Blue Like Monday Mornings

Blue Like Jazz Chapter 16 – Money: Thoughts on Paying Rent

The thing about new things is you feel new when you buy them, you feel as though you are somebody different because you own something different. We are our possessions, you know. There are people who get addicted to buying new stuff. Things. Piles and piles of things. But the new things become old things so quickly. We need new things to replace the old things.

I don’t think “new things” play as much of a role in my life as Mr. Miller seems to be describing. I’ve never really been one big on having a lot of new things. Matter of fact, I’m simply happy with things that might be “new” just to me, as in I have never had them before, but they are not “new” in quality. I don’t have an issue with used stuff. Something that’s “used” can still be “new” to me.

And actually, I think the title of this chapter, being “Money” is exactly why I’m perfectly fine with “used” things. A lot of things in life I honestly think are over priced. Some things are just ridiculously over-priced in my opinion, and for that reason I refuse to spend that kind of money on something like that “new.”

New cars lose so much of their purchase price the second you drive them off the lot. You know what that means; they weren’t worth that price that you paid in the first place, if putting one mile on it makes it lose its value.

I am not saying this to discredit anyone who has bought a new car. Who knows, one day I might be the buyer of a “new” car. I am not judging, I’m just saying I think that is a perfect example of how items can be so overpriced, in reference to what they are really worth.

I love used books, especially textbooks. What textbook is worth more than a hundred dollars? Or even novels. Why is a hardback copy of “The Da Vinci Code” twenty or twenty-five bucks, when the paperback that just came out is like five bucks at Wal-mart? It is the exact same story in both books. Are you telling me the hard cardboard material that is used to make the sturdy cover of a “hardback” book costs some fifteen or twenty dollars? Wow, I guess I need to get into the business of selling that cardboard. Maybe then I could afford gas…

I love to buy books, but I basically only buy used books. Do you know where is the best place to find cheap books? Thrift stores! Honestly. Matter of fact, that is where I got my copy of “The Da Vinci Code” (which I have no intentions to read…HA!), and I only paid $1.48 for it, and that was including the hard cardboard that makes it a hardback book. Then there’s Half Price Books. It is a death trap. For your time, not necessarily your wallet. You can get lost in that store for HOURS looking at books.

I suppose you could say I have “piles and piles of things,” but they are not necessarily “new.”

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I knew we had an extension cord in the basement, and I knew I was really going to Home Depot to get some drill bits or a laser level or one of those tap lights, and that I wasn’t going to get an extension chord but something else, something I would find when I got there, something that would call to me from its shelf.

Okay, so now that I’ve stopped and thought about this point once again, after having written what I just wrote about the last point, I think bookstores are the only store I seem to have this “issue” with. Here I sit with two stacks of books I’ve recently purchased that I honestly REALLY do want to read, but I have gone back looking for some other books that I “really want to read too” knowing I’ve already got my work cut out for me to get through all the books I already have, but nope, that doesn’t stop me, I still go, and even when I do not find the book I went there originally looking for, I end up having to check out because I find something else. HA!

But with other types of store shopping, really that is not me. I am NOT a shopper and actually view having to get out and shop for something, ESPECIALLY clothes, a pain.

But something I just thought about as I was typing this point by Mr. Miller, was how I think it can relate to some girls in college. I think some girls go to college with their major, whatever it happens to be, with really not much of a plan for goals in that major, but more of going to see what else they can find, in the line of men that is. You know, getting the M-R-S degree.

You know, people’s goals of college should be going to get a degree, like how Miller was sent out to go to Home Depot to get an extension cord, but he knew that wasn’t what he was really going for…

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Money does not belong to me, Rick once told me. Money is God’s. He trusts us to dish it out fairly and with a strong degree of charity.

I don’t know that I believe that “Money is God’s,” but I do believe in “dish[ing] it out fairly and with a strong degree of charity.”

Having the spending money that I do nowadays often times causes me to feel guilty when I spend it, especially when I think of other people, even my loved ones who don’t have even the kind of money that I have to spend.

Money is a complicated thing to deal with sometimes.

Okay, now in this paragraph, I am totally not referring to anything in reference to this post. Actually, I have always wanted to do this exact thing in a lot of my papers for college, but never did, though I did do it in one paper in high school. I have honestly always wondered if a lot of my professors actually read the papers students turn in, or if they read ALL of it. With a lot of my posts on this weblog, I don’t even think if I were you people I would read them all. Lately I’ve been really thinking about how I wish my posts were funny. I used to be a humorous writer, I even participated in helping to put out an alternative newsletter in the past that was dedicated solely to humor, but today I look at my blog and just wish I was funny. For some reason I blog about serious topics that really aren’t a lot of fun. I’m trying to figure this all out in my head right now. Basically I suppose this paragraph is to see if you are even still reading, especially since this is a part of this LONG blog series on a book that most of you people could care less about…HA! I suppose if you are still reading, you can comment in the comment section in reference to having read this, but don’t “give this paragraph away” if you know what I mean. Be clever in your response to note that you read this, but to not let others who did NOT read this, but just happened to click to read the comments, know what you are referring too. Heck, let’s face it, people will click to read the comments on posts even if they didn’t even read the whole post itself, or even read any of it for that matter.

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Sometimes I am glad I don’t have very much money. I think money might own me f I had too much of it. I think I would buy things and not be satisfied with the things I have so I would have to buy more.

I think money has turned a lot of people into types of people that they might not have been without it…

Like I said, “Money is a complicated thing to deal with…”

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We don’t need as much money as we have. Hardly any of us need as much money as we have. It’s true what they say about the best things in life being free.

Yeah, I think a lot of us, myself included, have a lot of things we could live without. Why we bought it in the first place, who knows. You know what kinds of unbelievable things could be done with some of the money a lot of us have that we really “don’t need.”

And yes, I do believe that “the best things in life” are “free.” I think feelings can be quite possibly the “best things in life” and they are “free.” Assuming you know how to work them that is…


[Note: All the above text in smaller italic print has been quoted directly from Donald Miller’s “Blue Like Jazz”]