The question of motivational staying power was raised on Twitter. @add_vodka asked:
@RevancheGS @GrlRedBalloon @serendipity85 How do you keep motivated to make sure you don’t give up?
My gut response felt too flippant to say aloud. It wasn’t meant to be but I could see how, for people who don’t know me well or haven’t read this blog, could hear it as a dismissal of their very real issue. So I dug deeper. I asked PiC how to explain how I stay motivated because it’s not something I think about. And in the asking, I realized my answer, in large part.
My short answer was: Generational Poverty. I’m never going back and neither are my parents.
My long answer? In my matriarchial line, I need to break the cycle of poorness. You see, as much as I carry my patriarchal grandmother in my spine, I carry my mother in my soul.
Mom grew up, impoverished, in the depths of rural Vietnam. Her father was a schoolteacher who earned just enough to feed his family for a number of years, but not much better than that. I expect they married too young, had her – the first – too young; had too many children, period. Month to month, their family stretched a single small sack of rice bought on credit against the next month’s paycheck. They ate rice porridge, supplemented by some fish if the kids could catch any, flavored with nuoc nam (fish sauce) if they couldn’t. She was cooking, cleaning and raising her three younger siblings by the age of 8, and more kids were always on the way. There was love and support from her grandparents but nothing in the way of money.
As the oldest, she was expected to fend for herself. Needed a new pair of pants? She had to raise a chicken, sell the eggs, and save the money long enough to buy cloth and sew it herself. The same went for school supplies, or any other needs. Not wants, needs. But, if a sibling needed something before she could make her clothes, she had to give it up for him or her. The family was utterly poor, and she was expected to bear the heaviest burden. The burden wasn’t just in taking care of herself far too early, it was to provide for her siblings, and that lasted well into adulthood. While she shouldered it without question, she was bound and determined never to struggle at that level again.
Fast forward about forty years, she’d worked herself to the bone running two small businesses with my dad only to find her health declining, her son a mess, and no trace left of what was meant to be our family fortune. A modest fortune it would have been, but sufficient to buy a home, send two kids to college, and keep my parents through their retirement. Business hadn’t been awful but life happens, as it does, and she found herself both in the same place she’d sworn never to be again, the place she said we would never be exposed to, this time without the ability to bootstrap her way out of it as she had always done. Her parents and siblings were fine, but in the process, she had sacrificed herself.
It tore my heart to see her struggling, helpless, against the twin depredations of disease and remembered and oncoming poverty. The first preceded the other, as is so often the case with many stories of financial ruin, but not by much. It wasn’t just the disease. It was the combination of family illnesses, debts, and lack of informed financial planning that meant she couldn’t simply seek treatment and recuperate. Financial instability added anxiety and depression to the toxic mix of medical conditions complicating her health.
Had they planned for the future better, had they saved more carefully instead of taking care of her myriad family to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, had they been more cognizant of all the emergencies that could and would arise: all the if onlys, we should haves, they could haves intertwined and spiraled into the mom I know now.
Personally, I never want to go back to my college days. Working 80-100 hour weeks, school 40 hours a week, sleeping a few hours a night, and still slaving over a checkbook scraping the pennies together at the end of every pay period, under a tiny lamp light. That was miserable. But memories of personal misery fade.
The memories of my mom and all she’s sacrificed for me. The memories of how hard she worked, how determined she was to lift herself and her family out of their dirt-grubbing poverty. Those ghosts are in my marrow, my tissue, the air I breathe.
So when someone asks me about my motivation, about how I keep going, how do I not give up, the simplest answer is: I don’t know how.
When I took over for her, it began as a fight for survival. Now, it’s fully ingrained. The responsibilities and emergencies will only grow in greater proportion with time. I have my parents to take care of. I have myself to take care of. I may have future generations to educate and support for some time. And the only way to do it is very careful and diligent financial planning. That’s how my motivation is sustained.
It’s a very different answer, I think, than the one that @add_vodka was looking for, which was more practical stuff, so I saved this longer answer for the blog.
The more practical simple answer is, of course, to set goals and align your goals to your values. But there’s value in knowing why you’d want to do any of that in the first place. The Great Big Why of it, if you will.
Dodging and weaving did me no good. After days of being cooped up with at least two sickies over the holidays, my immune system has succumbed, and so has PiC’s. He’s scheduled to be off anyway but I’ve been working from home to avoid taking sick time or falling too much behind.
It’s not just a major pain in the caboose being fluish, which is it. It’s that the energy drain somehow touches off this chain reaction of pain and joint flare-ups so that even though honestly, I don’t feel *that* sick and would normally go in, I have to baby myself because my body’s teetering on a precipice of a severe flare-up. As is, I’m one-hand Manny as my whole right side’s on strike. PiC keeps asking if he should feed me. [*sigh* Not yet, thank you.]
A severe flare-up goes a little something like this: imagine someone’s stuck a tube in you and drained all the fluid out of you. Then smacked a fire hot length of tubing on all major joints several times. Twisted and cracked all the minor joints, and has got all your muscles randomly and persistently hooked up to electrodes that send entirely the wrong signal to twitch and shriek helpless protestations to a brain that desperately says: “breathe! relax! breathe! OWWW!”
It tends to move in for about two or more weeks at a time. No short pop ins here.
So yeah, no thanks. If I have to be a big fat wussy who stays home because “a-heh-a-heh, I hef a leetle cough” lest that comes to town? I’m staying home and grateful I can work from home, grateful I can rest in between times and darned tooting I’m grateful for a most excellent partner who understands the pain and powers through his symptoms to tend to my nearly invisible ones.
After a wonderful meal at a Korean tofu house with a friend we hadn’t seen for a few months, she wanted to make plans to meet for dinner again during the week before she left town.
That same day, I received a message from another friend who recently relocated to this coast. She planned to be in town to see family, could we have brunch when she landed Saturday? When I wasn’t available, she asked if we could come out to see her across the way Sunday. Though she didn’t specify it was a full day thing, history shows that’s going to be expected. All previous “come hang out with me” invitations have always turned into a day-long finagle-fest because she always wants to do just one more thing.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy her company but it’s really hard to commit full days to hanging out at the last minute like that because I’m usually running like a madwoman during the week to survive and use the weekends to become human again. Which, as you might imagine, is a little complicated after September’s hosting visitors every weekend (and seeral weekdays) but one.
That’s the crux of it, isn’t it? I quite enjoy seeing friends, of course, but the last minute requests and those that sometimes grow well beyond moderation are rather difficult to accommodate. Or even to want to accommodate; it requires a sanity check to make sure we’re not just constantly running to everyone’s beck and call because they’ve dropped in and didn’t we want to see them?
Sure, but I think it becomes taken for granted that we’ll always be available on their schedule and doesn’t call for much advance notice. That drives me, an inveterate planner, at least a little up the wall. I understand that not all trips are planned as far ahead as I would like but these texts and emails are increasingly and frequently coming with very little notice.
Aside from the limited time factor, I worry about the money we’re spending hand over fist with this stream of visitors. When we host, I can cook and feed them relatively (not very) frugal basis. But many times, we end up eating out because they’re in the city, we’re not, and it’s inconvenient for them to come to us and then trek back to the city.
While PiC and I have agreed on a rule of thumb on eating out, my personal budgeting rules have always stated that “entertaining” comes out of the same eating out allowance lest we end up using the personal 2x/week allowance, and entertain two or three times on top of that. Before you know it, we’ve spent most of the week eating out. My personal budgeting rules have been repeatedly smashed under the weight of the last minute traveler.
We can’t control the travel habits of our friends, and we certainly never want them to feel unwelcome or unloved, but it’s time to gently nudge them toward better notification habits. And we need to learn to set boundaries we’re comfortable with rather than self-guilting ourselves into doing far more for them than is necessary.
Do you have any trouble managing drop-ins or do you have a good standing policy that works well for you and yours?
This entire month has been so busy as to be unreal, so it stands to reason that I’m having trouble believing the net worth is real.
Every single weekend was booked: hosting friends, driving back to LA, traveling to Oregon, hosting half a dozen houseguests for days. Every weekday was booked: I started an intensive pain care program, had a birthday, and worked every weekday.
The numbers aren’t fudged, but I have felt a poor steward of my money for not quite knowing where every penny is or has gone. The last notation on my cashflow Excel sheet is September 15th, for heaven’s sake; it doesn’t make sense that it’s gone up without close shepherding. In any case, a fraction was thanks to automated savings and contributions, the rest is due to the vagaries of the market and interest payments. Next month, the phrase “keeping bills as low as possible” will be an honest factor in that. We’ve been feeding about ten extra mouths this month, I’d just be lying.
To kill that feeling of unsteadiness, I paid all my bills a few days ago, took a deep breath and I’m doing some therapeutic cleaning today to clear my head and make a fresh start. Let’s take on October!
PiC insists he’s fully on board, being with me, but I have got to be trying his patience. Heaven knows I’ve worn through my own patience with this state of affairs.
This past week was one of the rougher, tougher ones in which I was barely good for anything in private and not much more than that in public.
I made it to work each day, drugged up to my eyeballs, or in so much pain that I was well beyond wishing for the sweet release of death. You bet your sweet bippy I took the time to make the right calls, but that left my willpower to deal with anything beyond the core necessities drained to the last dribs. By Thursday, all I could think was: I’m not cooking a darn thing tonight. By darn, someone is going to feed me!
Through the weekend, we hosted an old friend who has been nomadic for quite a few years of her high-powered career. As we missed her birthday last weekend, I felt obligated to be present for her so I tried to hide the pain behind normalcy. I didn’t do a good job of it but my next best shot was to sacrifice PiC’s support and continue to struggle behind the facade of maintaining even at home where I would normally collapse and stop pretending.
It was exhausting.
As much as I care about my friends, I was intensely grateful to stop pretending when she left on Sunday and for the day of rest on Monday to enjoy PiC’s company. With any luck, I can slowly lay off some of the pain meds so that this week isn’t a complete fog.
Living in a haze of pain isn’t just draining, it’s expensive!
The painkillers cost money, the eating out costs money, the being waited on hand and foot costs … one heck of a lot of good will! And that’s the most worrisome bit of course. How long can someone keep up the caretaker role before burning out?
But you know what? I’m tired of all that. Forget honesty – I think you could all stand a good solid blast of uplifting, happy geekery, could you not? If not, bear with me, it can’t possibly be worse than the me even I was sick of! (And as I assured my ever so flamboyant friend, even if it was only the “me” in the abstract.)
While washing dishes, or really just scrubbing at the balsamic vinegar charcoal that PiC managed to burn into my new Corningware Simply Lite, I ruminated on the differences in our buying habits. This was prompted by the new tiny bottle of dishwashing liquid he set out last week to replace the last bottle of three he’d purchased while moving into his last abode more than 4 years ago.
I remember, faintly, taking him to the store and teaching him about doubling and stacking coupons, those many years ago. We bought those three small bottles for pennies on the dollar and I proudly sent him on his way with newfound knowledge of coupon clipping. I had no clue that, as a basically single person (we were LD at the time), he would not finish the stash until I moved up years later.
In total contrast, I’ve always shopped in bulk for household goods. Toilet tissue, any kind of cleaning supplies, detergents, Q-tips: anything that could be used up had to be bought in bulk because 4 people would go through the stash like nobody’s business. I reflexively calculate how many coupons I can gather before a grocery or household run, and figure out how to store it later.
The mentality was that if I was out of something, I had to buy enough for the whole household – never just that I had to replace my own. Besides, anyone with siblings knows that once the irresponsible sibling runs out of stuff, your stuff is toast. It was some form of self-preservation. (So was my well developed habit of hoarding and hiding the stashes so that said sibling couldn’t use it up when I wasn’t looking. MY root beer, dammit!)
It’s a bit disconcerting now when I shop with PiC. In a full-size household, I thought, you buy whenever the prices are excellent because you will need and use it. In a this-size household, I’m having to hold back a bit** and realize that we actually might not use three tubs of detergent before Christmas and that it’s not actually necessary to stock up quite as much as I used to.
**Except when it comes to canned tomatos and cereal. The man consumes as much cereal in a week as I do regular food. If he keeps eating at a 1 (my) bowl to 1 (his) box ratio, I’m going to have to start hiding a stash!
Just another oddity of this stage of my life! Watch, when I finally adjust, we’ll add more mouths to feed. Furry, slobbery, doggery mouths.
It’s been long enough since any graduations of my own that graduation ceremonies are now utterly unmotivating. Or so I say now. May is a bit early for my taste, but maybe around June I’ll feel the energy from Pomp and Circumstance!
In the meantime, there’s something about a) coming back to my old room and b) traveling on a Saturday that makes me just want to hole up like a hermit and so that’s what I’ve done today.
I’ve emerged to spend $30 in pursuit of grooming and feeding. Both were good.
The latter was a catch-me-up session with a dear friend whose family news left me stunned and wandering the mall with unseeing eyes for half an hour until my brain cleared. While there were no deaths, there was a close call, and several other life events as defined by say, your health care provider for qualification to change your plan have or will occur. None of the good ones, though. The best I could do with give great big hugs and wish things would improve, rapidly. Y’know the weird thing? I felt guilty. It all happened after I moved, and I thought, “well crap, my world didn’t completely fall apart aside from that one really tough week, but your family took the hit.”
It felt like the odd void of disaster in my family was moved to someone else I love. Crazy, I know.
In any case, I’ll be writing the usual cousin check for a graduation and another four years completed. As always, I’m inmensely proud and scrambling for an appropriate card to tuck it into because darned if I didn’t take the box of cards up north with me when I moved!
And can I say? I’ve missed this crazy SoCal sun!! I’ll have to remember how not to get sunburned tomorrow.
