I have been in the process of closing my Bank of America checking and savings account for the past two years.  This is not an exaggeration.  While, in much more difficult, awkward, and painful circumstances, i have always found the strength to put my money where my mouth is (pun).  I am decidedly not all talk.  But even my true moral outrage is practically powerless compared to direct deposit.

And so i waited until i graduated grad school and no longer had my pittance wired directly to the corrupt, system-fixing, sonsofa bee.   But now the cable bill and my car insurance get auto-paid out of those accounts.  You start to see why they implement these programs.  To draw you further and further into a bank dependency where the effort to change banks is always made greater than the effort to stay.

Recently, I took the first step.  I opened a checking and saving account at my local bank.  I have my escape route.  Now it's that critical time in the break up where i try to get as many of my things out of the other person's apartment without them realizing it's happening.  "What? This ol iPod? Nah, nah, i just wanted it at home because i was hoping to use it to work out with."  

Leave the toothbrush.  You can get a new one.

At some point they took 8 of my dollars from my account.  Apparently i agreed to keep 1000 dollars in my account or forfeit 8 dollars.  I told the guy that that seemed ridiculous, and he said, "well, we would have sent you a letter."  Fuck you dude.  That's not good enough.  And it's so not good enough that instead of explaining how not good enough that explanation is, i am leaving this bank forever.   Don't take my 8 bucks and tell me you sent me a letter.  How hard is the concept of my bank just holding my money without taking it!!!  This is not one of those "possession is 85% of the law" deals because the whole (supposed) point of your institution is to hold and protect other people's stuff.  Not take it in tiny increments.  That's not the deal.  Bank of America, WHY ARE YOU SO HANDSY WITH MY MONEY.  And so, the ball had to get a-rolling.  I need out of this menagerie.

This post, of course, is all part of the process.  By shaming myself publicly i just shorten the amount of time it will take me to unravel my "assets" from one system, and recoil them in another one.  I'm just glad that my assets are significantly shorter than my computer and phone charger cords, because they have been braided for so long they have merged into some form of iDreadlock charger.

I've also tried reconceptualizing the problem.   As in, "for my new years resolution, I am leaving Bank of America."  This is a good resolution in that I may be the first person ever to give themselves an achievable goal.  It is also a good resolution in that it gives me a year.

Un-fortuantely, this deficiency of mine is a bit generalizable to other completely doable errands such as mailing letters.  Not writing letters -- i have a knack for that.  It is the mailing that stymies me.  Ask any of my wedding guests who are still waiting for their thank you notes (sorry eric).

It gives me a certain demonic pleasure to think that before too too long the postal system will become obsolete, thereby erasing my deficiency by default.  It's pretty logical to think that a similarly outsourced fate lies a bit further down the road for the banking system.  The world is coming to me.

Technology: Lazinesses greatest enabler.