Minimalism

Where I usually end up

Posted on by noemikjames / 14 Comments

So. Minimalism.

I embraced it enthusiastically. Well, I embraced the idea of it. And I tried to embrace the actual practices. I made many real, significant changes in my life. And yet, I can’t say I’ve succeeded in my quest to truly embrace minimalism.

Truthfully, it feels like I’ve failed.

But I know that’s not an honest, or accurate, way of looking at it. Where I ended up is not definitively in the camp of “failure,” or “success,” but somewhere in the murky, unquantifiable, middle.

Isn’t that where we usually end up?

In so many ways, I’m a complete convert. I really do believe in the philosophy of minimalism. I absolute agree that I would be happier with less stuff. Of course, the practice of getting rid of, and keeping rid off, that stuff, is harder to implement than it is to embrace.

In some ways, I really have changed. I haven’t purchased a book in ages. Maybe one or two for my kids, but very, very few. I don’t buy them many (hardly any, really) toys or clothes. In many of the areas of my life I’ve purged and not let the things back in.

But my closet is still a mess. I just don’t have much desire to get rid of most of my clothes. I like wearing the clothes that I have and if I notice I’m not wearing something I get rid of it, but I haven’t purged my closet down to the number of items I suspect people who are really minimalists have. Same with my shoes. I have more shoes than I need, and yet I wear them all. Could I live with fewer? Sure, but I don’t really want to.

And there are some tenants I can’t quite get behind, like the idea that one is always enough. I’m sorry but one set of sheets is not enough. Actually, I like to have three sets of sheets for every bed that is being used on the reg. There have been countless times when I have needed a third pair of sheets for any one of our beds. The idea of only having one of set is insane to me.

I have two sets of my daughter’s lunch and snack boxes. I’m looking to get a fourth smoothie cup so we have two sets of two and don’t have to wash one set every day to serve two smoothies. Do I need two sets? No. But it makes my life easier.

I still really appreciate my life being easier, and sometimes that means having more than one of something.

So what (physically) does my life look like over a year after I “embraced” minimalism? It may not seem like it’s much different–there are still toys all over the living room floor, and clean laundry toppled about the sofa, and piles of books and other flotsam and jetsam on my bedroom floor, and flurries of crap on my wardrobe and papers on my kitchen cutting board/island. But it feels different. Because none of those messes stress me out the way they used to; I know I can clean them up if I am so inclined. I still KNOW where all the things go and if I start picking up things look substantially neater in just 30 minutes or so. The layer of chaos is still there, but it’s a controlled chaos that I understand and can master. I don’t feel overwhelmed by it in the ways I once did.

I’m still reading lots of minimalist blogs. I nod along, agreeing with them on most points. I recognize that my life is better for having “embraced” minimalism, and I want to keep the ideas alive. Could I improve? Absolutely! Every day I think about committing to the ideals of minimalism a bit more. Sometimes I manage it, most days I don’t. And that’s okay. The seed has sprouted, and even though it’s growing slowly, it would take a lot to uproot. I hope to tend to it more, water it, transfer it to better soil. For now I’m giving it what it needs to survive, even if it can’t thrive. And that is better that nothing.

I wish I could just commit to minimalism full throttle and never look back. I think I would be happier that way. But it’s not how I operate. It’s going to take a lot of years to get me where I want to be. I do believe I’ll arrive at the desired destination, it’s just not going to happen any time soon.

I’m trying to be okay with that. Getting there eventually is better than never getting there at all. I’d rather keep the dream alive despite not having achieved it, because I know that I’ll be better off for it some day.

And I know that as unlikely as it seems at the moment, I will eventually wake up and realize that some day has arrived, that I will be living the minimalist life I always dreamed of.

It will have been worth the wait.

Parenting & Family

Two

Posted on by noemikjames / 11 Comments

My son turns two today.

I don’t write much about parenting him. I certainly don’t write as much about parenting him as I write about parenting my daughter. There are a lot of reasons for this; mostly it’s because parenting him is a lot easier for me, and I don’t generally come here to write about the easy stuff.

What I should write about more is how thankful I am that he’s here, that he came in time for me to realize that I wasn’t failing as horribly at parenting as I thought I was, that there were other factors at play, that I was right when guessed that maybe I was having a different experience than most mothers, that when I mentioned something that felt hard and another mom commiserated and I felt like maybe we were talking about very different things, that we were.

My son taught me that I CAN be the mother I thought I’d be, even if I’m not that mother in challenging circumstances. Knowing that I can be that mother, that I am that mother, that the experience I expected was not completely out of my reach, was healing in ways I can’t describe. Only in finding that peace was I able to fully embrace the mother I am, and to glimpse the mother I could be, to my first child.

My son healed me in so many ways. He came to me when I had given up hope of having another child and he taught me things about myself that only a second child could teach me. I am always and forever filled with gratitude that he is here.

Thank you my sweet boy. I look forward to walking through life with you.

Friendship

Crickets

Posted on by noemikjames / 24 Comments

I’m a person who values authenticity. I thrive on the truth. I want to hear and read something real. I’m not interested in glossy magazines and pinterest worthy final products. I want to wade knee deep in the muck of it. That is where the interesting shit lives.

The problem is, most other people don’t.

I notice that, a lot of the time, when I speak my truth, people don’t say a whole lot back. I can kill a conversation, with even some of my best friends, much more easily than I can keep them going. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve put myself out there and all I’ve gotten was crickets. More times than I can bear.

I’m just so done with the pleasantries, you know? What the fuck is the point? Life is so short. And we’re alone for so much of it. Why waste our time talking about shit we’re not really interested in? Why dance around a topic neither of us cares about?

Maybe, the thing is, that other people do care.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve attempted a real, genuine conversation about parenting, or marriage, or how much I fucking suck at keeping my house clean and got NOTHING in return. Just silence. The awkward shuffle of feet. The murmured acknowledgement that the call hasn’t been dropped. Nothing of real substance.

This happens all the time. With people I consider good friends. Really good friends.

Am I really the only one who wants to talk about these things? Do I bring them up too clumsily? Too forcefully? Is my voice dripping with despair?

The conclusion that I’ve come to is that I’m too negative. I linger too long in the dark and depressing. I’m not grateful enough. I complain too much. People don’t want to be around a negative nelly. People don’t want to talk, well, to me.

One of the reasons I wanted to go back to therapy is I wanted a place where I could talk about the negative stuff without threatening my friendships. I’ve lost so many friends talking about how hard shit is. People don’t want to hear about that stuff all the time. I wanted to pay someone to listen to it–to the hard and the upsetting and the exhausting and the brutal. I wanted, for once, not to be met with crickets.

I can’t afford $140 an hour right now. I’m going to look into sliding scale places and hopefully I’ll find someone, because right now I really need a sounding board that isn’t my husband and isn’t my friends.

Otherwise, I might not have either at the end of all this.

Financial Security/Identity

Concerning Our Unit

Posted on by noemikjames / 13 Comments

Here’s the thing. You put yourself out there. You ask people for their opinions, advice and guidance.

And then they give it to you.

Here is the other thing.

My husband and I have talked a lot about our unit and how much we think we should rent it for. We rent out our lower unit because we can’t afford our mortgage without that additional income. We do not rent it out to turn a profit. We feel very strongly about this.

Living in San Francisco right now, it kind of sucks. The lack of affordable housing is reshaping this city in truly upsetting ways. The amounts people are charging for space are horrendous. So many people are being forced to flee–some of them are our friends. I don’t even want to think about what it’s going to look like when this tech boom is over.

My husband and I do not want to perpetuate the system that we so despise. We are not interested in playing the part of greedy, corrupt San Francisco landlord. We don’t want any part of it.

We have calculated how much our home costs us every year–mortgage and property taxes, utilities, water, trash, home insurance–and multiplied it by 25%, which is the percentage of square footage of our home that the unit represents. Then we add a little on top, for our troubles as landlords. And that is what we rent our place for.

Could we rent it for more? Probably. But we don’t want to. It’s a small unit, in a not-so-great neighborhood, housing a loud family with two small kids above it. The pipes are super loud, especially the ones the connect to the washing machine that bang like crazy on the wall shared by the unit when I run a load of laundry. Also when the shower in the unit turns on it can sound like Armageddon.

We don’t love being landlords. We do this out of necessity. Sometimes it takes us a little while to deal with things that aren’t working great. Sometimes we fix things the cheap way. We’re not trying to screw anyone over, we deal with issues in that space like we deal with issues in the space we inhabit–we always spend as little as we can to fix the problem. Heck, most of the time we fix things down there that we would just deal with in our house: When the unit’s heater stopped working we got it fixed immediately. When our own heating ducts fell down we never had them replaced and didn’t end up turning on the heat one time that winter (and one of those months was COLD).

One of the reasons we keep our unit below market value is because that great deal inspires appreciation, and that appreciation goes a long way in placating people when things aren’t working as well as they could. Will we always fix something if it’s broken? Of course! But we hope they’ll be patient if it takes us a little while to do so, and that they’ll be satisfied even if they solution is less than ideal.

So that is why we don’t rent our unit for what we could rent it for. We don’t want to play the greedy San Francisco landlord, just because an insane renters market says that we can. And we don’t want to have a renter who feels they deserve the best and fastest service when things aren’t working great, in return for spending top dollar on the space. Instead we want to provide a place to live for someone who may not otherwise be able to afford this city (and sure, as someone argued, we can’t change the market by renting our one unit for less than we could, but we do change the life of the one person who is living there). We want to have a good relationship with that person, for them to feel at home in a space that otherwise would be ours, and that we hope we’ll live in some day. We want to foster a sense of community, not of hostility, resentment and entitlement. And so we make a choice to forgo a certain amount of money each month to have that. And we feel good about it.

{We also only rent to friends or friends of friends because we just don’t feel comfortable sharing our space so intimately with someone that no one we know can vouch for, so it’s nice to be able to help out a friend or friend of a friend.}

Maybe this isn’t the right decision. Maybe we’re fools for not asking for every penny that someone might be willing to pay. We certainly could use the money (now is probably not the right time to admit that I can’t afford the therapist, and called and cancelled our first appointment). But we can make it work. And we will. And it will be okay. And for us, right now, we’d rather be stretched a little thin and feel good about how we’re renting that unit, than have more money and feel shitty about what we’re charging and stressed out about what they will expect because we’re charging it.

Uncategorized

Next Steps

Posted on by noemikjames / 7 Comments

So, you all convinced me not to pursue the alternative medicine route with my daughter. I guess I’ll have to figure out how to navigate this ncertain journey on my own.

I did, however, reach out to a therapist a colleague at work recommended. The therapist I’ve been working with since before I embarked on TTC has moved offices and now there is a bridge between me and where she meets. I do not abide bridges–actually it’s the traffic before/on/after them that I take issue with–so I have been thinking about findindg someone else. And I have. And I called her. And I have an appointment for next Tuesday.

Mostly I want to work on some issuse in my marriage that continues coming up over and over again. I keep broaching them in the same ways and then getting frustrated when my efforts yield the same results. Meanwhile, every time I air a greivance and nothings changes, my resentment grows. It’s hard not to fall into the, “if he really loved me, or even cared, he would DO something about this already,” mindset, which I know is ultimately unproductive (and not at all an accurate interpretation of what is truly happening). Still, I perpetuate the thought-cycle and the resentment becomes more entrenched and I clearly need an unbiased third party to help me either change the way I think about these things or show me how to handle them productively–probably both.

Ultimately I would love to go to therapy with my husband, but he would NOT love that and at this point I recognize that many of these issues are my own to deal with for a little while. If , after some hard work on this stuff, I’m still struggling with the realities of our marriage, I will ask my husband to join me in therapy. I know he would come if I asked him to, but I also know that he’d rather not.

On the one hand, I’m eager to work on these issues because honestly, I am TIRED of them. They are boring and mundane. I want to let them go, but I can’t, which is FRUSTRATING. Many of them are subsets of common themes that wreak havoc on my happiness and general sense of well being. If I could really get to the heart of these destructive thought cycles and dessimate them once and for all, I could be a more joyful person who feels more fulfilled.

I’d also love to talk about work woes and my unmet career aspirations and that general sense of heaviness that descends when I think about my job. 

So there is a lot to talk about, and I feel I can be focused enough to really put the time and money to good use (though I’m not quite sure where the money is going to come from, that must be determined this weekend, and it if I can’t come up with it I might be shit out of luck). At the same time, I’m so done working on myself, being stuck in a perpetual cycle of self-improvement. Most of the time I just want to watch British police dramas and forget the rest of my life is even happening. The fact that my husband never has to work on his shit causes a fair amount of resentment in and of itself. I wish I were the type of person that could just accept who I am, flaws and all. I also wish I had way less flaws. That would also make things easier.

So there is that. No naturopath but hopefully a therapist. And hopefully and end to destrucive thought processes that killing my chances at happiness. Oh, and hopefully being able to afford it.

Uncategorized

Popping in (but hopefully not out again)

Posted on by noemikjames / 21 Comments

I realize that I struggle to come back here after short absences because I feel weird just jumping in with some random post about, say, minimalism, when I haven’t been posting regularly. I want to fill in the holes about what has happened while I was “away,” but then every post would be an “update,” and no one wants a string of those. Or I end up writing, or wanting to write, a post similar to something I just put up, because I’m circling the same issues over and over and don’t have much else to say. And yet, I can’t seem to stop myself… and so this will be a bullet pointed post about what’s been swirling around my head lately. I’m sorry. I do hope to write again soon enough to put down something of substance. In the meantime, I just got to get this stuff out of my head.

{I’m also behind on responding to comments, especially all the amazing comments from Purple and Rose summarizing the book Overwhelm, which I may just need to respond to in an actual post. The ideas in that really got me thinking… about so many things.}

My son turns two in a week. IN A WEEK. This is insanity. He is so cute right now. Everything out of his mouth makes me swoon. I adore him. I want him to be like this for a long, long time. And yet I know 2.5 is coming and with him I suspect it’s going to be a doozy. I’m trying to savor every adorable moment with him now, while I can.

Also, he starts daycare in a week a half (the Monday after he turns two). I know it’s going to be a rough transition for all of us. I’m not looking forward to it. Ugh. And yet, I’ll be so relieved when we no longer owe my husband’s parents this insane debt of gratitude for watching him every day.

Additionally, daycare is a major expense that I’ve gotten in the habit of NOT paying. It also costs significantly more than when my daughter was attending. I HAVE to get back on my budget wagon or I’m going to run my whole bank account into a deep, muddy ditch.

Did I mention our tenant is leaving? She already paid her last month’s rent so we’re not getting that income for October and we still don’t have someone lined up to rent the space, so probably not November either. And we owe her her security deposit. Blerg. I hate money. I hate being a landlord. I hate owning a home. (We’re also having some issues with our house.)

Things with my daughter and the diet are better. She had a few rough weeks, but I pulled a few foods I had recently introduced and things are better again. I’m so thankful things are improving. It’s hard to follow the diet when I’m seeing results, but it’s almost impossible to dedicate so much time and money to it when she’s acting like she used to. I’m back on board now that the positive results have returned. We still have a ways to go, but I hope we can eventually get there.

My husband and I are still at odds about the diet. This endeavor has inspired some surprising, and even troubling, conversations. I just had no idea he felt the way he does about so many things. And I’m seeing a real “privileged white male” mentality running deep through so much of his thinking. I just never thought of my husband as someone who let himself be so blinded his privileged place in the world, but it’s clear that he does. In the end I just wish I had a partner in this journey, because doing it myself is really fucking hard.

But I’m not doing it entirely by myself. I rely heavily on the kind and supportive women who also follow the diet and frequent the closed FB page dedicated to this life that I visit on the reg. I have a post written (well it’s mostly written) about the pros and cons of that space. I hope to clean it up and publish it soon.

I’m also considering taking my daughter to a naturopath or maybe a homeopathic doctor, not because I think she needs more or different therapies/treatments, but because I’d love to have someone else to consult with about all this. Without my husband on board, the closed FB group is my primary sounding board on all things my daughter/her behavior/the diet and I’d LOVE to have someone else who knows us both well and can help guide us on this journey. I’m constantly wondering if there is more I can or should do for my daughter–it’s clear she’s still struggling, even with the improvements–and I’d love to have an informed opinion to guide me. It’s exhausting to do all of this myself; I just want someone to tell me when I can let something go and when I should pursue it further… Of course seeing someone requires time, and a significant amount of money. I’d love to see an MD who specializes in integrative medicine–I think my husband would be most easily swayed by someone with those letters behind his or her name, but I haven’t found anyone in the city, let alone our side of the city, that practices integrative medicine. An MD would also be way more expensive than an ND… and honestly, I don’t care what letters are behind the name, and I’d be the one working with him or her.

I’m also considering following the diet completely myself. The idea has been on my periphery since I started but I didn’t have the wherewithal to commit. Then I noticed, on two separate occasions, what an arbitrarily shitty mood I was in after eating M&Ms (just a mini-bag each time, snagged from the bowl by the bathrooms at school) which are a heinous candy when it comes to artificial dyes. Making that connection has me more interested in following the diet closely and tracking what I eat and how I feel. I have always been someone who suffers from severe highs and lows, frequent foul moods and maddening malaises that seem to descend from nowhere. I’ve always attributed my unstable moods to my messed up brain chemistry but now I’m wondering if they are tied to what I eat. I really do believe the diet it helping my daughter, and I see so much of myself in her, it would be shortsighted and, well, lazy, not to give it a try. If it improves my quality of life, I can decide if it’s worth maintaining.

I’m finally done administering, and scoring, the big test for English language learners at my school. The final push required seven hours of work in my classroom last Sunday but it’s such a relief to have it done. I also got a bunch of papers graded and entered, plus I finished some translation work that was hanging over my head. Without all those obligations weighing me down I feel almost buoyant.

My daughter continues to be really hot and cold about Kindergarten. One day she’s telling me how much fun she had and how much she learned, the next she says she hates it and it’s boring. I have a feeling this will be the routine for the foreseeable future, and while it’s disappointing that she doesn’t have mostly positive feelings about school, I’m coming to terms with our messy, confusing reality.

For the past few months I’ve been able to tell when I’m ovulating because I have copious amounts of EWCM and then my boobs actually get tender during the second half of my cycle. Neither of these things EVER happened when I was trying, except for when I was on the super restrictive TCM diet, going to weekly (or twice weekly acupuncture) and taking Chinese herbs. Even then it was hit or miss. The fact that my body is just doing this shit now, of its own accord, is fucking frustrating. (And I know it doesn’t mean I’m any more “fertile” — my cycles are still a measly 20 days long–but still, I’m NOT impressed.)

Oh, and while we’re down there, I’ve had to start wearing my pessary again to manage my prolapsed organ issues. Again, not impressed. Busted lady business is NEVER discussed, which is a shame because it happens to people, and for some it’s an ongoing, upsetting, sometimes chronically painful thing. And I think it should be part of the “vaginal birth is ecstatically miraculous and beautiful” rhetoric that we’re so fond of, because for those of us who have to deal with the repercussions of that birth for the rest of our adult lives, it can feel a lot like we were lied to. /endrant: I’ll get off my soap box now.

And with that I’ve written a short novel about nothing in particular, so I think I’ll spare you all and stop. If you made it this far, I’m sorry. And thank you. I promise to put up a post of some substance soon.

Life/No-additives Diet

Six Weeks In

Posted on by noemikjames / 13 Comments

We’re six weeks into the diet. It continues to be a challenge, but for different reasons than when we started. It’s hard to stay motivated. One day I’m sure it’s making a huge difference. Other days I’m sure it’s not. Most days I’m not sure of anything.

It’s hard to commit to something when you don’t know for sure that what kind of impact it’s having. It’s even harder when it affects someone who can’t really understand what you’re doing or why you’re doing it. It’s harder still when your partner is not 100% on board. And when it costs more money and require more time and becomes this massive psychological stressor, hanging over every day with noxious clouds of doubt, anxiety and apathy.

It’s hard to commit to something that makes you different and isolates you and your child, something that nobody you know has ever heard of, let alone does themselves. It’s hard to stay motivated when the gains are so nebulous, when you’re constantly wondering what can be attributed to your efforts and what can’t.

Things with my daughter may be better than they ever have been, but I spend as much, if not more, time thinking about her behavior than I did before. It’s so hard to turn my mind off these days. I long for the times when my daughter’s meltdowns were just that, meltdowns, and not possible reactions to something I have to identify and remove from her diet.

What it comes down to is I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, and I HATE not knowing what the fuck I’m doing. I hate feeling uncertain. I hate not being sure.

So I keep trudging along, because the only thing that scares me more than doing this forever is to stop doing this, at least for now.

We’re six weeks into this diet, but we’re also six weeks into so many other transitions. They are all so wrapped up in each other, I sometimes wonder if I don’t attribute some of the stress I feel about the diet to stress that really belongs to this crazy transition to Kindergarten. Everything is so new this year, for all of us. I’m trying to remember to be patient, with myself. With my daughter. With my husband. With life.

Things will get better. They always do. I’ll learn to live with the uncertainty. I’ll learn to navigate within the nebulous clouds of doubt. This will become my new normal and some day it won’t be so hard. Until then I can manage. Until then I can make it work.

After all, we’re only six weeks in.

Life

On (Kind of) Arriving

Posted on by noemikjames / 17 Comments

I’ve been trying to write a post all week. I’ve been failing miserably.

I’ve written a couple of things. They are unfinished. Or unpublishable. Most are both.

I start and stop. Erase. Rewrite.

Usually I close my laptop and watch something on TV. I don’t even really read blogs that much. Mostly, when I have the odd free moment, I just want to escape from my life, And even the lives of other ordinary women like me aren’t enough of an escape.

I just can’t figure out what to say. Or how to say it. I don’t really even know how I feel about most of what is going on right now. And while it used to be a cathartic exercise to sort out the complicated thoughts and feelings, now it just feels like a chore. It doesn’t bring relief, it just sits like a weight on my chest, in my finger tips.

So I don’t do it. And I honestly think that’s alright, to not write. But then I miss this space, and the meaningful interactions I have here, and I’m not sure how to proceed. If I don’t write I become isolated and I feel withdrawn. But if I do write, I feel confused and frustrated.

I tell myself to come on here and just write about the easy stuff. Write about minimalism and how I’m still attempting to embrace it, but how quickly and easily the stuff creeps back in. Or about work and how I feel like I always have one foot out the door, except I don’t really have any actual plans to leave. Or my marriage, and how it’s better than it usually is, but it’s not actually super great. It’s just not bad.

That is kind of my whole life right now. Most things are okay. They aren’t super great, but they are better than bad. Maybe this is what arriving looks like?

At my old apartment I had to haul my laundry down a dark, dirty alley behind my building and wait in line to use the one washer and dryer that all nine units shared. The machines sat right next to the giant trash and recycling receptacles and massive rats scurrying to and fro were a common occurrence. I had find parking in a ridiculously busy neighborhood where no one else who lived there had parking and people who didn’t live there were trying to park so they could enjoy the many restaurants within walking distance. I always used to say that when I had off street parking and an in-unit washer and dryer I would have arrived at my life.

Well I have off-street parking and an in-unit washer and dryer, but the washer and dryer are in a weird, gross part of the garage and there isn’t a proper escape for the lint blower, plus we let our tenant use them, so it’s still dirty and dark where I do my laundry and I sometimes have to wait for some else to be done using the machines. And my garage door doesn’t open automatically so I have to get out of the car and hoist the heavy thing up and down, and it gives me splinters and the entrance is super narrow and sometimes I scrape the car backing out and there is hardly enough room to open my door once I’m parked and lots of times someone is partially blocking my driveway so I can’t get in or out anyway.

So I guess I’ve arrived at my life, but it’s not at all what I was expecting it to be. It’s not a laundry room with a tiled floor and painted walls that I can walk into without putting shoes on and that no one else is ever using. And it’s not a garage where the door rises effortlessly (on my part) with the press of a button, and there is plenty of space for my car and all the people who need to get out of it and no one is ever blocking me in or out. Most of it’s a lot like what I thought I was leaving behind, I just have a little more say in it all than I used to, except I’m still constrained by reality (read: money) and I still don’t see things improving any time soon.

I don’t know quite how to tie this up, but I guess what I mean is, my life, the whole of it, feels like the garage with the washer and dryer. It’s what I thought I always wanted, but it’s not what I expected at all. It’s almost like when I was wishing for it, I wasn’t specific enough, and before I knew it, I was getting something that technically fits the bill, but it’s actually what I was hoping for. Or maybe it’s just that in life, you don’t get to choose the important stuff. Or you do, but you can’t possibly know what you’re ultimately going to get.

Or maybe this is just the biggest pile of steaming first world problems a person could stumble across, or into, and I just need to shut my spoiled, privileged mouth and move on.

Maybe it’s D. All of the above.

Of course people always told me, when in doubt, choose C. Always choose C.

Uncategorized

A Good Day

Posted on by noemikjames / 7 Comments

Yesterday was a good day. 

I feel like I don’t come on here much to share the good days, and that is how the picture I paint becomes so skewed. 

But yesterday was one of the good days. I have been feeling myself lifting out of the generalized funk I fell into. I don’t really know what changed to help me get out, but that is usually how these things work. One day I just start feeling better. 

Yesterday I had a good conversation with the parent of a child we’re trying to help. 

I managed to fit a run in between work and picking up my kids, and even though it was hot, the sun his behind a cloud just enough to make it bearable. 

My kids ate the “super hero smoothie” I made for them, packed with two cups of fresh spinach. It’s amazing how much better I feel when I know they are eating healthy food. 

My daughter had finished her homework at after care. That always makes things easier. 

Neither of them got upset when I left to eat dinner with some friends. It was the first time I’ve been out with friends since before school started over a month ago. It was nice to catch up. Heck it was nice to just be with other adults who weren’t my husband. Also, the dinner I ordered was amazing. 

I got home all energized from seeing people and had a hard time getting to bed, but it’s okay because today is Friday. Friday is my favorite day. 

And those all some of the reasons why yesterday was a good day. 

When was your last good day? What made it a good one?

Financial Security

Standing at the pantry, shoving cookies in my mouth

Posted on by noemikjames / 33 Comments

In the darkest years of my disordered eating, I would stand at the pantry, leaning against the door, grab things I wanted to eat, and just stand there, shoving them into my mouth. It was like I thought that if I stood so close to where the chips were stored, it wouldn’t count that I was eating them. Like I hadn’t properly committed, and so the consequences wouldn’t be real.

They were of course. And I gained pound after pound until I weighed more than I had ever weighed, before or since. Even after 55lbs of weight gain during my first pregnancy, I didn’t weigh as much as I did in the years when my compulsive eating was at its worst. I just couldn’t get enough, nothing sated me.

That is how I feel now, with my spending. I happened kind of suddenly, actually. I was doing pretty well, even after I’d decided to abandon my budget posts and my spending-freeze for a while. Then, out of nowhere, I was on Amazon every day, buying thing after thing after thing. The past five days have been like some horrible binge, and I’m not sure how to stop myself.

I feel like such a failure. I AM such a failure. The is no one single area of my life that I have failed in so spectacularly as spending money. I have always spent irresponsibly and I continue to spend irresponsibly, despite trying to change time and time again. I’ve tried committing to not buying anything new, I tried committing to a budget. I tried committing to a spending freeze. I failed at each and every attempt. I didn’t even last very long for any of them.

I don’t know how to do this.

Well, that’s not true. I know HOW to do it, I just don’t know how to MAKE myself do it. And none of the experts can help me because for all of them it comes easy. They just DO IT, and hardly make a fuss. A lot of them LOVE doing it. They think it’s fucking awesome to do it. So how are they going to tell me how to make it happen, when clearly there is something fundamentally different inside each of us, compelling us to act in completely different ways.

It’s like when the Ph.D in math tries to explain fractions to a kid who is attempting Algebra for the fifth time. Their incredible understanding of math, and the ease with which they learned it, actually hinder them in their attempts to explain it to someone who just cannot comprehend.

I am that person. I cannot comprehend. I’ve always considered myself someone with considerable will power and stamina. When I have really wanted something, I have done A LOT of things I REALLY didn’t want to do, to get it. So why can’t I do THIS one thing that part of me doesn’t want to do? Why can’t I exercise willpower over this one part of my life?

This feeling of powerless crushes me. There is only one other time in my life I felt this out of control, and it was when I struggled with disordered eating. It absolutely consumed my life, and made me miserable. It fueled my darkest depression, and remains the solitary demon that actually pushed me to the point of such despair that I considered killing myself. The only thing that was able to repair my disordered dependence on food was my medicine, which helped me learn how to have a healthy relationship with what I eat. But there is no medicine that can foster a responsible relationship with money. I have to figure it out for myself.

Except when I try to do that I fail. And I fail. And I fail. Maybe I’ve made some gains, but they have been so microscopic–if I keep continuing forward at this rate, I won’t get it right before it’s too late.

Because the thing with money is, at some point it doesn’t matter if you’re making the right choices, because you can never overcome all the bad ones.

I know I’m not there yet, but I also have no reason to believe I can turn things around. I’ve tried. In earnest. Many time. And while I have learned so much, I have not found a way to put it into practice. I still spend more than I can to save money. I still buy things impulsively. I still treat myself and reward myself and tell myself it’s worth it. I still do ALL THE WRONG THINGS, and I do them MOST OF THE TIME.

So I’m starting again. Again. But it’s hard to garner enthusiasm when all the empirical evidence tells me this attempt, like all the ones that came before it, will fail.

That I will fail.

Like I always do.

Is there something in your life you’ve failed at many times? Did you keep trying?