i met a very interesting guy last night. his name is Tim Dennis.

we spent an hour in studio (Wed Mar 11 @ 11p) talking about his journey around the world to raise awareness about street kids. his spiritual journey, he called it. not religious … just spiritual. he sold his house in Scotland, rid himself of the burdens of what most of us might consider normal life (the mortgage, the debt, the sometimes-meaningless routine) and set out to inspire. he’s been living out of his truck and off the kindness of others, couch to couch, in an effort to help kids find a better way.

and he says he’s a normal guy. no better than anyone else, he says. anyone can do this, he says. i don’t disagree, but i wonder how much we want to.

oh sure, i firmly believe that deep within all of us is a desire to change the world (or at least our part of it), but there are so many ways we fight that desire. each day, we find new ways to push it down, down further, when we should be coaxing it to spring up and gush out around us:

• work
• marriage
• kids
• hobbies
• commitments

none of these are bad things. some are necessary. but all them can and should contribute to stoking that desire, rather than extinguishing it.

everyone one of us is on a spiritual journey. rarely will it involve selling our homes and setting out across this great globe with little more than wheels and a pillow (and sometimes not even that), but would you do that if you could? or if you felt you could? we’ve heard it before — life is all about the journey — but why we do allow ourselves to get caught up in the mundane, to convince ourselves that meaningless distractions are so important, to believe that what we do doesn’t matter, or even to put religious destination ahead of the spiritual journey?

Tim Dennis isn’t perfect, but he took the first step.

that’s a start.

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i’ve always hated seeing people who claim to be Christian flaunt their supposed greatness above others. it’s rarely obvious, but worse, i think, the more subtly it shows. because the openly proud are more easily dismissed, but the subtles provide the brush with which to paint the whole.

i’m not saying all Christians do this. i just hate when i see the ones who do. it’s trite, haughty and wrong.
it makes me angry.
it makes me sick.

…

i caught a reflection of myself today …

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life with a little girl is always frustrating and occasionally entertaining. (hold on, i might have mixed something up there … i haven’t decided if i’m going to be nice or honest.) the latest quirk is, whenever i catch her doing something she knows is wrong — in the act, red-handed, no need for a jury of her peers — she’ll stop, look right at me, and smile. and not just any smile. this is the sickest, most insincere, get-on-your-nerves kind of smile you ever did see. (horrifying thought: what if it’s not just a passing quirk?!)

it’s fake! she knows it, i know it, and she knows i know it. but still she’ll strike her pose, flaunt her evil ways in front of dear ol’ dad and say, “i’m a good girl, daddy. see? i’m smiling.”

(thoughts of Child and Family Services prevent me from wiping the smile off her face.)

it strikes me as childish, but then, she’s a child. she has an excuse, for now. and i was reminded of how those of us who don’t have that excuse still seem to find a way to keep up the act. with our boss, our spouse, our God. we might have had more time to perfect the smile with more realistic sincerity, but don’t be fooled — there’s no less fakery involved. and i’d love to say otherwise, but from time to time, that’s me.

it’s no fun being shown my own shortcomings in the face of my child, but sometimes i wonder if that’s why they’re there.

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more than money, my family inheritance includes a burning compulsion to keep. to collect. some would say hoard. it’s a wonder my username isn’t packrat31. that’s about how many years i’ve been fighting this flaw. and wouldn’t you know, the flaw often wins.

stuff – i’ve collected
trinkets – i’ve kept
not much i’ve rejected
not much that i’ve left

what kind of stuff? sports cards, comic books, birthday cards, bottle caps, trading cards, stamps, toys, books, costumes, cassettes, CDs, vinyl records, movies (still have more on VHS than DVD), files and anything with a speck of perceived importance or shred of sentimental “value”. in my defense, i have a rigorous process that each item must endure before kept (most likely) or chucked (less likely). okay, a single question, and maybe not so rigorous: can i justify hanging on to this for just a little longer?

far too often, i convince myself that the answer is yes. which is why i’ve moved six times and still have a lot of the same junk i had when i first thought it was cool. even though i’m still young(ish), healthy(ish) and robust(ish), that gets tiring. and with a seventh move on the horizon, i’m trying to trim the fat and knock 40% or so of my stuff off the list before i pack the first box.

in some cases — as i discovered this afternoon — the first box is already packed. i was in the basement searching for the Christmas tree (the small one, not the other two we have. and yes, we have used two trees in one year before, but no … never three.) when i stumbled upon a box that hadn’t been opened since our last move 4½ years ago. sure, makes it easy to keep it ready for the next move, but do i really want to truck the same box from house to house over the years, only to have my kids open it when i’m dead and find that there’s nothing worthwhile taking up that space? (as i age, i’m apparently getting smarter, so the new answer is now no.) of course, i opened it (out of curiousity, not because i had the time) and found all sorts of little things that i couldn’t bear to leave behind last time we moved. all sorts of little things that i haven’t missed or even thought about since … like a broken stapler … and more cassettes that i bought specifically for my first car, because it only had a tape player. i don’t listen to tapes in the car anymore or at home or anywhere else, and i’m not shelling out $400 for one of those machines that transfers cassettes to your computer for playback and storage. so what’s the logical thing to do?

*sheepish grin

you’re right, but packrat31 does not live in a logical world.

so the box is still sitting in the basement, and i’m sitting upstairs pondering its fate. and i know that this is the turning point. this is it. if i dump the box, i will have inflicted the fatal wound in packrat31. the killing blow. not dead yet, but bleeding. heavily. and running out of time. because he will be caught so callously, so unaware, that he will be left gasping, clawing, screaming at this unexpected treachery. “you were my friend!” he will cry.

and i will crush his head.

…

but the box is still sitting in the basement, and i’m sitting upstairs pondering its fate. until that changes, packrat31 wins again.

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just returned from the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight.
if this one’s on your list …

prepare to be disturbed.

… it has been 29 days since my last confession, er, blog post.

blindly stumble forward with me as i answer the question, “can i spend on nothing but needs for 30 straight days?”

after 30 days, step one is done: i’ve proven i can stick it through.

that in itself is a victory, because as the cliché goes, you don’t reach the finish line without taking the first little step. and while i won’t be spending 21¢ a day on things i want for the rest of my life (more, undoubtedly), i learned a thing or two:

- as bearded monkey said, i can become better at preparing for my days ($1.35 a day on poor planning doesn’t sound like much, but why not put that $500/year into something more useful?)
- i really don’t have to buy junk or even useless treasure to be a better person (or think i am)
- bank accounts looks better with bigger numbers at the end of the month
- i can reach goals (or come awfully close) when i a) define them clearly, b) write them down, and c) make them public
- inspiration is a ball that, once rolling, is tough to stop

i’m excited about what to do next and how far i can take this pruning concept. an added bonus is that even if i’m not documenting my daily spends, it should be easier to keep that up than it was 30 days ago.

time for a celebratory break … i’ll pick up the shears again a little later.

~score~
wants: $6.38
daily avg: $0.21
poor planning: $40.50

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blindly stumble forward with me as i answer the question, “can i spend on nothing but needs for 30 straight days?”

for the sake of good health, i skipped breakfast today.

what, that’s a bad idea?

finally returned to the chiropractor this morning (after a seven year absence, according to my chart!), and didn’t give myself enough time to chow down before leaving, so i found myself swinging through — you guessed it — the local Timmys for a Bagel B.E.L.T. after realigning my spine.

yeah, that’s yummy. delicious, in fact. or as my little girl says … “bee-licious”.

you know by now I’ll chock that up to poor planning, but i spent a little more than on just my breakfast. i decided to pull a random act of kindness and pay for the driver behind me. felt good – i’ll be honest. but now, i’m left with the dilemma of how to categorize that money drop.

1) i wanted to spend the money on something that wasn’t necessary … so is it a want?
2) i hadn’t set out to perform the RAK when i left home … so is it poor planning?
3) the world would be better off i (and others) did this more often … so is it a need?

i think you know i’m going to fight for this one.

i’ll admit, i don’t exercise my generous side as much as i think i should. in fact, there are situations i find myself in where i’m searching for justification to hang on to the bills in my pocket in order to walk away guilt-free. it’s not that i’m greedy, or overly selfish … but i certainly could put others first a lot more than i do.

when i think of people that give of themselves, it brightens my day. from the co-worker who spontaneously asks how she can help lighten the work load to the guy who brings in snacks for the gang, it makes my day. knowing that someone else has you in mind — even on the simplest level — is a compliment of sorts. a confirmation that you’re worth somebody’s time. and everyone gets a boost from feeling worthwhile.

i didn’t have this in mind when i decided to pay for the driver behind me, but i know if someone surprised me in that way, i’d have a smile on my face for more than a while. what’s more, i wouldn’t keep it to myself. we’re human, we like to share good news. in that way, one person’s act of kindness creates a ripple effect that doesn’t soon disappear.

i don’t know how far this morning’s act rippled outward from the driver behind me, but i’d like to think that it didn’t end with him/her. i’d like to think that s/he told a co-worker, friend or spouse, and that one of them felt inspired enough to at least consider doing something in kind at the next opportunity. if that didn’t happen, fine. but if it did, perhaps those ripples could one day reach as far as you.

you might be on the opposite side of my world right now, but with internet, e-mail and even the telephone, a random act of kindness knows no boundaries. all it takes is for one act to reach one person who passes it on … to someone who chooses to continue the cycle.

what does all this have to do with Pruning the Money Tree? that’s debatable, but at least i’ve just convinced myself that what i did this morning is a need … maybe it’s time to add another category to the budget.

~score~
wants: $6.38
daily avg: $0.22
poor planning: $40.50

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blindly stumble forward with me as i answer the question, “can i spend on nothing but needs for 30 straight days?”

i’ll tell you right now, i won’t be turning this experiment into a daily habit.

i’ll certainly take it farther than i used to, but here’s why i won’t even try to keep this up forever. i’ve worked my “wants meter” down to less than a quarter per day. if i kept that pace over the course of a year, that’s less than $100 spent on wants. sounds great for a miser, but that’s not what i want to be. my goal is not to hoard as much as possible, it’s to be wiser with my money than i was before the pruning began. that, i’ve accomplished. that will continue.

but i also want to live a little. that’s part of why i’m here.

~score~
wants: $6.38
daily avg: $0.23
poor planning: $36.82

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blindly stumble forward with me as i answer the question, “can i spend on nothing but needs for 30 straight days?”

friends and family

at the park on windy day

nothing else like it

~score~
wants: $6.38
daily avg: $0.24
poor planning: $36.82

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