If you want to REALLY be shocked by how much money you give the feds for half a years pay, just pay it all at once when tax time comes around. Yikes. Since I live off of fellowship money (which is oh so generously "given" to me rather than "earned," in a taxation sense) taxes do not get withheld from my income during the school year; but rather, they are stolen right out of my pocket in april. Gives one a new appreciation for the gentler, kinder "withholding" technique.
Do you ever try to convince yourself that "it's just money"? Yeah, right. We're Americans around here. It's NOT just money. It's not just what makes the world go 'round and drives our monstrous economy, it's also somehow become symbolic of everything else of value in life that it can't literally buy: our worth as a human being, our capability and talent, security, intelligence, kindness, love... Money's got its grubby little fingers in everything.
But it's not real.
So today I tried to tell myself, like so many times before, that IT DOES'T MATTER, and I'm probably happier with less anyway, etc. etc. Maybe eventually, if I've told myself that enough, I will have heard it as often as I've heard from my culture that money is everything. And maybe, at that point... I'll finally get it.
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