**This week’s challenge: make the most of a day without spending any money for a full 24 hours.**

If I told you I never worry about money, I would be lying. Even though I had the confidence to quit a career that was making me unhappy, my choice does not come without drawbacks. There have been many a nights where I wake up sweating, regretting my decision to leave my steady-paying finance job. Regret based purely on the state of my bank account and my recurring nightmare where a $100 bill is trying to eat me (or does that mean I have a crush on Ben Franklin? Any shrink reading this, please help). I obsess over the fact that if I stayed, I could have paid off my student loans in a few short years, then started saving for my future. During these moments of panic, I have to remind myself that I’m in this to make my life exactly how I dreamed it would be.  I want to be able to make the most of every single day, instead of spending my days cooped up in an office, living for the weekend. It’s cliché, I know, but life really is too short for that bulls**t.

In an attempt to find a bit of peace with my financial situation, I chose to go 24 hours without spending money as my first challenge. Does money really make the world go round? What am I going to do about food (maybe I’ll achieve my beach body sooner than I thought)? Do you think Lil Dicky will let me be in the music video if he makes a sequel to “Save Dat Money”? With all of these burning questions in mind, I started my 24-hour time clock at 5 pm Friday.

 

THE SHOW MUST GO ON

After classes ended on Friday, my school  hosted an open house to celebrate its anniversary. This event came with a ton of free delicious food, a chance to take part in the community, and the opportunity to see my students really come to life outside of the classroom. Going into the night, if you would have told me I would voluntarily stay at work an extra five hours on a Friday, I would have said you were crazy, but that’s exactly what I did.

I normally would have taken advantage of the free food, made just enough small talk to get by (I already made THREE friends at work, do I really need more???), then hustled out of there as soon as nobody was looking. But when you have no money to blow and a free night of entertainment at your fingertips, you lurk harder than a stage 5 clinger. I dove in and actually took the time to get to know the people I work with every day.  As it turns out, They. Are. Wonderful. ***Fun Fact***: it normally takes about a year for my personality to shift from that of a piece of cardboard to a functional human being around new people, so we are WAY ahead of schedule here, people. I can actually go into work on Monday and let my corny jokes fly freely. *Lets out the anxious breath I’ve been holding for an entire month.*

I forgot to mention I had some extra incentive to hang around the party:  A few weeks ago, I was asked to choreograph a dance routine for my Kindergarteners to perform at the open house. I said yes immediately, and was so excited to take on the project, that I completely overlooked one major problem in its execution… I have no rhythm.

A lot of people say they don’t have rhythm to make up for being a bit shy, but my dance moves are truly on par with that of Elaine’s from Seinfeld. I’ve already been asked to dance by a guy at a party and sent him running for the hills before the end of the first verse. I prefer to take this to mean that my moves speak for themselves, but unfortunately, the message they’re sending is: “this girl regularly trips over sidewalk cracks and probably still lives with her parents.” Both of which, are true. Thank you so much for asking!!!

I managed to put together a quality routine (using my wheelhouse of white girl dance moves and the electric vocals of Justin Timberlake), and by some miracle taught it to my class within the three-week time frame. Fast forward to the night of the show: All the other classes were doing beautiful, graceful, traditional Thai dances, complete with ornate outfits and makeup done so well that they looked like groups of four-foot tall, forty-year-olds.

By the time my class took the stage, I was a wreck.  Would my bold stylistic choices fall flatter than Fergie’s rendition of the National Anthem at the NBA All-Star game? (If you are unfamiliar with this reference, check it out on YouTube. Trust me, it’s worth your time.) At this point, the open house had already been going on for three hours and the crowd was wavering. The second they saw my kids’ outfits and heard the first notes of the song, the crowd LIT. UP. My class danced to “Can’t Stop the Feeling!”, dressed like a rag-tag group of hood rats, covered in glitter and ready to kill it. Those little nuggets absolutely nailed the routine and looked ADORABLE every step of the way. Once I saw the positive response, it took every fiber of my being not to do the moves in the front of the audience, like the mom from “Mean Girls”, but their determined little faces told me they had it all under control. When the song was over, my kids walked off that stage, high-fiving the crowd like a bunch of rock stars. Did I create a crew of five-year-old egomaniacs? One could only hope.

A small snapshot of their fun-sized glory.

 

SATURDAY MORNING: A WALK TO REMEMBER

Still riding the high from my kids performance the night before, I decided to go for a run. I came upon a beautiful flight of stairs, leading to an unknown destination, that I normally cruise right past without a second thought. Since I was not spending any money this Saturday, and hey, stairs are free, I took the time to explore. One beautiful flight of stairs led to another (I run just about every day and STILL am out of breath from climbing no more than 5 stairs, so this took some time). After about three flights, I realized I was ascending the mountain that leads to the viewpoint overlooking all of Songkhla. Determined to make it to the top, I turned the corner, only to stop in my tracks at the sight of over 20 monkeys blocking my path.

If you’ve never seen a monkey in the wild, you’re probably picturing a very cute and cuddly creature, like Marcel from Friends. In reality, wild monkeys are TERRIFYING. They’re stronger and larger than expected, have massive incisors (that they like to proudly display), and worst of all, are not afraid of humans **DUN DUN DUNNNNNN** .

Like the bold and fearless explorer I am, I quickly sprinted to a trail off the side of the stairs, out of sight of the monkeys. Thinking I was in the clear, I confidently continued my slightly diverted ascent of the mountain. Unfortunately my hike was turning into a full-scale “Dora the Explorer”-style adventure, because as soon as I got a few scenic pictures at the top of the mountain, I turned around to see a squad of six monkeys closing in on me. Since I am very outdoorsy and great with animals (AKA don’t do dirt and only like my own dog), I made the only rational move a person could make. I threw everything in my hands in one direction to distract the monkeys, and took off in the other. You’re probably thinking I was holding something insignificant, like a flower I picked up along the walk, but you are mistaken. I threw my running armband, which held my phone (already lost two phones on this trip, why not go for one more?), the only key to my apartment, and my plugged in headphones. Rationality at its finest.

The monkeys grabbed my headphones with all of my attached belongings and took off into a tree. By some miraculous twist of fate, my armband was heavy enough to disconnect from the headphones and fell out of the tree with my phone and key safely inside. I ran to retrieve my belongings and hauled ass back down that mountain. How in the world I only lost a pair of headphones (and escaped without needing a rabies vaccine) during that adventure is beyond me. But the rush of conquering obstacles, paired with the hilarity of getting mugged by a troop of monkeys the moment I declared myself safe, made the whole thing well worth it. Is this the kind of story money can buy? In(coin)ceivable.

Did I forget to mention I also had to take on a stray dog?

 

MEALS: THE WAY TO MY HEART IS THROUGH MY STOMACH (not you, creep)

As it turns out, I didn’t starve during my 24-hour challenge (thank the Lawd, because I have never and will never be a “forgets to eat” kind of girl)! I owe a special shoutout to the wonderful woman who works at the local fruit stand. I passed her on my run, turned walk, Saturday morning and started chatting with her as always (I’ve talked to her almost every day for the past month and we’re in too deep for me to ask her name now without it getting weird).  When I mentioned my challenge to go a day without spending money, she gave me my usual order of fresh chopped pineapple for free. Do I plan to pay her back the next time I see her? Absolutely. But man was it awesome to see how excited she was to help. This woman showed me just how much people appreciate someone taking a genuine interest in them and jumped at the first opportunity to express her gratitude. What a kind soul.

On the flip side, not everyone I encountered was as pure in heart. I had lunch with what I thought appeared to be a nice man on “holiday”. We struck up a conversation, and he asked me to sit with him to eat. Before even a drop of condensation from my water glass hit the table (this takes approximately 30 seconds in the Thai humidity), his friendly chatting quickly turned into aggressively hitting on me (spitting game this hard at noon??? I can only imagine what this guy is like in a club at 2 am). Needless to say, I ate my food, basically without chewing, and made a speedy exit. He picked up the tab though, so for the sake of the challenge I put a check in the win column! (Did it for the Gram *blog*)

I like to think that people like him are the exception, not the rule, when it comes to talking to new people. It won’t always be perfect, but taking the time to get to know someone increases the odds of making their day by 100% over rushing past them, minding your own business. So now I have a challenge for you- get out there and make the effort to talk to one new person today. We’re all going through similar things, we all just want to be happy, why not help each other out? Make the effort for a few days and you’ll be amazed at the result (but please don’t sue me if you get kidnapped. Thx.).

All in all, my 24 hours without spending money taught me three things: make the effort to talk to new people, always take time to explore, and stay the f**k away from wild monkeys. Most importantly, this day also showed me that money truly isn’t a source of my happiness. I’m not saying that money couldn’t take me to incredible places or buy me awesome things, but I had one of the best days of my life without spending a dime. The things that made it great were taking the time to connect with people (my coworkers, students, friends, strangers, etc.) and supporting my sense of curiosity by allowing myself to explore. Did I seriously just find two things that I can genuinely say get me excited? I’d say challenge number one was officially a success!

Challenge number two, here I come.