Charming but single had 2 great posts I think are worth mentioning.
First, the funny one: The Patron Saint of Spinsters
Excerpts: ““[Charming], I have a prayer for you,” said my Grandmother, a devout Catholic and fixture on her church’s prayer line…….
“Yes,” my Grandmother said. “She [a lady at Wal-Mart her Grandmother met] asked if I knew of the prayer to St. Anne.”
“St. Anne?” I asked………
“Yes, St. Anne. The prayer goes ‘St. Anne, St. Anne, find me a man.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but for once in a life full of sarcastic comebacks and witty quips, no words came.
“But the woman at Wal-Mart, she said she changed the words around a little because she’d been divorced twice,” my Grandmother said. “So she prays, ‘St. Anne, St. Anne, find me the right man.’”
My Grandmother was so proud of herself for finding a way to appeal to a higher power to intervene in my dating life. And the rest of my family teasingly sang, “St. Anne, St. Anne, find [Charming] a man!” for the rest of the afternoon.“
Read the entire post here.
FB: Poor woman!! But at least her Grandmother was trying to help. Aww.. I wish I had grandparents like that growing up (they’re all gone now). I can’t help but feel like I missed out somehow. Maybe I should go find an older retired couple to adopt as my pseudo-grandparents 
The second post is reflective: Mama I’m a Big Girl Now
Excerpt: ““I read this article about this young woman who become dependent on her technology and work,” my mom said. “And it was about how sometimes young people are too goal-orientated and they stress themselves out by working so much.”
I raised one freshly waxed eyebrow and gave her a sideways look.
“There’s nothing wrong with being goal oriented,” I said. “You work hard now, do the late hours now so that later you don’t have to.”
“Being goal oriented is fine, but sometimes, you can be TOO goal oriented.”
“And what did this young woman do to fix this problem of hers?” I asked, skeptically.“
Read the rest here.
FB: I think I’m in the mindset as well, but I’m trying not to be to obsessive about rushing, rushing, rushing my life to move faster towards clearing debt, then clearing my downpayment for a home, then clearing my mortgage, without stopping to smell the roses (so to speak), or taking heed of this timeless quote: carpe diem (“Seize the day”)!
They say that North Americans work twice (or was it thrice?) as much as their European counterparts (not as “hard”, because I think the effort is the same, but it’s that we accept and embrace longer work days, and make work the center of our life).
Whereas in contrast, the Europeans take a more laissez-faire approach to life, and when the work day is done, it’s done. In North America, when our work day is done, we still have work to bring home, work to do around the house, kids to perfect into model citizens; constantly rushing to complete tasks, like robots. We aren’t stopping to take a breather and feel good about it because we’re on this treadmill that’s going nowhere, trying to achieve perfection in all areas of our life – career, family, health, life, money, etc. It’s like we’re competiting against ourselves, and our own perceptions of what the “perfect” person is like.
After reading this post, I reflected on it all, and realized I don’t want to look back with regret and wish that I had spent my youth and life differently. Regrets would be a bitter pill to swallow in my old age, and what’s the point of saving all of this money if one day (for no good reason) I am not around to enjoy the fruits of my labour?
That’s not to say that I should immediately run out and do a massive shopping spree to cheer myself up, but I should learn how to moderate myself in the other direction – not to save so much that my quality of life diminishes and I don’t enjoy the next year or so of my life because of debt, and to stop punishing myself for the money mistakes I made when I was younger. (I would like to think) I am smarter now about money matters, and more philosophical about what happiness really means to me.
Sure, I’m very career driven (I love to work, and as Monk would say, it’s both a blessing AND a curse) because I enjoy accomplishing tasks and projects, but even though that brings some form of pleasure to me, I should really learn how to relax, obtain pleasure from other sources (family, life, etc) or I’m going to burn out and have nothing (memories, mental health, and internal satisfaction) to show for it. I don’t want to wake up one morning and realize I devoted my life to a corporate machine and made a small almost imperceptible difference in the company’s EPS (Earnings per share), instead of a large difference in one individual’s life.
Not only do they benefit from it, I benefit too – it makes me feel good when I help others.
All of this makes me want to volunteer somewhere, and help an organization plan events or fundraisers, or run a non-profit organization on the side. I’m itchin’ to do something like that, but with the way my life is right now, I cannot guarantee I’ll be in a certain city for any certain amount of time. The only help I can give is online or via telephone *sigh*, and it just isn’t feasible at the moment.
But I think once I get off this travelling treadmill, I’d like to look into starting a non-profit organization, maybe something along the lines of basic personal finance for high schoolers (or university frosh).
Just something to think about.
