How I stopped worrying and learned to love the lotto

A fool’s guide to financial independence through unemployment

Unemployment is a weird kind of freedom. It’s kinda like a snow day until you remember: oh shit, I still gotta shovel the driveway.

The relief of unemployment comes with the panic of will the next plan work out?

A guy can lose a lotta sleep worrying about his financial stability.

That’s why I decided to take action.

I went out on a walk to buy a lottery ticket.

Normally, I wouldn’t buy a lottery ticket, but for Christmas, Laura gave me a scratch and win ticket.

It was a $20 ticket, you know, the deluxe kind.

But from that $20 ticket, I won $50.

Well done eh?

A more responsible person might consider this win good enough. They would use this windfall to cover a bill. I used it to buy ten weeks of hope. Ten tickets for ten draws, ten weeks in a row.

In leaving a job though, I’m left dreaming:

What do I have?

What do I need?

What can I get?

What am I gonna do with this?

An outta work fool has neither money nor structure.

That’s a bit of a problem.

But right now, I’m enjoying a wealth of time - a wealth of time and ten weeks of lotto fantasies.

And with such wealth and well placed fantasies, I can focus my time.

I’m cutting wood for next year while burning the wood I cut last year.

So, I’m investing time in the future.

These investments are not limited to calories for heat.

More time is being directed here dear reader. Plans for finding a literary agent are moving along.

And while that’s happening, I have time to train for the next season of cycling.

But even with family connections, long baths and time with friends, my dance card still isn’t full.

So I’m investing time in growing my tour guide world by offering private walking tours that explore the more offbeat side of Halifax. Not the ‘official tours’ that talk about the plaques and the big names of the important people, I’m focusing my research on the absurd day to day stuff that the history books miss.

All of this time and investment?

I have no idea how it will work out.

I hope.

I hope to get a book deal and start speaking someday. Hell, I’d be happy with a professional collaborator willing to invest time in someone who has invested over 2k hours in a writing pocess.

I hope to have firewood that cures up nice and crispy for next year.

And I hope that the connections that I make now lead to a more financially rewarding tour season - ideally one so flush with cash I don’t have to spend twelve hours a day pounding around the Valley in a delivery van over Christmas.

Right now, I have a lot of time and a lot of outputs on various projects.

It’s all a leap of faith, founded on feathers of hope.

This is not to say that I don’t really have a leg to stand on. I have two. The ground however?

I just can’t trust it.

Not yet.

This tour guide thing is still too new. It’s too early to tell if it’s sustainable.

And that precarious position leads this fool to anxious, sleepless panic planning at 3am.

Which is why I love the lotto.

I don’t buy lotto tickets for the belief that I’ll win. I buy them for the soothing.

If I win thirty million, I’ll be able to take care of all the people that I love and won’t have to worry about money again!

Ahhhhh. The dreams.

Then the imagined purchases.

I’ll fix up my truck, and maybe get another. And another. But they’ll all be ‘old trucks’ - restoration projects. I’ll be saving the earth by saving these trucks from the crusher.

Even in my self soothing fantasizes, I still try to justify every indulgence to the hippies who resent those with dough.

It’s not like I don’t want to work. I’d love my work. But a lottery ticket? They exist to provide a fantasy that I won’t have to.

And that dear reader?

That helps soothe the fear of what if it doesn’t work out? What if all of your efforts once again fall flat and you go nowhere? What if you’re bound to be a nothing, financially depraved and morally bankrupt? What if you don’t deserve it?

With a lotto, none of this matters. You simply skip the line at the airline gate and go directly to flying private.

(Oh, how I’d love to fly private)

So the lotto isn’t a plan. A lotto ticket is a soothing fantasy that everything is going to be alright.

And at 3am it’s nice to have a choice - jump into action and forgo sleep.

Or

Imagine everything you’ll do with your winnings.

Tour season starts in about two and a half months - ten weeks.

So with my fifty dollars, I bought ten weeks of lotto tickets. I bought ten weeks of fantasy, ten weeks of non pharmaceutical sleep aids.

I don’t plan on winning the lottery.

But with ten weeks of time to fill and actions to take, a little soothing, late night distraction in the form of a 6/49 ticket can go along way to ensuring that I sleep well enough to truly give my best to the plans that I’ve created.

And if things go well?

I might not earn enough to fly private, but those bike parts that I want and that trip to Spain for my son becomes so much easier to pay for.

In reality, I’ve won the lottery multiple times.

I’m here in the best part of the best part of the world.

There’s a fire in the stove. My family are healthy. People love me.

Things will likely work out. Hard work does have it’s own rewards and ways of paying off one way or another.

But at 3am, that never seems certain.

So it’s times like these that getting a little bump from the lotto, can help you along.