I had a whole entry typed up before I left for Thanksgiving. I swear I did. I know not where it went.
To prove how much of a dork I am, I wandered around The Container Store last week for about thirty minutes. It was my first time inside said store, and the whole time I could think only this single thought: “I should be forbidden from shopping here, because I could spend 2.4 * 10omg dollars at this place.” I ended up spending nearly that much on a trash can and a couple of cable turtles.
The problem with having enough money to buy things is that I’ll end up convincing myself I have enough money to buy things. Imagine a monthly salary increase of X dollars. Now divide that new money into the new expenses you’re incurring or are about to incur: higher rent, car down payment (and monthly payments), car insurance, and long‐term savings (401k contributions, mutual funds, whatever). I could easily devote all of my new money to just these things. But I still feel like I’ve climbed an economic rung, so I worry I’ll regard myself as someone who now has cash to burn on things I don’t really need.
Anyway.
I was in New Orleans over Thanksgiving. The photos I took tell the story better than anything I could write, but I’ll add this: as he was driving me around town to show me all the aftermath, my father said he thought the city should paint all the telephone poles up to the waterline, to show future generations exactly how high the water got in that area. As a way of saying, “Look what we survived.” I think that’s a fantastic idea, and I’ll become quite cross when it doesn’t happen.