Pilsner Intellectual
You know your finances are in a bad state when you find yourself drinking fucking German Pilsner from Lidl.
To be fair though, I did bring this short-lived but no less intense debt upon myself when I signed the copy of the V50 that made the car I recently bought legally mine. So cry me a river.
What you should know is that I'm one of those paranoid money-conscious students who view the zero on his bank statement as a forced admission of failure, and the overdraft as a desperate pity-ridden state of being that only the most hugely inept, disorganised moron finds themselves in. As I view it, if you are given a fat loan or bursary at the start of University and you exceed your needs, finding yourself in abject poverty, you deserve all the fucking Pilsner you can drink (if you can even afford it, such is the gross stupidity of some financially-retarded students).
I mean how hard is it to balance the books at University? You pay rent and perhaps tuition fees (Scottish students don't, which makes their situation even simpler), you budget for food, and you spare some cash for socialisation. That is all. Yet, for some dullards, who strive to find a single brain cell that functions in their cognitively impaired cerebrum, this is all way too much to take in. So they inevitably phone home and the hot tears streak down their poor, dispirited cheeks as they blubber feint murmurs and sob uncontrollably, lips quivering, literally begging for a financial lifesaver from their forgiving elders. Some students simply can't get by without Daddy and Mommy's intervention, and my heart bleeds for them.
No, it burns. It burns an acidic loathing.
My sister is one such student, and we will call her Geraldine, for clarity's sake. Geraldine constantly phones home, playing the "poor-me-I'm-a-student" card that has been her top trump for nigh on four years now. The waterworks come out and she plays the trodden pettle routine, a play so full of self-pity it could well be rescripted as a Shakespearean tragedy and acted with all the authenticity of the late Laurence Olivier. If I pick up the phone on the other line I swear I can hear the sweet harmony of a concert violinist. Eventually, and without a shred of indignity, my compromising parents deposit a nondescript sum of money into her account with verbal pats on the back of "ma pauve Mimi! Bien sur je te donneras l'argent!"*
It's known as the common student bail-out, or the "pity call home." Or for some students, like my older sister, the "impervious greet," where "greet" is that wonderful Scottish slang for crying and impervious refers to the shameless lack of inhibition when playing the waterworks act for the dozenth time in a circannual span. I'm sure she is not the only person to leech off her parents years after her twentieth birthday but I'm sure that, somewhere, someone has created a word for it. When I discover it, I will brand her as such.
It annoys me in several ways because it should be pauve Mimi drinking fucking Pilsner, and not me. Yet while hers is a blundering, transparently avoidable scenario mine is a calculated and meticulously planned operation that has a clear starting and endpoint. While I am in serious debt for the coming two months after this short spell I will be back in the black, thus I have to live like a pauper until financial security. That's forward planning, for the simple-minded students reading this who don't understand the logic of living within your means.
I have it all planned down even to the smallest pennies of loose change I spend on charitable donations, such is the anality of my money-conscious being. During the months of August and September all I need to earn is five hundred pounds, which equates to a mere fourteen days of working. I can surmount that minor sum in just over two weeks, and indeed have done in the past. That leaves between five and six weeks of earnings that are spent on whatever the hell I want, after covering my entire expenses on one summer's working. If you've been keeping up, I can earn upwards of nine-hundred pounds in those five short weeks, without any financial help from my already burdened parents.
It's called hard work. You should try it some time.
You can have it all if you work for it, and I'm starting to realise this. You can have the dream house, the car, the lifestyle and all the associated perks belonging to the umbrella term "being successful." All it takes is a little hard work, but if you're willing to put the hours in, it can all be yours. Regardless of whether you start with nothing or start with an inheritance you can live beyond your means with a little smart planning and acceptance to break your back a little in the process. Some day, you will be able to sit back and look at it all and think "I earned this."
It's the most immensely satisfying feeling in the world. I don't have it all, I don't claim to either, but I'm working towards living a life of honest dignity and living comfortably. I may not have it now, in fact, I don't, but some day I will be able to look back at all this and appreciate the initiative taken to working hard and instilling good practices at an early age. Everyone comes to a point where they realise they must work hard to succeed, but we all come to that understanding in our own way.
For some, achievement is a short-term advancement. They leave school at an early age after exerting themselves on a dominance hierarchy (bullying types), get a low-wage job or apprenticeship, rule the roost in their local town centre, buy a cheap car on credit and never grow up until late into their twenties. Some stay in education beyond their thirties, believing that quality of life is judged by material wealth and knowledge. For some it comes without effort, for others it comes naturally, and others still are given it. Yet however you choose to define success, everyone has their own standards by which they measure themselves by.
I think, personally, that quality of life is they key measure to defining my own personal success. It encompasses holistic and materialistic poles, and more often than not these two factors intertwine inseparably. I value independence, a holistic and non-qualitative measure, but I can achieve this by living away from home (paying rent- materialistic) and transporting myself (formerly trains and bus, but now by car). I value family, and some day I will have my own family to share holistic qualities like love and materialistic qualities like possessions. I value self-perception, which is why I conduct myself in a dignifying and representative manner of who I am. That last point is also, I suspect, a key factor as to why I started this blog; it is why I use a traceable name, and why all my friends know the address. It is also why my parents don't know the website address, because it is not an aspect of my self-perception that I believe they should have access to.
Using my standards of success, and perhaps the wider issue of being (now we're getting deep!), I tend to measure myself against others using similar standards, not realising that everyone lives in their own personal universe that doesn't necessarily correlate to mine. I see my elder sister as being limited in money-management skills, reducing herself to having to play-act a heart-rending victim of the harsh, unforgiving student lifestyle. Yet perhaps she values her skills of manipulation, and if she does, then is it any of my business how her finances are faring? It is a thorny issue, and you can choose whether or not her pitiful pleas are applaudable or deplorable for yourself, but I think that so long as a comparison can be made I reserve the right to feel lesser or higher than the person I compare myself to accordingly. We do not develop equally, so let's not pretend we do. And if you think that you're different because you "don't care what other people think or do" then why don't you just kill yourself right now, you self-denying fool.
Only people who truly believe they are not agents onto this world commit suicide, and you may as well follow suit if you think you are following the ride without a competitive or comparing fibre in your body.
It's been a powerful journey, people, and I'm glad I managed to put across my point in as eloquent a manner as I can muster. I'm pretty sure it's this German ale that's making me so confrontational and honest, but if it is, I guess I'll drink some more. I may look down on people at times, or categorise them unfairly or perhaps even harshly, but if you think you are any different then you are deluding yourself. The difference between you and I is that I can admit to myself that I classify others, and feel humble or saddened accordingly, including the range of emotions between. I feel neutral towards some, seething dislike towards others and open-jawed admiration for others; think not that financial situation is the be-all classification, it just occurred to me as I re-calculated my financial debts like the good overdraft-terrified student that I am.
I'm sure there are lots of aspects you dislike or disagree about my being, which would coincide with thousands of others (perhaps you dislike meat eaters? Or athletes?), in which case I implore you to begin your own blog. Only by writing your feelings down can you truly start to realise the enormity of the complexity of your human psyche and further the path of enlightenment**.
To self-quote (perhaps the most pompous thing anyone can ever do): I drink piss-tasting German Pilsner now, but only so that I may drink champagne in the future.
*Obviously only my mother repeats this well-versed line, which translates as "my poor Geraldine! Of course I will give you the money!"
** Do not misconstrue this is as some fifth-dimensional astral state of mind or some other bollocks theory to transcending another plane. Enlightenment, in this case, refers to intellectual insight, a.k.a getting to know oneself, so please do not confuse with some status-heightening quest for spirituality. We are all becoming enlightened, with every reflective thought we have.
