jaychick.com

So, sometimes I daydream.  I’ve noticed about myself that sometimes I daydream about the future of how things will be and there are sometimes that I think back to the past at how things used to be.  I’ve been going back fairly often lately about how life was for me growing up. I’ve even had a couple of conversations with people recently about how when we were kids there were no such things as car seats for kids or cell phones or even coffee shops as we know them today. 

Where I am from in Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I grew up in a little town called Rudyard.  My grandmother owned the local laundry mat and lived in half of the building with the laundry mat on the other half.  When I was a kid I used to visit my grandma and play with my siblings and cousins in the laundry mat side of the building.  When we had played all the games we could think of from tag to hopping from one table to the other to the washers trying not to touch the ground because there were monsters trying to get us that lived on the floor but couldn’t jump, we would take to the outdoors.  Running around like happy little do letting our imaginations run wild, we would eventually make our way into the “coffee shop” next door.  Now this was the common scene in the “coffee shop.”

There were always the same three or four ladies in the coffee shop, they smoked like chimneys and drank coffee all day talking about their husbands what was going on in town and the latest dirt on so and so.  There were all kinds of nick nacs that no one in there right minds would buy for sale.  And when us kids would come in off the street all amped up from running from the aliens or whatever it was that was chasing us that day into the safe haven of the coffee shop where no monster dare enter, these old ladies would turn and “shush” us to keep it down.  We would get our fuel (candy bars and soda) and head out for another round of “oh crap here they come, RUN!!!” And we back into imaginary land.

From my experience and what I know now, life was very different for everyone back then.  Money came with harder work, it was spent more frugally, when you wanted to get a hold of someone you called them on that ancient piece of equipment called a land line and if they didn’t answer they weren’t home and you would wait and eventually run into them in town.  There was no email, or voice mail, if you wanted to send someone information you used the US Postal Service and stamps.  Life just seemed to be simpler.  You worked an honest days work for an honest days wage and bought bread, milk, beef and you paid the electric bill.

I know that I’m over simplifying it here but the point is that we have over complicating it now in the name of convenience and a quick buck.  I’ve noticed that there are a lot of things that have come onto the market that promise you that it will save time, energy, money, etc.  So what we have done has bought the product in hopes of gaining all this freedom that don’t currently have.  Well, the problem is that with that time we fill it with something else that in turn forces us to buy something else to save us more time and the cylce continues until we are at our wits end trying to manage all the time, energy and money saving gadgets that take up all our time, worn us out and thrown us into debt.

We “need” instant coffee that costs us $3 in drive through, food to come out fast and then require it to be healthy to boot, we expect people to get back to us immediately to phone calls or emails.  Did you know that the average American expects a return phone call within 20 minutes?  So these are just a few examples of the things that we call convenience that actually require us to work a lot harder to have.  If you buy a latte a day 5 days a week averaging $3 a drink, that comes out to about $66 bucks a month just in coffee.  That’s $800 a year.  Where instead if you brewed coffee at home it would cost you at $7/lb about $126 a year.  Of course it would take longer and you may have to get up 8 minutes earlier than you would otherwise but look at the savings.  And you may even get to interact with your family or roommate a little in the morning and that’s $674 less a year that you have to work to earn.

Now I have to say something here, while I’m sitting in a modern day coffee shop sipping my $3 latte writing this, that I know that I have not made all these changes to my life that I have written about. What I am trying to get at is we CAN NOT complain about our economic status if we are unwilling to change our lifestyle practices to save money by cutting out costly conveniences and letting go of expectations on others to fulfill a need we may have.

Just trying to provoke though here.  No condemnation whatsoever, but if we want things to change, if we want more time with our families, friends and the things that matter to us the most we have to make sacrifices and simply spend time with the family, friends, etc.  We need to stop listening to what the TV says will make our lives easier because they are not concerned about you or your well being, they are trying to make money off a product or services that is unnecessary and costly to you and I.

We are grown ups that feed ourselves by picking up the fork and putting it into our mouths not by sitting there having someone else feed us.   We need to think, make our own minds about what is important and NESSESARY. Everything else is luxury.  So spend more time running from monsters with your friends and less time wondering if you should buy the latest time saving gadget.