esther has a good point

I was reading my friend bEsther’s blog about “the deceitfulness of wealth.” She was saying — I think — that one can never have enough money, that there will always be something to worry about.

And isn’t that the truth.

Tim and I were worried about money, so I decided to take another job, this one part time.  So we have more money coming in. That should’ve solved our problems, right?

Wrong.

We still worry about it. It’s like what we spend expands somehow to fill up all the money we earn. When we had no money, when Tim wasn’t working (much) and I only had one job (with a reduced salary at that), we were cheap to the point of being stingy: no spending any unnecessary money. At all. But once we both got jobs and more hours, it’s as if all our resolve, all our good spending habits, all our remembering that there are things we’d rather have than a new pair of shorts or a cute dress, all of that went out the window. Compared to what we’d had before, the “wealth” we had now seemed almost endless.

I think that’s a symptom of a bigger problem, of never really being satisfied with what we have or where we are or what we can get. (We as in everyone, not just Tim and I). I think it may be time to try something new: being content with what we have. I know we’re looking so hard at the future — when I only have to work one job, when Tim has a job he finds fulfilling, when Tim has full-time work — and so hard at where we’ve been and what we’ve had to go through that we’re not thinking about right now and how to enjoy it, even if we can’t eat out a lot or go see movies or go shopping.

There’s plenty we can do: go to the dog park with the pup, walk the gardens and state parks in the area, have a picnic outside. We have so much, something that can be hard to keep track of with recession, illness and negativity vying for attention. I’m trying to be positive. Good thing optimism isn’t a salable commodity; I can get that for free.