No spending, the wrap-up

Well, wrap-up for now, anyway…more to come later.

For those following along, it’s probably pretty clear by now that I’ve been away.  There’s a long story and a short one, but the short one is just that things have been a bit rough on the work front for a few weeks, and dealing with the issues (and my resulting emotional state) took a whole lot of time, plus a bunch of rest and time spent trying to take care of myself.

The craziness isn’t over yet – I’m just sitting a bit more calmly in the middle of it right now.  But for now, I’m sitting at the table, surrounded by books, drinking green tea from a vintage mug and listening to “The Harry Smith Project: Anthology of American Folk Music Revisited”.  Really, with that going for me life can’t be all bad, can it?

So, I may or may not be back to posting more regularly soon.  To be fair, I very much hope to be.  Having a side project and a record of it did me a lot of good, I think, and I don’t want to lose out on that.  There are, however, a few kinks to work out first, plus some extra work that’s due to start very soon (which I’m looking forward to, by-the-by).

But, in the meantime, July is over (decidedly over now, sadly), and I have more to talk about with regards to the no spending.

The bad: after a good friend and I both had seriously lousy days, we took a trip to the used bookstore for a bit of distraction.  While I once again stuck with books that have been on my list for awhile, I did buy a few that were more wants than needs right now.  Admittedly nothing was over $3 and most were less, totalling $7, but still.  In the name of full disclosure I left with Jane Jacob’s “The Nature of Economies,” Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food” (which I’ve been wanting to read for ages), and a lovely hardbound edition of “The Wind in the Willows”.  One of my favourite stress-relievers is reading good children’s lit, and the latter is one that I actually haven’t ever read.  While I’m thrilled to be able to read them, I’m not quite so thrilled about buying yet more books, or heading out to shop as a distraction when things are not going so well.  This might be something to give more thought to.

The questionable: I’m a bit behind on ordering work-related things, so this week didn’t really have any questionable purchases in it – no textbooks, no software, no other supplies.

In terms of non-academic purchases, The Boy and I did make a move to buy a new push-cart type thing, since the old one was dying and we like it for groceries, but they were out of stock, so we made do with the reusable bags we usually use.

The good: my spending (other than the books) was limited to food.  Occasionally this was not-quite-so-good food (comfort, thy name is cheese), but for the most part I was buying good quality farmer’s market produce, which I’m pleased with.  The fridge is currently full of escarole, lettuce, spinach, leeks, tomatos, mushroons, zucchini, squash, and other tasty things.

So, that’s the nuts and bolts of what happened.  That said, I think I could use a bit of a post on what (if anything) I learned, where I’d like to improve, and whether I’m going to continue to limit or cut out spending in the same way.