this is why i don't fall in love in springtime!
This week saw me buy a gym membership, gym shoes, a yoga pass, bulk produce, magnesium bisglycinate, and something in which to organize my capsules and pills in hopes I’ll stop missing my meds. Uncertain whether I’m emerging from my period of burnout or having a hypomanic episode.
I know that much of skincare is a scam designed to get the girls, gays, and theys to spend money on useless goop, but the times in which I don’t wash my face are not motivated by feminist defiance so much as detached resentment toward my body for requiring upkeep. One of the bellwethers of my current state of burnout was when, about six months ago, I became incapable of taking a few minutes to wash my face or moisturize. It doesn’t feel good! It feels better to be willing to maintain routine hygiene practices!
But this all takes money. I wish it were simpler to tell the difference between being a functional adult taking care of my health vs. getting got by wellness hoopla and the consumerist impulse to fix my life with my credit card.
For now, I'm willing to be a bit of a mark. There’s a extent to which putting money towards supporting my physical health, even in terms of non-essential things—I can run or bike on the road for free, or do yoga in my living room; how can I justify paying for the privilege of doing it in a sweaty room?—is more about making my budget align with my values than any specific outcomes. Those values include not wanting to continue to grind my body and spirit into pulp.
(I could be hitting the pavement or doing youtube yoga, but I'm not, because I don’t enjoy doing these things and don’t find them restorative. It’s cheaper to make hummus than buy it, and it’s cheapest of all to simply not eat hummus; but is it worth the savings to live a hummusless life just because you CBA to make it?)
Merry Canadian tax season!
Are there any bloggers, books, resources, etc who give good, practical personal finance advice for hypothetical people with bad relationships to their families who are familiar with budgeting 101 (not that any method has ever really clicked for me, but we live in perpetual hope) and are looking for info on saving and investing without having to dodge crypto shills etc? Canadian context +++ but not necessary.
It's way harder than it should be to find personal finance advice that doesn’t eventually tell you to get into real estate speculation. I’ve seen recommendations for the Frugal Friends podcast, by which I am intrigued, but I will basically never open my podcast app of choice and not decide I'd rather listen to people talk about anime.
food
- Tiramisu wherein the mascarpone is cut with whipped cream is an abomination to god. On the other hand, the Costco scoop cake is shockingly delicious, as far as grocery store tiramisu goes.
- Other culinary highlights of the week included succulent, dark, thick elk stew at an event catered by the Aboriginal Friendship Centre kitchen...
- ...as well as the first tasty green smoothies I’ve ever made at home. (Frozen tropical fruit + raw ginger + lemon juice salvage what is otherwise a dull, vegetal mess.)
music
- SAYA by Saya Gray feels like Fiona Apple by way of Dirty Projectors. Sorry for the terrible comp, it's just a good angry art pop record.
- On the cultural-commentary-via-musicians side of things, Matt Bernstein's video essay The Complex Tragedy of Grimes doesn't contain a lot of new material for people who've been following Grimes' early career and descent into technofash notoriety, but I appreciated its refusal to litigate whether or not a victim has to be a sufficiently good person in order for us to condemn intimate partner abuse.
- Accelerate by Susanne Sundfør remains a masterpiece of baroque masterpiece and potentially the best pop song to ever make use of the pipe organ.