About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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March 2, 2016
Over lunch, a friend asked me if we do “Good cop, bad cop” with LB and for the life of me, I couldn’t wrap my brain around the idea. Ze is one year old. Is there a point to doing a good cop / bad cop routine? For 3 minutes, I stared at her, silently pondering what that would look like for an infant.
Besides, I’m no one-note mama. I am all the cops. Sometimes the good cop, mostly the bad cop, always the tickling cop.
I’ve made some first year remarks already but as I said then, there’s a lot about parenting that you just don’t viscerally get from a babysitting or professional aunt/uncle role until you’re there in the thick of it and there are no returns.
Experience has changed my viewpoint on some, not at all on others. It’s been a lot of “ohhhh that’s what that looks like,” or “what, exactly, is happening right now?”
Discipline
Pre-kids: My sibling’s the Exhibit A of The Bad Seed or a cautionary tale for the ages. It’s hard to know which.
It’s a Pyrrhic victory to hear your parent admit that everything you’d warned them would happen if they wouldn’t listen to you did happen, after they wouldn’t listen to you. I don’t know, can’t know, if we’d still have the same end result had they listened to me, but we know it all went to hell when they didn’t.
Post-kid: LB first heard “NO” at four months and hasn’t stopped hearing it since. Ze still doesn’t care what no means but soon enough ze will understand how to use language and I want hir to know there are times that are “yes”, and times that are “no”, and NO MEANS NO. From us, from anyone else, from hir.
Ze may act clueless or disregard the first admonitions but repetition is our friend here. When we’re consistent, we see the results of that efforts months later.
We don’t enforce *discipline* (punishment) specifically at this age, ze is too young, but we enforce the boundary of No especially when it comes to hurting others (*caveat: Unless they hurt or intend to hurt you, in those cases, gut ’em), or hurting hirself.
Responsibility
As in, having it. And then teaching it.
Pre-kids: This felt like an anchor around my everything. I don’t know how to motivate a kid to care about something that’s not a fun thing. From early on, I’ve always been the intrinsically motivated kid, competing against myself, but I’m necessarily an extrinsic element to LB so how do we foster that intrinsic drive? We cheer ze on for trying things, even if ze falls down or fails a lot, because we want hir to keep trying. And ze does. But how do we avoid turning hir personal motivation into a praise-seeking situation?
Post-kid: The responsibility is still daunting. I still don’t know how we’ll teach hir everything we hope to. But I have to hope that talking to hir, honestly and carefully, and demonstrating the desirable behaviors will have an impact. Maybe I was lucky to have been the passive kid I was; Mom and Dad always seemed pretty reasonable, I never wanted to rebel even if their rules chafed a little, and by the teen years, I assumed that acting like an adult would mean they’d treat me like one, so I did, and they did. For the most part.
We have to shape LB so that ze is prepared to succeed in a world we probably won’t understand in 20 years, being the outdated geezers that we are. We have to guide hir to build character, to have compassion, to be money savvy, to work harder and smarter than those around hir. I’m not sure how we do that. And in this world today that’s full of bile and anger and horrible people, how do we protect hir? Every single day I read another horrifying story about how someone abused, killed, and hurt their spouse, child, boy/girlfriend, complete stranger that looked at them wrong or was in the wrong place at the wrong time. We can’t wrap hir up in bubble wrap forever but it’s a scary damn world out there.
I don’t have any of the answers. To some degree, you can do it all “right” and still lose your child to whatever’s out there. But today, right here and now, I’m ignoring those what-ifs and soaking up the baby goodness and trying to get it right one day at a time.
Love
Pre-kids: Everyone says “it’s totally worth it” but it always sounds like they’re trying to rationalize the choice to have kids when it was prefaced by a story of how frustrated or annoyed they are by the kid. Which I’m sure all our parents felt at one point or another.
Post-kid: I absolutely adore this kid. Even when ze is difficult or confusing or frustrating. It didn’t happen the second ze was born like it does for some people. We needed time. I needed time to heal. I will never forget my fear and despair in Months 2-3. We needed time to get to know each other. Ze needed time to be more than a baguette.
Right now, it’s easy for me to feel both love and frustration at the same time and roll my eyes at weird infantile things like licking the dog or having a meltdown over having hir ankle grabbed as ze tips over the edge: “You won’t let me sustain a concussion waaahhhh!”
It’s interesting that one of my oldest friends knew bonding could take some time but didn’t tell me until I was past the 4th trimester. A mark of how well she knows me, and respects boundaries, that she wasn’t going to dictate to me what my life experience was going to be like some people do with their “wait until you … !”
So far, it’s hard work and it’ll only get harder. I think we can make the call in 30 years whether we did a good job and if it was all worth it because it’s way too soon to tell but right here and now, I’m just glad we took the chance and aren’t regretting it.
March 1, 2016
Change from Jan 2016: 0.10% decrease
0.10% decrease from last month
ON MONEY
I use Swagbucks. Here’s a handy tutorial if you’d like to join and earn.
- By way of ebates and Swagbucks, our Side Money tally this month went up $118.
- I knocked serious money off a bill with a phone call which was good because…
- We had that lovely episode with Seamus.
- I pick the best Valentine’s gifts. I’m loving this delightfully petite broom and dust pan! When you spend half your snack time sitting on the floor picking up crumbs, tiny cleaning implements are suddenly fabulous. Well, no, that’s not true, tiny gear of any kind is always fabulous. I gave LB a demonstration of how to use it to sweep up counters and got a little chuckle. Laughing at me, laughing with me, whatever. As long as we’re laughing.
- I bought a humidifier in an attempt to not die of the latest Viral Scourge and it came with a free subscription to Better Homes & Gardens. Imagine my tiny triumph when I read the fine print and found we could refuse the subscription and get a check for $6 instead. Yes, that’s small beans. It’s half a bean. But it’ll pay for my postcard mailing habit so it’s mine mine mine.
- File under credit card churning. I picked up the Bank of America Alaska Air credit card and used it to pay for our car insurance and a couple incidentals to meet the minimum spend of $1000 in 3 months. We netted 25,000 bonus miles (one round trip ticket), a $100 statement credit, and some thousand and change purchase miles. The downside was the $100 wasn’t pure profit – they didn’t waive the first year’s annual fee like most of the cards I prefer to nab so we came out ahead $25 and 25,000 miles.
- Two really sick friends received the gift of food delivery. It was a surprise and the best I could do once I found out how sick they were because I couldn’t run over to help myself. It ran to the tune of $400. That’s coming out of our discretionary spending and I regret nothing. (There were tears, the good kind. I double regret nothing.) Then PiC sold car parts to cover half of it, so I triple regret nothing because it’s always been my instinct to make up for unexpected expenditures instead of just cashflowing it. I’m a good influence, dammit!
- I’ve been wearing holes into the only pair of jeans that fit after I sized out of the maternity jeans. After weeks of deliberation, and cajoling by PiC, $55 bought me a pair of new jeans (50% off) so of course when I wasn’t looking, I dropped the last 7 pounds to hit my pre-baby weight. DAMMIT. I’d plateaued! There was no reason to believe those lingering pounds were going anywhere. Has unanticipated weight loss ever been so annoying??
- We are so close to completing our estate plan I can taste it!
- I’m also very close to completing our tax document compilation! We’re just missing a couple of forms. But I’m maybe not so much in a hurry to file because thanks to something outside my control on PiC’s side, we’re expecting a huge tax hit. Ugh.
(more…)
February 29, 2016
Last week’s ode to the Internet was timely.
This weekend was a trial, made slightly less grueling by having some access to the outside world. Last week I dragged along, trying to muster some good energy pockets each day but utterly failed. The best I could manage was being patient with an increasingly grouchy LB when ze was home and becoming one with the sofa when ze wasn’t. By Saturday, it was no use denying it: another round of illness had come a-knocking and we were fool enough to open the door. PiC was on nearly solo parenting duties, I simply couldn’t stay awake. He kept sending me to bed, and intellectually it’s nothing to feel guilty about, but it’s hard to shake the feeling of not pulling your own weight.
And it’s hard to shake the feeling of uselessness when random body parts stop working. Like the left knee doesn’t bear weight so “walking” is really “wobbling”, or three fingers are so swollen you can’t bend them. Or standing up makes your head spin, dip and swim.
Thankfully, I got a little work and household management done online, amid the brain fog, so that restless need to accomplish something more than having bizarre dreams and sustaining life was fulfilled.
Tetchy Toddler
Granted, it has everything to do with being sick but LB was prone to grouchy outbursts not unlike an angry, thwarted hunting velociraptor. Keep feeding the wee beastie, y’all, a sick raptor-baby is naught to mess with.
And can you blame hir? It’s miserable coughing all night. Poor thing wakes up in the middle of the night burning up, crying, because ze doesn’t understand what on earth is going on. I feel like a heel walking away from the piercing “maaa maa maaaaa!” when we’ve done everything I can for hir and ze doesn’t want to be cuddled to sleep. Rough times.
I don’t know how single parents manage, half the time ze was sobbing because ze wanted PiC. Seamus and I were on standby to fetch and carry, slather vapo-rub and administer Motrin, but ze wanted hir dad and only hir dad for comfort.
Moody Muttley
Seamus is off-kilter too. He’s been refusing his antihistamines and vitamins for weeks. He grudgingly takes them under protest.
It’s hard to tell if something is wrong or if he’s just in an extended funk.
Could be he’s worn out being moral support from our weeks of being sick. He always gets up to join us when LB is sick and being tended to.
Dad and delinquent accounts
Dad’s been missing utility payments.
I know because I am still remotely monitoring the accounts, not because he has learned his lesson about telling me the truth.
$100 here, $80 there. $400 for the electricity, another $200 for the water and trash. They pile up month after month as he pays what he can, saying nothing to me about the rest. Add that to the more than $1000 we pay per month for his rent and and it piles up. As does the aggravation.
I’m deep breathing through it lest the frustration eat me alive. Our budget continues to bear the monetary cost, I refuse to let the cost of his silence be my sanity. But it’s a little harder each day that feels like everything is subtly wrong.
One-horse home
We’re still a single car household and the inconvenience far outweighs the savings. On days when LB and PiC are out together, Seamus and I are limited to going only so far as I can hike, and if we have to run errands, well, we can’t. Unfortunately, he’s too popular with random strangers which makes it unsafe to leave him outside while I run in to run errands. He and I only run errands where he’s allowed inside. In case you think I’m being paranoid, someone just tried to steal our neighbor’s equally cute and friendly pup when they’d run into a cafe to pick up an order. 30 seconds is all it takes for someone to walk off with our dogs. What is wrong with people??
Shaking it off
I’m getting some work filed away to make Monday less painful, and by extension, the rest of the week as well. Maybe, just maybe, we can shake this funk before Tuesday.
How was your weekend? How does your week ahead look?
February 26, 2016
Most people who know me offline-only don’t know that I’ve got health issues. I don’t advertise, and unless it’s relevant, it never gets discussed. But it’s a very real thing that impacts everything I do in every way possible.
PiC lives with me and still forgets how overwhelmingly present my pain and fatigue can be. The level of exhaustion I feel every single day is equivalent to having a bad head cold. Higher pain episodes are like being struck down with the flu and its friend, the 105 degree fever, losing control of your muscles and consciousness, an anvil on your chest forcing you to gasp for the lightest breath. For days. Days and nights, forever and ever amen.
From that perspective, even though I’m considered “functional”, lots of “regular” life pleasantries become a trial. A walk around the block takes planning: rest for 3 hours, walk for 20 minutes. Cooking a simple dinner? Spread it across 12 hours or pay the price. A phone call? It’d better be really important because I have to take time and attention away from what I’m doing to properly entertain the call and use energy for talking aloud. A couple phone calls can wipe me out for the rest of the day.
You’d better believe I sorely miss the days when none of that was true. When I could work all day, play late into the night, and only be a bit worse for wear the next morning. How I miss the energy and invulnerability of youth and good health! In lieu of that, I’ll instead be deeply grateful for how much life I still have thanks to today’s connectivity.
My high degree of introversion requires at least a 15:1 ratio of solitary to social time. In the pre-Internet days, it was 30:1 because social time demanded that I be presentable. None of this rat’s nest hair, unkemptness and pajamas deal. That stopped being ok after high school, apparently. Who voted for that anyway? Nowadays, my life revolves around the internet.
While Vicky has a point that it can be all-consuming in a negative way, and I can feel to my marrow the longing to enjoy the air and saddle up my horse for an early morning ride instead of groggily waking up to work email, the fact is, with my health reality? There would be no riding for me. There would be no refreshing bracing air, there would be no breakfast on the propane stove. I would be an even crankier, isolated, friendless, shut-in. And who likes an angry shut-in except their cats? And I suspect that’s only because the cats are playing the long game. *shiver*
Why I love the internet
Boundaries
It’s far easier to set boundaries on the time you spend on any given thing when it’s entirely on the internet. If I’m chatting with someone on Twitter, it’s easy to just stop when I need to. The nature of the tool is that, barring the horrible trolls, you can very easily engage and disengage at will. You’re not required to engage with anyone.
Contrast that to when you run into someone you know on the street and don’t dodge around a corner fast enough. Then you get roped into a conversation you never wanted with someone who ignores your every “well, gotta go!” with a fresh topic until you just want the earth to open up and swallow you both. Preferably in separate chasms. PLEASE.
Naturally, I LOVE email. I can talk to someone at length, at my discretion and leisure, and they can do the same. No pressure!
Social me up
As much as my first thoughts about interacting with people dart toward “make it stop!” I do need the occasional friend.
But when I do want friends, this is the sad truth: my offline-only friends have scattered like dandelion fluff to all corners of the country and are busy with their own lives. You can find them on Facebook now, not just a phone call and ten minute car ride away. We keep in touch and see each other when we can but 98% of the year, I’m on my own. Or I would be, if I didn’t have the friends I’ve since made who are happily accessible in the space in which I can safely dwell without losing days thereafter gasping for air.
I’m not saying that my friends don’t care. But beyond our time and geographic constraints, the friends who are physically capable of doing in their 30s what they could do in their 20s are not the friends who necessarily understand or can accommodate the person that you became: someone in their 30s who functions like someone in their 80s. They didn’t spend the last two decades in waiting rooms alongside a geriatric population. They didn’t have to see a specialist whose youngest patient was 68 years old as their regular physician. You don’t see movies about the bucket lists of 30 year olds who are anticipating the possibility of spending their last 40 years crippled. That’s not a fun story and it’s not a fun life.
On the internet, not only can I have that social interaction and not be lonely during a string of isolation-days, I can find friends who understand what I mean when I say “I hurt.” And only on the internet could I message someone at 2 am saying “so I’m in labor” and not feel weird about it. Or message a friend at 4 am (you know who you are, Patti!) to ask “is this normal??” for the 50th time about a recalcitrant child that simply would NOT sleep.
Social vetting: the proof is in the mutual friends
After 5 years of determined experimentation, the data shows that you cannot make friends if you only leave the house, on average, 1 day out of 7 and avoid talking to people. (Why would I avoid talking to people? They’re draining.) It takes time and energy and that stuff is precious when it can’t be bought for love, money, or food bribery.
But making new friends is a thing you have to do if your old ones are all on the opposite. Pre-internet, this was a commitment of massive proportions: get cleaned up, drive/ride/walk to a place, wait for someone to show up that may or may not have common interests, find that they’re a delightful (yay!) or horrifying (oh no!) individual. In the latter case, wait for them to finally stop talking and lose interest so that you can hightail it out of there, taking three alternate routes and turnings so you can be sure that *if* they were also creepy they couldn’t track you home. [Only dudes have ever tried this with me. Dudes, if you’ve followed someone after a meet up? Don’t. That is super creepy.]
Over years of writing this blog, I’ve been incredibly lucky to find friends in a handful of fellow bloggers. Our friendships have deepened to the point where I refer to some as Gateway Friends. If they have deemed someone suitable to be friends with, I trust their judgment such that “your friend is my friend.” And that became possible because I witnessed their interactions on a regular basis and could judge for myself whether this is a person I’d like in my circle.
Heck, Vicky herself is someone I’d call a friend over our many shared years of blogging! We’ve never had the pleasure of meeting but we’ve helped each other out in a pinch, we’ve chatted over email, and where do you draw the line at friendship? You don’t need to know if my laugh mimics the Roadrunner and I don’t need to know if your hair is a particular shade to be valued, do we?
My friends, who are actual living, thinking, caring and hugely supportive human beings whether or not we’re in the same room, are friends only because the internet made it possible.
A life without work has little meaning
It’s hard to recall a time in my life when I wasn’t working. Whether it was for my parents, for volunteer hours, or for a living, you’d have to go back to the early childhood years to find a period when I wasn’t doing some kind of labor. And I loved it. Heaven help me but it’s so satisfying to do something well and meaningful.
If I weren’t working for a living, I’d be working for a cause, or something I believed in. That’s why I want to retire, even, so I can do what I want: help! But since I do have to work for a living, well, I have fifteen years of working in retail and another ten in my industry besides to be as grateful as Seamus with a brand new chew toy for the ability to telecommute to my current job.
Because most of my job can be done online, my time and energy can be focused on getting the job done, no wasting time on social niceties, I can also afford to live. Blimey but that’s a relief.
Fun is not just for the young
Pre-debilitation, I never walked anywhere that I could run, and never ran anywhere I could sprint. You can imagine how quickly all of that screeched to a halt when the whole disease thing set in. What did that leave me? Every activity I loved was my imaginary Olympic tryout, and then I couldn’t move. And if I did in defiance of nature? Bed, three weeks.
The internet can be a wonderful or awful place and I choose the wondrous. The internet gives me access to free books, chit chat with friends, and email with other friends. It gives me this blog! It gives me resources on food, raising the young, it gives me clothing that fits, DELIVERED! The number of stores I don’t have to search in person and on foot, for that, I give thanks. Heck, the internet makes it possible for PiC to try to replace our car without having to deal with the smarmy weasel-y salesmen we can’t stand. (I’ve met exactly one car salesman in 20 years who wasn’t gross. The odds are not in our favor.)
I can’t be the only person who loves what the internet lets us do. What about you?
February 24, 2016
I know you were all dying to know what we do with LB all day.
once mobility was achieved, productivity took a nosedive.
Over several months, we’ve tried nannies, sitters, and daycare. Some were ok, some were most decidedly not.
We haven’t tried in-home daycare yet, we’re considering a few, but I’ve gotta tell ya, none of them have felt quite right. The smaller size overall seems like a good thing, especially during this period when every possible disease is being shared across several different age groups. Truly, I didn’t expect this ambivalence to apply to everyone, our hope was we’d find the right place and it’d feel right. But the closest we’ve gotten is the brand-name daycare.
What we like about it
LB loves it. I’m not talking about any low level of interest or joy, here, it’s an intense level of happiness. Ze was all about this place: new toys? YES. new infant sized furniture? YES. new people? YES! The first day was the total opposite of what we braced for: instead of a scared, nervous or even indifferent child, LB went all in. Pulled up a seat at the table, sat down and helped hirself to some food, grinning at a brand new carer like they were best friends. (IN YOUR FACE, well meaning but totally annoying father who lectured me about separation anxiety.)
Subsequent drop-offs were the same for weeks: a mad cackle and dash-crawl to hir brand new teachers, or pull up a chair at the snack bar and never leave. Ze would see me at pick-up, and go right back to playing with hir carer because Mom, it’s bubbles time, just hang on, ok? Again, nothing like the picture of separation anxiety I’d slightly dreaded.
The carers seem to be fond of hir, despite hir well known defiance and horrible diaper changing etiquette.
PiC is the designated primary person to contact and they always try to contact him first. Any time they call me, they apologize and explain that they did try him first but couldn’t reach him.
What’s not awesome
The place is a damn viral incubator. It’s to be expected that kids will share germs but because this is a larger facility, there are that many more multiples of infectious disease vectors. You guys. SO MANY GERMS.
Ze has been sick at least half hir enrolled time, and sick enough to be sent home. Which means we’re paying a full month’s fees for half a month’s care, plus taking time away from work to care for LB myself. Well, both of us. PiC and I have started splitting the sick days. The first couple of times, I just took care of hir myself because we were frazzled by the surprise at-home days and it was easiest for me to just be home with hir.
We settled into a better routine once we got a handle on it. He does pick-up and drop-off, and I cover the mornings so he can work, and he comes home early to take over in the afternoon so I can work.
They don’t provide meals so I have to pack a lunch for school days. We split that too: I do lunches and he does bottles. It’s one more task for our evening routine, and I don’t love having to remember yet another thing.
$$$$: It’s really expensive. It’s been budgeted for since before ze was born but MAN it’s still a lot of money.
Status: Holding pattern
We have regular email updates from the daycare center but PiC also reports back. His latest update left me feeling a little less enamoured with hir current group. (We’ve nicknamed all the kids for their anonymity.)
***
PiC: Patient Zero’s transferred to a different group now, so it just leaves a handful of the older kids. LB loved watching the infants but I get the feeling that they need lots of staff time so the older kids aren’t getting much attention anymore. They’re kind of just left to entertain themselves.
Me: Who’s left?
PiC: Bruiser isn’t always the first and last kid there anymore, but he still always looks like he’s on the verge of tears.
Me: Bruiser’s so cute. But so sad. And looks like the model for Hitler’s Youth: perfect blonde, blue eyes, built like a tank.
PiC: Yeah, he looks like he has a destiny. He has an older brother.
Me: Mega-Bruiser?
PiC: I think Bruiser could take his brother.
Me: Cruiser, then.
PiC: Yeah. Precious Moments Puppy is still there. Also always looks on the verge of tears but I think he’s just channeling the atmosphere. It’s a shame that Vale of Tears isn’t there anymore.
Me: Why? She cried all the time. She made LB sympathy cry. She was the saddest of them all.
PiC: Yeah but she was like the walking emotional outlet for the entire group. She was The Giver, feeling all the feelings, so the rest of them could be happy.
Me: That’s true. Also messed up. Also it sounds like they’ve turned into the room of infinite sadness.
PiC: Sort of, yeah. It makes me feel like there’s pressure on LB. Whenever ze’s sick, they’re like, “Where’s our LB? Ze is so quiet and detached!” And I’m like, shit, lady, LB can’t carry the happiness for a whole group! That’s so much pressure!
Me: I dunno. Builds character.
***
We’re looking into other daycare options, mainly because of the cost, but now also in case the group composition changes so much that LB isn’t having the time of hir life anymore. We have totally reasonable standards, yes.
The thing is, I’m not comfortable with the in-home set-ups that I’ve seen so far. They *sound* nice, some are bilingual, they’re all much smaller and theoretically more hands on. But I’m just not comfortable with the feeling that there’s not as much accountability.
Facilities have standard regulations and background checks they’re expected to present, whereas the in-home daycares where I don’t know anyone and don’t necessarily do those things makes me nervous. Particularly in the case of more family-style care groups – how do I just trust that no one in the family is a predator? How do I trust that if they do harm LB in ways that aren’t immediately obvious, they won’t just cover it up? It’s not that I think larger facilities are infallible, but there are more controls in place, and I don’t feel awkward saying: do you have background checks for all employees?
I’m not sure what the answer is yet, but this has worked for now. We may just suck it up and keep paying the price for the peace of mind. Well, we will for now while we keep looking.
February 22, 2016
My jaw aches set in at dawn. When I close my eyes, my stomach’s flipping and turning like a bucking bronco. I think I know why.
My body is signalling: PAY ATTENTION.
By and large, I’ve been happy at my current gig. That’s shorthand for “I’m discontent with some things, I hate other things, and I’m fine with the rest of the things.” The scales tilt back and forth but always come back to neutral-positive.
This job’s been good for work-life balance in a way my previous gigs have not been, though, there are trade-offs. There always are.
My current set-up gives me autonomy and flexibility in exchange for being spare to the point of bare in the benefits department. It’s the first time I could make that choice and it’s because PiC and I have joined forces. I can now spread the risk and rewards across both our jobs, so I am not alone in providing all the income, all the care, and all the savings. This gig’s crap benefits don’t impact me the way they would have five years ago.
I took a calculated risk taking this job with this compensation package, for specific reasons, and for the most part it’s paid off: our money management has gotten better, my health has slowed its steep downward trajectory, and we even grew our family. These are not small things. These are all good life-changing things. Even if I harbor some disaffection over poor management, again, by and large, this has been a good career move for my life and my family.
It’s also somewhat less stable than your standard job in an at-will state. We renew my commitment every 12-18 months rather informally.
Financial State of the Union
As with all jobs, I maintain the perspective that this isn’t forever.
Every year, we sit down and discuss our budget, our savings plans and goals. After this year’s chat, PiC and I are facing something new. If I’m reading the tea leaves correctly, there may not be a renewal of my gig in about 12 or so months.
I’ve seen company buyouts before. I’ve been through corporate buyouts, and small partnerships hitting the reef buyouts. I’m seeing some decisions that may be nothing, or may be the early warning signs to a buyout situation. We don’t know. We do know that it never goes smooth…
And thus: the tension.
What if this job is over a year from now?
What if I am allergic to a traditional workplace after having tasted the nectar of a flexible working arrangement? (Magic 8-ball says: odds are high)
What if the next jobs are full of politics, meetings, and bureaucratic crud? (Ugh, I hate playing office politics)
What if I don’t want to stay in this career path after this?
NOTE: Since I started writing this, I’ve gotten confirmation that my reading of the red flags was right. It’s not imminent but I would be wise to plan ahead, starting now!
What shall I do next?
A job loss would immediately halve our income and dramatically focus my waking and unsleeping hours on replacing that income. Not the early retirement anyone dreams of!
My Catastrophizing Catamaran takes flight and I’m rethinking our 7-year-plan to pay off the mortgage, look for a house, heck, even digging into our savings to buy a replacement car.
It all boils down to two main things to worry about: money and what’ll I do next in my career.
The money part
We have a nearly impressive pile of cash in CDs and savings accounts totaling 2 years of living expenses in cash-like accounts. My secondary goal this year was to pull half of those cash assets into dividend stocks. The market’s down right now, it’s a good time to buy.
With this moment of uncertainty, if there’s no job in a year, it might not be great to lock that cash up. We’ll still be fully investing in all our retirement accounts, but our stock portfolio may only get about 1/3 or 1/2 of the cash originally intended.
The job part
This part is more complicated and doesn’t have a firm conclusion yet.
Much as I would love to be one of those bloggers who finds herself transitioning from a job loss to blogging full-time for a great income, this isn’t that kind of blog, is it? I’ve been around these parts for on a decade, doing what I love, and it’s fulfilling but it’s not filling any coffers. At best, this hobby has paid for its costs but it certainly hasn’t bought me a donut. Not even a bag of donut holes. And any money I made was put aside for the dogs. Dogs before donuts!
For now, this is a labor of love, not an income stream because the writing only truly flows when it’s authentic and authentic me isn’t necessarily Ye Most Marketable.
Instead, I cultivate our mundane income streams: the rental, our dividend investing portfolio, and of course a day job. Except replacing that last isn’t really firing up my engines.
Beyond all other things, my career was my passion, for years. The weight of the world rested on my shoulders so I hustled with the best, I outpaced the tireless, I strove and I strove. With that awful responsibility, working a traditional job was the only thing I wanted to do. Entrepreneurship could take a flying leap. My parents had been entrepreneurs. They built, they innovated, they slogged, they toiled 365 days a week, 18 hours a day, for years. It ended abruptly, with no savings, because of a huge number of factors. The upshot of that shared experience and picking up their pieces was I got as far away from it as I could. I did perfectly fine for myself running away from my parents’ choices. “Fine” got us to a place where we could actually plan ahead for emergencies, taking them in stride when they hit, and even have fun.
Having tasted the nectar of freedom from a traditional office, particularly when this lifestyle preserves precious energy, I find myself never wanting to go back there, either.
I get so much more done when I dictate my schedule, don’t have to dress up for an office, and don’t waste time on a commute. Twitter serves as my water cooler. I can dip in for quick mental refreshers, get caught up on news, and keep in contact with the rest of the world. Who needs an office?
Lastly, I’m great at my job in my current industry but I’m at my role’s peak if I don’t want to make massive sacrifices of time on business meetings and travel for not much more money. Quick confession: Nope. Life is too valuable to trade “up” for minimally more money.
So, what’s that leave?
I’m honestly not sure. I’ve never been this uncertain of my professional path forward before. There’s always been some plan, harebrained though it might have been. At least this time it’s not fraught with nightmares. There’s some self imposed pressure to make this next step a good one, but that’s always been true.
My instincts are directing me to look away from this field and explore something new. It’s worth a try. It’s worth kicking around some ideas and seeing what sticks.
One of my skills is resume and cover letter review and editing, and career advising. This is only offered on a highly selective basis but, to date, every single one of my advising sessions and rewritten resumes have borne fruit. For one friend, it spawned two promotions and a $10,000 raise with each. For another friend, lessons in negotiation resulted in 2 promotions and three raises. For the last, three interviews, two job offers, one perfect job. Not a bad track record but the sample size is small.
Another thing I’m pretty darn good at is money management. Again, for a select few, I’ve served as a financial adviser with all the requisite warnings that I’m not a licensed professional. I can only promise that I take this service very seriously and the suggestions and recommendations I make are what I would do for myself if I were in their shoes.
Could I hang my shingle out for either of these things? Sure! But the question is: is there enough of a demand that it would be a sustainable, worthwhile, pursuit? I’ve had a few people say in passing they’d pay for either one of those services but not enough to establish a strong demand.
I’ll keep testing ideas and testing the waters. Something will pop out.
What would you do if your job were over in a year? Is there something you’ve always wanted to do? Never wanted to do?
Self assessments always ask “What would your friends say you’re great at?” I don’t know. What would you call out as my employable strengths?
*Part of Financially Savvy Saturdays on brokeGIRLrich, Disease Called Debt and Lively Chicken*
February 17, 2016
The cynics among us say that we all have a price.
Although my instinct was to reject that truism, it may be true. We all care deeply about something in our lives. Sometimes we care about those things more than our own lives, sometimes they mean more to us than our principles.
Sherry and I were chatting about money as a tool for manipulation. Her extended family has ways they manipulate family members using money and so does mine. In most cases, I’ve gotten a very small dose of the Controlling Juice, but it’s bitter enough to inform my independent streak which has grown a league and a half wide.
Both our families have a cultural tradition of Filial Piety, though it plays out in different ways.
My parents were a mix of traditional and non-traditional in their approach. They instilled in me a sense of responsibility using filial piety, but it was an example, not an expectation. “Big Cousin bought his mom a house because he loved her, wanted her to be comfortable, and because he could afford to. Not everyone can do that so it’s good that he’s been so responsible with his money that he could.”
Showing your love was important, but being sensible was much more important to them. They cherished the salt dough handprint made in kindergarten as a gift as much as anything I bought with my red envelope money. Thanks to those conversations, I knew everything they did for me was out of love, not as a down payment for retirement (and some parental obligation to keep me alive). And everything I did for them was out of love for them (and out of my self-imposed obligation to keep them off the street). Neither of us expected money from each other.
But the idea of bragging rights that Sherry described was absolutely part of the mainstream culture and there was talk in the community of how I was taking care of my parents. No one said a word to me directly, it simply became obvious when I hit 25, “marriageable age”, and suddenly people I’d never met before were coming over for tea and a visit.
It was all a ruse to introduce me to their sons. “This will be a good daughter in law,” they said, “she would take good care of us in our old age.” As if there was no more to me as a person and a potential spouse than my ability or willingness to support my family. But they’re an older generation, maybe there wasn’t anything more important to them.
Obligations, everywhere I looked. Thus, any offer of money is looked at not as a gift, but sideways and scrutinized for intention, strings, and expectations. Is there any situation in which I need money badly enough to take it as a gift rather than taking out a loan?
So far, history says “no.” There’s no situation where I would want something badly enough that I’d take a lien against my integrity for it. If I need it, and can’t afford it, I find a way to pay for it. If I want it, and I can’t afford it, too bad. End of story.
Why so stubborn?
Two reasons, same experience
Number 1: Mom’s family. Immediately after her death, knowing that their behavior to her had been despicable, and was going to be public knowledge now that she was gone, they desperately wanted to look good. In our culture, the way they could fake it would be to pay for her funeral. That way, after treating her like dirt beneath their feet during the worst years of her illness, they could say “Of course we loved her, we paid for her funeral and everything!”
The price tag on “saving face”: $7,000
They harassed me endlessly, from the moment they knew I was coming back to arrange the funeral, to the moment the funeral began. CLASSY.
I didn’t consider it for a second. I also didn’t give them the courtesy of an answer. I just ignored them and wrote the check, letting the few sane elements of the family tell them to Back Off. A few of them went a bit further and pointed out that, money notwithstanding, I’d always taken care of my family. It’d be a cold day in Hell that I’d accept a handout from them, even if I went into debt in the refusal.
They were right, of course.
I didn’t go into debt but nothing would have convinced me to give them the satisfaction and I don’t regret it for a millisecond.
Number 2: I grew up poor. In most cases, money gifts within closer members of the family are just part of cultural traditions and mean nothing more than well-wishing. But in cases where there’s great disparity between the giver and the recipient, “gifts” become “charity.” And like it or not, charitable giving is considered a virtue, charity acceptance is not. By the same token, someone who gives to charity is good. But someone who needs charity is looked at through a different lens, one where they’re judged, and found wanting. I learned quite early on, there is so much stigma around accepting help that I wasn’t willing to ask for help of any kind.
What if the situation had been different?
What if she was still alive and they offered money for her medical care, money that I couldn’t afford at the time? I’d already paid over thousands to fix her terribly painful dental situation. I’d already paid hundreds of thousands for their living expenses, over the previous ten years, and that’s after I’d paid several tens of thousands of their debt. All of this before my salary reached $60,000, annually.
What if they had offered me enough money to buy her good health insurance?
What if they had offered me enough money to ensure some level of stability, as a hedge against my ill health, loss of income, and homelessness?
For nearly two decades, I’ve dedicated my life to save, invest, and plan for the worst possible scenario. We’re not free and clear yet but that self reliance and drive has gotten us pretty far down the road. Ten years ago, though, it wasn’t clear if and when I’d get clear.
What if I’d been offered an easier way out that could have saved Mom some suffering, for some unspecified obedience or compliance, all those years ago? Would I have swallowed my pride and taken it? I hate to think that I would cave but in hindsight, knowing that my best efforts weren’t enough to help her, the smart money is on YES.
What if it was an outrageous amount of money?
Barring the scenario above, the highly unlikely theoretical in which my mom’s family cared enough about her to offer me help to help her (they didn’t), what if the situation was less about your need, and more about the amount?
What if it was millions? Billions?
There’s a point at which our instincts must be to start rationalizing how much good you could do with that money, isn’t there? I know mine starts to say, with $5M, you could do a lot of good. With $5B, you could do a whole lot more than that. You could, for this outlandish amount, put up with the price of [something really annoying].
Or substitute “do a lot of good” with whatever it is you’d want to do.
Would it be worth accepting the money with one hand, and a possible shackle on the other?
If we’re talking purely in currency, how big would the bucket of money have to be for you to willingly walk away from what you believe? What would you be willing to sacrifice, or tolerate? If we’re talking about valuable gifts not calculated in currency, like good health, what would you think, then?
*Part of Financially Savvy Saturdays on brokeGIRLrich, Disease Called Debt and Frugality 2 Freedom*