Thinking like this is why I should still be in therapy

The "you should" thoughts have always been my downfall in cognitive behavioral therapy, and the "you should"s are always loudest about money.

One of my goals this year is to clean up the house and finish the renovations... I should be done by mid-October.

One of my distractions is that I've started doing all the travelling that was supposed to be my "well done" present to myself for finishing all that crap. So I feel kind of guilty that I'm rewarding myself for work not done *and* spending the money that could continue that work.

... but not so guilty that I'm not thrilled to pieces that I went to 221BCon or Gally. Cognitive dissonance! It's what's for breakfast. (And lunch and dinner...)

I joined the Jane Austen Society of North America, and now I'm getting flyers to sign up for the Annual General meeting (members only). It's incredibly expensive just to walk in the door, which door being halfway across the country. The hotel rates are nosebleed high. And half the good stuff is bolt-on extra fee activities.

But oh, what activities they are! A Regency fashion show and tea. A tour of a Sherlock Holmes museum in the area(!) Dance lessons and cooking lessons. All this on top of sessions like "See touring objects from the Jane Austen museum" and lots and Lots and LOTS about details and history in Pride and Prejudice because it's that book's 200th anniversary. Although the next year's meeting will likely be just as full of nice stuff, it won't be the Pride&Prejapalooza this one is.

I shouldn't go simply because it's so expensive. That money should be reserved for currently planned cons and house work, as cushion and debt payments.

But... right now, at least, my job's doing pretty well. Well enough that I am continuing to steadily pay down the credit card debt and the renovation materials and still put into the con kitty every paycheck. (At the beginning of the year I started a convention kitty - the money unspent from Gally was rolled into seed money for 221BCon then rolled into Malice and planned for Discworld con then Stratford then ChicagoTARDIS, then quite likely Christmas presents.) The kitty's pretty sizeable; if I don't get too crazed at Discworld and Stratford (and to be honest, I own all the Pratchett books already, both in print and audio, and I've shopped for almost all the Shakespeare tat I feel I need this particular year)... well, if I did food and hotel out of pocket for both of those and didn't do the large extra credit card payments those months only to counterbalance, then I could put much of the kitty into the Jane Austen thing and it would be half paid for Right. This. Minute.

I shouldn't go because I'm still working on the house. And... what happens if I don't get the house done by mid-October? Nothing. It's not like there's a legal penalty or anything. I set that deadline myself, and heck, the original deadline was supposed to be 2 years ago anyway. I'm on the last room, then it's just cleanup. With a little discipline (oh, how I should have discipline...) I can 7-items that like the wind.

I shouldn't go.

I *could* go, without doing major damage to my current budget or timeline.

And yet I'm struggling hard to give myself permission to send in that membership form.

Advice wanted.