A Shovel for the Crap.

What's Good? Money.

What's Bad? Money.

What's the Difference? Life and happiness.

I know it's been said before, but I'm saying it again anyway. The creator of the quote “Money can't buy you happiness” is an absolute moron. Seriously, people. Whoever first termed that quote, and all those delusional folks who repeat it in far too many conversations, I have to ask you, “Where is your head at??” Or better yet, “Where is this fantasy world you live in and how do I get there?”

Don't get me wrong, I get the gist of the meaning behind the words. It's better to have a happy family life than to make gobs of cash, marry the personality, not the wallet, etc. But is it really better? Who knows. What I do know is in today's life, you NEED money, all the time, to be happy.

What level of happiness am I talking about? I think at this stage in life I'm all about the basics. Electricity in your home is happiness, you need money to have electricity. Heat during the cold months is happiness, you need money to have heat. Food to eat is happiness, you need money to have food. Work and a regular paycheck is happiness, but you need money to get that work and to get TO that work.

I understand these are basic facts in life and are often taken for granted. Everybody's gotta deal with it, nothing new there, move on. We all plan for it and do what we've got to do to make it happen. It's basic, it's a part of everyday life. But what if all of that stops being basic? What if that existence you've provided for yourself suddenly smacks you upside the head so hard your clothes will be out of style by the time you stop rolling? (One of my father's favorite quotes.) And, out of nowhere, all those plans, all that work, is meaningless.

Plans are great, aren't they? We all have them, we all make them, discard them, rewrite them. They are there. They may be a detailed, long-term list of what and when filling a 300 page notebook. Or perhaps a 10-year agenda of how you want to get from where you are to where you want to be. They may even be something as simple as this vague notion in the back of your thoughts, this fuzzy, dream-quality image of where you want life to take you.

Plans are great. They tell us where to go and how to get there. They're a gentle reminder when we forget what is truly important to us. And a nudge in the right direction if we get knocked off our path a little. Best of all, they're usually easily adjustable and you can modify them to include that new goal or cool, fun thing you've recently discovered.

Yes, plans are great. Until that smack upside the head snatches them from your hands, tears them up, shreds them, and dumps them in a used litter box. I'm not digging them out of there. Are you?

So what do you do now? Many of us live paycheck to paycheck, nothing astounding about that announcement. We don't buy a $50 pair of jeans without budgeting for it or working overtime. We can't wait til next pay when we'll have money to order a pizza. But we're making it, it's working. Until one little bit of crap starts the downhill slide. That $25 vehicle inspection turns into a $400 new breaks and tire bill. A week or two later the alternator goes, couple of weeks after that the starter. Your medication that was a $10 co-pay suddenly isn't covered and you have to pay $300 a month. And on and on.

And the crap just keeps piling up on top of you. I'm no longer talking about those little rabbit turds of crap, I'm talking about the great big globs of crap that plop down one right after the other until you don't even know where to start or what life should smell like.

Money DOES buy you happiness. Because money is the ONLY shovel you have to haul that huge mound of crap out of your existence. So, how do you get it? Where do you find it? There's a shovel laying out there somewhere for you…..but where? And would you even recognize it when you see it?

Very recently, I've been the recipient of the type of head smack I described earlier. In fact, I'm pretty sure my eyeballs are still rattling in my head. Yes, my clothes have gone out of style but that's not new. So, what do I do now?

Well, I'm learning what to do now. And I'm trying a large variety of many things to see if I can find my shovel. At this stage, I'm not sure I even know what a shovel is let alone how to use it, but I'm going to learn.

And I'll share my newly acquired knowledge here. And please note the MY in that last sentence. It's very likely that none of this is new, but it's new to me. I read a lot of blogs and watch a lot of Youtube videos about this. It's so easy to say what to do, the actual doing of it is a whole other ball park, though. So, read on as I explore, as I try, as I discard, and even as I completely screw up. I'll share it all, the good, and the bad, and the difference.

Maybe together we can discover exactly what that stupid shovel is supposed to do.



As always, take your time leaving but hurry on back.  :)