The budget of the unemployed, continued

Thursday's money is full of grace:
brunch out: $10 (because what's the point of being unemployed if you can't periodically have spontaneous midmorning breakfasts with friends who may've been up too late partying and hence are playing hooky from work?)

For the record, I talked myself out of the less healthy (thank you neuroses!) and more expensive things involving hashed browns in favor of a salad and out of an Arnie Palmer in favor of simple iced tea.

::

Today's tip:
While discussing the healthy avoidance of paralyzing guilt, my older and wiser and probably more fun roommate pointed out that the first step is telling yourself there is no reason to feel guilty and that you don't feel guilty. At first, this is empty rhetoric, your politician self promising your plebeian self that the recession you see? Not happening. Ignore the unemployed friends, the rising costs of basics, that falling stock market. But eventually you are less the creepy liar who's cheating on his wife, and more the aged master from kung fu movies who sets a seemingly impossible challenge that turns out to work. And then, one day, you are your own self-help book, providing good advice and reassurance and reminding yourself to have perspective.

My roommate didn't say it like that because she doesn't obfuscate things or have a sick obsession with twisted analogies. But she did agree that it's also similar to making changes to your diet; initially you crave the unhealthy things you're used to eating, but with time, you honestly begin to prefer the healthy foods over those former favorites.

Which brings us to the actual tip: tell yourself what you like and don't like. Eventually you will be telling the truth. Don't say: oh, I really want that new $5 eyeshadow. Instead say: oh, that $5 eyeshadow is pretty enough, but I think it's about one shade off from the ideal brown for my skin tone (aesthetics) and who knows what chemicals are in it (hypochondria, social justice) and that's a lot of packaging (environment) and I'd rather save that $5 for the perfect eyeshadow because $5 is enough to buy a small nation (tightwad).

The best bit is that the perfect eyeshadow exists only as flickering images in Plato's cave and that itself is a concept so you will never actually encounter it.*

* Best bit here means only in the saving-money sense. It is not the best bit when you are supposed to buy a new eye shadow for whatever reason one has to buy eye shadows and you have so convinced yourself that you don't want the imperfect ones that you are nearly paralyzed by the decision and you are the freak standing in Walgreens holding eighteen potential eye shadows with your face streaked with tears and mascara. Not that I've ever experienced such things.