pays a pittance compared to the high point for me. Why did I bother? Because life is a math problem, as I am trying to convince you of. I had the prospect of sitting on the couch all summer. That would have been great, mind-numbing fun. I could have watched a bunch of movies, ate chips till I exploded, and been a total vegetable. But had I done that, I would have earned exactly zero dollars. Nothing. Bubkis. Zilch. You get the point, I trust. So that was one possibility for my summer, sit on the couch and earn no money at all. I know plenty of people would have selected that option because “my time is more valuable than that”. Well, mine is more valuable than that, but not the “that” you might think of at first. The fact is, working hard for a low (in my experience, at least) wage brought money into the house. In fact, instead of making zero dollars over the summer, I made thousands working for minimum wage. Now which scenario is better? Not hard to beat zero dollars, especially when it gets into thousands of dollars. I could have whined that my time is more valuable than minimum wage, but the truth is, it’s not right now. Given the choice of nothing or something, something wins. So for all the whiners who are just being lazy (yes, I said it), get off your butt and earn a paycheck. More to come. That’s not easy for me to say. I am a writer by nature. Math is a four letter word in our house, if you catch the double meaning there. But I am convinced, more so all the time, that life is indeed a math problem. Of course I will try to illustrate what I mean. We used to make money and spend even more money. It didn’t matter because once upon a time we had credit cards and didn’t mind borrowing as much money as a lender would let us borrow. Who cares, right? It was all on plastic, so it wasn’t real to us. But as much as I struggle with math, I do understand negative numbers. And once upon a time, we were swimming in negative numbers. Hence the math problem. I think many people—it seems particularly problematic here in the States, though I can’t speak for people in other countries—seem to believe that negative numbers will work in the real world for real life finances. That is a problem. Negative numbers work in the classroom when working a math problem on the board, but in life, negative numbers spell trouble. So here is the basic math problem as I see it: income minus expenses equals ???. Many people seem to think that expenses should be whatever number they want while being unwilling to work extra to increase the income part of things. That doesn’t work. I’m speaking from experience here. I mentioned ways that we used to act, but now we make sure that income is a larger number than expenses on a monthly basis. How do we make that happen? We work. I currently work 2 jobs, 7 days a week between them, because life is a math problem. One of the results of us having changed our ways, and of us working hard, is that we actually have money in the bank now. We know that real world numbers have to balance in the end. There is more that I want to say on this topic, but I will save it for anther post. I have blogged on other major topics over several posts, and this particular topic seems pretty major. More soon. I would love to see a 110% return on investments that I make. That would be awesome (and unrealistic in the extreme, I realize). I wouldn’t want to pay 110% interest (perhaps more realistic in some situations) on something. But let’s stop with the 110% effort. It’s a myth and impossibility. Don’t believe me? Well, let’s think through this for a moment. If I give 100% effort, that’s pretty darn good. I think most people would be satisfied with me saying that I’m going to give 100% effort instead of say 60% effort. I think we can all agree that less than 100% effort is possible and probably common in many endeavors. But if I give 100% effort, that’s great. I’m giving it my all. Yay me. But we are moving into the time of year when we will likely hear from many sports figures that they plan to give 110% on the field. Not possible. Those folks lack something I like to call common sense. A bit harsh? Perhaps. If I can give 110% effort, and that is all the effort I can give, then that means that I am giving 100% effort. I can never, nor can anyone else, give more effort than they can give. If I can somehow give 110% effort, then I wasn’t giving a 100% effort before. There is no giving more effort than I can give. 110% makes absolutely no sense when we are talking about individuals and the amount of effort they give at any task. To claim that now, somehow, you are going to give it more effort than before and that will be more than 100% is silly. If you are always giving your all, then you are always giving 100% effort. That is not to say that the amount of effort that each of us has and can give doesn’t vary—of course it does. If I am under the weather, then I can’t give as much effort as if I am healthy. In that moment of ill health, I can still give 100% effort. It just won’t be the same 100% that I can give when I’m healthy. So how about we knock off the whole “I’m going to give more effort than is possible to give” attitude and ditch the 110% effort talk. |
Want to get new blog posts by email? Sign up below.
AuthorRyan Myers writes a variety of fiction. He plays the field from mystery to literary fiction to fantasy. He is also working on a memoir. Archives
April 2020
|