February 17, 2007

• Money kind of disgusts me.  For the first time in my life, I'm making a lot of it.  And that feels great.  I just got a beautiful new couch, and I'm wrting this from a stylish new leather chair with my feet resting on a matching black leather ottoman.  I want for nothing.  At the same time, it's all kind of sickening.  I was at drinks with some co-workers on Friday, and one said, "you know, I don't even bat an eye at expenses under $100 anymore.  All that stuff is just noise."  I laughed -- this guy makes me laugh a lot, because he's got an excellent, sarcastic delivery.  And I laughed because what he said was true for me too.  If you adjust expenses as a percentage of income, me spending $100 now is equivalent to me spending $10 or $20 a few years ago, and I never batted an eye then. 

  It bothers me, though, that I laughed.  That I feel that way.  What also bothers me is how much people with money talk about money.  401k contributions and itemizing tax deductions and saving up for the down payment on that house.  How soon should I seriously consider buying rather than renting?  If I pay down my student loans rather than deposit money in my 401k, aren't I just throwing away the matching contributions my employer would make? 

  It's sad that some people should have money and others shouldn't.  Why can't all the people in this world have  the advantages that I’ve had?  I feel particularly guilty as a lawyer, because I think we're overpaid -- certainly scientists or artists deserve as much as we.  But lawyers defend big corporations and big corporations have a lot of money at stake, so they'll pay a lot of money to defend their interests, so firms make a lot of money, and so they pay associates a lot of money.  There's no comparable market in poetry.

  I think it's odd people plan for retirement.  That there comes a point when people plan to stop working.  It's only natural, since most people hate their jobs; so most will want to stop working at the earliest possible second.  But what about people who like their jobs?  I like my job.  Why would I want to retire?  It is true that I am lazy, and at some point it might be nice to work two weeks out of every month rather than all four.  But I couldn't see ever stopping completely.  So why save for retirement if I'll always have a steady stream of income?  One reason is that I might not always feel this way.  Maybe 40 years from now I'll be fed up with work and ready to retire; it would be an awful mistake to have locked myself out of that possibility by not putting away money now.

  Money sickens me partly because I've never had to think about it before -- in the sense of having too much or too little.  Now that it's on my radar, it's a sign that my life is changing; that I'm becoming a real adult.  That college and law school are behind me.  I miss that time in my life.

  I've been trying to think about places that I could donate money to.  Were I to give to Caltech, I'd want to give to the Music Program, since it was a big part of my life there, and it always needs money.  I also feel tempted to give to SURF because I feel so guilty about how ugly that all turned out.  But it has so many donors already, that it also seems like not as meaningful a use of my money.  For donations should be based on the effect they have on others, rather than how they make me feel. 

  Money is perplexing, because it's so tangential to my daily thoughts, but so many people around me are obsessed with it, with what to do with it, and with how to get more of it.  I think what's bothering me is that it is one more instance of how I feel different from the people around me; how I feel bored by the conversations that are out there.  How is it that I'm always bored?  How is that I can't find people with similar interests?  What is wrong with me?  What am I not interested in diffrent things?  Why can I not find people who are interested in the same things as me?  What am I interested in anyway?

  • 9:23 pm
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