The other day, as my team at work was eating our traditional holiday Qdoba lunch, our boss asked was what we were planning to get ourselves for Christmas (at 32, I’m the youngest person in the group, so this is mostly adults with grown children or older adults without children with two other exceptions beside myself). We bandied back and forth a bit, talking about upgrades to home theater systems, parts for a boat someone is building, good suppliers for smart home appliances or gear until the conversation began to stymie and I tossed out my answer. Since my PC is about eight years old and can’t play more and more modern games (the latest updates to Cyberpunk2077 upgraded it out from underneath my ability to play it), I’ve been saving up for a new high-powered gaming computer and will just be tossing a bit of money that way rather than buying myself anything specific. One of my coworkers joked about Gamer LEDs, water cooling systems, and overclocking computers but, once we’d gotten all the jokes out, I said I was planning to buy a computer strong enough that I wouldn’t need to overclock it for the stuff I wanted to do since I could just save a bit longer and not potentially shorten the lifespan of my computer by putting too much stress on it. My boss commented that I’m so practical, which was probably just an offhand comment in his mind, but it’s been stuck in my mind ever since.

To be entirely fair to him, I am an incredibly practical and forward-thinking person. I take great care to set plans for myself, to follow those plans, and to work to optimize as much of what I’m doing as I can. If something is working poorly or just an inefficient way of doing things, I will always try to find a way to improve it without letting myself get carried away by the details. I’m always trying to simplify things, to take things seriously, and to be earnest and straight-forward in everything I do. I’ll joke and have fun along with everyone else (and frequently work to bring some fun into the more boring aspects of ours jobs), but I have little use for extraneous stuff (other than books) and tend to live simply compared to my coworkers. I can see how, with his glimpse into my life, he might think that and find it somewhat boring or silly to the point of being worth comment.

Things, of course, look very different from my perspective. In addition to being the youngest, I’m the only one in the group paying off student loans. I’m also, coincidentally, the only one who doesn’t own a home. I’m also the only one who isn’t married, who is any kind of queer, and who has struggled financially. So, sure, what some of my coworkers see as a preference for the practical is actually me trying to stick to my budget. I eat the same lunch every day because it costs me about ten bucks a week to eat that every day. My coworkers are easily spending triple that when they buy lunch from the deli in the office. I can’t afford the down payment for a house, so I’m stuck in an increasingly horrible renting situation where I’m now probably paying more for rent than any of my coworkers are paying for their mortgages since most of them bought their current homes at least a decade ago (most of them even longer). It’s frustrating, sometimes, to see how different our lives are and to know that they so little understand my struggles that they think I enjoy bologna enough to eat it every single day at work for simplicity’s sake. Back when I had roommates and my rent was lower, I always got the nice deli meat or just bought lunch at work every day and that’s not really something I can afford since doing that would be almost half of my weekly grocery budget these days.

So, yeah, I’m practical. I am in a position where, since I have enough stuff to get by already, I can just save for the more expensive stuff that will last longer, even if it seems like a super boring thing to do since I’m going to get it with as few frills as possible because frills aren’t worth paying extra. I have become this practical out of necessity rather than desire. Sure, its a choice no matter how you spin it, but one is fueled by a lifestyle preference and another is fueled by fear of spiraling into debt or needing to rely on someone else for financial support that they could hold over you for the rest of your life. Which, to be blunt, is a position I refuse to ever be in again after all the “I put a roof over your head, clothes on your back, and food on your plate” I got from my parents. I do not trust anyone to have that level of power over me and, yeah, that probably says a lot about me, but I also have figured out how I can avoid that situation: ruthless practicality. It’s not fun, but it sure is effective (which is a very practical way of looking at things).I’ll admit that I’ve adapted to this style of life better than most because I was raised by two civil engineers and learned how to survive long before I learned to live, so eating a bologna sandwich every day at work is a pretty low price to pay for my desired long-term outcome compared to some of the things I’ve done in the past for similar, if somewhat more intense, reasons. It comes easy to me, especially because I don’t really have much of a choice.

Which isn’t to say I don’t live without some luxuries. I’ve got my favorite soda at home, I usually buy my favorite snacks to keep around my home for whenever I want them, I buy myself plenty of books and games (still on a budget, but one that allows for a new game a month with a little left over), I’m willing to pay other people to do stuff I could do myself if I took the time, and so on. It’s probably nothing my coworkers would consider luxurious, but I’d be doing the same stuff even if I had more money, so it’s not like I’m depriving myself. All that would change if I had more money is that I’d work less and read more. I don’t live uncomfortably since I’m not even tired of eating bologna. I don’t like or dislike the experience, after all, which is kind of the point of eating it every day. Its boring enough that I can’t get tired of it like I can get tired of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I literally can’t even make it through a whole jar of peanut butter without getting tired of them, but I haven’t missed a bologna sandwich in months and don’t even feel revolted at thinking about how much bologna that must have been. Which, you know, is a very practical situation to be living in.