Anyone who knows me knows I have a tendency to be up and down. I'll be on top of the world one minute, and completely pissy the next for no apparent reason. This can lead to many stupid things done or said, and I think about a quarter of my life is comprised of apologizing for another quarter of it. I'm blaming it all on my star sign. Can't find the link anymore, but I read a description that was really good at explaining all the cap that I pull and should have bookmarked it to refer people.

Anyway, I can be having a great day, like today, and then feel myself slipping into one of my funks. I'm learning to socialize without alcohol (oh, didn't I tell you? I gave up drinking for February. Story for another day). I'm finding it not as scary as I thought it would be. I got to spend a couple of hours outside watching the Rugby Sevens Tournament with some friends before going to work, and it was exactly what I needed. But then three hours into work I started feeling down.

I'm convinced it's not because of work. Well, let me explain that. I think it's because I'm in a rut, and that work is just part of that rut that I'm slowly walking along day after day, digging a little deeper with each passage. If I keep walking along it, at what point do the sides become too steep for me to get out?

I desperately want out of Vegas, but I'm not doing anything about it. I'm not actively applying for other jobs, although I did go through a brief phase of looking at apartments in New York, and Munich, and London. But I don't think New York or London would cut it right now. I think they'd end up being a different sort of rut, and I don't want that. Hell, I don't even want to walk down a different path, I want to be climbing the trees. I want to dream in a different language.

I'm sometimes confused by how I got, as I see it, stuck here. After travelling around so much when I was younger, I never thought I would have to stop but owed it to myself to try this 'normal life' everyone else always talks about. After being in Vegas for six months, and getting decidedly antsy, instead of listening to myself and going somewhere else, I bought a condo in the hopes it would maybe settle me, let me give myself a chance at a normal life and a decent career. It's given me the decent chance at a career, but it hasn't settles me. And Vegas is hardly conducive to having a normal life.

For me, settling down, buying a place, and holding down a 9-5 job (well, 330-1130, but you know what I mean), it's been the equivalent of most people's teaching abroad year or peace corps year, albeit a lot less altruistic. I've taken my year off, and now I'm ready to get back into living the life I want, which involves much less in the way of mortgage payments and a lot more in the way of. . .well, anything, really. I have to write my books and my screenplays, and make enough money that I can up and leave and do it anywhere.

So the reason for the title? I like to buy shit when I'm in a pissy mood. Which I am on a regular basis because of the decision I made to try and have a normal, sedentary, settled down life. I have too much crap now to be able to up and move easily. I need to focus my retail therapy somewhere it's going to help, not hinder, my ability to bugger off for a while. Instead of buying any more fricking Blu-Rays (Zombieland is the last one, tomorrow, I swear), I'd be better off sticking that cash in a piggy bank and sending it all off at the end of the month towards my credit card, or student loans, and working towards something that'll get me where I want to be, stop me being so changeable, and buy trips not toys.

But now all I can think about is going to amazon.com and buying a piggy bank.