Allons-y

I recently changed up my work life a little bit. I used to have two jobs, the Job I Didn't Like and the Job I Did, and trying to balance them was putting me at serious risk for a nervous breakdown. So I called up my boss at the Job I Did Like and asked if there was any way I could do more work for him in exchange for more money, and it turned out he'd been thinking the exact same thing, had essentially just been waiting for me to ask, which is simultaneously totally awesome and incredibly terrible because wait a minute, seriously? It was that easy? How long ago could I have done this? How many e-mails in ALL CAPS screaming at me about YOU LEFT AN EXTRA SPACE BETWEEN TWO OF THE WORDS ON THIS DRAFT THIS IS NOT WHY WE HIRED YOU could I have avoided? How much money could I have saved on the nightly vodka I used to anesthetize myself after 14 straight hours of trying to appease two employers? How much peaceful sleep could I have enjoyed, unperturbed by 11:30 p.m. e-mails from psychotic co-workers wanting to know the status of a three-sentence Facebook update I'd been working on? DANG. If I get an ulcer, it's totally my own fault.

Things are much better now, to say the least. Almost every day I find something fresh to love about my new and improved employment situation, and Wednesday morning of this week it was the sudden realization that I can finally take a vacation. One of the awful things about balancing two jobs was that obligations for one -- a day-long meeting here, a two-day conference there -- meant time off from the other, so whenever I actually wanted to take time off for myself, no one was particularly thrilled. For two years I restricted days off to necessary occasions, i.e. those related to weddings, family or babies, and for three years before that I restricted days off to necessary occasions because I only got ten a year. I have never taken a full week off from work for my own reasons ever.

By Thursday morning I was developing my plan. The floodgates were open -- I officially had the freedom to take time off, and thanks to working two jobs for two years, I had the money to actually go somewhere interesting. There are so many things I've wanted to do for the past couple of years, so many places I've wanted to go -- how would I decide? But in the end the choice was obvious.

You know how as women we're not supposed to buy into all that Sex and the City crap about how spending money is empowering? How that's just a myth society sells us to keep us up to our elbows in unnecessary clothes, cosmetics, and cookware? I rarely feel empowered when I buy something, especially when it's something expensive -- even if I can technically afford it, I always think about how someday my little Honda is going to develop a transmission problem, or I'm going to develop another problem my back and this time it will require surgery, and when that day comes I'll think about all those irrational purchases and start tallying up how much money I could've saved if I hadn't allowed my financial decisions to be guided by my insecurities and I'll want to kill myself.

Well, guess what? I've found the Buyer's Remorse Loophole, and it's TRAVEL. Because really, when is travel ever a waste of money? Especially when it's to France?

Look out, Paris. I'm comin' back.