File your complaints here.....

I am pretty sure this blog entry is going to be nothing but bitching. If you are into that kind of thing, welcome. If you are just curious as to what kind of thing gets under my skin, please stay. If you are looking for something to use against me in the future, grab a seat.

I should start with this thing we all have to deal with: money. As we all know, Congress fucked around with the debt ceiling for far too long, achieved very little, and showed themselves to be about as ineffective as possible. Unemployment is still hovering just over 9%. The S&P downgraded its credit rating for US debt. While I was never a big fan of the government, I always trusted that things would work out, somehow, even if they worked out a different way than I would have liked. I want to believe that people are rational and can engage in reasoned discourse to find a solution. But no. There is no more reasoned discourse or rational acts. Actual and direct damage is being done. I don't think there is a single person who hasn't been affected. I know that all the time I spent busting my ass to save my pennies to invest and save and have something to retire with....well, it was all a waste of time. Thousands of dollars just disappear over night. The markets are false. It's like a game, only suddenly we realize we have been talking about real money and not the Monopoly version. It's all so abstract until you realize how much actual suffering is going on in the world because of Tea Party ideology or conservative Republican rhetoric or liberal everyone gets a blue ribbon or the outdated and false democratic majority rule bullshit. It's all a bunch of crap. There is no direct say in how we are governed. But that is nothing new. It's all a matter of hoping that no one fucks anything up too badly.

There is plenty more I could say about that, but I guess it's time to take this to a more personal level. I've been pretty reclusive over the last few years. I will go to work and see people and chat and joke and do all the things people do at work, and I will run errands and chat with people in the store. But then I will make it to my house, like I finally crossed the finish line, and all that social ability, all the chattiness and smiley a/t will slowly dissolve and I would find myself avoiding eye contact with my next door neighbor. I will intentionally leave my phone, on vibrate, somewhere where I won't see it for hours. I will sit on my back porch and slowly feel some degree of relief, even though I didn't realize I needed it. Many times when I am sitting there I wonder what is wrong with me, what made me this way...I feel like something must be wrong with me because I seem so unwilling to participate in the world at large, and everyone else seems to want to do exactly that. At the same time, I really do love people. I love having genuine connections with people, and I never get around to telling anyone how much it means to me. I do best one on one. Groups of people seem almost inhuman to me. But I can pretend. I can play along and do all the things that people expect. I can laugh on key. But....all I will be thinking about is my quiet back porch, crickets, and my dog.

This is probably entirely too personal for a blog, but it doesn't really matter.

This ship is sinking...

So, yesterday my friend S emailed me a link to a recently published NYT article about law school, debt, and the job market. Here is the link if you are interested: Law School is a rip-off. It is an interesting article for sure. I have to be honest....I get a sinking feeling in my gut whenever I hear someone mention they want to go to law school. I would try to talk anyone out of going, or wish them the very best if they didn't want to listen to reason.  I know it is sort of taboo to talk about money, but anyone who knows me knows that I talk about it all the time. The conversations take this basic format:

Friend : "Hey Ashley, you want to go out to dinner/bar/movie?"
Me: "Eh, I can't do anything until payday"

But really, I can't do anything on payday, or after payday, or anytime in the next 10-25 years. It's sad. Sometimes I get so tired of making excuses why I can't do anything that I just don't return phone calls/texts. I am utterly blown away by most of my coworkers, folks who go out to lunch every single day, who regularly go to happy hour, and don't pay anything towards their loans. I hear them on the phone, telling the loan officers they just don't have anything to give them....

So, am I just a sucker because I make an effort to pay down my loans? Get this: I have a significant amount of both federal and private loans, all of which are in repayment. I have been paying down my private loans at a 30 year rate. That means I will be 60 something years old when I finish paying it off. I just consolidated my Federal loans (except for the Perkins, since as a PD I qualify for loan cancellation on that one, which was 14K to begin with). I have been making monthly payments on my private loans since the Fall of 2007. It is now January 2011, and as of this month's payment, I will have paid down all of the accrued interest and will finally start paying down principal. 3 fucking years. Thousands of dollars down the drain. Interest accruing every second of every day.

tick. tock. cha-ching.

I am not married. I have a mortgage. I pay for my own existence. Alone. With my crappy public defender salary. I hoard whatever money I can. I have a savings account. I have an IRA. I have a state retirement plan. I am trying the best I can. My mom helps me out a lot. She paid for the new battery for my car. She gives me $40 from time to time. Once, she paid off the entirely of one of my loans. But, she doesn't have a job. She is still living off whatever money my dad left her when he died. That money is a finite sum and has to last her the rest of her life. I don't come from a family with money. I come from a single parent without a job. No one is going to bail me out if I can't do this myself.

I guess I should be happy I have a job? Ignore the fact that even though I am making more money than before I went to law school,  I am 100 times worse off financially? I am happy I bought a house 9 years ago, before law school was ever on my radar. I couldn't buy one now. Hell, my mortgage payment is beans next to my student loan payment.

eh. So there is my sob story. My current life revolves around the money I don't have. This job search I am on stems from more than a desire to do something different.

obviously....

This is what people look like while studying for the bar.

Car Trouble

In the nearly 7 years I have owned my little VW Golf, it has caused me very few problems. Which is surprising given the extent of my neglect. Oil change? Tire rotation? Check engine light? Pshaw. Well, last week I got in my car only to discover that in addition to the check engine light that has been on for the last two years (more on that in a minute), two additional error lights were twinkling at me from the dash. Sigh. One was for the airbag, and the other one was too cryptic to even guess what was wrong. I've also noticed over the last week or so that the car has really been struggling to start on these cold mornings. After three years of Vermont winters, I knew the little car could take much more than 20 degree mornings. So, with all this and since it had been slightly over a year since my last oil change (I can justify this), I decided to take it in for some new oil and a quick check under the hood.

The upshot is owning a diesel car is expensive when it comes to replacing things that are dying. I need a new battery (never replaced the one that came with the car) and something called an air flow sensor. The battery power was intermittent which was causing at least one of the check engine lights, possibly the one for the air bag as well.  A quality battery for diesel cars seems to cost a little over $200. I knew about the air flow sensor....that is the light that has been on for 2 years. Sounds innocent enough, but not at over $300. So the car people have scraped the sensor and the light goes away but eventually comes back. Sigh again. Oil change and diagnostic? Nearly $100.

The thing is, I really want to go to Carrboro this weekend. I like getting away from Columbia from time to time. Hell, I am up for getting out of Columbia whenever I can. But....well....errr..

So, it might not be the best idea, but I am going to speak sweetly to my little VW and ask it to take me on this one last trip. And then I will take VW to the car spa, get a new battery, take care of a few other things. One more week, little one. One more week. Please. You are on my 2011 to do list. Front and center.

Did I mention that I am due for a new timing belt as well?