Queercents

I am sitting in the laundromat down the street, waiting for my triple-washer to finish its spin cycle. The owner has asked me to hang out and talk with him today. “I feel a sermon coming on,” he says.

Father Peter is an evangelical Christian. He’s a priest at a nearby church, as well as the owner of my neighborhood laundromat. He hangs photos of Jesus in the laundromat and says “praise the Lord” a lot. He thinks the only options for Christian sexuality (read: legitimate sexuality) are celibacy or as part of church-sanctioned marriage.

And yet, I continue pumping quarters into his washers and dryers. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s only one activity I enjoy more than the slow, tooth-pulling agony of preparing my taxes: Preparing my taxes twice.

Lucky me! I just found out that I need to file an amended tax return for 2007, a realization that comes shortly on the heels of receiving a huge refund. I want off this emotional rollercoaster!

Why amend? I went back to school in September, so I took the Lifetime Learning Credit, on the advice of my tax prep software. However, yesterday I discovered that the school I’m attending doesn’t participate in federal student aid programs, even though it’s accredited and well-established.

In short: No FAFSA, and no Form 1098-T from the school. I can’t claim a cent in tuition tax credits. This means I will have to pay back a large portion of my refund. ARGH. Read the rest of this entry »

When I told my aunt that I’m going to school for massage therapy, she was elated. “I get massages every other week,” she said, “and have been for years. I consider it absolutely necessary to keep me sane.”

She runs her own business doing outpatient drug and alcohol counseling. There’s a lot of stress involved, and receiving massage that frequently is probably one of the best possible things she can do for herself to maintain her physical and mental health.

But recently, I had a client ask me: “Do most people get massage as a luxury?” I was a little surprised that someone would ask this, and didn’t really know what to say. Is it a luxury to have no back pain? And more importantly, if my clients see massage as a luxury (read: unaffordable and/or frivolous), how am I ever going to make a living in my new career? Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I took a daytrip to Boston to meet with a great new client. It’s a freelance computer programmer’s dream gig: reliable work, little to no project management overhead, coworkers I genuinely like and trust. Plus, I get to telecommute most of the time, with an occasional on-site visit to a city I really like. What could be better?

I’d initially planned to make the trip via car for this first meeting, but then the ecological stupidity of that idea hit me. There’s a perfectly great bus line that runs between Portland, Maine and Boston on a reliable and frequent schedule. I’ve taken that bus enough times to know the strategies for getting a seat to myself. And it’s a pleasant ride - I get to watch a movie, or read, or just stare out the window. Besides, if I have to make the commute, I might as well save some carbon emissions and make the trip with other people!

Also, have any of you readers ever driven in Boston? In rush hour? When I lived in Boston, I almost never drove anywhere, especially not in Southie, where the office is located. I must have been out of my head, planning to drive. So I took the bus, for environmental reasons as well for my personal sanity.

But to keep my frugal self happy, I kept a running tally of the total transportation expense. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in the bad old days, when I was freelancing in college and didn’t know what the heck I was doing, I got burned badly one year when tax time came around. To the tune of several thousand dollars, which I’d neglected to put away in savings because I was young and naive and didn’t understand the concept of “self-employment tax.” Ouch.

I understand it now, boy howdy, which is why I’ve been trying to see the future and plan for it. Since I started my freelancing business, I’ve been carefully putting away 45% of each freelancing paycheck into a special savings account, and trying desperately not to touch that money.

I haven’t always been successful about keeping that money separate (sometimes a girl’s gotta pay rent), which gave me serious jitters about doing my taxes this year. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the years, my partner and I have made many conscious choices around our food. It’s really nice to know where our food comes from, and if we eat seasonally, it’s a wonderful way to stay in touch with the changes in the weather and light.

But eating locally is hard! And often expensive, though it doesn’t have to be. This year, because I’m in school, we are a little financially strapped. We’re planning to participate in a local community-supported agriculture (CSA) program, run by a friend who is running a farm by himself for the first time. Buying a share in his CSA represents a large investment in his new career and his new farm. It’s a lot of money, all at once, to keep us well-fed throughout the growing season. Read the rest of this entry »

Moorea pointed out in a recent post on going to beauty school that a recession is the perfect time to take out a student loan. Still, it hurt when I signed that promissory note so that I could go to career school and become a massage therapist.

We have an entire course in massage school dedicated to self-care and professional development. The class’s goal is to teach us how to take care of ourselves so that we have long, happy careers, and avoid burnout. At the last class, our teacher told us that the average time for a massage therapist to work in that field is eight years. Injury, money issues, and emotional exhaustion can pile up for massage therapists and cause us to lose interest, burn out, and move on. Our teacher questioned aloud whether our significant investment (roughly $10k) was worth it for a career that only lasted such a short time. Read the rest of this entry »

Thank you for all of your wonderful feedback on my last entry. I had planned to make this next entry about taking out loans for school, but something much more important came up over the past few days:

My wonderful cat Minnie is really sick. Minnie is a sweet, loving, and vocal 12-year old marmalade Maine Coon mix.

I’ve had her for ten years, most of my adult life, and she has seen me through so much. She’s moved house with me countless times, including two cross-country moves. She’s known my exes, she’s made good friends with my partner, and she’s been a constant and faithful friend. Read the rest of this entry »

I am now less than two weeks away from my thirtieth birthday. Thirty is a big, fat, round number. And since I’m coming up on this big fat round number, it’s a good time to figure out where the heck my life is going.

So many things in my life are intentional: my wonderful partner of 8 years, our choice to live in Maine’s largest city, our small-but-perfect apartment with a view of sunrise over the water. I even have good friends I’ve chosen as family. But my career in computer programming was not intentional; it was something I’d fallen into during college because the money was good. And my job in corporate IT for a well-known Maine outdoor retailer/behemoth was uninteresting, had no advancement potential, and was stressful enough that it was affecting my overall quality of life.

I realized I needed to leave when I was chatting at a cocktail party and felt ashamed to tell another guest what I did for a living. I actually felt boring.

So screw that, I decided, I’m going to massage school. Read the rest of this entry »