Smells Like Autumn, Smells Like Leaves; You Don’t Know That You’ll Rust and Not Belong So Much

I think I’m depressed. Not the serious clinical put-me-on-24-hour-watch type of depression, but the pre-winter, post vacation blah kind of depression. Don’t get me wrong, life is good. No complaints. But I’m still experiencing a let down of sorts from coming back from Florida. I’m a guy who likes to travel and craves to see the world. However, due to financial and personal reasons, we haven’t been able to go on many big vacations in recent years. I was hoping that this excursion to Florida would somewhat satiate my wanderlust, but instead it just exacerbated it. It’s like I got a small taste of what could be, and then left back with what things really are. To make it worse, we are on the cusp of winter and I really don’t like snow and cold. I think I suffer from seasonal affective disorder because the winter months are especially rough for me. Living in Colorado has certainly helped since it is still actually sunny outside during the winter, but still the short days, long nights, and bitter cold really get to me. I’m serious when I say I could easily see myself as a snow bird during my retirement years spending the winter in a timeshare in some warm local where it never snows. Hey, if I had the money I would be doing it now.

But that’s the problem. I don’t have any money. Well, I take that back. I have money, however, I am currently using that money to pay myself back from the time when I didn’t have any money. You see, faithful readers, a few years back the mrs. and I hit a bit of a financial rough patch, you might say (cue violin music). After enduring several rounds of layoffs, wage cuts, and raise freezes for about a year, my number finally came up at my former employer. That was a few months after my wife got laid off from her job. Since the recent economic downturn hit our area pretty hard, employment around here was fairly scarce (and some would argue that it still is). So, with two mouths under 4 to feed and a mounting pile of bills to pay, we got desperate and moved to Minnesota where I took a good job in a place that absolutely sucked. Talk about enduring a bad winter. Not only was living in MN crappy, but we never sold our house in Colorado which meant that we were paying a mortgage on an empty house and all the complimentary bills that go along with it, on top of the rent for the small 2-bedroom apartment we were renting in MN and all of the bills that goes along with that. Sure, I had a better job, but what’s the point of making more money when all of the extra you make is going to pay for an empty house in a place we would rather be at? We were ready to move back within six months. We figured, hey, if we are going to be broke we might as well at least be in a place we love vs. the frozen wasteland hell that goes by the name Minnesota. So, we moved back into our house and I had the very good fortune of staying with my employer from Minnesota but working out of the Denver branch. I eventually changed divisions working for the (former) Big Boss Lady and that pretty much leads up to the beginning of this blog.

Believe it or not, that’s the short version of the story. The good news is that so far life has been leading us up to a happy ending. I worked down in Denver for about three more years and when I finally got fed up with it, I landed a better job much closer to home. The mrs. also has a good job close to home and the two of us together are slowly climbing out of the big hole we found ourselves in when things took a turn for the worst. It’s been a hard climb out, though, and one of the opportunity costs for us having to pay back our massive debt has been to not take whirlwind trips through Europe, winter vacations in Hawaii, or even trips back to see family. This past Florida trip was the first time my whole family had been together in over 2 years. It’s been even longer for the mrs. side.

So now, there’s the conundrum. The mrs. and I have a budget set that will get us out of debt so we can finally go and do the things we want to do. Unfortunately it is going to take a couple of more years to get there. I believe they call that “delayed gratification.” You save and take care of the more pressing things in your present so you can have the means to enjoy the future. The brain says, “That makes sense.” My heart says, “Screw that! Let’s blow the budget on another big vacation!!!!” Right now the brain is winning only by the slightest margin. The heart is putting up one hell of a fight.

So, what’s a depressed, impatient person to do? The mrs. suggested getting a second job and using those proceeds as extra money outside the budget to use towards another vacation and other weekend getaways. Sounds good. So, that’s what I’m doing now. I’m trying to find a part time evening position that isn’t in fast food or telemarketing. Sounds easy enough, but it’s actually been pretty tough trying to work around my current hours. I need a low-stress job that pays me well to just sit around and play on the computer for my whole shift. You know, kinda like my day job but at night…