Today, I have disappointed myself immensely by spending way too much money. But let me start at the beginning.

First, I went to hang out at a food place with some school friends I hadn’t seen in a while, and it was really fun. I got to eat some good food, reunite with my friends, catch up, all that. I enjoyed it, and I spent like 25 dollars on food. From there, I went with another group of friends who wanted to hang out in the same day, and one the friends from the food place was in this group too, so we went together there. We drove down to a mall and stayed in Barnes and Noble to wait for everyone else, where I proceeded to buy the Tamagotchi, the Erased manga, and a CD of Ten by Pearl Jam. It was about 70ish dollars, I believe, and decided that was the end of my spending, maybe one more thing, but that’s it. Everyone else got there, and I got tempted to buy the Evangelion artbook, but decided to wait on it.

We then walked to Best Buy, where we stayed for a while and I got Spider-Verse on 4k since I wanted it for a while. THAT WAS THE END. NO MORE.

Then we walked to Target. One of my friends, who didn’t have cash, begged me to get him a Lego set for 35 dollars, saying he’d pay me back. He did the same thing at Barnes and Noble, where I said no, but eventually caved in at Target. I never really liked this person much, to be honest. It feels like he’s trying to mooch off my friends sometimes, with him constantly assuming people will just give him rides, asking to buy stuff everytime we go out, etc. I even remember in Barnes and Noble, I don’t know if this was directed towards me or my other friend, but he said something about “Oh, you’re not gonna let me get anything even though I’ll pay you back, but you conveniently have money when you want stuff.” But yeah, I bought him the set because well, whatever, I’ll see him again and he’ll give me the money, and if not, I’m moving anyways, so I’ll cut ties or whatever.

Then, in Target, my friends wanted to plan out a Barbenheimer thing, where we’d watch Barbie and Oppenheimer in theaters on the same day. In order to properly coordinate it, I decided to be the one to pay for everyone’s tickets, which I’m okay with doing for some of my friends, since they have jobs and I know for a fact will pay me back, but some, like Mr. Lego Man… I don’t know. But whatever, I accepted.

Then, we went back to Barnes and Noble, and I caved into my spending habit and bought the art book and the omnibus. My friend who drove me here decided he was very tired and wanted to get going, since it was 8pm (I was as well), so we left. On the way back, I sort of just went on a rant about how I felt immensely guilty about spending my money, how I hated being pressured into doing stuff, being socially drained, that sort of thing. And then I got dropped off home. And now, I’m gonna rant about that same thing here.

Socially drained

I’m not much of a socially outgoing person. I try to pretend I am towards others, whether at work, or in public, just to give myself a good image. But the truth is I’m terrible at being social. And part of that is because my energy to socialize with others is very low, and today, I exhausted that a lot. I hung out with two friend groups for an entire afternoon and I already felt tired by Barnes and Noble. I have nothing against (most) of my friends, but I just can’t really handle the energy of having to keep track and talking to like five different people at the same time. It’s very taxing for me, so today as an extremely stressful day in that regard, and it especially doesn’t help that now I’m responsible to plan an event where I’m forced to be with my friends for at least 6 hours just watching movies.

Being pressured

I hate being pressured by others to do things. I wouldn’t say the Oppenheimer thing was a peer pressure thing, since I did have intentions to watch Barbie with friends and rewatch Oppenheimer, I’m just concerned about the grueling time it will take. However, the thing with the Lego set ticked me off a bit. He had asked me and my other friends several times that day to let him get the set and that he would pay us back, but I just didn’t want to do it, because he didn’t have the cash. To be fair, he did say he would get his next paycheck on Monday, the day before Barbenheimer, so I would get the cash by then. However, if he really wanted the set, he could’ve just waited until Monday to get the cash and go buy it himself. I don’t know why he felt the need to pressure not only me, but my other friends as well to buy it for him, and even said what he said. All in all, to me, he’s generally an unreliable guy, and I don’t really trust him for much, so the fact that he pressured me to get the set, and now I have to buy HIS TICKETS since I’m getting everyone else’s as well, ticks me off. I need to learn to be more resistant to pressure and to make sure to make myself clear.

Spending 200 dollars today and punishing myself

The worst offender of all, I spent over 200 dollars today. The pressure of buying stuff, plus this, and also needing to spend a ton of money on theater tickets for my friends sort of set me off on a little bit of… I guess the best word is a “panic attack” when I got home. I just felt immensely guilty, and vented to my mother about it, who told me that I was in control of my money and that I should use this as a learning experience for myself, but not to feel guilty. But when I got to my room, I just slumped in my chair and silently broke down a bit over this. I needed to save my money for my future endeavors, like college, getting a car, that sort of stuff, and I decided to drop hundreds in a single day, and need to drop even more the next few days now as well. Obviously, everything else contributed to my attack as well, but I just had to sit in my chair and breathe for like 10 minutes. And because of the guilt of spending all that money, I decided I had to punish myself for this somehow to learn a lesson.

So in order to repent for my actions, I decided to ban myself from buying any “wants” until I move and to commit myself to more productivity tasks every day. I feel that this was a suitable thing to do in order to make up for today’s major loss and to rebuild my mental state of mind and motivation. I hope that this will serve as a suitable punishment for myself and that I commit myself to it.

Overall, I just feel horrible from today. I had fun, but the stress and guilt outweighs that for me. I need time to relax until Barbenheimer and I needed to get this off my chest as a way to vent and make myself feel better. So for those who read this all… thank you. And have a good day. A better day than I did.