I suppose deep down I know it’s petty, immature, and self-obsessed to equate financial worth with self-worth, but it’s hard not to feel fairly low when you’re looking at things in a bills and food kind of way. Today’s the 18th of December. I still haven’t yet received any sort of job offer nor indication that I should expect one.

When I decided to make the move without first securing new employment I was initially timid that I might end up in this situation. Shortly before we left Virginia I was asked to interview as soon as I arrived in the city. This, I felt, was a good sign. Once I had gone through the interview and felt strongly about it, I let go of my lingering doubts. Surely, I’ll be hearing from this company soon.

“Surely,” I’ve been repeating to myself every weekday since then, “surely, I’ll hear something soon. Today, maybe.” When the business day is winding down, and the likelihood of a telephone call is diminishing I start to think that they might prefer to send something tangible by the post office. Then, once the mail carrier has come and gone I start thinking about the next day.

This is how I’ve managed to allow 36 days to pass since my first interview without realizing just how long it had been. I’ve never had to wait this long without at least knowing something. I’m fully aware that the holidays may be causing some delay, but this just feels like an awfully long time to wait.

I’ve interviewed elsewhere since then. It’s a bit farther away. Still inside of Chicago, but a pretty long trip by public transportation. Who knows? Maybe I’ll hear back from them first though.

In any case, the date of my first paycheck keeps slipping deeper into 2008. I just don’t know how we’re going to keep up with the bills and rent on one income. I really thought things would come together neatly so much faster.

Now, I just don’t know what I should have done differently, but I know that I’m feeling much more like a hindrance than an asset to this family.

So why, after six months of silence, do I feel the need to start babbling on again in a public forum (a potentially public forum at any rate). I suppose it has to do with my most recent effort to make sense of my life. This isn’t intended to be a wrenching soul-searching endeavor the likes of which everyone hates to be forced into listening. It will probably turn into one. The best laid plans. . .

So, as I said before I’ve moved some 500 miles from my last residence, started living with my girlfriend (Staci) and her two pets (a dog named Leroy and a cat named Milo), and taken a new job that requires me to wake up around six-thirty in the morning rather than sometime before two in the afternoon. I’ve essentially turned my life upside down. Many of the ideas I’d had regarding this arrangement have turned out to be untrue. For instance, combining two similar incomes towards bills, rent, and food has not entitled me to a seemingly inexhaustible font of cash the likes of which can be used to procure both goods and services at a whim. Also, while the great majority of events both special and otherwise that a person may attend does increase almost exponentially when said person leaves work in the afternoon rather than the dead of night the early morning awakening does not really leave this person with a great deal of energy to pursue them. See also: misconceptions about financial abundance.

See, I used to work the evening shift. I’d wake up around, oh, 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning. I’d sip coffee for a good hour or so while reading websites, watching DVDs, or playing World of Warcraft. Then it was off to work, where I’d see folks leaving in the evening announcing plans to go out to eat, to a movie, or just to go home and lay on the couch with their sweethearts watching television. I’d be more than a little jealous, and think “Boy, you sure do get to do a whole lot more when you work day shift.” And I suppose I do, that I just don’t remember it as well because most of the days I don’t do anything more than come home and wait for Staci. That, and I kind of miss being able to slowly sip a couple cups of coffee without having to rush off to work. I’m better off this way. Working at night would make for a pretty miserable relationship.

As for the money issue: I really thought when I decided to move that I’d see a considerable bump in my spending cash. After all, we’d be combining groceries, splitting bills, and chipping in for necessary expenditures. We ought to have more, right? Well. . . maybe, but not nearly as much as I must have expected. I still tend to wind up pretty close to broke at least twice a month. I haven’t exactly been able to just buy whatever I like either (as I thought I might). A couple of times I’ve taken a look at my collections of things and become inexplicably depressive. Now that I’m starting to type this it sounds a bit spoiled in my head. . . but let me explain.

All my conscious life I’ve been obsessed with things: namely the continual acquisition of them. This drive should no doubt be familiar to any of us who grew up feeling socially awkward in the 1980s and 1990s. I used to tape the little product inserts that came in packages of Transformers to my dresser as best to fantasize about finally having all of the parts to one of the “gestalt” robots (I can distinctly recall wanting to collect Superion particularly badly, though I never did. In fact, I never managed to collect all the parts of any of these toys which turns out to be portentous.). I also hung on to the LEGO catalogs, both the large ones that showed every set by theme for the year and the tiny fold-out posters that only gave you a taste. Once I reached a certain age I probably spent almost as much time looking at other things I might buy if I had the money as I did playing with the toys I already had. “If I could just get this entire set,” I’d often think, “that would be great. Think of how much fun that would be.” I never, ever did. Before I could even come close I’d find some new collection of toys that I absolutely had to have.

As I got older, the objects I longed to own changed (though not all that drastically — I bought more LEGO sets during and after college than at any given time in my childhood) but the cyclical nature of my obsession never did. One month I simply had to own all the seasons of Smallville. The next it might be as many different chapters of Final Fantasy I could get to run on the PlayStation 2. I’d run out and get one, spend far too much time looking at places I might buy more, and then forget all about it when I found something new or rediscovered a past obsession. The simple fact is I am addicted to thinking that some complete set of something or other I can buy will make me happier. I’m addicted to finding new collections of things to be obsessed over. A few months ago I took stock on how many first seasons of television shows I had bought and how much it would cost to finish them. In short, it was a lot of money. A lot of money I now don’t want to spend on that. . . It really made me feel awful in a way I cannot adequately explain. I have a few ideas, but nothing concrete. Nothing that makes me say “Aha! So that’s why I felt so awful!”

I thought maybe typing it out this time would help me come to realize it. So far. . . not so much. Some time soon, perhaps.