The matter of me
Found eight cockroaches in the coffee plunger this morning, not seen them in there before. Mizuki not at all impressed.
Had a wonderful, long conversation with mum this morning. I’d wanted to squeeze in an extra call because we missed our normal Sunday evening catch-up, we talked for almost two hours. The meat of our call had to do with me, our favourite subject. Mum asked some poignant follow-up questions to things we’d talked about before. We talked about money, and how little I have spent this year (equivalent to 1400 British pounds), laughed at the fact that as a consequence of that low spending, the $230 I spent on a second hand Vitamix blender constituted 8.5% of my expenses for the year so far. That prompted mum to ask how it is that I manage to haggle/negotiate so successfully in cases such as: the blender (the seller had listed it at $400), my truck (paid $6000 on an asking price of $8000), my wage (started at $23/hr 7 months ago, now make $32.50/hr). My top of mind thoughts ran as follows:
- Confidence that all parties can survive a mild disagreement about an objects value.
- Awareness of the fact that my needs are already met. I am ever conscious of the fact that my needs are already met, that anything (beyond a necessary baseline of food) is a luxury beyond my needs, and therefore that I can live without whatever it is I find myself merely wanting.
- Fungibility of money, opportunity cost of spending/what we forego with each dollar that goes out the door. In my case, travel.
The largest ‘takeaway’ from our phone call was the firming up of my growing awareness that I need structure. I talked about the small but compounding harm that has been done by people kindly informing me that I’m a very independent person. This has, from a young age, fostered in me a feeling that I don’t need other people. Little could be further from the truth. I’m realising now that I have taken myself almost as far as I can, that in order to learn and grow as a person I need richer influences, to connect with others, have exploratory and stimulating conversations, expand my toolset of thinking methods.
I’m parked outside Mizuki’s work waiting for her to finish up on the forklift so I can take her to the beach for lunch. Reminds me of when I would bring lunch to Rose while she was working at the Comedy Festival in Melbourne, or the Fringe in Wellington. There’s a real joy in being able to occupy a moment in the day of a loved one that is usually off limits, the time they spend at work. The freedom, granted by my day off, to enter one of the interstitial moments of someone else – a lovers’ – day.
