Lessons

Have you ever thought you learned a lesson in something and then come to find out you apparently didn’t learn it well enough cause you in the same damn situation again.  I’m having such a déjà vu moment now.  When I first left home a few months shy of 17, I lived with a guy, <shudders> named Michael.  Now I had a very modest savings then and even though I had rent to pay I still worked 40 hours a week AND went to school.  That lasted about 6 months before I gave up on school so I could work even more hours cause there was just never enough money and my savings was dwindling.  These were the days of the budding meat sandwiches if you’ve read that post before.

Well Michael was a very materialistic guy and while I am not, I let him talk me into buying all sorts of stuff.  When I finally dumped his ass, I SWORE that I would never find myself being that poor again and that I would ALWAYS make sure that I had a very comfortable safety net of money.  Anyone who has lived under the constant pressure and stress of just getting by for longer than a couple of weeks can relate to how horrible that feeling of desperation is.

Yet here I find myself again.  While I am not yet at the level of desperation that I’ve resorted to budding meat, and I can pay my mortgage.  I find myself without a very large safety net of money.  Now I am not laying blame at ‘S’ door for this, cause while we do have nice things between the two of us, and we did save, we just never saved enough for me to be on my own with the same level of bills for 2, at the same time that I lost 40% of my pay.

I want you to think about that now.  If you suddenly lost 40% of your salary tomorrow, could you pay your bills, groceries, gas, mortgage or rent and whatever extras you might need?  That’s the stress I’m under right now.  Now I can in theory make up that 40% and then some in commission.  However for me to make large commissions, people need to be buying.  And with the economy in it’s current state, not a whole lot of people are buying from the companies that I work with, so in turn they are not buying from me.  This is a serious problem.

So while it irritates me that I have to rely on ‘S’ for extra money to help pay the bills, even though we are separated and suppose to be responsible for ourselves, beggars can’t be choosers.  Maybe when the economy picks up, things will be better and I can start making some decent sales.  And THIS time I PROMISE I’ve learned my lesson.