How to Lose a Habit in 10 Days

How to lose a habit in 10 days

Salut, mes amis,

A happy new year to my fellow explorers as we learn, love, and eat our way through these next 365 days. 

I’ve got big plans for the frozen days where even your soul can be heard shivering.

We start this beautiful year broke. Like, government-bailout broke. Greece-in-2006-rioting-in-the-streets broke. 

Imagine the fur trappers in the early days: rich with pelts from a recent voyage, they would arrive at The Hudson’s Bay Company trading their stock for payment. While riding the wealth of the then-plentiful beaver, the HBC company offered them silver, on the credit that they would bring more pelts in the spring. This is how I assume debt started in New France, with interest measured in rabbit skins.

While being broke is often considered a horrible thing—to be honest I would prefer not to be—it is an excellent time to reevaluate.

I bring you to the 10 days of January. Similar in concept to the 12 days of Christmas, except filled with excel spreadsheets, tears, and seasonal depression. They still finish with partridges in pear trees; don’t ask me how. 

The first 10 days are the perfect time to realize how much money you spent on pizza in 2018. It is a time of reflection and restarts… or bankruptcy; it can be the perfect first step in obliterating your credit rating as well as never being able to borrow money again.

Now I am a person who has trouble with math and habits. I also have trouble digesting cheese but refuse to admit it. I needed to make this process as simple to follow as possible. Steps 1–3 are printing off or copying into excel (still have no idea) your spending info to get an idea of where you are. If you don’t know where you’ve been how will you know where to go next? This applies to understanding both finances and systemic racism. Both come to a head when you admit where you, as a person or society, went wrong. 

Now in front of you, on your adorable desk from Ikea that you purchased on your credit card, you should have the evidence. Open your calculator app on your phone and start to add up any entries that fall under the category “if I didn’t buy this would I have survived.” Yes, Uber is included in this. Surprise my friend, you don’t actually need a personal chauffeur to survive. If only I had learned this sooner…

When I moved in with my friend Jenna, she was living at Lansdowne and Dupont (this was in Toronto), I was still working at the Delta Hotel near Union Station. The 15-minute walk to work I had prior to moving became a 40-minute trip on transit—2 subways and a bus. My first day commuting from my new and distant neighborhood I took an uber. It was around $16, which was $4 cheaper than a cab. What savings! Of course I would take transit home. Drinking with friends that evening went on far past the last subway train, so for the second time that day I ubered home. This was the beginning of a month and two weeks of ubering—always less than $20, as long as there was no surge, and only if I was running late. By September, I had racked up around $970 in Uber charges. I learned, the quick and hard way, how dangerously easy it was to use this app. 

Trust me: add Uber to your list.

Once you have compiled your list of sins you have two options. Neatly arrange the papers and place them in the shredder. Prepare to live your life the exact same way. This is the equivalent of pouring lighter fluid on water and lighting it in hopes for it to disappear. 

The other option, which is the harder option, is to realize where you went wrong. If you’re like me—and for your colon’s sake I hope you aren’t—you may discover the ungodly amount of money you’ve spent on pizza. Not “take-out” per se, just pizza. I have great taste in pizza. I’ve tried it all: American style, Canadian, Italian, Brooklyn, deep dish, homemade—I am an aficionado of the slice life. 

Pizza is not where I actually went wrong. It was the spending outside my means. Spending on pizza? Yes, but why are you bringing it up again? It wasn’t only pizza! What, do you hate pizza or something? Pizza racist!

Realizing where you money goes is eye-opening; sometimes blisteringly so. 

It’s good practice though to see what you need to survive and challenge yourself to stick to that. I’m in the process currently. Financially, my ship is sinking but it hasn’t yet sunk. Adrift in the St. Lawrence on a collision course with rapids (minimum payments) I have to toss out all of the excess weight. It’s a temporary solution, not a forever one.  

I have no right to Marie Kondo your life. I am not someone who has invented a new folding method for finances. What I can say is now is the time for review and to replace your spending. My first 10 days have been that of begrudging reflection. Until that croissant that was “hoovered” into my system at the beginning of this writing session, I had not spent a nickel on a non-essential in 2019. Is this sustainable? Probably not. Will there be pizza? There will be pizza. I am not advocating for a Year of Less. You should read the book though, it’s fantastic, and Cait Flanders’ words on paper are like butter on bread. 

10 Days. Don’t buy anything. Take the bus. Clean your colon. It doesn’t matter! Well, my doctor says that last one actually does matter. Please discuss with your own healthcare professional or Doula first. 

​I hope winter in New France is more gentle than Visa, but I have a feeling it’s just as unforgiving.

​Gardez vous au chaud mes amis!

Yours in Survival,

Evan