Squishy Balloons

You’re five years old. You know a thing or two about balloons.

This is a water balloon, though, so it’s fun to squish the water around. After a few minutes, you notice that, no matter where you squeeze, the water always ends up going somewhere else.

As a bat out of hell with infinite energy, you try everything you possibly can to get the water to compress and become smaller, but it just doesn’t happen.

Compress one side, and the other side bulges. After a bit more observation and some thoughtful contemplation, you realize that the amount of water in the balloon is conserved. In physics terms, that just means it’s the same amount no matter what you do to it.

You’re eighteen years old. Balloons are pretty lame, but you live in your own apartment now, and you’re responsible for all of your own expenses. It is evident every day that money is conserved, just like the water in that squishy balloon.

You realize that you can get ramen noodles at the rate of 7 for a dollar, and for many of the expenses you have, you can spend less if you focus on frugality.

I realized immediately that I could control how much money I spent every month. Rent was set, but utilities, food, clothing, and any other expense could be considered discretionary, at least to a degree.

and

At the grocery store, we would get milk that was about to expire (or, in the case of Kroger, milk that had already expired) for 50 cents, or sometimes even a quarter per gallon. Same with bread.

You realize that choosing what to do with your money is a sort of squishy balloon. If you live like a frugal pauper, you can afford the door fee at the punk show or the road trip to another city.

You’re 43 years old. You’re still learning about metaphorical balloons.

You know all about trade-offs in life, but you bite off way more than you can chew anyway. Your jiu jitsu gym is practically bursting at the seams, so you decide to expand the following year, doubling in size so you don’t have to expand again. You plan this out carefully and take a full year on the planning, design, and buildout.

Meanwhile, you plan to start a second gym. The first is great, but you could have an environment where students had even more class opportunities, and besides, a gym much closer to home would be great.

As if this isn’t enough, you create an encyclopedia of your BJJ techniques, making a subscription-based platform that users can still access for free.

All three of these projects are set to go live in January of 2019. Crossing the finish line with such intensity and focusing so much on three projects (instead of one) means the balloon squish has to go somewhere else. It turns out that stress, too, is conserved.

You’re however many years old you are today. What’s your current squishy balloon?