IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN!

I hate money and most everyone I know hates money too! Its basic text book psych to know where my hatred comes from: I grew up poor and money has been a constant pain my ass since about age 8. I know, I know, it seems very hip and cool lately to brag about your meager upbringing, ever more obvious these days as J Crew comes out with 200 dollar ripped and stained jeans that somehow manages to glamorize poverty and not owning a working washing machine but I swear I really did grow up with no money.
There are a lot of reasons we never had any money- my dad was seriously injured and forced to quit his good paying job, a bevy of bad addictions made things worse and least of all is that my parents never seemed too concerned with a budget. So when part of the roof of our house collapsed and there was no money to fix it a large plastic tarp was used to cover up the gaping whole, this wouldn’t be so bad but I grew up in Seattle where the average yearly rain fall could easily flood a large rec. room…and it did! My childhood home become a wasteland, a very public proof of our poverty, it was obvious from its bad wiring that gave you a little shock every time you touched metal to the mounds of garbage that seemed to fill every corner- we were broke.
It was gruesome, ugly and sad. A total buzz kill.
It also left me in a hot mess of a relationship with dollar, dollar bills; I had the farthest thing from a fairytale childhood but money is the one thing I feel like I actually think I need therapy for!
It continues to have this larger than life status in my mind because I can’t seem to get my head around what I want from it. When I was a child, teen and into college I felt I deserved a grand lifestyle of designer clothes and exotic vacations and so drunk of the power of my first credit card I began to give myself that life style. I lived far outside my means (which wasn’t hard to do) and racked up charges buying Kate Spade purses and Juicy Couture underwear! Thankfully my credit card only had a limit of 800 dollars but I still managed to not pay the bill and get it sent to collections.
After living in Los Angeles I realize that the old adage of “money doesn’t buy happiness” is true, most rich people in L.A. are miserable and I wasn’t much happier myself when I was filling my closet with stuff- more stuff definitely didn’t make me more happy and so I covet that type of life style less and less.
However living a lifestyle I can afford hasn’t released me from my struggles with money. It’s not as though I live in paralyzed fear, I’m not settling for a job that pays well but I hate because it brings home the bacon- no my delusion runs deeper than that: I’m actually crazy enough to want to do something I love and make a reasonable wage off it.
My dysfunctional relationship with money is re-enforced by the world around me, this blog was inspired by an NPR story I heard that entailed an interview with high fluting college professor who stated my generation is the most entitled generation yet to be seen and why you ask? For wanting the very thing I covet, to make money off something that makes me happy- apparently that is something for the fortunate (i.e. already rich) and the rest of us need to fall in line.
I have no simple solution to sum this blog up, my guess is this is an ongoing dialogue to have but I wonder how are others handling paying for a grown up lifestyle while still trying to figure out how to be a grown up? Are we an entitled generation?
Questions, questions???