Thinking, thinking, thought.

You know how easy it is to obsess over certain thoughts? How they can easily inundate your mind, take away your focus, control your behavior, cause you enough emotional distress that you could punch a stranger. Sometimes you don't even know how these thoughts get stuck in your head, reeling through your cranium like a broken record, over and over and over and over again. Once they are there, you can't get rid of them, like when you wake up with a Britney Spears song stuck in your head and you wanna scream "FML!". Or when everything you see, taste, hear reminds you of that single thought.


Ben Franklin was sneering at me all day today. Abe Lincoln told me that he likes the warmth of my back pocket. George Washington said, "tip me, bitch." Jackson was so convincing that I smelled the stale scent of green paper for an hour straight. All I could think about today was $$$ and to survive with bills, wedding payments, groceries, gas, etc etc etc. I became so distraught with the thought of a financial crises that I completely stopped working [oops] and began fervently searching for new jobs. Jobs that paid way less than I could swing. Jobs that required more experience than I could have time for. Jobs that required a Masters Degree, psssh who gets those anymore??

Being greatly disappointed by my lack of options, I had a brilliant idea to find a part time job for the weekend. Yes! Use my "spare" time to make a little extra cash... that will go toward gas money for the week. It would most likely take away the generous time I purposefully set aside for my fiance. It would cause more fatigue than I already have. It would prevent me from planning my wedding. Hmm, dead end once again.

On top of this revolving thought, the clock hit 4:55 pm and I snapped out of my daydream, the one with a 60k per year job, a house and a white picket fence. I was dreading the 45 minute drive home, full of traffic, idiot drivers, nose pickers and my vibrating steering wheel. My gas light kindly reminded me that I needed to, once again, spend $50 on a tank of gasoline that had managed to successfully master the disappearing act. The random lurches bellowing from beneath the hood of my car reminded me that I needed to drop a C note on a transmission flush. The awkward twitch of my steering wheel screamed, "get a damn alignment already!" Bills have added up, even before the cash register went **cha-ching**.

As I drove across the Burnside Bridge, my thoughts turn to my growling stomach and I can smell the wonderous scents of Portland's Friday night dinner scene. I want sushi. No, southern food. Ohhh! how about Mexican! Oh wait... I'M BROKE. All of a sudden, a cute little voice streams through my car speakers and she says:

"Seems like everybody's got a price, I wonder how they sleep at night. When the sale comes first, and the truth comes second, just stop, for a minute and smile"

She's got a good point, what else does she have to say?

"Why is everybody so serious? Acting so damn mysterious, got your shades on your eyes and your heels so high that you can't even have a good time. It's not about the money, money, money, we don't need your money, money, money. We just wanna make the world dance, forget about the price tag. Ain't about the cha-ching cha-ching, ain't about the ba-bling ba-bling. Wanna make the world dance, forget about the price tag".

As I'm thinking about how coincidentally this song by Jessie J coincides with my current obsessive thought, I look up from the road and revel in the fact that a big fat juicy rainbow has appeared across the Eastern sky. I remembered a verse in the Bible (Genesis 9: 8-16), which I later had to look up because I don't have that stuff memorized and a phrase came to mind: He doesn't give us more than we can handle. I repeated that to myself in order to make it more convincing because I wasn't having it. I repeated it again, and again, and again. Forget about the money, it's not what's important.

Finally, I was able to breathe. Pin It