Lately, I haven't been on top of anything.

I'd like to blame it on the Guild, and that's partly true: the added workload is a lot for me to handle. But it's a necessity, and so I can't really use being busy as an excuse. Still, I feel like I've got a clean pair of socks in the morning, I'm a hero.

So all the little householdy things like packing lunches and catching the cheap transport rather than the expensive have really fallen by the wayside. Plus, I haven't been keeping track of anything: not the money coming in, and definitely not the money going out.

Last year at this time, I was working like someone just invented the concept of "jobs" and I was really trying to reduce my debt load. I did that, which freed up additional $$ that I planned to use to either 1) stop working at the Souk or 2) pay off more debt.

But I didn't really plan for, or anticipate what my spending issues were: what behaviors got me into debt in the first place. As they say: those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

This month, I've gotten nasty-grams from three different debt-holders. One of them was fixed with a simple telephone call, one with a quick check in the mail, but the third one is already looking really thorny. But the stupidest thing is, in both cases, I had the $$ to send them. I just didn't do it. And not only did I not do it, I spent the money I was supposed to send them. I earned it back, and I have it now, but I could have sent it straight away. I didn't, and that scared me.

I've had a rocky relationship with money, from the very start. No one in my immeidate family is what I'd call responsible with $$. I'd sworn I didn't want to live that life, and I remember the sick-gut feeling of knowing that there's not enough money, and that people aren't going to care why that's so. I've been working to fix this issue, but not enough: a lifetime of sloppy habits take effort and care to break.

I'm taking another look at my "system": checking for leaks and pitfalls. I know now that my biggest money drain comes from a few isolated issues that I have to address, and that the fact I'm making more $$ means I have to be more careful, not less. The reality is, even though I'm not in the same debt area I was last summer, I'm still very much in the red. Im hoping that I've got a little bit of grace to fix the current screwups, but I really don't want to be making the same mistakes over and over in my life. If nothing else, I want to be assured that when I go on auto-pilot (because if things go well, my life will be even busier than it is now), I've got a straight course set.