happy new year! for my coworkers and me, anyway. yes, it’s october 1, the beginning of fiscal year 2003 for those us of in government service. no big changes, except i had to have my timecard through yesterday finished by this morning, instead of by friday. woo.
ah, october, my favorite month. and this year, it brings our second hurricane threat in so many weeks. we escaped isidore and sent it to louisiana instead. looks like we may not be so lucky with lili.
i still felt like crap after lunch yesterday, so i went home about 2:00 and bummed around napping and watching stupid tv all afternoon and evening. being home beofre 5:00 finally gave me a chance to call nick (who is 7 hours ahead of me), so it was nice to talk to him. i miss having him here.
i’ve decided that i can’t possibly be the only person who often feels a little crazy and unsure of themself. if i were, i would be a strange mutation of the human race and some scientist would have discovered me by now and subjected me to all sorts of weird tests to understand why i am the way i am. now that we have that covered…
see, lately i’ve been having doubts. about where i am and what i’m doing with my life. like a flashback to the quarter-life crisis i underwent about a year and a half ago. the main character in office space asks a question that goes something like “what would you do if you had a million dollars? because whatever your answer is, that’s what you’re supposed to do.” the guy’s answer is that he would do nothing. (to put things in perspective, his friend’s answer is that he’d do two woman at the same time. yeah.) now, i know, it’s just a movie, but i actually think the question is legitimate.
i like my job, but i can’t escape feeling slightly restless. today is the 1st of october. it is the first 1st of october in the history of my life that i haven’t been in school, with the exception of one co-op tour. ok, and when i was a baby. but you get the idea.
if i woke up tomorrow morning and had a million dollars (and we’re just talking a flat million that is magically tax-free, for the purposes of this exercise, so don’t nit-pick, people), this is what i would do: first, pay off the rest of my student loans (which total more than $10k but less than $20k). second, treat myself to a new car. third, i would buy some things for family and friends that i know they really want. fourth, i might think about buying a house, but probably wouldn’t, because of what my next plan would be.
see, i’d take the remaining ~$925,000 and dump it into a savings account of some sort. with $925,000 in the bank, i would then indulge myself by going back to school and taking completely random classes in photography, or journalism, or graphic design. i would be able to go from odd job to odd job, changing and indulging my interests as i see fit, and never having to haggle over a salary of ~$20,000 a year because with the quite realistic assumption of a 5-6% return every year on my nest egg, i’d have ~$70,000/year at my disposal just from the interest. which is far more than i’d need, at least as a single person. hell, i could support a family on that! my parents did it on less.
they say that a million dollars today ain’t what it used to be, but i say, i’ll still take it and could live as comfortably as i wanted for the rest of my life. i dunno, it makes sense to me somehow.
it’s a bit of a scary thought–the idea that if money didn’t matter, i can’t say that i’d definitely be doing what i’m doing now. no, if money didn’t matter, i would explore many different paths.
becca says that if that’s how i truly feel, that if i’d quit my job tomorrow if someone gave me a million, then i should go ahead and do it. go ahead and explore another path.
i don’t know. i’d like to know if i could make it in a completely different career track, and i wonder if i would enjoy it more or less….and yet i am very comfortable with my life right now, and the comforts i’m able to enjoy on a more-than-$20k salary. i guess one must decide which they feel is more important, and i’m not ready to make that decision.
anyway. i’m feeling physically better today, so that’s a start, even if i’m still mentally confused. i posted pictures from bowling on sunday. i must warn the viewer that they are mostly bad pictures, and include many shots of people’s butts. i wasn’t in control of the camera, so you can’t blame me. i just post ’em.