Wed, Nov 23, 2022, Am I being gaslit....again?

 I thought Counselor Katie was telling me to radically accept the possibility that my life won't be much more than this. When I brought it up, she said that's not what she meant.

Then Counselor Mark...I thought he told me not to give up until I've exhausted every possibility of getting a partner....he said he didn't say that... I have it in my notes.

I'm a bit annoyed at Counselor Katie, only because her payment system is a bit problematic. I have to manually do it. And I don't get invoiced or anything. And her admin is telling me to schedule the check to arrive the day of the payment. Errr...I'm not scheduling a pre-payment. That's just crazy.

So I have 4 days off with no human contact.

So much to say and think, yet so little at the same time.

Biden delayed student loan payments for what appears to be about 8 months next year. I'm just budgeting for no student loans for the whole year. This threw quite a spanner in the works. Without the student loan payment, I decided to just make the monthly (really quarterly) overseas payments come out of my bonus. It amounts to about $6k/yr. I think I'll just take a lump sum out of whatever my bonus is and put it in a separate bucket so I don't have to account for it.

So without student loans or tithing money in my monthly budget, my total expenses for the 2023 calendar year is around $18k, rounded to $20k. I didn't want to do another sparse year, but here we are.

It's hard not to feel motivated to save more. But I'm stuck with...what am I doing with all this money. 

I thought planning my perfect year would be a great exercise in claiming my life and ceasing to wait for the other shoe to drop. But alas, it's just kind of taken the fun out of it. I feel like I've run the gamut of emotions of all the things I've planned for next year.

I think that's part of the reason flying to Seattle for the Nov/Dec timeframe just never took off the ground. I was pretty set that I'd spend Nov/Dec enjoying the milder late fall climate in NC. So without an obviously compelling reason to stay in Seattle, this was the easier choice. 

So I have $800 worth of clothes coming on Monday and no place to go. It's overwhelming. And I discovered an Old Navy glitch that was giving away $20 coupons but couldn't bring myself to splurge on anything. My mind is too pre-occupied.

I've gone through different iterations of which of the $800 haul I want to keep. I think I'd settled on the 2 tight dresses (more warm weather clothes) and 3 pairs of leggings.  I might still try everything else on just for fun. But a winter trip to Seattle is like at a 0.0% chance of happening at this point. 

I'm still trying to convince myself it's okay to keep a few items because I do plan to return for a late spring and an early fall, so some of the cool weather clothes makes sense.

But I'm not really interested in figuring out where to store everything. 

I really, really regret not staying and see where things would have gone with Sean. I imagined if I were still there and we were still getting along, this news from Biden would have been the "sign" I was looking for to stay all of next year.

It would've been awesome! 

But now that I'm not actively sobbing and it's been about 3 weeks since I left Seattle, and it's the holiday season, it's hard to imagine upending my life to be back in cold, dark, Seattle this time of year.

In today's session with Mark, he was trying to talk to me about likelihood with rejection, etc. I think the numbers don't lie. It's like 1 in 3 black women will get married. 

So if I do go back, right now, the thing that makes the most sense is just shoot for low hanging fruit which is a summer fling. But this time, don't wish for more when it ends. So with that as a goal, a spring/summer trip for 6-8 weeks makes sense; take a break; then go back for late summer/early fall. 

I won't need a puffer coat and warm sweaters...or pants! I won't get to wear my cute fall boots, but that's okay. 

I did get to use 2 of the glitchy Old Navy coupons and got 2 dresses/tops to wear over leggings and a pair of ankle boots for $9 total. 

Depending on how some of the other stuff fits, I might keep a couple things for the late spring/early fall..but just a couple. And then just remind myself that I can always wear...pants. Ick. 

Now I wonder if the cost was ever the issue with moving to Seattle. I could always have technically afforded it. And I think it would be scary to move to Seattle to be with a boy as much as I thought that's what I wanted. But with this free year of no student loan, I really don't have an excuse not to move, but I feel even less compelled than I did before.