Living Within the Means

       I never want to go shopping in my life again until I have "real" money to spend. Shopping is getting to be work and more thinking for me then it should be and I don't like that. Call me a weakling but I hate it. I used to enjoy shopping even if it was just for food and even school supplies but now everything is getting out of hand in this world even the cost of things. You almost have to be a CEO of some company or in the business world to make it here on this earth and I'm not being smartalike about it either.
      The more money I spend on the things I need to keep living a healthy life and alive, the more I don't want to keep doing that and I mean the cheaper I want to live, which means more fast food for me. It does help me to see how much more blessed I am then other nations and even people around me like my siblings and I don't want to think about the politics or what nots when I go shopping. I put my siblings in here because of the loans they have to pay back from college along with everything else they have to pay for in life. That really goes for anyone that goes to college now.
       I was blessed enough to go to a college where I worked for my education and I loved my jobs there. The more I live in the real life and get older and dependable in my alone life, the more I see how blessed I am because I went to that college. I would be so freaked out and not have the job that I have now if I went to a "real" college with loans to pay. I'm just freaking out about how I can even pay my apartment anymore on the paycheck I am. I'm also seeing that I am blessed or was blessed to go on the trips I have been on and to help other ministries and people/friends with their dreams when I could.
       I'm helping two girls through Compassion International right now. I have helped a friend reach their dream beyond anything they could ever think of. I have gone places that I never thought I would have gone. Yet, now that I'm going to be 30 in the next two years is setting in my mind, I don't have a real job that I can live on at all. I have to start "living within the means" and I don't think I can do that by myself. I mean I am still single and can do anything that I want and go anywhere that I want if only I had the money to do that.
        God has dinfantly been providing for me over the past few months and I am thankful for that but even that won't help in the long run. I don't want to sound ungrateful because I am and I can hold on just a bit longer to where I am but someday something is going to have to change. I went shopping for needs today like food and higene projects because I had $20 on me and I thought that would get me what I needed and no more money spent over that. Well, I was wrong. Everything I brought was over $30 dollars and I only brought 8 items from Wal-Mart. That is how bad the world is getting these days.
         Yet, the people higher up don't see that because they can get all the money and spend it however they want. While, the people down here trying to raise the next generation right can't even live right on their own. People and parents wonder why the teachers get so stressed and upset at times. Well, maybe it is because we are working two jobs or some days barely trying to get by on what we have. We could be sleepy because we ate the cheaper food instead of the healthy gluten free food and so on. To me, it doesn't make sense and I'm thinking about all of this when I went shopping today.
         It is no fun thinking about this while shopping. Shopping is suppose to be a stress free hobby for the most part. I know I am on my soapbox but all this is true. It is just really dumb when you have people that care about other people and put them before theirselves and yet those people don't get anything in this world. That is how I am feeling. I mean I have even spent money on my daycare children just to do some new project with them or any projects at all. Somehow I am living with and supporting 14 children and me plus a few friends from time to time on my under $600 paycheck just barely.
         When you think about it that way, it should change the way you look at the teachers around you, whether the teachers teaching you or your child because when they get home, they are just under another different kind of stress. We have a life that we are living or that we want to live but we are giving that life up for your children in a way or at least I know I am. I bet you that any teacher that reads this and anyone that knows a teacher will think that this is true and will change their point of views or at least I hope it does.
        We have the hardest jobs, espically the early childhood teachers, might be a little bias, but still it is true and yet we get litautlly another in return. Look at it that way and when you do try and thank a teacher very often and in different ways.