What scares me

Being currently in the middle of a massive life change I am learning a lot about myself. It seems my biggest fear, stumbling block, thing that stops me from doing stuff, is money. I don't mean just a momentary - eek, don't want to spend that - kind of feeling. I mean a terrified, out of control, being sucked down the black hole, light headed, kind of feeling. A hide in a corner and hope it goes away, kind of feeling.
Over the top? Yes.
Verging on paranoia? Probably.
One thing I do know, saying snap out of it and thinking through everything logically is not helping. My current approach is just to ignore it and hope it goes away to where it came from. This is the worst it has ever been but looking back, all my major life changes so far, money stands out as being the thing I most worried about.
It has made me think how for other people money is not this concerning. Some people think nothing of leaving their job and starting a new life in a new country. I always intended to do that and now I am wondering if the reason it has never happened is deep down, it freaks me out!
It has made me think about other people's situations where they seem to want to change their lives because they want something else but can't or won't. Perhaps they are just like me and have a big fear stopping them too but maybe theirs is people or commitment. i imagine if I felt about commitment the way I feel about money, long term relationships would be hard and the idea of having children would be nightmare fuel.
It is weird how much your mind and emotions can interfere with your life. I feel I have no control over these feelings, even though they are mine. So far in the past if I have just got on and believed the more rational thinking about the problem, things have been fine and you would think I would learn from that. It feels almost an instinctive response that I am squashing to get on with my life.
I wonder if we all have these things that shape our lives more than we realise. Most of the time they are almost subconscious and it is only when we challenge them with bold decisions that we realise secretly they have been controlling our lives.

The Supermarket's Birthday

Well apparently it is my supermarket's birthday. As part of the party, there were games - well special offers, which for me became a game.
I didn't realise it was the supermarket's birthday so it was the last week of it's celebration, I had not used any of the birthday coupons, cheerfully referred to as presents. They don't let you use more than one at once so it was the big decision which to use with today's grocery shop.
The two I most liked was the instant $5 off your bill or the win your whole shop free. What should I do? Take the $5 - that would be half the bottle of the tasty Riesling that was on special or go for it all for free.
I thought about it all around the supermarket, down the aisles with the staple food items and especially down the aisles with the biscuits and the chocolates and the ice cream. If I won this shop for free, it would be so worth putting in a few bars of chocolate....
I got to the counter.
I still had not decided.
"Do I give you this coupon now?"
"At the end," the checkout chick said.
I still had time to decide.
I watched the items be scanned. This was adding up fast.
It was an expensive shop. Would $5 off be worth it or should I gamble it on a total freebie?
The last item scanned and she looked at me.
I looked at the total.
It was a birthday, it should have games.
I played the game.
I gave the win a free shop coupon.
It was the supermarket's birthday so it won. I paid for the shopping and pretended to be happy about it.

Buying a paper shredder

On the telly I was a little unsettled by seeing the ease with which people can steal your identity from documents in your recycle bin. I decided I didn't want my identity getting any ideas of having a more fun life with someone else so it was time to buy a shredder. There seemed to be quite a range of shredders from every expensive to very cheap. Having no expertise in being able to tell the difference I went for cheap.
Once home and unpacked from all its packaging - which disappointingly was inappropriate to shred - it was the on the bench plugged in, eager to shred something. There it was, sitting there innocently by the box, the instructions. They were printed on paper just begging to be shredded. On one level it seemed wrong to shred the unread instructions as the first piece but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed so right.
There were instructions on the shredder anyway. There is a little line of pictures of what not to put through the shredder. There is a person with long hair dangling, there is tie, there is hand - all fair enough so far - then there is a baby and what looks like a bomb. I wonder if the sticker person was given a specific number of he had to include and that necessitated some lateral thinking.
It turns out shredding is quite addictive - maybe that should be warned about on the unit... or maybe it was in the instructions.