Today’s deck is the Tarot of Sexual Magic.
I’mma be honest, the name is more scandalous than the actual deck. It’s actually a bit forced sometimes like The Fool being a guy on a walk and there’s a couple in the background. Not a single shlong in sight either.
Today’s reading has an undercurrent of exhaustion, but in the Jojo Part 3 finale way.
For reasons you’ll soon see.
I forgot to mention it yesterday, but I had an idea that literally came to me in my sleep… well, to be more specific it was a couple of names, then N was like “Oh you wanted to make an idea with this thing right? They could be this and that” and from there the ideas started flowing.
So with that idea in mind I went out to take a couple of photos and see if I did anything with that.
I dropped by Nakatsu, then walked around Umeda for a bit.
I’ve been listening to a book on the MCU and it’s not because I’m a comics fan (that’s a whole ‘nother discussion) but because these biographies show how petty and dumb people with power are and that fixes my imposter syndrome.
I did come out of it respecting Rich Evans’ less famous brother Chris Evans more though.
So after some nice photos I return, and while doing other stuff I’m thinking “you know, it’d be so funny if the advance payment I’ve been waiting for arrived without much fanfare”, so I opened the banking app to feel disappointed and…
…
…it did.
I’ve got money on the account.
I’ve got enough money to operate normally for a while, hopefully while the bullshit with my other banks finalizes.
I’m so tired, at any other point I would’ve unironically been jumping and giddy, but at that moment my brain just made the sounds of an HDD skipping around. Like playing an old school PC game that starts to lag because too many things popped on the screen.
I can pay company bills that piled up for like half a year, I don’t have the suspense of if I’ll be able to pay the salaries, I can continue new incorporation processes, I can go on a fucking vacation for the first time in like 4 months.
Muscles in my back that I wasn’t even that aware of unclamped all at once.
I’m so tired, man…
One of the more daunting nightmare scenarios I faced while going through this all was the fact that even if I decided “I’m gonna give up some of my favorite collectibles to scrounge up the money to pay the salaries” I wouldn’t be able to. I’d need to basically empty my shelves and even then I’d barely make it for a single employee.
This specific hypothetical was exacerbated by the fact that I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TO DO THAT. I’M NOT BROKE I’VE BEEN VERY RESPONSIBLE WITH MY MONEY AND I SHOULDN’T BE IN THIS POSITION BECAUSE MY BANK HAS BEEN DUMB AND MADE IT HARD TO EVEN GET MY MONEY OUT LET ALONE ALL THE BULLSHIT PRECEDING IT ALL.
I’ve talked about how aware I’ve become of how many people depend on me, but let me give you an idea of the mental math I run at all times.
At any given point when I use money I have this estimate in my mind that’s like “if today all our streams of income suddenly stopped dry and for some reason we refused to start new ones, how much time would we have before all the money we have runs dry?”.
I’m gonna keep the specific amount of time to myself, but you get the idea. It can be like “well, it’s 4 years” and then we get another payment and I go “okay it’s back to 5 years”. Or it’s 10 but then with a new hire it’s reduced to 8.
Of course, we have a stream of income to this day. I cannot begin to express with words how blessed I feel by the fact that our almost-10-year-old game has been selling so consistently. But something I’ve learned from my parents is to not use money I don’t have or that I don’t know if I’ll have. So like… an investment is a loss until stated otherwise rather than counting on said investment doubling and using money we don’t have.
If you put payments on a credit card, assume your salary is being cut by that amount, and so on.
Now, imagine going from this comfortable-but-constantly-accounted-for state of mind and switching to “yeah zero security that I’ll even make it to the end of THIS month…” and to be like that because our bank decided they had a new fancy system held together with spit and a prayer.
That’s why when people say I’m “rich” my answer is to shrug with an “eh…”. Because in my mind rich people don’t NEED to work. I may be financially comfortable, sure, but that’s more akin to the aforementioned ticking clock to being broke having enough of a leeway to figure things out before it happens.
The day I can see my job and go “I don’t actually gotta do this” is the day I’ll proudly say I’m rich.
Until then, mo’ money mo’ problems.
After allowing myself to melt for a few minutes I went out because there’s bills I need to pay and I need cash. So here’s some interesting bits about the account.
The foreign transfer arrived in what’s basically a savings account, meaning that to use the money I have to move it to a current account. That’s an immediate process but it sure took me a couple of tries.
Converting money is also instantaneous and the app actually lets you see how much you have in yen and then a breakdown of how much you have in each currency and each savings or regular account.
THIS is the part where it dawned on me how I got all this money without all the extra steps I’ve had to do with out current company account. Even outside of the expected logistics from it being sent to a personal account instead of a corporate one, I didn’t have to fax shit and I’m able to check the damn balance on my phone.
In fact, it dawned on me how my old bank (the one I’m trying to be rid of) didn’t even have an app.
I then spent the rest of the night opening Digimon TCG packs. As much as a treat as to clear up some space.