J to J report #6 - Naughty!

No Spend Days this week 3/7 Yeah! YTD 11/48

Although I had the best week so far in terms of 'No Spend Days', I had my first slip on my journey of not purchasing unnecessary items.

Now, notice that I said 'slip' and 'journey', I am not seeing this as a failure and giving up on my goals. Not unlike trying to lose weight, give up cigarettes (thankfully something I never started), or stop biting your nails, this is not something I necessarily expect to be completely successful at first time. I may trip on the journey again, but hopefully next time it will take a larger obstacle to make me fall.

What I do feel proud of is that this slip was not an unconscious one. I did not make any 'spur of the moment' purchases. I bought two items I wanted (though don't need) after much thought. 

The first was Emma Dean's recipe book "A Homegrown Table". I have wanted this book ever since she won Masterchef last year, and after reading it at Mum's I knew that there were a lot of beautiful simple recipes in it that I would use. I have already put some in my meal plan for this month, so unless I was going to steal my mother's copy, I had to get my own. I didn't just go out and buy it from the first place I found it though. I looked around thoroughly and eventually bought it at a department store for almost ½ the price that the major bookstores were charging.

The second item was a DVD of a television series that I had missed but particularly wanted to see. I tried sourcing it through the BCC library network, and through video rental stores, but no-one had it. So, after a lot of careful consideration regarding how much I wanted to catch-up with this series, I bought it, and it is one that I will watch more than once.

It is important that we don't berate ourselves for not being 'perfect' all the time, but that we continue to see it as worthwhile to take steps to improve our capacities in the areas we consider important. My elder son used to get upset when he couldn't do something perfectly first time, until we pointed out that when he was a baby he couldn't walk, and that it took a lot of falls before he was fully proficient, and then he went through the same process to learn to run, to kick a ball, to talk, to read ……Learning to live in a new way is no different.

Now - off I go to watch that DVD.

Have a good week.

Ravs