I don’t like to be a complainer.

I am one, but I don’t like to be. So, I hide this entry behind a link. You choose to read my moaning at your own peril.

Any moment now, though, life/fate/whatever-you-call-it can just stop running up at random and kicking me square in the balls.

I’ve been a little tight on cash lately, just desperately trying to make it to August where things start to clear up. But that’s really a lie. Because I’ve had to take on so many debts while “waiting” for that to happen, that all the money that might have been there at that time is now gone.

You may say, “Bad planning, Chris. You’re notorious for your bad financial planning.” You’d be right, I cannot argue. But neither have I been frivolous. In the past, I have not been able to put away the money to account for emergencies. I have been more frugal in the last seven years. I have taken active steps to securing my finances. Then life runs up, in what should be a comical orange wig, and fires off a rocket-kick directly to the wedding tackle.

The last few kicks I have weathered with a minimum of fuss. Cars break down, for example, particularly in my presence; I don’t drive them any harder than anyone else, but entropy is inevitable.

But a little more than a week ago, I got in a mild fender bender, barely a scrape on the fellow’s bumper. Possibly not even my fault, but I felt like it was and didn’t make a stink. Gave the guy my number. I’m strapped this week. I’m strapped in a serious way. I have to leave for a workshop on Sunday, training myself being the only major investment I have made in seven years. The guy called today. The day I’m supposed to spend $250 fixing the car again. The day my rent check is likely to go through. The day I’ve run out of checks and need to order more. Five days before I need to leave for Vegas and will most assuredly need some cash on hand… you know, to eat.

I simply cannot get ahead. Yes, I could live an even more spartan existence, but what would be the point? I find myself with just more emergencies, more groin shots, and then no pleasant life experiences to surround them.

It’s really the false hope that hurts most. I always feel like I’ve crested the hill. Like the sacrifices I’ve made up until this point have been worth it, only to have two more months in the red, two more months scraping to make it to that blissful moment of security.

When I worked at the Kenosha News, I had a colleague names Scott who told me about a book he was reading. The author put forth the idea of past lives and future lives. A soul is reincarnated, but it chooses the challenges that it will attempt to overcome. It sets forth a life obstacle that it will then work against in order to learn what that life can teach. In a way, it’s like the movie Dark City (which if you haven’t seen, is worth a rent). Even people who have everything going for them are challenging themselves to see whether vanity will overcome their judgment or some other such philosophical matter.

If that author is right, my obstacle is definitely financial.

I can point to every other “flaw” in my life as being related directly to my constant uphill battle with money. I get depressed when I these seemingly fated boots to the babymaker occur. That leads me to all manner of escapism, which is the root of my other vices, without a doubt.

For example, like a lot of people, when I’m broke I want to spend money to get me out of that mild depression. Luckily, I have few hobbies that cost me anything really. I don’t buy many things. But, I have to eat, right? So why not spend money on something that I would have anyway? Something really terrible for me. And then skip my workout, because I feel like I’m going to puke and it’s much more aside from reality to watch a movie on the couch and rub my overstuffed belly.

Now, I’m not going to lament that nonsense. When people get all pitiful over things they are doing to themselves, I can hardly sympathize, and I’m not so much a hypocrite to excuse myself the same behavior. I consider a workout as a pleasure, actually, and I’m beginning to more directly equate junk food with a loagy melancholy all its own; but it’s a good example. In fact, it’s a wonder I’m not an alcoholic or drug addict, my escapism being such a driving force.

I suppose that the most successful people in history have been able to channel such depression, anxiety and frustration into something more productive. Art, literature, music, etc. I have occasionally found myself able to do so. But much of the difficulty I find in that is a lack of self-confidence in what is produced. While writing this has a cathartic effect, for example, it’s hardly an aesthetic expression of anything. As a practical man, I have to add that it solves nothing. Unless…

Primo Bitching for sale here! Get it while it’s good and self-pitying! Blogger blathers about troubles and travails, only $.50 a word! Dickensian verbosity without all that art!

Any takers? I thought not.

All this lends strength to my growing thought that practicality and responsibility is for saps. It surely has not gotten me anywhere. I’m still living check to check, no better off than I was when I first moved to Milwaukee and did not really bother trying to stay on top of my finances. It’s all just pointless. Though not as pointless as complaining about it on a public web site.