I went for my run last night. It was too dark to go along my tried and true routes - the Merri Creek trail doesn't look too appeal when it starts getting dark and I'm scared of those roving gangs of bogans who beat you up for sport.

Instead I went running around the streets. I've never done that before and it was a pretty amazing experience. I did a huge blockie - through North Fitzroy, past all the people getting home from work or on their way and all the restuarants with their delicious dinner smells, then around and through Clifton Hill. Two guys were sitting outside one of the pubs having beers. I tripped over that beer hole (I'm sure it has a proper name - the hole where they load the beer into the basement of the pub) and they cracked up at me. I got all offended until I realised I'd have done the same thing.

A bit further on, there's a car with a For Sale sign - a groovy old Holden. Anita and I always try to see the price on it but you can't see it clearly from the tram so I turned my head to read it from close up and ran - bam - into a pole. To make it worse, a guy was walking beside me and he told me that's why he didn't jog. It's not the jogging that's dangerous though, it's the looking.

So anyway, life... there are things you'd think I'd learn. Like every time I start a new contract I'm all like I'm going to save heaps of money then suddenly my contract gets to it's end and I've saved nothing. Buggered if I know where the money goes - dresses, shoes and car repairs, I guess.

My contract is coming to an end soon and I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm so not wanting to look for another job. I'm sick of working for the Man. The Man sucks. But I need to pay rent and eat and all that kind of thing, so I'm trying to think of ways to make money that aren't so time consuming. A few ideas are kicking around.

My needs are simple (except for my need for dresses and shoes but I have enough of those, enough I tells ya) and my living expenses are cheap. I've worked out I can get by if I'm frugal on $200 - $250 a week.

I've been doing a lot of soul searching about this. I think I'd rather live simply and have my time for own pursuits than rake in the cash but be at the Man's beck and call. So much of the stuff I spend my money on is unnecessary - I think working puts you on this consumerist treadmill. You work, then you feel like you should reward yourself for working so you buy pretty trinkets and sparkly things then you have to work more ... until you die.

I've spent so long working for financial type companies where I don't really give a damn about the company or them making money for their shareholders or their profits and bottom lines. I spend my life doing things that I don't really give a rat's arse about. It's not like I feel any of these companies are ethically wrong, but they aren't really in line with my personal ethics either. (I've been thinking a lot about ethics lately, and will prolly post more on this soon).

Every time I take on a new job, I think I can fit my writing in around it, or that I'll save money and take time off to write but that's not working. It's like saying I'm going to eat all this chocolate cake now, then my belly will be full of chocolate cake and I won't have to eat cake in the future. We all know how that works!

None of this really relates to weight loss at a basic level but, on a broader level, I think it does. I believe that how we spend money and how we relate to food are closely related; how we work and live effects who we are and the value we place upon ourselves as people.

Life is about making leaps of faith - that leap you make when say you're getting off the couch to go for a walk, the leap you make when you suddenly stop seeing yourself as the fat one, the one that can't lose weight. I think I need to make that leap away from the corporate teat. I need to put ME first and put a value on myself that's beyond any pay packet.