Over the weekend, I spent some time going through my rather long list of Read It Later bookmarks and I happened upon 100 Ways to A Better Life by Dragos Roua of Brilliantly Better.  Quite a few were either good reminders or wake up calls for me.

I’ve been allowing one of my co-workers to push my buttons lately and I don’t know what frustrates me more, that there are buttons to be pushed or that I allow it to happen.  I absolutely hate wasting my energy on him and his drama; I’m so tired of drama.  Last year I decided that I was just going to “be in the moment” and take a lesson from the Beatles to “let it be”.  I decided right around this time last year that I wasn’t going to let anyone make me miserable; other people are welcome to their judgements and opinions but in the end, only my opinion matters to me.  I can decide to be happy and I can decide what or who affects me.

Here are some of Roua’s ways to a better life that I find inspiring:

1. Accept Your Mistakes

You’re human. We, humans, are making mistakes. Accept what you did wrong and try to do better next time. No need to punish yourself forever. In fact, accepting your mistakes is the only way to make them disappear.

2. Accept Your Friends Mistakes

Maybe you got hurt by somebody. Happens. Just accept it and deal with it. People are making mistakes and if you can accept that for yourself, accept it for your friends too. In the end, all you need from them is their love.

4. Build Self Discipline

Don’t wait for other people to impose discipline on you. Start early. Create your own discipline. Although it sounds a little bit harsh, self discipline is a facilitator for many things in your life. It’s hard to get but great to have.

5. Make New Friends

Reach out. Don’t be afraid. Establish new contacts. The worst thing that may happen to you is to be rejected. Well, if that’s the case, move on. The reward of having true, long-lasting friendship is worth all the potential rejection.

15. Find Reasons To Agree

Rather than disagree. We have this mindset of competition which makes constantly arguing over things. Well, stop that. You don’t have to force yourself intoagreement, if it’s not the case, just trying to find some reasons will be enough.

17. Wake Up Early

This is not a habit, this is a lifestyle. Don’t just wake up early without a purpose. Be early. Be there before others. Look for opportunities and embrace them. Waking up early means keeping your eye open to every available opportunity.

18. Train Your Focus

Your focus is in fact your reality. Use it wisely. Train it constantly for it will enhance your reality in ways you never imagined. Keep your focus sharp as a razor blade and be prepared to experience life in fantastic shapes and colors.

21. Be Better, Not Perfect

Striving too much for perfection will ruin your life. It will wipe out all those little imperfections which are making you… human. Being better, on the other side, is rewarding. Look back at the yesterday you and just say: I’m better!

22. Stop Self Sabotage

You’ll be surprised by how much of a burden you can be to yourself. You are literallyself sabotaging. Most of the time, unconsciously. If you have a long history of failure behind, that could mean you’ve become your worst enemy. Stop it.

23. Find Reasons To Love Your Life

Maybe life wasn’t fair with you. Yes, I know, I’ve been there: life is never fair. But it’s fantastic. It’s unique, unrepeatable, one of a kind, beautiful, simple, challenging, sweet, hard… Just take a step back and find reasons to love your life.

24. Try Something New

Maybe you’re sad because you’re bored. Have you ever thought about that? Just reach out and try something completely new. Go for a challenge, learn a new sport, pick a different restaurant or go for a comedy movie (if you’re the drama type). Justtry it.

25. Avoid Fighting

Fighting is the biggest energy leak of your being. Trying to prove another guy wrong is so against your true nature. You’re here to acknowledge life’s wonders, not to prove anybody’s wrong. They’re not wrong, just have different opinions. And that’s part of life.

26. Stop Wasting Your Power

Are you doing something that you think you shouldn’t be doing right now? Well, that’s wasted power. That’s meaningless stuff promoted to the honor of being a part of your life. How long are you going to approve this? Why wasting power?

27. Learn To Ignore

I think they should be teaching this one in schools. We’re so focused on so many topics and think we have to do so many stuff, that our life is literally clogged with stuff. It’s good to do stuff, but learning to ignore stuff is much better.

28. Experiment Gratitude

When was the last time you said “thank you”? With all your heart? Everybody knows that an attitude of gratitude is the key to success, but almost nobody practices it. Well, start by experience gratitude first, and take it from there.

29. Recycle Your Aggression

Don’t throw it away, recycle it! Use it for something you really want! Call out those wild forces inside of you and put them to work. Aggression is part of your being, so don’t try to reject it, because it will only grow stronger. Recycle your aggression.

30. Release Your Guardians

Don’t touch that! Don’t eat that! Don’t go for that opportunity! Those are the sentences you hear when going for something you really want. Those are yourguardians, your mental constructs made to protect you. Release them, you’ll be much better off.

31. Clean Up Your House

It’s fun. And it’s good for you. Make a habit out of cleaning up your house with joy and happiness. What’s outside is a mirror of what’s inside. If your house is a mess, probably your internal life is a disaster. Neat that stuff, it’s easy.

33. Dissolve Negative Opinions About Yourself

Whatever you think you may do, it’s half of what you can really do. And that’s because you have so many negative opinions about yourself. You can solve them. Just accept the fact that you have them and then start working on them.

34. Build Different Skills

Don’t stop learning. Don’t remain stuck in a single career, it’s boring and limiting. Learn different skills, possibly from completely unrelated fields. You never know when life will ask you to use them. Besides, it’s a lot of fun.

42. Follow A Coincidence

Well, there aren’t any coincidences, I lied. Everything has a purpose. If you witness something which may seem like a coincidence, then you’re very lucky, you just got a sign. Follow it with trust, it will lead you well.

43. Play A Game

Any game. Just play. Like a child. Allow yourself to do something just for fun, without any goals, pressures or deadlines. Will make you understand that everything is a game. Sometimes a little bit harder, but still a game..

44. Forgive Somebody Out Of The Blue

Don’t hold that grudge for that past insult. Grudges are heavy and tend to make the take off for a new life a little bit difficult. The longer you hold that grudge, the more difficult the take off will be. Forgiveness will lift you off.

45. Stop Solving The Wrong Problems

You are not here to witness the bad things in your life. Nor the performance in itself. You are here to enjoy a journey. To become aware, To grow. So, stop solving the wrong problem and focus on what really matters.

46. Make Peace With An Old Enemy

That’s more than forgiveness, that’s the actual process of reversing a situation. Make peace with somebody. Turn it into your friend. I’m not saying this is easy, I know it first hand. But I also know it works. Enemies count down, friends count up.

48. Break Up With A Person You Don’t Really Like

Maybe you’re friend with somebody just by habit, chemistry being dead for a long time now. Just break it up. Tell him. Ok, let’s unfriend us, this will not work. It will bring up something you thought you lost it long ago: courage.

50. Stop Being Judgmental

With others AND with you. Excessive criticism will kill your enthusiasm. And if you think this post is something you shouldn’t read in the first place, then, my friend, you really are judgmental. Lighten up. Accept life as it is.

52. Smile At Least 10 Times A Day

And I mean it, start to count that. Smiling is a sign of honesty and power. Everybody can cry over a disaster but only the most powerful can take bitterness with a smile. Exercise that power. And then try to go for 20 times a day.

66. Say Something Nice To You

Ok, but if nobody is telling you nice things, why not start this yourself? Do it in whatever form you think it’s appropriate: send yourself emails, write in your calendar or leave yourself nice postits on the desk. With something nice just for you.

68. Don’t Argue, Win Or Lose

This goes hand in hand with avoiding the fight, but it’s a little bit different. If you get caught in an argument, just accept that you can have only two outcomes from it: win or lose. Settle with one and just move on.

72. Go Social

Mingle, interact, go out. Get used to meet new people. Make this a habit and you’ll soon get used to do new things too. The goal is not to be the best networker in the world, but to be connected to as many energy sources as you can get.

80. Stop Complaining

Complaining is like an open invitation for troubles. The more you complain about something, the more of that something you invite into your life. Cut it out. You don’t get any comfort out of complaining, only troubles.

81. Reject What You Don’t Want

It’s so simple, yet so underrated. Society wants us to complain even when we don’t really like stuff. Like forcing us to smile when we don’t find it funny. Allow yourself to walk away from something you don’t like. Just do it!

83. Listen To Your Critics

This one might be difficult in the beginning but once you get used to it it’s fantastic. You may find out a lot of stuff about yourself that you didn’t know about. You think you are one kind of person, but others may disagree.

84. Don’t Take It Personally

Never. Your world is shaped by your reaction to things, not by the things themselves. Don’t get upset, don’t think that somebody knows you enough to make right assumptions about you. Acknowledge and move on.

85. Laugh

This time is not about smiling. It’s about laughing. Don’t you ever miss another opportunity to laugh. Especially at yourself. The longer your laughing sessions, the shorter your misery ones. Looks like a nice deal, isn’t it?

86. Go With Passion

Don’t let your rational mind stand in the way of your passion. If you found – or at least felt, even occasionally – something that thrills you, you’re there. You don’t need a confirmation on this from anybody. Go with your passion.

87. Trust Your Emotions

Don’t underestimate your emotions. Or overestimate them. Your emotions are your feed-back system and for that they are very important. Trying to ignore your emotions is like depriving yourself from lights in a car running in the middle of the night.

88. Live It Like A Holiday

Ever observed how nice you feel during your holiday? How light, joyful and authentic? Everything is just wonderful. Well, you are on a continuous holiday here. It starts with your birth and end with your death. Live it like a holiday.

93. Stop Reacting To Stuff

And start acting on stuff. Initiate things. Start projects. Predict situations and be there before the hurricane hits. Reacting to stuff is a victim paradigm. Stop being a victim and start acting. Create your life instead of being the creation of others.

94. Live Today

Not yesterday, not tomorrow. Go for what you can do today and leave yesterday behind for good. It’s not here anymore. And tomorrow doesn’t even exist yet, so why bother. All you have is today. Don’t waste it.

95. Expect The Unexpected

If there’s something unusual that happens to you, go for it. The unexpected is a signal of an opportunity. It will not always be nice, this unexpected, but whenever it’s around, magical things are happening. Wait for it. Praise for it.

96. Enjoy

Like being in joy. Like giving permission to yourself to extract joy from any situation you’re in. Even if it’s bad. Or especially if it’s bad. Joy is everywhere, you just have to let it manifest through you. Don’t resist joy. Don’t reject it.

97. Make Your Own Rules

And stick with them. Go for what works for you, not the others. Go for what you want, not the others. Including me. Make your own system and be proud of it. You may upset some people in the process, but hey, that’s life.

98. Love

Unconditionally. Totally. Constantly. Restlessly. Love is the only glue that keeps your life running. You were born out of love and you carry it deep down in your being. Love is never about the others, it’s about you.

100. No Regrets

Regretting something is another form of not accepting reality. What you can do about it now? It’s gone. It doesn’t exist anymore. Focus on what you can change: your present moment. Not yesterday, not tomorrow. Now. Live now.

Some of these things seem so obvious, so simple, but how many of us remember to really implement them all in our lives every day?  I feel as if I’m constantly striving to achieve these things in my life, to be a better version of myself, and I almost always feel as if I have to remind myself to be happy, to let things be, to just be in every moment without judgement or a need to prove myself, my thoughts or my actions to anyone.

I have a dry erase sheet in my bathroom that I leave little love notes to myself, reminding myself of these things — “All things shall pass.”; “Today is a happy day!”; “Be in the moment!”; “Smile!”  What do you do to help yourself become the better you?

I’ve been researching backup options for my laptop recently.  This, of course, has gotten me thinking a lot about all of the horrible scenarios in which data can be lost, but it also reminded me of a funny story.

Many of us in Gen-X are all-to-familiar with having to break their parents and grandparents into the 21rst century technology of computers.  Most of us spent some part of our teen years or part of our 20-something years (or if you have a particularly determined parent like my mother, your 30-something years) attempting to train older members of your family to use their VCRs, e-mail, cell phones, word processing software, and so on.

I recall an incident some 15ish years ago where a friend’s Mac computer was crashing, the hardware was failing, and despite the fact that she had a plethora of computer –unfortunately for her all IBM/Windows and UNIX/LINUX — geek friends, nothing could be done.  There was a group gathered for the crisis as the panic increased and her father came into the room to see what was going on.  When they told him what was happening and his daughter complained that she was going to lose everything, he very practically replied, “Well, can’t you just print it all out?”

Can you even begin to imagine how much time it would take to print everything out that’s on your computer, if it were possible?  Of course, that’s only documents and photos.  You’d lose videos, music, executables, encrypted files, those ebooks not in PDF or Word format.

Amusingly, thinking about all of this, I can remember back when I used to have to save my work to a cassette tape — very noisy.  Then I recall having a home computer which didn’t have a hard drive big enough to actually hold the word processing software so in order to save the document I was working on, I would have to pull out the word processing floppy, press save and quickly insert a blank floppy and hope that the computer didn’t lock up.  I remember losing a 12 page term paper that way once.

Of course those incidents were in the 80’s when you could actually print it all out.  Who knew that in less than 30 years we’d go from a few files on a few floppy disks to needing to backup terabytes-worth of data?

I’ve been working on this whole budget plan thing for a couple of weeks now and I still don’t feel any further along than I was when I started.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m an intelligent person.  I can grasp the very basics:

Income – Expenses >= 0

I mean, I did study accounting in college and I do have a programmer’s logical mind.  Plus, I was a math minor.  I get the most basic part of the concept.  Really, I do.

However, I just don’t think my brain is wired right for easily latching on to the complexities.  For instances, most books and examples out there all offer up examples of income that is the same amount and dished out on the same two days every month and most of the expenses are fairly simple and fixed every month; a few of the examples might show the occasional expense that might be paid quarterly and they all usually show groceries and dining out as unpredictable.  Clearly none of us eats exactly the same thing day after day and no one is stupid enough to pretend to make the assumption in a sample budget even.

It seems like everyone these days are jumping on this zero-based budget bandwagon.  ”Zero-based” sounded a lot like what was in my checking account so I looked into it.   It turns out that it’s not what I thought it was.  Zero-based budgeting is basically a method where at the beginning of each month you spend all of your expected incoming income “on paper” — every dollar has to be spoken for, every dollar has to have a job, so to speak.  You make a list of all your expected expenses and you dedicate every last expected incoming dollar to every last expected expense until the balance is zero.  Now, one of those “expenses” can be a savings account so its not like you actually have to really spend all of the money — I mean, spending it all is what got you in this problem to begin with, right?  The idea is that you don’t just have money sitting around doing nothing, idling about, burning a hole in your pocket, raring to go do some evil by bringing some infomercial trash into your home…or whatever unnecessary thing you might spend money you might psychologically think is “free” on.

Well, that method seems like it’s solid and it appears to work for a lot of people.  Radio/TV talk show host Dave Ramsey has built himself a cult based on it, but I have to agree with my Daddy — there is just no way that you can budget for little thing.  The whole zero-based budget method stresses me out just thinking about all the ways I’ll feel like a failure throughout the month as surprises come up.

A number of years ago, I did really well using the envelope (or my Daddy calls it “the shoebox”) method – a method of budgeting where monthly or biweekly or whatever period, you set aside a certain amount of money for expenses in categories, in envelopes marked for that purpose (ie. mortgage/rent, groceries, gas, auto repairs, etc.) . Then anytime you want to  make a purchase or pay a bill, you check in the associated envelope for the type of expense to see if there are sufficient funds;  if the money is there, yeah!  Go for it! Otherwise, you have three options: 1) you do not make the purchase/pay the bill; 2) you wait until you can allocate more money to that envelope; 3) you sacrifice another category by moving money from its associated envelope. The flip side is true as well, if you do not spend everything in the envelope this month then the next allocation adds to what is already there resulting in more money for the next month.

The envelope method is just a tad more flexible for me.  There’s the psychological feeling that if I don’t get it right on the very first try, I can rearrange things while no one is looking and no one will care — in fact, the rules say I can so there’s no cheating.  Plus, I feel like I can have an envelope marked “Miscellaneous” that covers anything I forgot about when I made up the budget and drop any left over money into it every month; then at the end of the month, I can re-allocate that money over to savings, where my emergency fund is going to be building.

What kind of budgeting method works best for you?  What sort of mental tricks do you play on yourself every month to make it work?

Who Cares?

Am I the only person in the world who couldn’t care less what is going on in Tiger Woods’ personal life?  Am I the only one who thinks that it’s none of my business?

I mean, it’s not like he’s mis-using taxpayer (your and my) money to make out of town/state/country trips to see “call girls” and mistresses. He’s not some hypocritical lawmaker preaching morality legislation while getting caught propositioning gay prostitutes in airport men’s bathrooms nor is he running for President and having a love child with his publicist while his wife recovers from cancer or something like that.

Tiger Woods is just a celebrity golf player, an “athlete”.  His personal life affects no one beyond his family and the women he cheated with.  He really has no obligations to anyone else and no one else really needs to be informed of all of the seedy details.

He’s not a world famous neurosurgeon; he’s on on the brink of discovering the cure to cancer; he is unlikely to negotiate peace in the Middle East or even convince the Democrats and Republicans to compromise on a Healthcare bill while President Obama is in office.   There really doesn’t need to be all this fuss about how his marital strife might affect his work.  It’s golf.

December 11th, the night I was stuck in the hospital when I had my appendix removed, the big story on all of the news channels was Tiger Woods infidelity.  They brought it up every 20 minutes.  Why???

With yesterday’s press conference where Tiger apologized to his fans for letting them down, the media again are busy calling in “experts” to speculate what the public are thinking.  On talking head on CNN had two “experts” come on to discuss how men and women would be receiving the message differently.  What annoyed me was the fact that no one ever bothered to consider the thought that maybe many women, especially those who don’t care for golf, don’t care.

In fact, some of us don’t care who Jennifer Anniston is dating or what Paris Hilton is doing or who the Kardassians are or what happened to Jon and Kate or any of the Real Housewives from Atlanta or New Jersey or wherever they are now.  I actually suspect that most of us don’t care about any of them.

Or is it just me?

Last night I saw an advertisement for something I could use.  It doesn’t really matter what It is.  Let’s just say that if It functions as advertised, it would make me look nice and probably boost my self esteem as a result — basically, the next best thing to magically making me a Supermodel overnight.

Anyway, It was one of those special deals with “order now” and “get this extra thing free” plus “get this other thing half price”.  You know what I’m talking about, right?  You’ve wanted one of those before.  You may even have ordered a few.  The whole thing was very seductive.  If you called right then, you could get the whole special deal.  (How do the sales people know when those advertisements are running really?)

Now, I’ve been reading The Budget Kit and a number of budgeting and personal-finance-related blogs lately, there’s a big focus on differentiating needs from wants, and a bigger focus on restricting the purchasing of wants or prioritizing them, especially when you are in financial trouble. So…I took some agonizing time to consider whether It was a need or a want. Clearly, It isn’t required to sustain my life — It isn’t food, water, medicine, air, shelter, wood for heat…Therefore, It is not a need.

Thus, It is a want.

Having divined this truth, since I am attempting to spend as little unnecessary money as possible, to straighten out my finances, to get back on track, I did not make the purchase. I agonizingly did the right thing. Non-spendoholics must not even have to think about such choices. They just know and do the right thing and there’s no residual disappointment.

Unfortunately for me, my new little frugal angel and my old spendoholic devil manifested themselves last night as I slept. I spent the night dreaming that I was arguing all night with my mother about whether or not she would allow me to buy It; she kept insisting that no one needs an It, but I argued that she used to encourage me to get one when I was a teenager and I had a perfectly good one in my 20’s that wore out. This It is better.

The whole thing has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I hope it will get easier.

I used to be a prolific letter writer.

When I was young, I had pen pals.  Real ones.  You know, people who did not live anywhere near me with whom I exchanged regular pen and paper based correspondence through the U.S. postal system.  I wrote pages and pages to each and every one of them and they wrote pages and pages back to me.

Those were the days before you started to see the random computer in schools or even in homes.  You know, the 80’s.  Oh, they were selling computers, but there wasn’t much that those dinosaurs could do back then.  I remember learning to write Basic programs on our Texas Instruments computer which hooked up to the television to use for a monitor and saved your data to cassette tape at really irritating high-pitched squeals and that was only if your parents didn’t want to do something important like watch the news or Quincy or Remington Steele.

I wrote my first novel in high school by hand on loose leaf paper.  I just wrote that to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.  AOL was the first real social not-just-for-nerds-and-geeks e-mail system that started to conquer the non-college community and that was the early to mid-90’s.

I think that’s when the art of letter writing began to die.

When people began to be able to send each other short messages every day and get a quick response and it was so much cheaper than making that long distance phone call, there was no need to write pages and pages of anything any more.  Heck, I find that some people’s sigs are longer than the actual message body, which is a big no-no for me — call it a pet peeve.

Now, there’s no excitement when I go to the mailbox.  Why should there be?  The only envelops in there are junk mail and bills.  There’s no anticipation, no hoping that maybe today will be the day that I get that extra special letter from that extra special friend.  I used to look forward to getting those envelops with my name on them.  I would race off to find a good quiet place to sit and read the contents, to catch up with my long distance friend, to vicariously experience through those pages my friend’s life, my friend’s dramas, triumphs, trials, and defeats.  Afterward, I would immediately begin thinking of what I would write in my reply; sometimes, I would tuck in little things I found for the receiver like a bookmark or stickers or a special pen and sometimes I would get things too.  The important thing was that it was a wonderful experience, a physical kind of contact that you don’t get with these modern day so-called pen pals that take place through e-mail.

I miss those kind of good old days, those kind of friendships where you wanted to spill your soul into pages and pages and someone in another zip code wanted to share theirs.  I miss the anticipation of hoping every day that the mailbox will hold a letter from your friend and not just bills and junk mail.

What’s strange about this whole moods is what got me started on this train of thought.  Yesterday morning, I was listening to The Writer’s Almanac on NPR; they’ve been doing a series on love letters since Valentine’s Day is approaching, and yesterday’s love letter was Napoleon to Josephine:

“I have not spent a day without loving you; I have not spent a night without embracing you; I have not so much as drunk one cup of tea without cursing the pride and ambition which force me to remain apart from the moving spirit of my life. In the midst of my duties, whether I am at the head of my army or inspecting the camps, my beloved Josephine stands alone in my heart, occupies my mind, fills my thoughts. If I am moving away from you with the speed of the Rhone torrent, it is only that I may see you again more quickly. If I rise to work in the middle of the night, it is because this may hasten by a matter of days the arrival of my sweet love. … I ask of you neither eternal love, nor fidelity, but simply … truth, unlimited honesty. The day you say ‘I love you less,’ will mark the end of my love and the last day of my life. If my heart were base enough to love without being loved in return I would tear it to pieces. Josephine! Josephine! Remember what I have sometimes said to you: Nature has endowed me with a virile and decisive character. It has built ours out of lace and gossamer. Have you ceased to love me? Forgive me, love of my life, my soul is racked by conflicting forces.

My heart, obsessed by you, is full of fears which prostrate me with misery … I am distressed not to be calling you by name. I shall wait for you to write it. Farewell! Ah! If you love me less you can never have loved me. In that case I shall truly be pitiable.

Bonaparte

P.S. — The war this year has changed beyond recognition. I have had meat, bread, and fodder distributed; my armed cavalry will soon be on the march. My soldiers are showing inexpressible confidence in me; you alone are a source of chagrin to me; you alone are the joy and torment of my life.”

First of all, I have to say that for a supposed mad, out-of-control emperor, he certainly knew how to wear his heart on his sleeve.  If you didn’t know this was that stumpy little weasel-looking guy with a…well, a Napoleon Complex, if you close your eyes and picture Brad Pitt or David Boreanaz or whoever-it-is-that-people-think-is-ridiculously-dreamy these days, if you close your eyes and picture your dream guy writing this letter to you, you’d have to admit that’s one hell of a be-still-my-heart-catch-my-breath-aching-to-touch-his-naked-skin romantic letter, isn’t it?

Come on, isn’t it?

Second, he wrote it himself, not some git in Hollywood or some sap who works for Hallmark.  Napoleon actually wrote this letter himself.  With ink and paper.  He agonized over it, spilled his aching heart out to the woman he loved on pages and pages.  He didn’t make it short and sweet; he expanded on every thought and feeling, drew her a picture with his words.  He wanted to make sure she knew everything he felt and likely she was at home, waiting to receive a letter from him, to have that physical connection to reassure herself that he he was alive and well.

No one writes letters like that anymore.  Not even emails.  So many people are trying to reduce their communication to less than 140 characters that they have forgotten the art of letter writing and even the art of communicating.  Sometimes, less is not better.

I still remember the day River Phoenix died. I was in love with him, of course. O.K. I didn’t know him enough to love love him, but I loved the thought of who I thought he was.

And I remember the day he died quite clearly in my mind.  I came home from dinner with friends and heard on the late night news about his untimely and at the time mysterious death.  I remember the devastated, crushed ache of my young early twenties heart.  As time went on, all I could think about when I heard his name or saw one of his movies was what a terrible waste his death was — all that fantastic talent gone in the blink of an eye, snuffed out because of stupidity.

For the longest time, I couldn’t watch his movies.  They just made me too sad.

When Heath Ledger died in 2008, I didn’t have the same puppy love crush and thus didn’t feel the same crushing ache, but I did feel devastated for  the loss of amazing talent that was just gone in a heartbeat.  The story is all too familiar and yet no less tragic.  Like River he had graduated from child parts to brilliant adult roles and unlike so many actors in Hollywood today, he was able to play characters other than himself.  He had a lot of promise.

It’s been only recently that I’ve been able to begin watching movies which star him again.  Still, I feel melancholy.

Britney Murphy’s recent bewildering passing brought up all the same internal sadness for me.  Britney was another promising star in my mind.  Perhaps she wasn’t Julia Roberts nor would she have ever been some Angelina Jolie, but I believe she had the promise to be a great comedienne actress — one of the greats even.  At 32, she was so young, too young.  Her life and her career were just beginning and it was all over in the blink of an eye before there was a real hint of the shine her star could have been.

One of her movies recently aired on cable, one I really like because it made me laugh, but 5 minutes in I had to turn it off, because watching her made me cry.

The thing is that it’s not just actors who die young that break my heart.  Every week I hear about tragic deaths on the news, young people killed in accidents, crime, war — their lives were just beginning but  now they are gone and who knows who they might have been, what wonderful, amazing things they might have accomplished, but for a moment of stupidity whether it was their stupidity or someone else’s?

And it makes me sad.  I am devastated, crushed, and my heart aches.

My friend, our office assistant, suggested the following recipe when she learned that I was taking a moratorium on grocery shopping. Happily I had all of the ingredients on hand! This sure made lunch far more interesting than my plan to eat a can a day of each thing.

Yesterday, I mentioned my “Eat Only What’s In My Pantry For A Month” diet.  I sort of invented this diet in my late 20’s, after-college, starving under-paid programmer years.  I’m quite sure there are many variations of this diet around and they probably have more or less inventive names.

Back in December when I was starting the paperwork to attempt to refinance my house, before the emergency surgery interrupted, I talked to my shrink about my options should the refinancing fall through.  I brought up this memory of one July back in my younger years, admittedly when I was healthier and more socially active, that I quite literally brought a random can of something every day to work for lunch; it would be “Oh, looks like I’m having beets today!” or “Hmmm, green beans!”  I ate dry toast every morning and at least once or twice every weekend, a friend’s mom would feed me and I was not ashamed.  I only spent money on rent, utilities, and gas.  I had less than $10 in cash in my purse the whole month and I believe I managed to end up with at least $5 of it.

I used to think once you got beyond 35 years old, you couldn’t live like that anymore.  I always get a laugh when I tell people that one of my favorite memories in college is going to Krispee Kreme at 3am after the midnight movie when the “hot now” sign is flashing and buying one donut but not having enough cash to pay for it so I had to write a check…and worrying that it would bounce before my monthly allowance check deposited.  You can only really get away with that in college, right?  I mean, try explaining that kind of expense as a 38 year old.

So, here we are on Feb. 2nd and I have begun my “pantry” diet.  It’s going to be hard because I’m going to be out of candy and chips really soon.  I can make my own soy milk and soy yogurt — I have a stockpile of soy beans for some reason.  I have a lot of rice and couscous and frozen fruit, some granola.  I’m sure I have some oatmeal, canned beets, and green beans.  There’s a bean soup mix in there and a few bags of frozen veggies.  I even have the things I need to make a rather dull pot of spaghetti.  I think if I plan things out, I can make it through 26-ish days of February.

I just feel a little too old to be doing all of this…and I sure wish I’d stockpiled more chocolate bars before January ended.

My mother has a talent for offering inappropriate advice at the absolutely least welcome time.  We have a regular conversation about how difficult it is for me to save money.  This conversation has been repeating itself many times over the last 10 or 15 years.  It seems that every time I get a little bit of money in my savings, something big and unexpected occurs that wipes my savings totally out.  Then when things get tight for me, my mother has the audacity to say something to me like, “You know, it’s always best to have have about $10,000 in your savings.”  She’ll also let a day or so pass and then mention that I really should be making extra payments to my mortgage principle a couple times a year.  Meanwhile, I have been telling her things like I have to make a choice between eating lunch this week or paying the water bill or that I’m not sure how I am going to pay the $1,000 bill I got from the hospital for the emergency surgery I had last month when I also have to pay for heat.  Where does she expect me to come up with $10,000?  If I had $10,000 I wouldn’t be starting the “Eat Only What’s In My Pantry For A Month” Diet.

It’s that kind of useless advice that people offer that boggles my mind.  There’s never any additional advice attached that helps explain how you are supposed to reach the lofty goal of the advice when you are in the particular situation you are in.  It’s kind of like the obscure New Year’s resolutions “I want to lose weight” or “I want to be more healthy this year.”  There’s no specifics.  Everyone with smarts knows that in order to make a resolution you can keep, you have to have a specific goal — like “I want to lose 10 pounds” or “I want to walk 30 minutes 3 times a week.”  Then you can make a plan to achieve your goal.

The problem with arbitrary advice like “You should keep 3 months-worth of your salary in savings” is that it doesn’t take into account the financial situation the person is in already.  Is the person in debt over his head?  Is the person living paycheck to paycheck?   Is the person making more every month than she is spending already?  A person who is struggling is going to have a lot harder time figuring out how to save that much money; in fact, such a person might find the feat overwhelmingly hopeless despite the fact that the advice is painfully obvious and having that savings would in fact make life easier.  Dishing out such advice without actually offering any real direction on how to achieve this while still being able to pay bills and eat is just as useful as announcing that you hope for world peace.

But it’s worse because it’s thoughtless and hurtful; it sets the receiver of the advice up to feel like a failure because he or she can’t snap his or her fingers and magically make all of his or her financial woes go away.  It’s clear what the goal is, but the path isn’t always obvious and unless you are walking it or at least can see the same point-of-view and offer more than a trite recitation of what all the books or magazines or talking heads have been repeating for ages, sometimes the best thing to say is “I empathize” and leave it at that.