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Have you actually moved into the new house yet? Have you unpacked? I had zero free time for any leisure-related activities for a solid three months after I moved into the house I bought. Of course I bought a foreclosure that needed a lot of work, so your mileage may vary. I think one of the issues you may have (and I recognize it because it's something I've dealt with) is the lack of long-term goals. You had the short-term goal of getting your degree, landing a good job, your marriage and relationship to your family, and then buying this house and moving into it. But when you have no big things you're trying to accomplish in the next 5 years, it's easy to just focus all your attention on immediate leisure-time activities. Especially when, as you say, you don't take any vacation time. On the other hand, if you don't have a goal - not just a goal that you have to achieve, like "don't go broke and lose my house" but a goal that you genuinely want, like "see Paris" or "get a big promotion to management" or "move to Alaska and become a gold miner" or whatever, then your life just becomes "about" whatever the latest passing entertainment option happens to be. This is probably something to discuss with your wife and your therapist, and probably not something you can just decide on or fix immediately. But it'd be a good idea to think seriously about what you want out of your life. When you're on your deathbed, will you look back fondly at all those countless hours you spent collecting x-wing minis, making wargaming terrain, and playing computer games? Is that what you want your life's work to be? I bet it isn't. When you have a priority for your future it'll be a lot easier to stop spending money on frivolous pastimes now. When your plan for your future is achievable and you can think about it every day, you can look at every nonessential purchase you make as not only money but also time invested in something that directly detracts from achieving your goals. Like I said, this isn't easy. It's not really something I've got figured out fully yet, and I'm 40. But I can look back at the last ten years and see that I've wasted a lot of my time consuming ephemeral entertainment options, and a lot of that time I honestly don't even remember any more. If you asked me to detail the games I played in 2007 I couldn't do it. I have some minis I painted from back then, but not many. I have a lot that I bought back then, that I still haven't painted and if I'm honest, I never will. I have computer games on the shelf I never played and never will, I have an original XBOX with games I never played and they're too old to even bother trying to sell anymore. The money and time I spend on that wasn't just erased from the limited time I have on earth, it was directly subtracting from achieving things that would actually have been significant and important to the sum of my life. I could have been doing something more meaningful with myself. Nowadays I look at gaming as important only in the aspect that it lets me spend quality time with people I value; otherwise, it's time-filling entertainment for those times of my days when I haven't got the energy or the attention to spend doing something more valuable. I still buy games and toys and poo poo, I'm not perfect at this yet, but lately I've been doing things like: supporting a family member who is really struggling, paying attention to making my home a better place to live, planning for and fully funding my retirement savings needs, improving my performance at work, and re-focusing on my marriage. I've also started getting some exercise. All of that stuff pays dividends. It feels way more rewarding than accumulating expansion packs for the Lord of the Rings LCG, adding to the bins of unpainted Bones in the hobby room, or adding line items to the list of Steam games I'll never install and play. Makes me a lot less eager to buy buy buy.
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Jul 31, 2015 20:33
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signalnoise posted:Yeah I have no idea what I want out of life other than enjoy it day to day, and I rarely manage that. I have never had space for big projects, physical or otherwise. One of the ways I've approached my own problem with this is trying new things. I love gaming but I'm open to pretty much any activity or interest. Whether that's backpacking, or making beer, or keeping dart frogs. That sounds like hobby proliferation (and it can be: I have spent too much money on a lot of unfinished projects, ugh) but it's led me to interesting places: volunteering with a local feral cat rescue group, becoming interested in maybe one day through-hiking the pacific crest trail, briefly considering a career in microbrewing cider. I realized I don't have to become some big famous person, or get rich, or do grand things, in order to have a fulfilling life. I just have to recognize that I've spent too much time inhabiting a very small and insular slice of the total possibility-space, and that the way to become inspired to do something meaningful is to discover more possibilities. If that sounds a bit grandiose, well, fair enough. And like I said, you don't have to figure it all out right away. But I had to come to the realization that playing computer games was, in part, a way of avoiding thinking about my own mortality and the degree to which I've wasted big chunks of my precious life on consuming forgettable entertainment.
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Jul 31, 2015 21:59
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Duckman2008 posted:my father in law definitely still uses an iPod touch 2nd Gen and an old Kindle he got for free through a contest as his portable internet devices You're complaining about old people who actually use modern electronic devices. My mom still uses AOL. My mother in law goes for months without checking her email. She's literally afraid of her computer. QVC and Home Shopping Network still make piles and piles of money, from people who are incapable or terrified of shopping online (but OK with telling a stranger on the phone their credit card number). Annnyway, yeah I guess foisting your unnecessarily-expensive internet off on the in-laws is a good deal, although I wonder if they're aware that they're just subsidizing your entertainment budget rather than a necessary expense. In the meantime, it's August 12th. How much have you already spent in August on games and game-related stuff?
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Aug 12, 2015 20:33
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How did you spend $175 on hair? Are your travel costs being reimbursed? Did you really only spend $85 in an entire month on groceries?
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Sep 1, 2015 01:37
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spwrozek posted:Any real salon, in any city. $60 for a cut, $90+ for color, plus tip. My sister charges $160 for a cut and color in Toledo Ohio (not exactly New York). Add in a $30 tip... Yeah real salons in real cities cost a lot, but there's all kinds of things in life where you can choose to spend a shitload of money for something. Between sisters, mothers, and a wife, I have six women in my family, and I'm confident none of them have ever spent $175 on a single day of hair care in their lives. Another friend of mine has a mowhawk which she has colored and styled regularly and even she once told me her big spendy visit to her hair person costs about $100, and she only does that every six months when she's feeling flush... the rest of the time, she styles it herself. But that's all pretty much irrelevant, because: signalnoise has very little ability to ask his wife to cut back on her own personal discretionary spending, until he's shown he can go without spending several hundred dollars on games and toys for at least like six months or more. After that, they can both budget what they can afford for nonessential spending, and if hair salon is where his wife wants to spend like two thirds of her monthly fun money or whatever, go for it. In the meantime, if he even raised an eyebrow at the cost of his wife's haircare, she could just point vaguely in the direction of his mountains of tiny plastic mens, or his Steam account, and he'd have to tuck tail and slink away.
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Sep 1, 2015 18:57
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