I know it’s been a while since I’ve shared what life looks like on my side of the screen. School started on September 24th, and these past few weeks have been about building a rhythm that feels like mine for the first time in a long time. For nearly 18 years my routines have always revolved around my child, their needs, their schedule, their emergencies, their milestones. And now, for the first time, there is a part of my day that belongs only to me.
I wake up before my alarm now, same time every morning. I make two eggs with ketchup and hot sauce, and a Greek yogurt, the same breakfast every day, which I actually enjoy. There’s a peace in knowing the next step before I take it. Lately I’ll put on “Return to Me” by Matthew Ryan (from One Tree Hill).
It’s been the soundtrack of my mornings for over a week. I’ve also started running again. Years ago I used to run down to the waterfront from my apartment building under the city lights, and I forgot how much that rhythm used to tether me to myself. It still does.
I’m taking three classes this quarter: film, sociology, and Fundamentals of Psychology 309. That last one intimidated me at first, especially with the early start, but it doesn’t feel impossible anymore, just new. My sociology class is online, which gives me some breathing room between lectures. I still meet with two classmates from our Law and Society class last quarter for coffee, and I didn’t realize how much I missed that sense of familiar faces until school gave it back to me.
I also made a new connection this quarter, and it was one of those easy, human kind of connections that just feel like oxygen. We went together to see a film at the Tacoma Film Festival for a class assignment. The film was titled Sweet Summer Pow Wow, it meant a lot because I got to feel close to my biological grandmother who was 100% Creek Indian, our tribe is in Alabama.
And then there’s someone from last quarter who has stayed in my mind. I thought about them over the summer, quietly, occasionally, in the way you think about people who are rare. It turns out they were thinking about me, too. I stayed to talk with them after class one day, and they told me they finally bought some stocks, “it’s small,” they said, and I told them it doesn’t matter, because you don’t need to start big, you just need to start.
They’ve always refused to invest in stocks and oil on principle, and I had been wanting to get them taken care of, so finding out they invested while thinking of me mattered. It mattered not so much that they are now invested (although this is very important), but the fact that they thought of me in the middle of their life and acted on it. (I also made sure to introduce them to ESG investing, which felt like getting to give something that actually lands.)
That’s been another quiet lesson of these past few weeks: some people appreciate the gift but never the giver, and some people appreciate you. You feel the difference immediately.
I’ve also been looking at Boston apartments and houses on Zillow, not as fantasy, but preparation. I know that sometime in the next 14 months my life might move across the country, and I’ll have to rebuild a community from scratch.
Part of me already feels the tug of that future life, different mornings, a new library I haven’t met yet, a train instead of a bus, a neighborhood where no one knows me yet but eventually will. And another part of me knows we have built something real here, connections that formed without trying, community, loved ones outside family, even though we know we can build that again. I’ve proved it once already.
My son wants another Halloween party this year, so we’re planning that. It still surprises me sometimes that he’s almost 18, old enough to have his own world now. I guess this is the transition: two separate becoming(s) happening in the same house.
I’m still investing weekly, $5 every Tuesday, either into VOO or VT. It’s not the amount, it’s the muscle memory. One of my portfolios hit a $1,000 milestone recently, and another is inching toward a five-figure mark whenever the market settles. The numbers aren’t the story; what they represent is. I remember when none of this existed, when I had no ownership of anything with my name on it. It still feels surreal.
I had to buy a new laptop for SPSS because my old one couldn’t handle it, but I think even that felt symbolic, upgrading the tools because I’m upgrading the life they serve. Next week I’m attending a finance event on campus in the Milgard Business Building, not because I need the information, but because I finally realized that sometimes the room matters more than the material. It’s about being in proximity to people who want to build, too.
That’s what life looks like lately, quiet discipline, slow-building momentum, and a future I can feel gathering at the edges of my present.
I don’t have all the details figured out. But I can tell I’m building toward a life I’ll actually live inside of.
And that feels like something worth writing down.
This blog is read in 50+ countries (and counting). If you’re a student, teacher, or lifelong learner from anywhere in the world, I’m honored you’re here. Economics belongs to all of us.
The Broke College Student 
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