Recently, at a drug store, I overheard a person berating themselves when their card was declined. “What? How could I be such a stupid loser?,” they cried, loud enough for all of us in line to hear. Only, as a store worker soon explained, the card reader was declining everyone’s cards on the first try that day. On the second try, it went through fine. But, the declined card had nonetheless triggered the person to tell themselves an immediate story about what that meant and who they were.
So, in the spirit of that, today, write about money. Not so much about what you do or do not have in terms of money, but about how you feel about money, or what stories you tell yourself about yourself as you interact with money, or a way you see others interacting with money that intrigues/bothers you, or a formative experience you had with money in childhood, or a reported piece about something missing from the dominant narrative about money. Anything you want connected to money. Let’s go.