Rattling around in my head is a story about a young boy who is given a newborn calf, with instructions to lift the animal up over his head ten times each day.  As the calf grows into a cow, the boy does his duty, and so grows into a man of incredible strength, able to lift his full-grown steer overhead ten times daily.

As romantic as the notion is, that has got to be pretty hard to do, or cow-lifting competitions would be so common and state and county fairs that animal activists would be screaming for the practice to stop.  Eventually, it gets harder than the body can endure.  That's how the Pagan savings challenge is starting to feel for me:  I'm breaking a financial sweat as I force myself to live in a smaller and smaller financial world.  Each week, there's less money for things like birthday gifts, gas for the car, offerings for my gods.  By setting a greater amount aside, I'm constraining what I can do right now, and it's really, really starting to suck.

This is a point that each of us should reach at some point during this year.  It can be used as a bellwether, because if the pain begins too early, the savings goal wasn't suitable for the situation, and if we sail through to December without a hint of tension, the bar should have been higher.  November seems like a good time to feel like this.  I sincerely believe I can finish this, but I can't be certain.  Doubt and fear lead to steadfast perseverance.  That cow is getting heavy, but it's not too heavy.  Not yet.

My week forty-four savings: $990, 4.4% ($44.00) of which I added today.