It’s Friday night. I don’t feel great. My throat has been uppity all week, but yesterday and today it felt like it might actually be sore. Or that something in the vicinity of my throat might be sore, like my ears. There have been some dry coughs, to dispense with the tickle, but nothing to suggest I’m actually sick. I’m also tired, but I can’t tell if I’m fatigued. I can never tell if I’m fatigued. What is the difference between fatigued and tired? And if you woke up at 5:45am to take your friend to the airport before work, and had a shit day in your classroom, can you effectively tell the difference?
So it’s Friday night, I’m tired and might be getting sick, but I’m still on the elliptical. I’m working out because that is what I do. I work out 4-5 times a week. I’ve never struggled to do this, I just do it. I always do it. I do it when I’m on vacation. I do it when I’m overwhelmed. There are very few weeks a year when I do not work out four times. I’m not one of those people always trying to find way to avoid my weekly work outs, I’m the person trying to find a way to fit them in.
I’m not saying this to boast. It’s just who I am. I like working out. I (usually) like the way I feel while I’m doing it, and I usually like the way I feel after I’m doing it. Sometimes I’m not in the mood, but I always get it done, because I know that I need it. Not working out just isn’t really an option for me. It’s not something that I really have to work at, so I’m not really all that proud of doing it.
I may be very good at exercise, but I’m a pretty shitty eater. Am I a healthy person? I don’t know. I exercise like crazy but I never eat five servings of fruit or vegetables in a day. That is NOT who I am. I don’t think I will ever enjoy eating enough fruits and vegetables and I’m done feeling guilty about that. It’s just not who I am, and no amount of eating fruits and vegetables is going to make me like them more.
By the same token, I am not organized. That is not who I am. No matter how many things I buy to contain the clutter, or how many times I try to purge the clutter, it will always sully my surroundings. I am a messy person. That is who I am.
I’m also someone who likes to buy things. I know FIRE proponents think we can all live frugally by making the same choices, but after all these years of reading their blogs it’s clear to me they do not have to make the same choices. They just don’t. For whatever reasons, they just don’t feel the same urges to spend money. And other people have stronger urges to spend more money than I do. We all are who we are.
Some of it may be nurture – the circumstances of our youth shaping our relationships with money – but I absolutely believe a lot of it is nature. My sister and I are born of the same parents, who spent money on us, and around us, in the same ways. I love spending money. She does not. She just has no interest in it. My kids are the similarly different from each other. My daughter never wants to get anything on a trip to Target. She doesn’t even want the cash I would have spent on her there. Meanwhile my son covets a trip to the big red bullseye now, right after Christmas, even when he can’t articulate a single specific desire. He just wants to go inside and find something that catches his eye. He expects buying something to fill something inside him he doesn’t know is empty. That space does not long to be filled by things for my daughter, or my sister. For my son, and I, it does.
That’s not to say that we can’t change. But I think some of us will never meet certain goals in certain aspects of our lives. I don’t spend as much as I once did. No one specific strategy led to me spending less, I just gradually, over time, needed that outlet with less frequency. I still have moments, where the boxes pile in our entryway for a week or two. But I can go 1-2 months without buying much of anything, and not really think about it. Before the idea of not buying anything for week felt stifling. Now it’s hard to remember what that was like. So I did eventually changed, but I can’t tell you how or why. I know for sure it wasn’t in response to any conscious decision. I made conscious decisions to spend less, but they never resulted in that outcome. Eventually, I just didn’t want to spend money like I did before. But I can’t promise I won’t someday return to my old habits around shopping and spending.
{I still spend inordinate sums of money on things I absolutely do not need, but I do that much less frequently than I used to. I think I’ve learned to manage those impulses better because I’ve purchased so many things I thought would fix something, but instead just made me feel guilt and regret. I’ve definitely learned that over time, but it took many painful personal experiences to learn it – no one could have taught it to me.}
{I also really struggle to spend money on certain things, things that would probably make my life easier. Spending money on someone cleaning my house is SO HARD for me, even though I hate cleaning my house and am horrible at it. I also hate spending money on transportation. I will always choose the onerous, inconvenient but slightly cheaper transportation method over the flight or rental car or Lyft that would make me so, so much happier. Why can I spend so much money on shit I don’t need, but I loathe spending it on things that will make me measurably happier in the moment? I will probably never know.}
I’ve thought a lot about all this, but I’ve returned to it more this past week, as I’ve read articles and blog posts about goals and resolutions. I haven’t articulated resolutions for myself in a long time, and I certainly don’t plan on starting now. I do want to reflect some of what is working for me, and what is not (or has not) worked for me in the past six months. While I know I will never be an organized person who tracks her spending or follows a budget, I also know that I can make better choices that serve me in these areas. I also know I can make deliberate decisions about how I spend my afternoon and evenings that will improve my mental health and well-being.
When my kids were young it felt like most of my life was out of my control. I was not going to get enough sleep no matter how early I went to bed, because someone was going to wake me up. Working out was always going to make me feel guilty when an adult needed to be actively involved with our children during every minute. No amount of “conversations” with my husband was going to make him understand what I needed, or result in the recognition I craved.
But our lives have changed. My husband participates now in ways I never could have dreamed of two or three years ago. My kids can occupy themselves for hours at a time, and if I have their friends over (or take their friends somewhere), that time can be useful for me for rest or play or pursuing personal interests. I’m comfortable enough at work that it doesn’t require so much prep time before lessons or scoring time after them. There is room in the margins to make choices that are beneficial to me personally.
And I want to make those choices meaningful. I want to recognize that they are in fact choices and think about why I’m doing what I’m doing. I want to be honest with myself about how I feel in certain circumstances. I think I like being home all afternoon, that it’s restful, but actually if I get more than one or two afternoons a week at home I feel restless. Having said that, if i don’t get any afternoons or evenings at home to chill out I feel over scheduled. It’s a delicate balance but a balance is, I think for maybe the first time, possible.
I don’t mean to make it sound like I have things all figured out. I certainly don’t. But for this ADHD mom with two “spirited kids” who has struggled mightily to find her bearings as a parent, for the first time I see that I can be active, instead of just reactive in my life. I can make deliberate decisions instead of just responding to what is in front of me. The reasons this is now possible had little to do with me – regular family dinners and limited screen time did not deliver us to this place. My kids just happened to grow out of a lot of their struggles (a lot, definitely not all) and a global pandemic kept my husband home for two years so he could participate in family life in a way that was impossible before (this change also thrust him into a significantly depressive state (maybe even one of clinical depression) that he’s only now emerging from so it’s not like we traveled a happy, wholly positive path to get to this point). I also recognize that many husbands and fathers did NOT start participating more during the pandemic, I am incredibly lucky that my husband chose to do so – again I had nothing to do with that happening, I was just lucky that it did happen.
So all of that was to say, I don’t think I can change who I am, and I won’t make goals or resolutions that are essentially attempts at altering my character. But I will look at what has served me these last two years and determine which deliberate decisions can make a positive impact in my life. And I hope to do all that this week.
Do you make goals or resolutions at New Years? If so, what are you aiming to change?
