I'll tell you, 6am is a colder, harsher hour when it's not your signal to go to bed. For reasons clear neither to me nor, apparently, to my immediately supervisor, the workforce management department has seen fit to slide my usual comfortable closing shift up to the bitter pitch black of the early morning. There appears to be abundant opportunity for overtime, and January is my traditional month for financial recovery and social hibernation, so I guess there’s a silver lining to this bone-chilling cloud of pre-dawn rime ice, but it was a roughshod and sudden death that my vacation died this morning.
The new year has also brought the first sign of legitimate winter, which, as it turns out also has an upside. The expired license tabs on the back of my car that would normally mar the dull and dapper semblances of responsible adulthood pending my next payday is neatly obscured by a bulwark of crunchy snow and ice. The truth is, I could afford to buy tabs this week if my work schedule allowed me to get to the Midtown DMV before Saturday. When I say “could afford”, I mean barely. I cleared the holiday season with my accounts pretty well tapped out, though I made it without ever having to think too hard about the costs of the gifts I bought. There’s an argument to be made that the luxury of ignoring your account balance is the real goalpost of financial stability. Worst case scenario, if an especially astute office peeks into the ice cave that holds my expired tabs, the deadline to pay the ticket is still beyond the next non-rent paying paycheck, which will be significantly bolstered by as yet untold hours of mandatory overtime. My dad taught me that the best use of money is to slay petty inconveniences like having to make a panicked rush to the DMV after work. Plus, there’s always the possibly apocryphal story about the “10-day grace period.”
I am unconcerned.
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