I’m going to attempt to start writing blogs again. It felt good to get the last one out. I know that writing helps me, so why not do it? Why ever stop? Oh right, depression.
Taking care of yourself is a learning process. I’m finding out what it actually takes to take care of myself. Figuring out what makes me feel good and what makes me feel bad is going to allow me to remove the things from my life that make me feel bad, and bring in more of the things that make me feel good.
I know life is a bitch, and some bad things are just unavoidable. I don’t want these things to affect me poorly anymore and I feel like I’ve been doing a good job at improving with that. As much as I dislike overly positive people, I’m trying to be more like that.
For the most part, when I don’t want to do something it’s because I’m depressed. When my depression makes its way to the surface, I lose all motivation. That usually causes anxiety, which causes a whole bunch of other problems. It’s a really crappy cycle to get stuck into and I don’t want any part of it anymore. I’ve been trying to force myself to keep moving when depression wants to take over, and it seems to be helping. Its exhausting and I fail a lot, but I’m hoping it will get easier with time.
Having gone down this road before is a little demotivating. I know that I’ve said this before, I know that I have tried to improve before, and I know that I failed. I can’t really call it a fail until I stop trying though.
I’m generally happy with the way things are going in my life. My boyfriend and I have been trying to plan for our future and determine what the best option is for us. We’ve been talking about moving out and eventually getting another dog. We’ve wanted a second dog since before we got the first one. Over the last 5 months of owning Beedle we are realizing that he needs a permanent playmate. At this point we are pretty sure we won’t be able to get a second dog until we move out and it has really pushed me to want to move out sooner rather than later. I say me in this case because Joe has been wanting to move out since before he met me.
For years I have wanted to get rid of debt before moving out of my parents house. I was unfortunately young and dumb once, and opened too many credit card accounts. Those accounts are now being paid off but putting a halt on my future. I never wanted debt when I moved out, so I never wanted to move out until I paid that off. After being convinced we aren’t going to get another dog until we moved out, I quickly changed my mind about moving out with debt.
I’ve been budgeting myself and keeping close track of my bills to get rid of them, and I finally feel like I’m getting somewhere. I was able to pay off a small credit card recently, and every time I check Credit Karma, my credit card debt balance decreases. Its nice to be able to see the progress you’re making through your credit report, but it can be very discouraging at the same time if I go months without seeing any changes. As long as there are good changes or no changes at all, I should be happy with my progress.
My boyfriend just bought a van that we are going to convert to a camper. This will be used for the majority of our future trips and is going to make our ADK trips a lot easier. I don’t get out of work until late on Friday night so leaving to go to the ADK would have been an issue since we would be setting up camp in the dark. With a van, we can just hop in the back of the van with our bed and sleep without any set up. Everything will already be good to go. With the van, we will also be able to keep warm at night easier. On our last Colorado trip, the temperature dropped into the 30’s every night and got pretty chilly in the tent.
Right now we are working on getting the van street legal and cleared up of any mechanical issues that may be there. We are also working on figuring out the inside layout. The guy Joe bought the van from had already started converting the van and gave us information on what his plans were. We completely took out everything that he had done and are trying to figure out a new plan. Once we figure out what we want to do, we will start bringing it all together.
We are hoping to have everything finished up and ready to go for the first warm weekend where we will feel comfortable testing it out. We are eager to start making trips to the Adirondacks so the sooner the van is finished the better. We took Beedle for a ride in the van and he honestly seemed to like it better than a car. He has always been afraid of vehicles, and I don’t blame him considering what he has been through. On our drive he was able to sit right in between the driver and passenger seats, and I think he liked being able to be in between us. When he is in one of our cars he is confined to the back and just wants to be up front with us.
We are thinking of putting a bed for him right in between the driver and passenger seats instead of having a center console. Like I said, he seemed to enjoy being able to sit in between us, so that will be a great place for his “seat”. We had a bed platform in the back, with a small “kitchen” area with a sink, counters, and a fridge in the middle. Joe ripped all that out, and we are going to re-design. We are going to keep the fridge and the sink that came with it. I’m not sure what Joe wants to do with the counters, if they will be thrown out, re-purposed within the van or fixed up and re-sold separately. If we don’t use them, I’m going to try to fix them up because I believe it is real wood that I could sand down and re-stain really nice. It would be nice to sell them and use the money for the van anyway. For our sleeping arrangements, I’m pretty sure we are going to be rebuilding the bed platform about 8″-12″ lower than it originally was. Reason being the platform stopped right under the windows and our mattress would be covering 8 inches of the windows on both sides. We also can’t access the inside handle to open the back doors of the van with the platform raised so high. If we get a little crazy, we might ditch the bed idea as a whole and set up hooks in the van that we can hang our hammocks onto. I think I would have to sleep in my hammock a few times to see if I would actually be willing to do this.
There are a bunch of little additions that we are going to get quotes for to see how much it would cost us if it were even possible to do that. I’m excited to start seeing what this van ends up turning into and I’m even more excited for the adventures we will take it on. I’m not excited for the debt that I feel like this van is going to cause. When Joe got the van I was really excited but I didn’t think about how big of a money pit it would be. Joe keeps talking about all these things and all I see are dollar signs coming out of his mouth. I don’t want money to be an issue, I never want money to be an issue. Its always an issue.
I hate being broke. Even though I know it could be much worse, it still sucks. Like I said earlier, I’m slowly paying off my debt, but I don’t want other things holding that back anymore. I want to get rid of my debt, I just want it gone. I don’t want to put money into something when I owe so many companies money that my teenage self so carelessly took advantage of. A lot of the stresses of my last relationship came from finances, and I don’t want that to become an issue in my current relationship.
I guess I need to weigh the pros and cons and remember that even though this may be a money pit, its going to provide me with (hopefully) years of adventures and building memories with my two favorite men and that we will figure out the money part.