I've just spent the last day deliberating over purchasing a game for £29.99. It seemed such an extravagant price, especially considering I have around 50 games waiting to be played in my games library as it is. But there was something about the game I wanted and couldn't put it to the back of my mind, yet equally a part of my mind was telling me that there was nothing that I wanted and I wouldn't miss it. But my impulse won through and there it is currently downloading...
A part of me though was sensible. I performed some sort of mental spreadsheet which calculated my expenditures over the last month and the future requirements I'll need. I weighed this against the hefty £9000 tuition fees of my course next year followed by the increasing debt of my current student loan of the last three years and I felt guilt. The debt has this uncanny omnipresence, yet it's also never there. It's hard to explain unless you're in this situation yourself. When you go to university and take on a loan it's not from your personal account, you don't see your own money in the red, you see what you've got without thinking that there is money elsewhere to worry about. Therefore it's so easy to forget how much you owe the company. So much so that it doesn't even worry me, not like the thousands of people who say that they can't stand it being around their shoulders, the stress of not paying it back. But that's the thing, I've come to except that I may never pay it back, and if that's the case, on my death day, that loan will be released without me having paid it back at all. Then again the realisation that I'm in £20,000+ worth of debt floods back in bouts and I panic. I'm never going to get anywhere in life while having to pay that back. All the dreams of economic security with a degree are tarnished by having to have paid for that degree in the first place. To get that well paid job I have to pay off that high debt. And sometimes I think that the degree would perhaps have best been forgotten, that I should have gone straight into the career world rather than stressing for three years.
However, the vast majority of the time this doesn't even blemish on my conscience. I even considered taking the maintenance loan so I could live out next year, regardless of what it adds to my mounting debt. And so when I make extravagant purchases (in my eyes) I just think 'well that's one mornings wage gone-easily replaced'. But I forget that that job won't be there forever. From September I won't be earning to the following year - and this scares me. I need to put a break on my spending.
Not to mention I had a mini wake up call yesterday. A grandmother of one of my old classmates stopped my mother to inquire into what I'm doing and to boast about what her grandchild is doing.
The grandmother seemed to look down on my degree, the fact is wasn't law but psychology, that it was only 3 years and not 4 years. And just as my mother was about to say I was going on to do a teaching degree, the woman went 'She wants to become a teacher but I've discouraged her...anyone can be a teacher'.
This made me feel inadequate beyond belief. Angered that yes, my degree subject is laughable, that everyone believes it's toilet paper, that the job I'm going for is one that 'anyone' can do and that I've spent three years wasting my life and wasting my money.
I feel this low *puts thumb and finger together*.
I feel that I have no direction in life, and the directions I have taken are pointless.
What's more, I'll probably go nowhere. Even looking at my jobs now - pretty much a shelf stacker and a receptionist - jobs that anyone could do without paying £21000 for a bit of paper.
At the same time I'm also angry. Angry that everyone seems to demand an explanation for everything. Angry that I can't live my own life without people telling me what I can and cannot do. And hence why all my posts lately seem to be grumpy. I'm 22 yet I scream 'grumpy middle aged woman'. My life seems over when it only should have just begun.
I started this post about a game. I've ended this post about my anger.
Dramatic much?
