Marriage/Self-compassion

The First Steps in a Journey of 1,000

Posted on by noemikjames / 17 Comments

I’m hoping to talk more about self-compassion soon, about what it looks and sounds like, and how one might actually practice it, if they were so inclined. I also hope to relay some of my experiences on this journey to self-compassion, in case they may be helpful to others who are curious about walking this path.

Thrice this weekend I had opportunities to practice self-compassion, and you know what? Not only were those moments not nearly as drawn out and wreaking of resentment, at the end of each I actually had some insightful realizations about thoroughly entrenched thought process.

First, when I was mentally adding up my grocery spending for the month, I started to realize it was going to be almost exactly the same as last month, even though I hoped to bring it down $100. Right as I started telling myself how dumb it was that I didn’t make any significant changes but still thought I was going to spend less (this is how I hide my self-criticism, by saying what I’m DOING is dumb, and not calling MYSELF dumb. Well played inner critic, well played), I stopped myself and changed tracks and said: This is really hard. Changing deeply ingrained habits is really hard. All people struggle with this, and it’s so easy to feel like I’m the only one who hasn’t been able to change the way I do something. But every struggles with this. And it’s really hard. And it sucks to feel like you are failing. But you are really trying, you just don’t know how to make this change.

It was that last sentence that struck me: I DON’T KNOW HOW TO SPEND LESS BUYING GROCERIES. I mean, sure I know what other people do to spend less, but I haven’t really sat down and thought about which of those strategies might work for me and my family with our specific strengths and weakness and our unique restrictions. I honestly had never considered that before, the fact that I didn’t have any plan to actually change the way I buy food. I just kept telling myself, This month I’m going to spend less on groceries, and then I just didn’t buy one or two things randomly and hoped to see a significant difference in spending. Of course what I’m spending hasn’t changed! I haven’t changed the way I buy groceries! It was a real a-ha moment for me.

Later I got into it with my husband, but I stopped myself, and instead of berating myself for losing it with him again, I hugged myself and recognized how hard being married is, and how hard it is with kids, and how I’m really trying but it’s fucking hard and everyone does shit in their marriages they regret and it’s okay that I made a mistake. And I cried, but I calmed down faster than I would have and I didn’t feel any resentment toward my husband. I thought about the things I normally do after a blow up, all the reasons I feel resentful and upset (like how I think of ways to make his life easier and offer them, but he never does that for me, he just comes home and sits on the couch while I race between bedrooms at bedtime until I can finally collapse on the bed at 9pm), and I thought: If I didn’t ask for what I needed he’d never offer it to me. I have to duck out of work early to make time to exercise and provide my own self-care because he never gives me the time. And then I thought: I’m lucky to be able to carve out those moments, to leave work early and run before I pick up the kids, and then shower while they are watching TV and dinner is cooking. And then I realized: it must be hard for him to carve out that time for himself, his work hours go later and he doesn’t have as much flexibility. And those hours on the couch are really all he has.

I can’t tell you what an incredible moment that was. It has been SO LONG since I saw his situation in a sympathetic light. Whether or not he feels like he can’t carve out time for himself or not, for me to have that thought was momentous. TRULY.

The third instance came shortly after when I was outside with my son in the backyard, which is completely overgrown with weeds. I was lamenting how everything I planted two years ago died after a few months (I couldn’t water them because of the drought, but they probably would have died anyway), and now the clover is back and the wild grass and both have taken over and I am a failure for letting it get that way and I will never be able to rip it all out. And then I looked out at it and my daughter was standing in the middle, blowing on a dandelion. I was about to call out to her not to blow on it because then a million more would be growing in the yard, but I stopped myself and said, Girl, you better not tell your daughter not to wish on that dandelion. They are going to grown regardless and shame of you for even thinking of telling her to stop. I was thinking that as I looked up and saw her, standing there, blowing with all her might as she made her wish. Suddenly I recognized how beautiful our yard is, with the green and the yellow flowers and the white blossoms, like a long forgotten garden, a secret treasure lost to anyone but us. Why would I want to pull up the clover and the grass? So we can sit in a landscape of brown dirt? Where is the beauty in that?

I sat there thinking that I’ve been annoyed at the overgrowth of clover for months, thinking only of how I didn’t plant it or want it there, ignoring the fact that nothing I did plant could grow anymore anyway, and that the clover and grass made it beautiful.

These were three really big moments for me, and I attribute them all to treating myself with compassion when I was feeling upset. I think when I’m kind to myself I’m better able to see what is actually happening, because I’m not busy judging or labeling any part of my experience.

Late Saturday night my husband told me that he wants us to see a marriage counselor. I fee like I should be happy, because it means he’s willing to work to improve our relationship. Instead I feel deeply sad, knowing that he’s as unhappy as I am.

I’ve spent a lot of today attempting to treat myself kindly, to let myself feel my sadness even when I don’t really understand why I’m feeling it. Surprisingly, when I’m nicer to myself, I find the space to be kinder to my husband as well, and that has made today a lot more pleasant than it would have been. I’m not 100% sure where this journey to self-compassion is taking me, but walking this path intrigues me.forgotten garden

Life

Thoughts on a Friday

Posted on by noemikjames / 20 Comments

Some thoughts on a Friday…

  • I responded to comments on the past post. I hate when I can’t get to them until the next day, but such is life sometimes.
  • My son has been having a REALLY HARD TIME LATELY and after two months of it I feel so worn down. His bedtime has become a 90 minute long affair, which pushes my daughter’s bedtime back, and means I’m not walking out of her room until after 9pm. It’s hard to have so little time for myself at the end of the day, and I end up getting less sleep than I need most nights. I’m tired and worn out and frustrated all of the time. My daughter continues to be her high-maintenance self as well, so things have not been great at home.
  • A local music festival is happening in SF right now and my husband’s organization is involved (the one he founded, not his work), so he’s been at concerts most nights this week. I like being able to support him in his interests like this, but I can’t help but think that he would LOSE HIS SHIT if he had to do bedtime solo for three nights in a row.
  • I also just found out that not only has my husband been buying his lunch every day for months, but he’s also been buying an afternoon cup of coffee because he doesn’t have a thermos to bring to work anymore (not sure what happened to the one he used to use). That means he’s been spending $12-15 A DAY on lunch and a coffee. Meanwhile I’ve been eating $1 soup packets that require an involved process of boiling water and then microwaving in a giant Pyrex bowl for four minutes to mimic “simmering” on a stove top. I’m trying really hard to just be okay with this discrepancy in our approaches to lunch, but it’s hard, especially when I know he gets to eat from really tasty food trucks every day while I’m eating crappy, packet soup.
  • I know four people IRL who are pregnant and three women on my staff got engaged this year and I’m realizing that I am HORRIBLE at talking to people about these kind of major life transitions. I hate repeating the tired cliches, and I know no-one wants to hear the truth about having a first, or second kid, so I just don’t bring it up. And then it seems weird that I’m never bringing it up. I also don’t know what to say to the people planning weddings because I was never formally engaged and I officially got married after my second child was born (and that happened in my parents living room with only our families and two close friends present) so I feel like I don’t know anything about being engaged. I also feel some regret about not having a traditional engagement story, because they seem fun and romantic and there is very little about my relationship that is fun and romantic. We are more of a get-things-done kind of couple. Also, I’m kind of done oohing and aahing over giant rocks on people’s fingers. I know. I’m a bitch.
  • I am finally deleting a bunch of blogs from my reader that were making me feel shitty. I don’t know why I have such a hard time cutting that negative shit out of my life, but I do. I’ve been reading some of these blogs for over a year and it’s almost never a positive experience. Why have I kept reading them this long?! Basically I’m hate reading these people, and I don’t want to engage in that. I have a list of five that I think I need to stop reading. This weekend they get the boot.
  • I have not figured out how to manage library wait lists. I’m either waiting for a bunch of books with nothing to read, or feeling stressed out to read three books in three weeks. I love that I can read books from the library for free, but I miss being able to buy a book and have it waiting for me whenever I’m ready.
  • It looks like the El Niño we were promised dissipated and our severe drought will just become more severe. It’s scary how little water we have here in California right now. It’s kind of stressing me out.
  • The journey to less stuff continues. It’s hard, especially with the kids. But I’m still spending WAY too much time picking up dumb shit at the end of the day. I told my husband that if no one is going to help me with keeping the house picked up (I’m not talking clean, just free of random shit strewn all over), then I’m going to start getting rid of stuff, without asking people if it’s okay. I think my daughter is old enough to either help or get rid of shit. It’s time to start learning the hard lessons about stuff.

I’m going to stop now, because we’re all busy people and I don’t feel I’m adding much to the meaningful dialogue of the world with this. I don’t know why writing about this stuff helps me, but it does. My mind feels quieter after a post like this, and that I appreciate.

What’s been bouncing around in your mind these days?

Identity/Life

Self-Deception and Self-Compassion

Posted on by noemikjames / 19 Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot about Mali’s comment on my last post, especially the part about how when she learned to love herself she was able to love her husband for who he is, without wanting him to change.

It was the transformative power of self-compassion that kept bringing me back to her comment. Could self-compassion be the key to all my troubles?

I wasn’t so sure, not because I didn’t think self-compassion was important, but because I believe I already practiced it. I didn’t consider myself self-hating: I think I’m an okay person. I don’t berate myself with put-downs or shame myself on a daily basis. I thought I was appropriately proud of my accomplishments and accepting of my flaws.

And yet I couldn’t get the idea of self-compassion out of my head. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the past few years have been hard on my view of myself. The implosion of friendships, including one that ended painfully and abruptly for reasons I still couldn’t clearly articulate, had left me feeling dejected and fundamentally damaged. I had become so unsure of my self-worth that I was retreating from most social situations. I had started focusing on my negative aspects, hyper aware of when people shushed me for being too loud, or seemed to shy way from my boisterous presence. After spending all of last year wishing I could eat lunch with my colleagues instead of rush home to pick up my son, I was now eating lunch alone in my classroom, unwilling to subject myself to other people’s possible judgement.

And yet, I didn’t speak hatefully to myself for these perceived short comings. Sure I wished I were a calmer person with a quieter voice, but I wasn’t calling myself names because I wasn’t.

After a few days of contemplating my own need for self-compassion, I searched my shelves for a book I had purchased long ago on the topic. Quickly I remembered that I had already given it away, because after reading a few chapters I had concluded that self-compassion was not something I needed to work on. I already felt fine about who I was, and the narrative about self-acceptance and love didn’t seem to apply to me as I already accepted myself.

The next morning I was in our school’s library inquiring about the availability of Chromebooks for one of my Spanish classes, when I came across a book about the power of self-compassion. I immediately recognized it as a book my closest friend at work had recommended, one she was holding a book club about next month. She had suggested I read it, because she knows I like that sort of thing, but I dismissed the idea, again determining that self-compassion was already a part of my life.

Yesterday I picked up the book and carefully read the back cover. I almost put it down again, but at the last minute I asked our librarian if I could check it out.

Last night I started to read it. Again I felt it didn’t really apply to me. There was no critical voice inside me proclaiming I was “a fat cow,” or “a horrible friend.” I almost put it down again, when I got to the first exercise. It intrigued me, so I tried it. Within minutes I was sobbing on my bed.

I guess self-compassion is something I do need to cultivate.

I’m only 60 pages into the book, so I can’t yet write much about this journey, but I wanted to come here and document my incredulity at my own self-deception. I consider myself a fairly self-aware person, so to find out that I was actually engaging in a lot of self-criticism, without even realizing it, has been shocking. I’m still not really sure what happened, all I can guess is that I had such faith in my standards as being appropriate, and so inundated with the idea that criticism is an essential part of self-improvement, that I didn’t realize I was feeling bad about myself for not being the person I thought I should be. Sure there were all sorts of things about myself I wanted to improve, but I didn’t think I felt badly about not yet achieving them.

And it’s not like there weren’t any clues. How many times have you, gentle readers, suggested that I’m being to hard on myself? I always counter that really I’m not, I’m just holding myself accountable, but I suspect now that you were all right: I have been too hard on myself. I do judge myself too harshly. I don’t forgive myself for my shortcomings.

Late last night I was picking up a few things before bed when I came upon a picture of myself from college. It must have been my sophomore year, when I was at my heaviest. In the picture I’m sitting on a bouncy horse at a playground, a young girl I used to babysit riding the horse next to me. I’m clearly 30-40 pounds over weight, with an awful bleach job on my horribly short hair. Looking at that picture I felt such an overwhelming sense of shame and disgust. I wanted to rip up the picture before burning it into oblivion. This memory of my past, which should have inspired wistful fondness for a family that meant so much to me during college, only conjured regret and self-loathing about how horrible I looked.

That is when I realized, that I don’t say mean things to myself because I’m on the acceptable side of most of my standards, and I’m actively working on the ones I haven’t yet achieved. This constant drive to improve is about keeping myself in a place where I can earn my own love and acceptance. I am always racing to stay on the right side of my own standards. If I stop, even for a moment, I have failed. And if I fail, I can’t forgive myself.

These are big realizations for me, and I have a lot of work to do to change deeply ingrained thought patterns. I think this journey is going to be a particularly difficult one, and I’m going to need to process a lot of dark, painful feelings before I make it to the other side. I’m not looking forward to walking this path, but I also recognize how necessary self-compassion is for me to be the wife, mother and friend that I want to be.

I start today, loving myself for the imperfect human being that I am and always will be.

Identity/Marriage

Threadbare

Posted on by noemikjames / 42 Comments

Remember when I mentioned that things were pretty good in my marriage? Well, right after I wrote that, they started chafing again. It was to be suspected, our good periods never last all that long.

And honestly, we’re not even in a bad place, it’s just not good. Our marriage is not unraveling, but it feels threadbare. Sometimes I wonder though, if this meh-place, which is defined primarily by apathy, but also includes significant tinges of frustration and irritation, is worse than being truly angry at each other. If we can’t care enough to get angry, is there anything left?

Things were already starting to chafe, even before our weekend away, but it was the three days in the snow with my parents that really highlighted it for me. On the one hand, I’m proud that we never actually got mad at each other, on the other hand, it’s kind of frightening how little effort that takes these days, even when we’re clearly not happy with each other.

I blame myself, for my marriage. If I had spent a fraction of the energy contemplating what it would actually be like to be married to my husband, as I expended on being afraid of never having kids, I probably could have foreseen this. But I was blinded by fear. All I wanted was children, the rest of it was ultimately background noise. Even at the time, when the stories I told myself about our relationship were so compelling, there was a part of me that knew I was really doing it to have kids.

It wasn’t that I knew it wasn’t going to work, our marriage I mean; it wasn’t that I lied to myself about that. I honestly didn’t know if my husband was the right person for me (I still don’t). But I had never been with anyone else and I figured that even the people who thought they knew, couldn’t really be sure. Marriage is a gamble, always, whether you want to believe it or not.

That is what I thought–and I still believe it–but I fell back on that without looking at what was there for me to see. I convinced myself that I couldn’t be sure, so that I wouldn’t be forced to be to make as honest of an assessment as was possible at the time.

Would I have ended up with my husband if I hadn’t been so blindly driven to have kids? I don’t know. I think there is as much chance that I would have as not. The truth is, I can’t know. And it doesn’t matter even if I could, because we’re married now and we have two kids and we need to either make this work, or walk away.

It’s not that we’re anywhere close to walking away, but I worry that a after a few years more of this kind of apathy we might be.

And yes, I realize that means that I need to pull us out of the apathy. I need to do the hard work giving a fuck again. But it’s so hard to feel like I’m the only one. As long as we’re having somewhat regular sex (once a week is good, twice a month is passable), and I stay off my husband’s case, he could do this indefinitely. I honestly don’t think he cares. Would he appreciate it if our marriage were better? I’m sure he would. But even if he recognized that he would be happier in a more satisfying marriage, I don’t think he’d do anything to change it. He just doesn’t have the drive when it comes to personal matters like these. He’d much rather wait it out, taking the past of least effort and resistance, than do the hard work necessary to change things. Even if someone guaranteed him it would work, that we’d both be happier with each other if took the time, I don’t know if he’d dedicate the time and energy to actively work on himself, let alone us.

I know that I’m supposed to be okay with that. I know that I’m supposed to work on changes in myself, because that is the only half of the equation I have any control over, but it’s damn hard to put in the effort when I don’t think my partner would (or will) do the same.

I don’t know. Things aren’t bad enough for me to suggest we do something radical, like see a marriage counselor. Maybe I need to go myself, to work on my own apathy. Because I am the only one I can change in our relationship

I mean, if I did the work, and revived our marriage, I would gain as much as my husband. How can my resentment run so deep that I would refuse to put in the effort myself, knowing what I would gain? Clearly I have some work to do on my half of the equation. I just honestly don’t know if I care enough to do it.

And maybe that is really the only thing that has changed. Maybe we’re exactly where we’ve been a hundred times before, and the only thing that’s different is that I don’t have the energy or drive to work on myself. I want to care enough to do it, but I just can’t muster the enthusiasm to make it happen.

Because honestly, what is the point? I keep coming back to that old adage: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I truly believe that insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. But I guess it’s never that easy in a relationship, because the peripheral components are always changing, and so the situation is never truly the same. Maybe that is why I kept thinking I could change enough for the both of us, because so much else was shifting in our lives.

I don’t know. I’m surely making it out to be worse than it really is. I know many people are in less satisfying marriages. And I am thankful to be with my husband, even if I wish we could be more for each other. Things probably are good enough, and it’s so easy to fall back on the “well the kids are young and shit is hard right now, we’ll work on things when it’s easier” mentality, which is my husband’s attitude about everything that he might want to change. Maybe that is just what I should do. Wait it out, work on other areas of discontent in my life, and hope that we can find our way back to something more meaningful when we don’t have to work so hard to manage it.

I mentioned before that this is my year of embracing loneliness, but it’s more than just learning to live without the expectation of friendship, it’s about becoming self-sufficient, about relying on no one but myself for my own contentment. I really do believe I have to get to this place to have meaningful friendships, and maybe it is the key to my marriage as well. I’ve come a long way in my journey to being okay alone, but I definitely have more terrain to travel. Hopefully as I near the end of that journey, I’ll be ready to fight for my marriage again. In the meantime, ambivalence will have to be good enough.

Life

Striking a balance

Posted on by noemikjames / 6 Comments

The blogosphere seems quiet these days. Or is it just me?

This is my third day with some time to myself. The kids have school but my district is off. I have so much on my to-do list and three days is not nearly enough, especially not with the packing that needs to happen for us to be ready for the snow tomorrow.

I’ve been struggling with striking a balance between crossing things off my to-do list and doing something I’d really enjoy. It’s hard because, while they aren’t that satisfying while I’m doing them, purging at home or getting caught up at work offer more rewarding results. It’s tedious work to sort through my husband’s crap (why must he keep literally hundreds of CDs that he NEVER listens to?!) so that our room doesn’t look like a junk pile, but walking into our now pristine bedroom is very satisfying. And while I hate spending a beautiful day cooped up in my classroom alone, grading papers and entering grades, I do appreciate the mental weight that is lifted when I’m not stressing about all the papers I still have to grade.

It makes more sense to spend these precious days doing what I need to do, those things that I don’t have the time and energy for at the end of long days of teaching and parenting, but there are ALWAYS more things that I feel like I need to do, and if I dedicate every free moment to those tasks, I will never carve out time that is truly for me.

I’m not trying to complain–I know how incredibly fortunate I am to have these random days in the middle of February to get things done–but it’s hard for me to strike a balance. I’m trying to take little moments here and there to do something for me. Tuesday I met my mom and a friend for brunch at a local favorite that will be closing soon. Yesterday I met my husband downtown for lunch, and delighted in the most delicious fried chicken sandwich, and I let myself lie on the bed with a book for thirty minutes before I picked up the kids from school. Today I am watching The Expanse on my computer while I grade papers, and will run in the sun on my way home from work. And while I’m a tad bit disappointed that I can’t spend a whole day luxuriating in some time just for myself, I appreciate all the work I got done at my house and feeling a bit more caught up at school.

What do you do with a rare moment to yourself?

Minimalism

Minimalism, Take 2

Posted on by noemikjames / 9 Comments

It has been suggested here that I am prone to falling in love with an movement or lifestyle, jumping in with both feet, pursing it enthusiastically, and then abruptly abandoning it for the next best thing. While I will admit that isn’t an entirely inaccurate assessment of my tendencies, I would also argue that many things I’ve embraced over the years still play important roles in my life, and some I hope to embrace more fully in the future. While we don’t follow the no-additives diet as strictly as we did before, we’re still eating much of the same foods and taking many of the supplements we felt were having a positive impact on our daughter’s behavior. And while meditation is something that I’ve never embraced in the ways I think I want to, I absolutely believe it would be a hugely positive force in my life and I hope to make it a daily staple at some point.

So yes, there are lots of things I embrace enthusiastically, write about a lot, and then let falter. I’m sure I’m not the only one, though I am probably looking for that one “thing” that will make everything “better” with greater fervor than most. Just because I stop writing about something, doesn’t mean it has left my life completely.

One thing that I really do feel made a lasting positive impact in my life was the pursuit of minimalism. The only other thing that I believe has had such an important impact on my life is regular exercise, which I re-embraced after a years-long hiatus when I was pregnant with my son. Exercise is absolutely essential to my mental well-being, of that I am absolutely sure. I am just as convinced that having fewer possessions makes me a happier person. I would go so far as to say that having dramatically fewer possessions would make me a dramatically happier person.

It’s ironic to me that I figured out owning less would make me happier after an entire lifetime of compulsive consumption. All that time I thought buying more would fill some hole inside me I didn’t even recognize, when it was jettisoning those very things I was buying that would ultimately make me happier. It’s even more frustrating to me that the habit of buying more has become so engrained, that even now, when I know that more stuff ultimately feels suffocating, I still struggle not to buy more.

Minimalism seems to be almost a cure-all for my dissatisfaction. If we owned (and purchased) less, our house would feel big enough (and be aesthetically pleasing), our income would feel sufficient, our time would be freed, and our priorities would become apparent. I am 100% convinced that I NEED to embrace minimalism to attain lasting happiness.

So why haven’t I? Well, I’ve tried. And then, when I didn’t do it like some of the blogs and books said I should, I felt like I failed. And then it felt like my family wasn’t on board and so I couldn’t manage it anyway. And then life happened and I more or less abandoned my attempts at achieving some ideal expression of minimalism.

But I never forgot how good it felt when I was really trying, when I drastically reduced the articles of clothing I owned or the books I kept, when we purged enough of our belongs to get rid of three large book cases and everything they held. For the first time in my life I felt like I had some control over my stuff. Finally I didn’t feel so completely overwhelmed by all the shit I owned. It absolutely felt like we were on the right track, but when I suspected we may never be true minimalists, at least according some people, I started to worry that it wasn’t worth even trying.

In the year since we purged so much of our stuff, I’ve read a lot more about minimalism and I’ve come to understand that there is no ultimate ideal one has to achieve. Minimalism means something different to each person who pursues it. And while it may be true that even when we’ve gotten rid of all we feel we’re able to, we still won’t have achieve the ideal of “minimalism” to which so many prescribe, I still believe we’ll be at a much more positive place than we ever were before.

My son is growing swiftly out of the final “baby” accoutrements and I’m taking these few days to pack them up so I can hand them off to someone else. We’ll still have so many more toys and books than we really need, but I’m recognizing that my family has different comfort levels when it comes to jettisoning these things and I need to respect their boundaries. While I’d LOVE to get rid of more of the stuff I don’t feel like we really use, I’m sensitive to the needs and wants of my husband and children. Right now I’m trying to simplify, and streamline, with the hopes that as we move forward we can get rid of more while acquiring less. Hopefully, by the time the kids have graduated from the toy-heavy years, we’ll have all become accustomed to owning less, and we won’t struggle so much with getting rid of that which we don’t need.

We still have a long, loooooong way to go, but I KNOW this is worthy endeavor, and I believe a continued pursuit of our own unique brand of minimalism will provide significant returns, especially as it evolves over time to help us live intentionally and in line with our values.

What is one thing that you need to ensure your happiness?

Life/Writing

Writing that no one else needs to see

Posted on by noemikjames / 11 Comments

I’ve taken to writing in my journal again. Or in some random google doc. Sometimes I write in those places–instead of here–because I’m writing about stuff that I’m not ready to talk about in this space yet. More often than not, I’m just writing stuff that I don’t think anybody else needs to read. I have convinced myself that recognizing that something is not necessarily meant for public consumption demonstrates a certain maturity I surely lacked before, but it’s just as possible that cowardice is keeping me away.

I continue to work on the things I have been working on for so long. I have this sense that I’m at the precipice of an evolution of sorts, but the changes will happen so slowly that I won’t recognize any of it until it’s already happened. I suppose that is always the case with personal growth (barring some jolting, life altering experience that shifts one’s perspective irrevocably): we shuffle clumsily in a certain direction and don’t realize how far we’ve come until we can finally look back with an altered perspective. Who knows, maybe I’m full of it, but there is this idea, this suggestion in the back of my mind, that I’m done with the bullshit I’ve been engaging in for the past decade. Or better said, I’m done engaging in it without realizing. There is every possibility I’ll keep playing these dumb games with myself, but I think I’ll at least be cognizant of them, which is progress I suppose.

And time marches on, imperceptibly in the moment, momentously in the remembering. Every day FB prompts me to revisit the posts and photos I put up on that calendar day, each year before. I am constantly in awe of how little I remember even with these visual and written cues. Was my daughter ever that small? Why can’t I conjure even an inkling of how it felt to parent back then? Especially with “memories” generated by FB, where every installment falls somewhere between farce and facade, I am gutted by how little these publish-able moments really mean to me. After the initial, ohs and ahs and wasn’t she/he cute… there is very little connection to that time, that child, that mother behind the camera. They may as well be strangers to me.

I think that may be the greatest surprise of my life (after pretty much everything I’ve ever felt about motherhood): how little I actually remember. It’s baffling to me, how thoroughly time erases what has come before. Is it my ADD? My depression? The medications I take (and have taken) to tame both? Is it just how my brain works? I mean there are some things I can reach back and touch, but even that pain–or elation–reverberate like echoes, having lost almost entirely the mass and velocity of the actual experience.*

I wonder sometimes, if I’m the only one who recalls so little without the prompting of moments frozen in time. It’s comforting to know that I’m too normal to be the only one who does anything… that simple statistics assure that I’m quite literally never the only one…

I’m one cocktail in and unsure that this makes any sense, so I’m going to sign off. I hope you had a nice (and long) weekend. I hope this week doesn’t present any unforeseen challenges, and that those you foresee aren’t so bad.

How well do you remember the past? Do you write anything that you don’t let others see?

*My old blog does help me remember, but I need that sheer volume of words whose entire purpose is/was dedicated to remembering to bring me back. And even then, I can recall very little of what is not presented in a post.

Financial Security

Financial Security vs Professional Satisfaction

Posted on by noemikjames / 19 Comments

Project: Apply-for-a-new-job is inching a long. I’ve been doing some reconnaissance, having lunch or dinner with people who teach, or have taught, high school. I’ve even been fortunate enough to talk with people who’ve taught both high school and middle school foreign language, which has been especially helpful. For the most part, my previous assumptions have been confirmed, but I have learned a few important things. Talking with other people has been a good way to get started.

I haven’t started working on my resume yet. I think that will have to wait until spring break, in early April, but I may try to work on it sooner. I brushed it up a couple of years ago, and I haven’t done much since then, so it shouldn’t require too much work. That is one of the problems with teaching, not much changes from year to year.

I’m coming to understand that there probably won’t be many positions that I can truly consider, at least not without taking a significant pay cut. Between the differences in pay throughout the peninsula, and that fact that all my years won’t be honored at my next school (at the most they would accept ten of my twelve years, but the reality is most will probably only offer to accept seven or eight), I will almost certainly have to take a $10-20K pay cut to make this change, at least I would to teach at the kind of school I’m interested in (small, alternative, not requiring I use a certain textbook exclusively). I didn’t think that would be the case, but as I look into positions that are being posted, I’m realizing it is. There is still a chance that I could make the change without losing pay, but I think those opportunities will be exceptions.

Do I delay financial security in search of professional satisfaction? If I were miserable at my job, and I really believed a position that required a pay check would be more satisfying, then I would say yes, absolutely. I would forgo padding our savings account or contributing more to retirement for a few years if it meant I could be happier at my job now. (Is this foolish and shortsighted?) But the truth is I’m not miserable. I could stay at this position, where I make more, and have tenure (and seniority! So much seniority!) and not be unhappy. There is a vast chasm between miserable and satisfied, and I am hovering somewhere in the middle. And I think I can hover in the same okay-enough place for a while longer.

It’s disheartening to be sure, and it makes it harder to motivate on the more difficult tasks of revamping my resume and writing cover letters. But I’m going to continue on this path, at least until summer, so that I can be sure that staying is the decision I should make. My goal moving forward is to ditch all this assumption and gather concrete information so I can truly make this decision and then let it go. Maybe I can revisit it in 3.5 years when my son is out of full-time day care and we have more room in our monthly budget to absorb a decrease in income. Of course by then I’ll need to take an even greater pay cut, as I’ll have even more years that won’t be honored by my next employer, but if that is the way I have to play it, so be it.

Have you ever had to choose between financial security and personal or professional satisfaction? How you make the choice if it were presented now?

Financial Security/Identity

Budgeting and Consumer Responsibility

Posted on by noemikjames / 8 Comments

One of the biggest reasons that people tout for embracing frugality or minimalism is that those lifestyles provide the money and time to live in accordance with your priorities. When you spend less, and have fewer things, you can wield your time and money as tools to sculpt a life the reflects your goals and values.

This is the main reason I want to get control of my stuff, and my money, so that I can live in accordance with my values. I am a long way from where I want to be, but I’m taking steps in the right direction.

I read a lot of blogs about minimalism, and a few about personal finance and frugal living. A lot of the personal finance and frugal living blogs that I read are about saving as much of one’s income as possible, to ensure future (or continued) financial freedom. Some have goals of retiring early (VERY early) and some just want enough in the bank that they never have to make a decision based on a lack of funds, or to do the work that makes them happy but can’t support them completely. In almost all of these cases, the main goal seems to be saving money, by any means necessary. Year long shopping bans are instituted, eating out is shunned, gift cards are used to buy other people gifts. The main idea is to save, save, save so that later (or now) you can have the life you want.

But one thing I’ve found curiously missing from the personal finance and frugal living conversations is the idea of consumer responsibility. I think we can all agree that most of the time the cheapest choice is not the most most sustainable choice, or the choice that provides a living wage for those involved in its production. And so the question arises: should consumer responsibility be a part of the personal finance and frugal living equation?

I ask this question of others because I’ve been asking it of myself. As I poke around in our monthly budget, looking for ways to save, this question comes up again and again. Sure I could save some money here and there buying a cheaper option, but that option would almost certainly be more harmful to the environment, or bypass attempts at fair trade. We like to buy organic, not just because we want to avoid ingesting pesticides ourselves, but because we know they wreak havoc to the ecosystems where they are used, leaching into ground water and contaminating the soil for miles around. We want the animals who provide our dairy and meat to be treated well, raised on the foods there bodies were designed to digest, and not treated with unnecessary hormones. We want to do this not only for our own health, but for ethical reasons as well. These products cost more, sometimes significantly more. Do we stop buying them to save money?

I know there are A LOT of other places in my budget where I can cut costs without making these hard decisions (especially when it comes to groceries), and I’m making baby steps in the right direction. But eventually, I will have to make choices that either save money, or prioritize my values. It seems that ultimately, in most cases*, the choice is “either/or” (am I wrong about this?), but never “and,” when it comes to saving money and consumer responsibility.

I recognize that minimalism and frugal living can make it easier to prioritize values. When you buy fewer clothes you can have a greater inclination to spend more on a garment that wasn’t produced in a sweatshop, or purchase something from a small, local vendor instead of from a giant internet retailer (with horrible employment practices). When you have more money, you can be more intentional with how you spend. And the most important: when you consume less, you create less waste. But honestly, I haven’t seen those ideas included in any conversations about frugal living. Of course I’ve only just started reading many of these blogs, and I’m horrible at configuring a productive string of words in a search bar, but upon closer inspection, it doesn’t seem like they happened before I started following along. (If anyone can point me towards post about this, I’d be much obliged.)

I am only just starting out on this personal finance journey; I still have to learn ALL THE THINGS. And I’m sure I’ll eventually find a balance between saving and all my other priorities, but I’m kind of incredulous that this isn’t a bigger part of the conversation, especially since most of the people achieving early financial independence seem to be well educated, conscientious individuals. For many people, the goal is to make ends meet, and consumer responsibility is a luxury they can’t afford. For those of us who have a choice, I hope we are making it wisely.

How does consumer responsibility factor into your budget?

* I know there are some cases where this is not the case, but they seem rare and subject to regional availability.

Health & Well Being/Identity

Languid

Posted on by noemikjames / 2 Comments

The days lately have had a certain languid quality to them. It may come from listening to Station Eleven (and I can’t determine if that is because of the story told or the voice telling it), which I really liked. I’m far down on the wait lists for the next five books I want to listen to, so I guess I’ll look into podcasts while I wait. Anyone have any recommendations?

You want to hear something funny? That post I wrote yesterday wasn’t finished. I set it to publish, with the intent of coming back and wrapping it up, but then I just forgot all about it. At least it wasn’t too glaringly obvious that I had stopped writing in the middle of a thought.

You want to hear something else funny? Right after I wrote that post my daughter had an epic one hour meltdown because I asked her to play a three minute vision therapy game on the computer. I’m trying hard to remember all the good that came before the hour-long meltdown, but it’s hard, because an hour long meltdown casts a shadow on everything that happens before and after it. An hour is a REALLY LONG TIME for your kid to be melting down, especially when you need to go pick up your other kid. The whole ordeal reminded me that things are probably never going to be “easy” with my kids (or at least the one of them), but I continue to hope that there will be longer, more enjoyable moments in between the really hard stuff. And I assume “the hard stuff” will change over time too.

But over all things are pretty decent these days. There seems to be just enough space in my life to make it feel manageable, and I appreciate that feeling. As the pace of life slows, I have more time to consider what I want my days to look like, what I want to prioritize, what is worth the effort. I have way less of an idea of these things than I feel like I should at 35 years old, but I’m confident that in time, my priorities will solidify. I hope that, over the next five years, I’ll begin to glean what is most important to me, and that by then I’ll have the time and space to shape my life around my preferences.

In the meantime, I’ve been gifted with small, but substantial, pockets of time. I have all of next week off, and my kids only get Monday, so I have three days to get some stuff done around the house before we leave for the snow on Friday morning. The seventh graders are at outdoor ed this week, and while their absence only affects two of my classes, those classes are the bookends of my day, and having them be quieter and more low key is greatly appreciated. It’s amazing what 55 minutes of quiet can do for one’s soul (I’m writing this post during one of those classes). My daughter and I don’t share a spring break, and while I’m bummed to lose that time with her (and the money I’ll have to spend for camp), I’m looking forward to all that I will be able to get done with both kids at school for 4-5 days (my son generally gets a day off around then, but I’m not sure if it falls on my break or my daughter’s).

Things continue to be good between my husband and I. It’s amazing how much brain space is taken up by petty resentments when things are fraught between us. I’m not sure how long this tranquil period will last, but I’m enjoying it while it’s here.

The quality of these days is… strange to me. I tend to oscillate between the extremes of excitement/enthusiasm and sadness/anger/despair. To be suspended for so long between them is… awkward. It’s quite startling, actually, how graceless and lumbering I feel in this space, as I stumble around, trying to find my bearings. I’ve caught myself, on occasion, talking myself out of thoughts that maybe this is a mild depression of sorts, because it can feel that way sometimes, in the absence of the high highs. But I know depression well enough to recognize what it is not. This is complacency maybe, but not depression. It may even be contentedness, or even equanimity, but I have had little enough experience with either to recognize my own experiences as such.

It’s a weird place to be, in an emotional state that I don’t entirely recognize. It’s also hard to admit to myself that depression would be more comfortable than placidity, that it has become a touchstone of sorts, one I have come to rely on so much that without it I flounder.

So that is where I am, in this languid state, trying to appreciate it for what it is, without turning it into something it’s not.

Have you ever found yourself in an unfamiliar emotional state?