Step Away From the Magazines

Recovering chronic People mag buyer. I couldn't subscribe because that would just prove my weakness, so I just kept buying it at newsstand cost. Tard. Upon moving to Chicago, with our new credit card, I got swindled into buying $500 in magazine subscriptions (Rolling Stone, Interview, ESPN, Entertainment Weekly, Reader's Digest, Good Housekeeping{?!!}, Vanity Fair, DETAILS and a sundry of others related to initial credit card purchase and not). Never again. The "mag" company just took their monthly subscription cost out of the cc account. The obsession of checking the balance of money related accounts hadn't been routine as they are today. I will check the same account sometimes three times just to see if anything else has cleared, so at the end of the day I can sleep knowing there is a positive balance in the bank. A friend of mine recently revealed her choice to rarely speak of money and how much she makes or discuss anyone's financial situation. I am however the complete opposite and it did not used to be that way, but when it is the root of evil (the love of it) and the key to my happiness, seriously, I just can't stop thinking about it. Would never marry for it because that can makes things worse. I would rather be left with $10 at the end of the paycheck than with the idea of uncomfortably large monthly payments because it did not get paid last month so-we's-got-to-double-up-this-month type of thing. It is an ebb and flow. I don't keep a check book and that is one key to my retardation. I've tried, lord knows I have tried, but numbers make me anxious and I tend to run from having to use them, even though I am actually quite good in math and have been since childhood. Nerd-a-lert. Conditioned reflex to run from because my 7th grade, "Superior Math" class teacher, Ms. Durham, was such a freak. She had the driest sense of humor and it made me drift. With the most deadpan of delivery, she shared this joke, "My plant is having babies, and you can't watch." Truly not my type of classroom environment, but most educational for the spirit and comical in retrospect. Never again would I like math.

One of the many projects I must undertake in the next few weeks is letting go of magazines. F'n magazines. I have piles of f'n magazines and the task is daunting. Hording is definitely something I fear and I'm seeing a good basis here with the accumulation of magazines. Particularly because I don't read them right away and think miraculously I will make time to read all of them. I used to, but I read so much at work that I get annoyed when I have to do it off the clock. Whatever. These piles won't whittle down themselves and yet I keep finding magazines that have Russell Crowe involved which looks like a major issue. Put the magazines in the recycle bin. Put the mag-a-zine in...the...recycle...bin...