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Life has been lumpy lately. I’ve been dealing with some heavy stuff in my personal life — Mommy cousin Duane, etc. — and that’s left me feeling low. Combine that with my natural inclination toward depression, and you’ve got a recipe for a gloomy guy.
That said, I woke up feeling great today. And that energy carried through as I had my regular Zoom call with Diania Merriam, the organizer of the EconoMe Conference.
Diania and I started these calls for professional reasons, but after nearly two years they’ve evolved into something else. Now they’re mostly a chance for us to help each other with our respective mental health struggles. During today’s conversation, we had an interesting progression about personal finance.
We were talking about how I need to get out of the house more. Because I work from home, I spend most of my time alone. It’s not good. Humans are social creatures, and that goes double for me. No wonder I feel shitty when I never leave the house!
Anyhow, Diania mentioned that she gets a lot of benefit from attending yoga regularly. And then she said something interesting.
“I’ve actually started cleaning the yoga studio,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, instead of paying $113 each month to be a member, I clean the yoga studio for two hours per week. In exchange, I get free membership. But you know the crazy thing? I find that I am much more motivated to attend classes because I’m cleaning the place than I did when I was paying money out of pocket. It gives me a sense of ownership. I look in the mirrors and think, ‘I cleaned that.’ I have a greater sense of buy-in.”
“That’s interesting,” I said. “Buy-in is so important. And it’s different for each person and each situation. I joined a gym last week. Kim and I have a sort of rudimentary home gym here in our basement, but in the four months we’ve lived in Corvallis, I’ve never used it. Kim has used it once. But now that I’m paying to belong to a place, I’ve been…
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