I know for a lot of people this sounds like nothing. On this sub I think people will understand what it actually means. For most of my adult life my checking account has been at zero or close to it by the end of every month, sometimes a little negative with an overdraft fee to show for it. Every unexpected thing, a copay, a car repair, a higher than usual utility bill, meant either going without something else or putting it on a card and dealing with it later. That was just the texture of my life and I had stopped thinking of it as something that could change. About two years ago I started treating $500 as if it didn't exist. Not in a budget app, not as "savings" in a separate account I'd just transfer back when I was short, but literaly mentally writing it off. I told myself I had that much less than I actualy did. When my balance said $600 I behaved like it said $100. This sounds simple and maybe obvious but the thing that made it work for me specifically was not tracking it, not celebrating it, not checking if it was growing, just forgeting it was there. Because every previous time I had tried to save a buffer I'd watched the number and the number would become a resource I'd negotiate with in my head. Now something unexpected comes up and I have options that weren't there before. Last month my cat needed an unexpected vet visit and I paid it without it touching anything I needed for rent or groceries. That has genuinly never happened before in my adult life. I'm not done, I have a long way to go, but I wanted to put this here because two years ago I would have needed to read it.
u/Gulnozar
I work from home. My neighbor across the hall, I'll call him Gerald, is retired and genuinely lovely but has absolutely no concept of time. Every time I step out to grab mail or take out trash or literally just exist in the hallway, he opens his door and starts talking. Not a quick hello. A full update on his week, his opinions on the building management, what his daughter is up to, the weather, his knee. It's always twenty minutes minimum and I cannot figure out how to exit gracefully because he's nice and I don't want to be rude.
I started timing my exits. Checking the peephole first. Taking the stairs to avoid passing his door. Yeah that wasn't going to work long term.
One day I just snapped a little internally and when he opened his door mid-hallway I kind of panicked and responded to his "hey how's it going" with a confused smile and "sorry, no English" and kept walking. He said oh sorry and went back inside. It worked so well I did it again three days later. And then again.
It's been like six weeks of this now. I wave. I smile. I occasionally say something that sounds vaguely like another language but is not. He has been completely respectful about it and stopped trying to chat, just waves back.
The buttface part is that last week my other neighbor saw the whole thing and pulled me aside later like "you know he told me he feels bad he never learned a second language." So now Gerald feels guilty about his own monolingualism becuase of me specifically.
He's still lovely. He held the elevator for me yesterday and smiled and I smiled back and I don't know what my face did but it wasn't normal. Am I the buttface?