Tag: money

Stealing Back Time

Bailey Gunn1 Comment

Not too long ago, I told you that time was like money, and that you should spend it wisely. And that’s still true. You should definitely think carefully about your priorities and how you will budget your weekend. But what about the moments when your time is abruptly taken from you? What about the moments you’re late or made to wait? Those moments are lost to you, and you wish you could get them back.

Well, lucky for you, I know how to do it. I know how to steal back time:

Read.

Yup, it’s that simple. Reading will allow you to fill your head with knowledge and fill the gaps of empty space in your day with productivity.

Take today for example. I cross a bridge to get to and from work, and when I’m really lucky, the bridge goes up, and I have to wait behind rows and rows of brake lights for it to go down again (usually about 15 to 20 minutes). Before, I would blast the radio and the A/C or heat to drown out the fact that I was going to be uncomfortably stuck in my car for a while. But recently, I’ve started to jam the car into “park” and whip out a novel while I’m waiting.

Gone are the moments where I’m staring mindlessly at someone’s back bumper. Instead, I’m gently cradled in a world of fantasy, with my eye carefully trained for movement in front of me. I’m actually excited when the bridge goes up now because I can take a few moments to get a couple of pages in. And as you can imagine, my ride home is a lot less stressful because I’m no longer wishing I were somewhere else.

Why does this work? Because a story, a magazine, a newspaper, or even a comic is easy to pull out in those dull periods of time during your day. It’s sort of like splashing water on your face: it rejuvenates you for your next task by creating a smoother transition: something to something, instead of nothing to something.

And I do this all of the time. I read at night, I read in the day. I even read and walk. I’m all like, Just walking? Pfft! BORING! SNORE! Let’s raise the difficulty level a bit!

Have I tripped occasionally? Sure! Do trees slap me in the face a couple of times a week? You betcha! Do I pull beetles out of my hair from walking to closely to branches? Hundreds of times! But I’m getting a full ROI on the time I spend when I have nothing else to do.

I mean, the fact that life is always going to give you something to wait for is a given. There will always be those quiet times where nothing is really coming and nothing is really going. And of course, there are always going to be times when you feel you could be more productive. But you don’t have to feel like your time is wasting away. Reading is, and always will be, the perfect solution for stealing it back, moment by moment, page by page.

Life is a Currency

Bailey Gunn1 Comment

Did you ever notice that no one really knows what to do with life? Everyone wants to find the meaning of it. Everyone wants to know its secrets. Everyone wants to “live” it. But no one knows how.

So, we spend our whole lives trying to puzzle out…our lives. Who are we supposed to be, and what are we meant to do, and how much time are we meant to do it in. Questions, questions, questions. And yet the core question of our lives, especially when we’re in our mid-twenties, is what are we put on this Earth to do. What are we supposed to do with the time that we are given?

But I think a better question is how do you want to spend your life? 

Because everything is always so much simpler when you talk about it in terms of money (especially math, but this whole metaphor thing works, too).

So, think about life like it’s a crumpled dollar in your pocket. Think of it like it’s that last couple of pennies that you found in between the cushions in your couch. Think about life like it’s the money in your savings account that you’ve been hoarding since middle school. It’s exactly the same.

There will be times in your life when you’ll have to spend money on things that you’d prefer not to spend it on (baby showers, bridal showers, bills). And at the same time, you’ll have to spend time in life on things you’d also prefer not to spend time on (baby showers, bridal showers, bills).

And then, there will be moments that you don’t have enough money (or time) to do the things you want to do, but you’ll do them anyway, because you know that you are short on both but that these moments are important.

And in very rare times, you will be able to buy and spend the money and time that you want to, with even more fantastic results.

By viewing life this way, you suddenly take the pressure off yourself. Sure, sometimes it can be hard to know how to spend your money, and a lot of the time, you’ll get it wrong. (Why did I go to the store to buy salad ingredients and come back with French Toast Crunch?) just like (Why did I hang out with that group of friends because they left me drunk at the bar without money or a taxi?) But that’s life, too. You’re going to make mistakes, and you’re, quite literally, going to pay for it.

The point is that if you treat life as you would your own money, you’ll find it to be a lot more precious and priceless than if you treated it as one big problem to be solved for x. It’s not necessary to have all the answers. All you have to do is spend your time (and money) wisely.

Do It For The Story

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This was both the slogan and the excuse during college.

Wait, you have a test tomorrow? No, no, no, dude. DUDE. We need to rob a bank, grab some corn dogs, jump the fence to the community center, and draw mustaches on all of the “Rent-a-Cop” posters. 

And any sensible person would at least ask why. But your friends already knew the answer: It’s so that you can be the coolest person at the party, strangers gathered around, beer in one hand and the other hand slightly raised in the air, describing how you scaled the fence to the community center only to find that your best friend was hanging from his underwear at the top. Like your friend, all of the people at the party are also hanging: on your every word.

And really, this isn’t news. Humans have a long oral history. We love stories. It’s how we communicate dangers, humor, and understanding. We are completely fascinated with telling others what has happened to us in order to warn them or simply make them laugh.

But that’s the key. To tell a story, you need an audience.

Which brings me directly to my point. You can have all the money in the world. You can jet-set to Japan to see the sunrise only to race back to New York to see it again. You can wear bikinis in Hawaii and parkas in Alaska in the same weekend. You can rub elbows, and maybe even noses, with celebrities. You can buy a mansion and have a wing just for your dog. You can invest that money, donate it to charity, and make it all back again.

And that would be great, truly. But it wouldn’t mean anything without someone to talk to about all of your adventures, all of your experiences, all of your fears. It would mean nothing if you couldn’t share it with at least one other person (romantically or platonically).

You see, as a young person who is not entirely sure what she wants to do with this box of chocolates we call life, I’ve always figured that if I had enough money, all of my problems would be solved. I could travel the world, like I want to. I could buy a house and rescue all of the homeless dogs, like I want to. I could feed the hungry and make a difference, like I want to. Yes, I could eat lots of corn dogs, like I want to.

But in the end, what would it amount to if I couldn’t tell my story to someone? Is a sunrise seen alone as sweet as one shared? For that matter, is a corn dog?

That’s a lesson this social media generation can relate to: “pictures or it didn’t happen.” Well, your life is one snapshot in a billion. If there is no one to appreciate its beauty, does it really matter that it happened?

And I know, it’s sort of like a “if a tree fell in a forest” argument, but I wonder if I didn’t have life already figured out in college, when I did everything for the story. I wonder if I’m not trying to complicate everything now that I’ve graduated.

The point is, you can rob a bank, eat corn dogs, and draw mustaches on unsuspecting Rent-A-Cops. But if you have no one to talk to, no one to laugh or cry with, no one to enjoy the stories of your life with, you have nothing.

In the end, it isn’t what we leave behind. It’s who we leave behind, and what we shared with them that truly matters. Write your story and make it a good one so that others will want to share it, too.

Winning the Lottery is a Great Way to Die

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Yes, if you haven’t heard, the Powerball Jackpot is up to a whopping $500 million dollars.

And if you really haven’t heard this news, then it’s probably because you haven’t been watching the news, or it’s because you’ve been fantasizing about what you’ll do with all of the money.

So, what will it be? Pay off your debt? Buy a new house? Move to another country? Own a yacht? Donate to charity? Get a sporty sports car? Quit your job in the most dramatic way possible?

Of course, this is not to mention all of the things that you’ll have to do when you hit it big: hide from relatives, remain anonymous, donate to your alma mater, squirrel it all away or blow it one shot, enroll in therapy to cope with your losses.

See, the problem with winning the lottery is that it is completely life-changing (says the girl who has only won prizes out of a claw machine and knows nothing about actually winning the lottery). But, sans experience, if you really think about it, if you think about coming into a lot of money, you’ll find that there are a lot of parallels to dying. No, seriously:

  1. There is a formal announcement. (People who aren’t your relatives may cry. Your relatives may cheer.)
  2. Everyone pretends that they know you. (And show up at the most inconvenient times).
  3. You have to disappear for awhile. (Whether you come back is really up to how much you win and how much debt your relatives are in).
  4. You have to give up your current lifestyle, sometimes unwillingly. (Which is exactly like death because, well, you know, you’re dead.)
  5. Relatives have to sort through your belongings. (And decide what to move into your new castle).
  6. You realize that it was your health that mattered all along. (Again, death sort of puts a stopper on anything “health-related”).

And so what do I mean by all of this? More money is the way to solve my problems, you say. And it is in some ways. I’m not about to sit here and tell you that my student loans have gone away because I have been wishing on every 11:11 I see.

But there is a price to receiving gobs and gobs of money. What everyone doesn’t realize is that when you receive it, you have to give up a lot, too. You inevitably experience a sort of death in society, as it were. And it really isn’t a happy demise. (If you need specific examples, google every single celebrity ever.)

Let’s face it: you have to give up your sense of anonymity because everyone knows the person who won 500 mil at the office, drug store, mall, etc. You have to give up your current life because everyone is going to call you a cheapskate if you don’t buy a mansion, and everyone is going to whisper when you pour every cent into a new Ferrari. But most of all, you have to give up your sense of humanity. Sure, you can donate to charity, and it will most likely make you feel good. But you’ll never be able to really empathize with the struggles of the common man or woman ever again. You’ll be a ghost, looking in.

The point is, if you say that you need more money in your life, you are simply looking to deaden yourself to the world. You are simply saying that you would prefer to disappear. What you really need to be saying is that I need more love in my life. And when you have that, you begin to realize that all of the best things in life are truly free.