Know Where You Are
Today is the second day of me being in Monk Mode and I have to admit, it’s been really nice. I haven’t had the urge to grab my phone and scroll aimlessly trying to kill time or search for stimulation. However, I have been doing research and brainstorming on what I want to takeaway from this Monk Mode that I am participating in.
One thing that I have come to the conclusion of, is that up until this point, I have been terrible with money. I really don’t spend it on useless things, but I just don’t make enough to live a comfortable life while also being in hella debt. And that’s when it hit me today.. a majority of my daily struggles all revolve around money in some way/shape/form. Now how is that a fun way to live? I’ll let you in on a secret, it ISN’T.
I’ve been so fucking broke for such a long time. There have been weeks this year where I was LUCKY if my bank account didn’t go negative before payday. Mind you, this was also while having a professional job.
Growing up we are encouraged to go to school, go to college, get a good job, and then work that job until we retire, or something along those lines. And so like many people my age (I’m 28), we do the damn thing and go to school to get a professional job that we think will make us happy.
I originally was going to go to school to work in social work because I have always just wanted to help people. But the night before my orientation in college, we had to decide what we were going to declare our major in. And my gut was telling me that social work wasn’t gonna be it for me.
Okay, I say my gut, but I also I looked up the salary that many social workers make and LMAOOOOOO. There was no way I could do that with the amount of loans that I was going to have from school. So I decided to take a safer route and do Business Management.
It sounded great at the time, but looking back, I wish I would have majored in something I was genuinely more passionate about. Something like web design, graphic design, photography, art, etc. Something that taught me a skills that I could use to create my own service/business.
On the bright side though, my Business Management degree has shifted my brain to think like a business person, so when the time comes for me to run my own business, I have general idea on what needs to go into it and all that jazz. Which is what I am sort of kind of doing with this website?
I don’t know exactly what my goals with this website are just yet, but I am excited to figure it out along the way. And if you’re reading this right now, you get to witness part of my journey of figuring it out :)
I have been trying to work on so many projects this past year that I wasn’t really doing great in any areas of my life. Mainly because I was focusing on too many things. I was learning how to be a content creator, learning different styles of art and ways to express myself, learning how to make music, learn graphic design, make a fan-made Pokemon game from scratch, and many other things.
These are things that I am going to continue to do, but I am just taking my focus off of them for a little bit so I can finally focus on one thing to get me to the point where I can actually dive into all of these things that I want to do and learn.
I have also noticed that while trying to learn all of these things, I have been constantly growing, constantly changing, and constantly adapting to the things that life has thrown at me.
There’s just been so much happening in my personal life, in the lives of everyone around me, and in the world around us. It’s been so hard to keep up and so hard to hear my own thoughts with all of the noise. This was one of the main reasons I wanted to delete my social media.
In my last job, I started off managing 7+ social media accounts that collectively equalled to 40k+ followers, for a local business here in Tampa. I really enjoyed it at first, but the company was very disorganized and there was a lot of things going on behind the scenes that I didn’t really agree with. Towards the end of my time with the company, there was so much uncertainty with what the future of the company was going to look like. I didn’t have much guidance or direction with what I was supposed to be marketing for the company as well, so it really started to affect me outside of work.
I started to feel extremely lost and I started to seclude myself from my friends because I just didn’t really know who I was anymore. Anytime I would see my friends, I felt like a shell of the person that they knew when we would hang out before. But nothing on their end had changed, it was always me that was changing.
I have been on a self improvement journey for the past year now, and this is the first time in my life where I feel like I know the direction that I want to go in.
I have always relied on life to take me where it wants, which has lead me to so many cool places and will continue too. But it’s all just been based off of coincidences and timing.
Unless the universe really just be making everything work out idk.
I haven’t wanted to base my life in the hands of the universe anymore to determine random outcomes by chance. I wanted to start heading into a direction where I know what I want and I know where I want to go.
Being lost for so long, I had felt like my compass wasn’t working and I was in the middle of a fog. I still feel like I am in the fog but I can see a horizon in the distance and my compass is finally working.
And in order to create this life that I want, I have to know where I want to go, know who I want to be, and know what I have to do to get there.
One of the things that I desire in this life is to experience financial freedom. I don’t want to worry about money anymore. It’s been something that I have done my entire life and I finally want to stop reliving this endless cycle of barely making ends meet.
So I’m going to be vulnerable here with you and share with you where I am at financially.
This will be to show you where I am at, but also to show myself where I am so I know where I need to go from here.
I have avoided my debt for such a long time because it’s been such a big number being held over my head, and now that I am heading into a direction that I am excited about, I am shifting my mindset to make that number feel small and not hold so much weight over me.
Sooooo…….
Let’s see where I am at right now.
I currently have six credit cards that are all pretty much maxed out (LOL), a loan for my car, a loan for some work done on my car recently, a credit line, a private student loan, and the rest of my silly student loans.
So let’s break it all down:
Credit Cards:
Credit Card 1: $1,338
Credit Card 2: $1,530
Credit Card 3: $1,160
Credit Card 4: $1,488
Credit Card 5: $1,382
Credit Card 6: $1,015
Credit Line: $800
TOTAL: $8,713
Car Related Loans:
Car Loan: $8,496
Car-Repair Loan: $653
TOTAL: $9,149
Student Loans:
Private Student Loan: — $10,971
Student Loans: $37,347
TOTAL: $48,318
TOTAL ALTOGETHER: $66,180
So I am basically $66,180 down the shitter right now.
In the past, this number would freak me out, but ya know what? I am happy to know that this is all that I owe for everything. It could be worse. And even though I am not in a position right now where I can pay that off anytime soon, I at least know what direction I need to go in to tackle this mountain of debt.
So going forward, that is part of my mission.
I appreciate you taking the time to read this, if you are feeling stuck, lost, or overwhelmed, I hope you can try figuring out where exactly you are with everything in life right now.
If you feel like you are in a fog too, the only way to get out of it is to figure out where you want to go and then put one foot in front of the other. No matter how big the step is, it’s one step closer to where you want to be.
I hope this post helped you in one shape or form. Thank you for giving me the space to speak freely with where I am at with things. I appreciate you <3
See you on the flip side.
Love always, Kyrin.
