Fantasize About Future

[mishalak]

I had a couple cups of tea while I was working today because I was very tired out after three stressful days of work. Which is unusual because I cannot afford several cups of tea a day, it is not in the budget. I have to scrimp and save in crazy ways to be able to afford my fannish lifestyle. (Which would make a good filk song. "How do you afford your fannish lifestyle. How do you pay for the conventions that you go to.")

So I started to think about what I want out of life. From simple things to large ones.

I want to be able to have tea or not, without having to think about it. A cup of fine Darjeeling, followed by something fruity from Celestial Seasonings, or not as I please. Simple food things like that. I have enough right now to live on and I also have enough to eat out on occasion since that is on my socializing budget. I would not like

After that it gets more complex. Food is simple; work isn’t because I have little idea of something I emphatically want to do for a living. I’m going to try for a civil service job. I would like something that pays moderately well but without extra hours when I need to be at conventions or fan meetings. Or else it’ll have to have something else going for it that is really good so I don’t mind that I miss lots of my social events. Like a flight attendant job which pays well and has the travel benefits, so I think that would make up for the often strange work hours.

In a really ideal world I would have enough time to make a graceful home and enough money for that. A small house I could work on and make a reflection of my peculiar obsessions. Maybe a beehive or two if I have the space. A fruit tree, maybe even a espalier peach against a rock wall.

Love would be grand. Someone to be my partner in crime, so to speak. Not someone exactly like me, but with enough interests in common that we’d enjoy doing things together. Though I’m shy around large groups I quite enjoy talking with just one person for hours.

So there is a bit of a simple dream. My next steps are to return to my boyfriend search with new techniques and to take a civil service test for Colorado. And maybe make some inquiries with friends about jobs and new friends.

Comments

[mrpsyklops.livejournal.com]

Good luck on both your searches. I worked civil service for the State of Alabama and Jefferson County, Alabama for over ten years. I really enjoyed the benefits, and the overtime was minimal. It made doing fannish things very practical, and, from time to time, almost affordable.

If I had had more patience, I might still be there. Of course, I really like what I'm doing - enough to make the hours I put in acceptable, if not a preferred lifestyle - so I don't regret leaving civil service.

Beth and I met playing Dungeons and Dragons, so we started out with something in common. She was a friend of a friend, and he brought her along to one of the game sessions in which I was the Dungeon Master. We gamed together for about a year before we started dating, and we dated for a year or a little more before we decided to commit to each other and marry.

I ended up in civil service because I decided that working 60 hours per week as a retail manager for U-Haul wasn't the way I wanted to spend my life. I had a degree (religion/philosophy - it's an even longer story), but I went back to school to add a 'practical' major (accounting). It took about a year and a half going full time, including summer, but between savings, work-study, and loans, I was able to make it through. It made getting the civil service post easier, since I had a specific knowledge-set the State was interested in.

Another "civil service" job is work with one of the state colleges or universities. In Alabama, they had the same retirement system as the 'real' civil service jobs, and the same minimal overtime.

Just for what its worth....

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

All well this is part of my problem. I never finished my degree in accounting. I'll have to explain in my journal sometime. How about tonight?

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

If nothing else, I have lots of good tea here, if you ever happen to be in NY

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I think the next time I get east will be when I go for Worldcon. I'm almost positive I can go now. Of course that will be crazy time and as such I just withdraw money and spend that without any thought as to budget. I just have to watch that I don't run out of the spending money before the end of the vacation.

[snippy]

Your dreams are good, and I think they are achievable. I have a life I enjoy, that is even better than I dared to dream of--and I wish that for you, too.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Email me your snail mail address and I will send you tea. I want a world in which I could fulfill more wishes.

One of the biggest difficulties in finding work one even likes, say nothing about loves, is that it is so hard to find out what kinds of jobs exist.

[davidschroth.livejournal.com]

What she said.

Although, if you included a list of what, exactly, you'd like to receive in a care package, it couldn't hurt...

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

As I replied to Carol. I'm not starving; I just spend too much on my fannish lifestyle. Though the sentiment is appreciated.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I do have tea. But I worked out that it costs about 10¢ for a cup. Not much but my current budget for food is about $3 a day. So I just have to stop and think about having a cup. Not like it is the end of the world, but if I was always having three cups a day that would be 10% of the daily budget. It's just hard, to have to think about such things. I don't want anyone feeling like I’m starving or something. I just have made a choice. I could increase my budget. I'd just then have to cut back on fannish things. If I stopped buying so many damn books I could probably drink as much tea as I want.

In other news I spent the whole budget today at Cub Foods. They're doing this going out of business thing here in Denver, so I stocked up on things like frozen food. I shouldn't have to spend much else for the rest of the month and then next month I'll be able to spend less than normal.

[armoire-man.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what it is that you do at work, but it sounds suboptimal. You have the intelligence and skills to make between 50% and 100% more than you do now at a much less stressful job. Most of the state administrative jobs are such jobs, and you should investigate them.

The jobs are boring, pleasant, with boring pleasant coworkers, pay about twice as much as your current job, and have no overtime.

These are not careers, these are not jobs that support lavish house payments and redecorating schemes, but they are jobs that can make apartment living and fannishness possible and pleasant for a few years until you hook up with that true sweetie and enter domestic bliss together.

Email me offline if you have more specific questions about the details. It's time to get you out of whatever that hell is you're working in now!

[thette.livejournal.com]

One way to increase the budget for fannish things is to live practically vegetarian. (I and KJ are going to the US over New Years.) We have had a food budget on about 1500 SEK a month (less than 200$), and we live good.

There's nothing to stop you from eating meat and fish a few times a week, but vegetarian food is cheap and bulky.