Current location:	West Des Moines, IA
Current mood:	disappointed
Current music:	Cassandra Wilson, "Poet"

Staying Put
I made another hard decision today: I'm not taking my birthday trip to hike up Fuji for my 35th birthday.

It just stopped feeling right. Money is the primary reason: I have enough money saved up, but the issue is that I have no work yet to put money back into my coffers. I'm engineering a move in a couple of months. Things are happening and need to get done at home with my folks and I need to put some time in. I also expect that I'll need to contribute some money. It's all speculation, but when I left Ringling, I had less money saved up than now, but I completely ran through it due to unforeseen circumstances. I don't want that to happen again.

My ability to use my saved up miles was neutered due to a combination of my scheduling and the fricking peak season. Out of pocket, I would have been paying nearly $2000 alone for airfare. Add housing (hotel or hostel), train fares and food and other purchases (because I cannot return from Japan empty handed!) and it would have been a lot of outlay with no influx. I don't like that math.

On the flip side of things, there are some things worth going into debt for. This would have been a once-in-a-lifetime trip. And it still can be, but not right now. The significance to the 35 was kind of arbitrarily assigned. I suppose it would be equally as cool for my 36th, seeing as how I have a thing for multiples of three and it is the year of the Ox in the Asian calendar. It would also be my third year of the Ox, so more threes. Maybe I should work on that instead.

Still, I need to find something to do for my 35th birthday that doesn't figure me being alone with no friends around me. I have to do something.