Learning, Earning, Yearning

The street front of my work building includes a pizza place, a gelato store, a Greek cafe, a bar, a FedEx, and a Chinese restaurant. My coworkers and I have found that Ginger House, as the Chinese restaurant is called, is great for a quick lunch, and anytime any of us goes, we bring back handfuls of fortune cookies (at least one for everyone around) to play our favorite game: Make ourselves coherent in Chinese. The back of the fortune always has a Chinese word, along with the character and the phonetic pronunciation. We all take turns trying to make Jenny, the native Chinese speaker, guess which word we're saying. (We can only make ourselves coherent about 20% of the time).




So I have a stockpile of fortunes littering the top drawer of my desk. Recently I got one that said something about the facets of life being learning, earning, and yearning. I think it came at a good time. Lately I've been so frustrated about finances and things I "need" that I can be distracted at work, and even stay up thinking about it. I think that I am good with money, but I've also had to readjust pretty much everything I know since coming to NYC. Everything is just so much more expensive. I've been finding that I can barely put away anything into my savings account (so unlike me!) and though I tell myself "once I buy this, there's nothing else I need right now" something comes up. Something will ALWAYS come up. I feel like money is always something I've whined about so I've really tried to stop it, but it's a new level and really part of the acclimation process here so I wanted to write about it.

I'm a firm believer that you should never have everything you want. I never want to be caught up in the superfluous "things" of life. I just want to get by, and travel, and have something I want every now and then. It helps to always have something you're working towards, and have goals. It's the yearning part. But sometimes it is just so annoying and frustrating to feel so helpless when you feel like you need so much (it's the damn winter clothes that are getting to me!)

I have every faith that God does and will provide, but sometimes I have to remember that sometimes that means necessities. I feel selfish sometimes when I think about all I have and how I still feel the way I do. I guess it's because I compare myself too much to people around me, but I know that no one's got it all.