The Bridge from Planning to Reality

Last updated on March 30th, 2021 at 09:42 pm

One of the methods I commonly use for saving—and caveat, I’m saying that this works for me personally, not necessarily for everyone—is saving my change in a bucket. I don’t spend change if I can help it (and it helps that I’m not a coffee drinker); I take all that change goes in a bucket so I can eventually deposit it into the bank account. At the same time, though, you don’t want to leave it sitting too long.

You start to think about it after a while—all the change I have sitting here, I could be using to pay debts, gain interest—whatever it is that you could do to improve your financial situation. I just did a roll-up (i.e. the times where I’ll sit down and roll up a bunch of change), and there’s $451.50 to be banked (plus another $125 US cheque, a British 5-pound note and a cheque for all of 19 cents from a refund) [note: Just returned. Apparently, TD has free change counting machines. When did this happen? All that time and effort… for nothing D:]

Today’s activities won’t include too much for the 20K, I fear. Two birthday parties tonight mean that I won’t work directly on my site, but I’ll still be working on the layouts on construction paper, and trying to get that entry for the Indie Writers’ Deathmatch done by tomorrow.

In fact, why don’t you give the “monologue” I wrote a read and tell me what you think? Any comments, positive, negative or ambivalent would be highly appreciated. [Sarah took a quick read over it at one of the birthday dinners tonights and gave some crits and comments—please note that this copy has not seen them yet.]

Premise: In a dystopian near-future, economic collapse has sent the United States into a frenzy, and after being shunned by the United Nations in their time of need—including their neighbours to the north—they attack to make their point made and voices heard. This is a short story detailing the situation found in one of the cities affected by these events.

This used to be a nice town. That was before urban sprawl led to social collapse. Before vertical growth sent everyone scrambling for refuge in the tunnels. Before the glasshouse that we thought protected us all was found to be cracked just enough to shatter from the first stone thrown.

Back when the word “Canadian” meant something.

Who would attack US, the Canadians thought.

I mean, we only had a wealth of natural resources. We only had the second-largest political landmass on the globe. We were only one of the last economies to feel the chilling touch of the Great Recession. Oh yeah, no one would want a piece of that.

And yet they kept pretending that nothing was coming. The prices kept rising, but that didn’t matter—condos, computers, cars, real estate, stocks, bonds, drugs, identities—whatever was on the market, they’d eat it up like there was no tomorrow.

Too bad so few realized how soon that cliché would become so applicable.

When the U.N. turned their back on the US in their time of need, all those years of pent-up rage, blind patriotism and political shenanigans came to a head when their neighbours in the Great White North couldn’t be bothered to spare them a dime.

We thought we’d be safe in our overpriced highrises; our new digs from the boutiques downtown; our brand new luxury cars with the tops down in our pleasant—albeit brief—summer days.

Like I said, let me know what you thought.

Karaoke tonight reminded me that I should look into singing lessons eventually—my breathing was all sorts of messed up. I can sing okay—just not with any stamina 😉 But I guess that would translate to my performance in intramural sports as well—huh. Who’da thunk it.

Ah! I also received an awesome idea from Jen, someone who was at one of the parties I attended—if I break down the $20,000 into daily chunks, I can try to advertise to do jobs at one flat rate to try and make those daily goals 😊

So $20,000/365 = $54.79, so let’s round that up to $55 to make it easier.

Imagine:

Casey Palmer—The Job Man! Does any* job for $55!
*the option to do a job or not is at the discretion of Casey Palmer and Casey Palmer alone

I could advertise this alongside my resume and people could challenge me to see what jobs I’d actually take on. It’d be interesting 😁 I need to get my sites done so I can advertise this properly. I thank you Jen for your beautiful, beautiful brain.

That’s all I’ve got in me for now.

The 2010 20K Running Total = $62.20