Not a Wasted Word

This week at work has been very weird. Two classes were very easy; I only had a few students in each and I had a decent plan to do stuff with them. One class was super weird; I had my own 8th graders plus 13 from another class and I was trying to get each group to do something different (you can imagine how that went). Then two classes were the same as always, except I was never quite prepared for them because of the rest of the day being so odd.

I hoped to get a ton of stuff done at work this week, and I did use my preps (the ones that weren’t taken over by subbing or IEP meetings) and those two easy classes relatively wisely. I dug myself out from under the pile of free-reading checks, which is no small feat. But I am taking a fair amount of work home with me to complete over the break. At least I shouldn’t have to come to my classroom over the break. I consider that a win.

And I feel relatively prepared for our trip. The amount of work required to spend 2.5 days in the snow is not (in my opinion) worth the actual time in the snow, but I’m trying to get excited about it. The things making that somewhat possible are:

• We’re leaving Saturday morning, so I can spend tonight packing up the car (which I just exchanged with my mom).
• It’s only a three hour drive to where we’re going
• We had most of the snow clothes we needed, despite not going to the snow in many years. My son can use my daughter’s old stuff and my daughter is borrowing some pants and boots from a friend. Somehow the jackets I bought them two years ago still fit well enough (I always buy big, thank goodness).
• The person watching our cats doesn’t want to sleep at the house, so I don’t have to have a bedroom cleaned up, just the common areas, kitchen and bathroom. Ditto on a bed set up with clean sheets.
• This week wasn’t “regular” at work so I had a little more mental and physical energy to prepare.
• We’re coming back on Tuesday so the kids are missing one day of school and we are hopefully missing the President’s Day Weekend Traffic.
• I am off the whole week so I have Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday to unpack and do laundry and repack all the snow clothes for the next time we go.

The first and last items on that list are the most important ones. My husband wasn’t so thrilled about going Sat-Tues instead of Fri-Mon but I was adamant. I cannot be ready for a trip like this on a Friday afternoon. I just can’t. I’m so glad I insisted. I absolutely need this evening. I’m also so glad we aren’t doing this during my kids’ spring break when I would have to have been at work the day after we got home. No thank you.

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful that we get to go to the snow. My kids are so excited and I’m excited for them. It’s just A LOT of work for such a short amount of time. But now that most of the work is done, and I feel relatively confident that I haven’t forgotten anything important, I’m trying to get excited. Once I get all the snow clothes and regular clothes and food in the car, I will feel even better (I’m not confident it will all fit).

I’m going to post this now because if I don’t it will sit here until Tuesday and wouldn’t that be silly.

I hope everyone had a nice long weekend (if you get one)!

I swear it’s never my intention to just ghost y’all for so long. I clearly need some kind of posting schedule I’m at least attempting to stick to.

My husband follows Reductress on Instagram and he’s always sending me their posts, because they are hilarious and he knows I love them. When he sent me the post about this mug, I asked for it for Valentine’s Day because it really spoke to me.

This is me to a T. Every week I think, I just need to get through this week! Next week will be better! Next week thinks will finally feel manageable!

Of course, next week never comes. Or at least that feeling I’m chasing never does.

This week is that sentiment on steroids. The 7th graders are at their outdoor Ed experience so I’m not doing much with three classes a day. I have so much backlogged work I’m expecting to get done. But of course, I’m able to tackle far less of it than I hoped, and it takes longer than I expected. Yesterday there were three teachers out and no subs so I covered during one of my prep periods. Today I had an IEP that took an entire prep period. I did hunker down during my second prep and chipped away at my towering pile of papers (I start teaching at zero period and teach until 6th period so I have two prep periods during the day).

This weekend we’re going to the snow, so I have tons to do at home too. The good news is I have next week off, so I’ll have a couple days to unpack. And if I really do get as little done this week as I’m afraid I will, I can spend a day of my week off in my classroom.

In the meantime I just need to get through this week…

{I wrote this on Saturday night, and I’m posting it on Monday morning. Apologies!}

I was supposed to be hanging out with my girl friends tonight, while our daughters hung out too. But the last pair just cancelled so I guess it’s just my daughter and I. I’m realizing that I missed the last two events my friends spent together, which is why I haven’t seen a friend since before the holidays. They all went to a Warriors game together, and I just couldn’t bring myself to spend almost $200 dollars just to hang out with them (I really could not care less about basketball) and they all went to one of the girl’s theater production last weekend, when I was at a comedy show with my husband (again, this was a show that was rescheduled last year, and we never cancelled our tickets). It’s a bummer and I miss them, but none of them are as eager to make plans work right now as I am, because they’ve seen each other a couple times.

And yes, I know I could try to make shorter, smaller, plans with just one of them (I did try to do that tonight, after two cancelled, but the last one ended up canceling too), but that can be hard. We all have a lot going on and finding a night when we can meet up is challenging. I’m also not very good at initiating things like that, because I’m always so exhausted after work and ferrying my kids around the city.

I also don’t really have any other friends (who live in the area), which surely isn’t helping. But even if I did, I’d probably be just as bad as getting together with them. I mean, I don’t really have many friends because I’m so bad at making time for them. It’s absolutely my own doing, to a large extent.

A great friend of mine is coming into town in a couple weeks, so hopefully I’ll be able to see her while she’s here. That is something to look forward to.

Things with my husband are better. He clearly feels bad for what he said. He was exhausted and I caught him at a bad time. We both recognize that our daughter’s schedule blew up seemingly over night and we have not adjusted to that yet. Between all her new commitments, and my being sick, things came to a head.

We’ve created a spreadsheet to help us keep track of who is picking up and bringing home which kids when. I think that will help immensely. Hopefully our daughter will be able to get herself to swimming on the bus at least one day a week soon. It’s too tight some days, but on Wednesday she could probably do it. Even one trip I don’t have to make will be much appreciated.

As for martial arts, I’m still trying to figure it out. Unfortunately it’s more complicated than just, I love it but it’s hard to get to enough classes. If that were the case I’d never consider quitting! But I’m definitely at a level now where a lot of what I’m working on is hard, and committing to 1.5-2.5 hours at the dojo after a long day in the classroom is not always something I want to do. And yes, many times I’m very glad I went, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like the best use of an entire evening. Prepping for my test will require an incredible amount of time, and most of it won’t be super enjoyable. I need to memorize a lot, and keep reviewing it once I’ve memorized it so I won’t lose it, while also tackling more things. I’ve definitely been a green belt for too long, but the idea of testing is daunting. I think once I get to blue belt I’ll be okay just hanging out at that level for a while – a lot of students seem to do that – so maybe I should just get there and then lay low for a while and decide how to proceed later. I do love sharing this one activity with my son, whose other interests (::cough:: video games ::cough::) do not align with mine. But it’s really hard to know what to do, because while I feel pride and accomplishment after I test, I don’t enjoy the stress and time commitment required to test. It’s not just physical, but mental as well.

The dojo can also be a reminder of how much I suck at building community. Everyone there seems to know each other better than I do, even people who started much more recently than I did. They are all young and can stay for multiple classes, and then grab a meal after they train. I just can’t do that. And I never will be able to do that, at least not for several more years. And if I’m being honest, I probably wouldn’t want to do it that much anyway. Social situations where I don’t know anyone very well are hard for me. I’m not good at them. They are stressful and exhausting. I’d usually rather be at home where I don’t have to work so hard.

I think I just have to recognize that friendship is not something I’m ever going to have at the level I want to have it, and be incredibly grateful for the times in my life when I have friends at all (like right now!) I have no friends who actually lived in the city for many years, that is why the ALI blogging community of a decade (plus!) ago was so important to me! Those were my only friends! And without my blog and the people who read it and commented (whose blogs I also read and commented on) I would have felt so incredibly alone.

I guess I don’t have much else to say. Thank you for your thoughts on my last post. I was so upset that night, because I’ve been trying so hard to work on the guilt I feel about committing time to myself, and I’ve worked so hard on believing my husband when he says I should go do something, and his comments just seemed to confirm what I’ve always feared! That even when he’s saying I should do something, he’s actually resentful that I’m away and keeping tabs on who is doing more. But I think it’s more complicated than that. I do believe he genuinely wants me to see friends and train at the dojo and go for a run. But he also needs some down time, and if the delicate balance that works for both of us gets pummeled by sickness or some special events, he can start to feel resentful. I’ve felt myself doing the same thing. We’re both just doing our best, but the margins are so small that it can fall apart really easily.

My husband and I have some serious work to do. Our kids are suddenly very busy (mostly our daughter) and our afternoons and weekends have become incredibly packed. A lot of transporting kids has to be done, which means a lot of communication has to happen. It’s a game of life tetris that right now, we are losing.

I haven’t seen a friend since before the holidays. I carefully planned the few visits I had with my sister so they would minimally inconvenience my husband. I have been at the dojo about half as much as I originally planned, so I could run errands and take the kids to various things. And yet my husband thinks I’m doing all my own shit, without a care, while he sacrifices at the alter of family commitments.

It really sucks. I’ve been making conscious choices to not do things I want to do, in an attempt to keep him from feeling overwhelmed. And what I get is, Well you’ve been doing all your shit. And I’ve been pulling back to make space for everyone else.

Except I’ve been pulling back from my own shit to make space for everyone else too. I just think that when I’m gone for three hours while my daughter tries her first art class across the city – running errands and killing time because it doesn’t make sense to drive all the way back home – then repeat the trip to get her, it seems like I’m off doing my own thing. Except driving across the city, and then driving to another part of the city to get cat food, is not actually my own thing at all.

I have been sick. I did need significant coverage at home on Sunday and Monday nights, because I couldn’t take off from work. And I did take my parents to a comedy show on Friday (tickets that were delayed a year because of the omicron outbreak). And I have been at the dojo once a week for my own training. And yes, one of those days was a longer 3 hour session, but it was just ONE time in the entire month of January. I was gone another Saturday morning, but instead of going to the dojo like I wanted, I drove to Oakland to get medicine for our kitten because the pharmacy at his old vet fucked up and gave us half as much as they were supposed to in December.

I can tell the something will have to give this spring, and I think it’s going to have to be the dojo. There is no way I can train for my blue belt test with my daughter swimming three times a week, my son at the dojo two times a week and my daughter at art once a week. And if I can’t train for this test I should just quit, because I’ve been a green belt for way too long, and everyone else at my level is testing this spring and I don’t want to be left behind again. If I can’t do this now, it means I can’t do it, period.

And maybe that is what I’ll have to do. This is when most people quit anyway. I’m certainly most people. And my commitments at home mean the dojo will never be the community I want it to be for me, or that it already is for other people.

I suck at community anyway.

Right now there is camp sign ups to figure out and a ski trip to plan for, while learning my new crazy afternoon family taxi schedule. February is going to suck. Maybe March will be better.

I’ve been struggling with a couple things lately, things that feel too big and opaque and complicated to write about here. Things like a lack of ambition, or less grandly, a lack of motivation to plan even a weekend away in the snow. Also friendship stuff, worry that my friendships are slipping away and wondering if it’s just a normal occurrence, because that is what happens to most friendships eventually, and especially those that are formed in middle age, and as moms. Or if it’s a failure on my part, yet again, to adequately nourish the relationships that are important to me. Or if it’s a failure – and this is what scares me the most – to be the kind of person people want to remain friends with.

So big questions, the kinds that I don’t really want to ponder, let alone put into words. At the end of the day, there is always a series of tasks that have to be accomplished – checking the kids backpacks, preparing the coffee maker, filling the water filter, emptying the ice trays, tidying the house – and by the end of it I’m tired and I just want to go to sleep. I don’t want to think about things. I don’t want to plan. I don’t want to look at cabins on AirBnB. I just want to listen to an audiobook and play a puzzle game. So I can fall asleep and start it all over again tomorrow.

I think a lot about work. I have to be on, on, on all day. And when I’m not on I’m planning so that when I’m next on all the stuff I need to ready.

I had to get some work done last Sunday night and my sister said, you’re so beholden to your job. And it stung because I try so hard not to be, to leave my work in my classroom, but I had a new group of 6th graders on Monday morning and that meant starting all over again, like it was the first day of school and I wasn’t prepared. So I put my computer away and didn’t do what I needed to do, and 1st period on Monday was kind of a disaster and I left a horrible first impression of unpreparedness with that group of kids. And for what? To prove to my sister, whose job history could not be more different than my own, that I’m not working too hard? I’m still mad at her for saying it, such a throw away line she probably doesn’t even remember uttering but that has stuck with me, and I’m even madder at myself for letting that utterance get under my skin.

{She said a few disparaging things that bothered me and I’m still working through why each one bothered me so much.}

I feel like I just want to do nothing but every day I have to do SO MANY THINGS. Is this a mood issue? Perimenopause? Just who I am?

I just finished the book Molecule or More about how dopamine drives desire but has nothing to do with satisfaction. This explains why I really want shit, but the once I get it, having it is disappointing. But dopamine also drives long term ambition and planning. and people who have over active near future dopamine activity, commonly have deficiencies in their long term planning dopamine circuits.

It’s easy to read something like that and say, AHA! This explains it! Even though I know it’s an over simplistic explanation at best, and surely inaccurate in many significant ways. And what does it me to understand that is the case? I guess I feel slightly less self-loathing when I know that some of my perceived shortcomings have biological explanations, but ultimately I don’t feel better about what I’m incapable of accomplishing.

I’ve read some articles recently about the downsides of over identifying with a diagnosis. A label can help you better understand yourself, and why you behave in certain ways, but if OCD or ADHD or Autism start to define every aspect of who you are, you may become limited by it. I can understand that. When I was first diagnosed with ADHD, it helped me disentangle myself from a tight know of self-loathing and a perceived belief of falling short of so many of society’s expectations. It also allowed me to access medications that brought me out of decade of clinical depression. The relief that the road map that a diagnosis of ADHD provided was very real. But over the years I found myself referring to that road map too often, even though when I could tell its topography was not longer serving me. Working on how and when to identify with my ADHD, and when to remind myself that it doesn’t define me, has been a complicated journey. One I’m still traveling.

The truth is, ADHD is tightly intertwined with most of what I’m most proud of as a person, and most of what I’m most ashamed of. I could spend my life trying to reconcile those to extremes, or just celebrate what I’m proud of and take small, consistent steps in improving what I’m not proud of. Just like everyone else.

I started this post over a week ago and added a sentence or paragraph when I found the time. I promised myself I’d publish it on Monday, regardless of where it was. So while I can’t really wrap all of this up into a meaningful bow, I will say that I’m feeling a little better about some things, despite some weird virus that resides primarily in my throat upending part of my weekend. I’m also noticing some physical symptoms that suggest hormones had at least something to do with my mood last week (I could (and actually have) put up several posts on how ill equipped I feel to understand the ways I should be incorporating permenopause into my current identity.) It’s so much harder for me to understand, and the guideposts provided by society are not comprehensive at all.

Well, I didn’t mean to be gone for a week, but as I expected things have been hectic since my sister came into town.

But this week we’re getting blissful break from the rain. On Sunday I ran on the Embarcadero and got caught in the rain for the second half of my run. At that point I was officially very over our wet weather.

But this week has been dry. And even sunny in some spots. I hope that continues.

I’m feeling stressed out and over loaded and I’m trying to identify exactly why that is and what I can do to ease those feelings. Unfortunately I think a big part of it is that I didn’t get to unwind during my break like I needed to, because of my friend’s mental health crisis. So I guess I just need to accept that and hope I can make the mid-winter break in February more restful.

I’m sorry I don’t have more time to write, but I just dropped my daughter at her second swim practice and my sister downtown, and I’m supposed to be at the dojo in less than an hour.

We got a break in the rain today, and it was marvelous! I was so taken by the color of the skies on the drive to work this morning, and I realized it’s the first time I’ve seen the sunrise since before the winter break. We’ve been getting SO MUCH RAIN. And there is more to come. Today was the only break in a week’s worth of rain. Tomorrow it starts again and it’s supposed to pour through Monday.

Our back room, the one that already had water damage, has gotten REALLY bad. It’s basically just a mold incubator now. The walls are covered in mold and it smells AWFUL. We already keep the door to that room closed, and don’t use it much in the winter because it’s FREEZING back there (it doesn’t have insulation), but now I don’t think we’ll be able to use it again until we get it gutted and rebuilt.

Normally this kind of thing would send me into a panic spiral, but it’s not. I think this is because it just has to happen now, so no choice has to be made. And if we have to do this now, we are pretty certain we will not be doubling (or tripling) the cost of the project to build inside stairs to connect the units. Would I LOVE to have inside stairs, absolutely. Am I willing to spend $50K on them? Absolutely not. And honestly, it’s probably best for both spaces if we just leave them separate. So now that I feel pretty confident about what we’ll do, I’m not so stressed about it anymore. I guess the thing I really hate is making difficult decisions.

Do we know how we’re going to pay for this? Not yet, but we’ll figure it out. This has been a back burner project for us since before the pandemic, we were just able to keep punting it because of the drought. That is no longer an option, and we knew at some point it wouldn’t be. We’ll figure it out.

Speaking of money, one of the main ideas of Your Money Your Life is to figure out how much money you make an hour (the actual amount, so how much you make a year, minus all the stuff you spend for your job (including clothes, work dinners, coffee breaks with your boss, commuting costs, etc) divided by the actual number of hours you work (which includes all the off-the-clock hours and commuting). I did a rough estimate of this (it was hard because I wear Vuoris to work at least once a week, which means I can’t really say that ANY of my clothes are work related, and I’m better about not spending my own money on school stuff, but I’m not better at tracking how much money that still is. Even commuting is hard because we charge our car in our house at night, so that exact expenditure is lost in our monthly PG&E bill).

So I calculated it as best I could, and the number ended up being pretty high. I’m sure I didn’t consider enough spending that happens because I work, so I rounded it down quite a bit, but it’s still a pretty decent number, one that might not help me reconsider my spending in quite the way I’d wanted. If I had done this 20 (or even 10) years ago, it would have been a MUCH lower number that would have made me think very differently about a lot of purchases, but now if the question is, is this purchase worth 30 minutes of my working life, the answer might be yes a lot of the time. I’m going to have to think about it some more, because I wasn’t expecting this result.

The happy part of this is that I make a decent amount of money now! I’m sure in comparison with others in the area it’s not impressive, but to pay a mortgage that we acquired in the 2012 market, it’s not bad.

Having said that, this home repair project will definitely be felt, which means we could absolutely be saving more than we are. A lot more. So, so much more. And now we need to, for something much more serious than a trip.

Off to a totally unrelated topic: today I had to get my blood pressure, heart rate and oxygen levels checked for my ADHD meds refill, and the nurse asked me if I work out a lot, before telling me I was like a 20 year old. That felt really good, because I don’t look anything like a 20 year old anymore, and my weight gain is making some clothes a little tight, I was also SO RELIEVED that she didn’t weigh me, because seeing a number right now would do nothing for me except trigger old body issue stuff that I’m trying really hard not to fall into. (I was going to request she not say how much I weighed, but I’ve had mixed results with that in the past). I had been dreading the appointment all week, but instead I felt good about myself when I left. Hooray!

Did I mention the sun came out today? It really did wonders for my mood. I also think my hormones are leveling off. I hate having so little control over my base-line mood, but I guess I should embrace the days when I’m up instead of down.

Today was really energy intensive at work, but tomorrow should be a lot less so. And then we have a three day weekend! My sister is in town starting Saturday and it’s my mom’s birthday on Monday, so it won’t really be restful or relaxing (both of them require.. a lot of consideration, especially when they are together, so it will be a lot to spend 24 hours managing my mom’s birthday expectations and my sister’s but-this-is-my-vacation expectations, especially with the rain making it impossible for us to be outside). Still, I will take a day off when I can get one, because it’s almost impossible for me to take days off when I want to.

And my elliptical workout is done! I didn’t get to run today because of the appointment (all the parks are closed anyway, or I would have been a lot more upset about that), but I did get my cardio in. Nice to know it’s actually doing good things for my body!

(Hilariously, I’m pretty sure I’m in WAY better shape both physically and mentally, than I was in my 20s. Which was not lost on me when she said that.)

I’m back at work this week. Today is a PD day. PD = Professional Development = ALL the ineffective meetings about whatever new edspeak buzz word we’re focusing on right now (but will never mention again).

I will say that I REALLY liked our later Winter Break. This past week off was lovely. I’m not sure if the same thing will happen next year (my kids start break a week earlier and end a week earlier than I did), and I’m not sure what I would pick if I could, but it doesn’t matter because I have no choice, so I’m going to enjoy whatever kind of break I have (I know I’ve VERY lucky that I don’t need to travel to see family during the break, so it doesn’t really affect me).

Anyway, I enjoyed having four days off while my kids were back in school (they had Monday off). And I enjoyed having my break take place after Christmas Day.

And… my friend made it back down to LA. I don’t understand how they did it, but I’m relieved they did. I actually have a lot of bigger feelings about it, because their ability to buy a ticket, and navigate TSA and get on a plane and fly to LA flies in the face of their behavior over the past two weeks and the story I’ve told myself to tolerate the way I was treated as I tried to help. Lots of big feelings about it, but I’m focusing on the relief I feel that they are home and I am no longer the point person that their family and other friends are depending on.

This weekend was a little rough. I was feeling pretty down. Today I started my period which explains A LOT. Now I’m feeling a little better, just knowing that hormones are a big part of why I was so down this weekend. It’s also annoying to recognize that something I have NO control over, can hijack my experience so much.

I’m spent some time today writing down all my purchases for the first week of January. I’m finding Your Money or Your Life to be a somewhat challenging read for me – why is it so hard for me to articulate my values and purpose?! – but I’m committed to sticking it out to the end. And I’m committed to taking the steps outlined in the book (though I’m sure I won’t be able to accurately determine how much money I’ve ever made – babysitting was my main form of income for SIX YEARS, and I have no idea how much I made back then), at least for a few months. I want to change my relationship with money, and this book promises to TRANSFORM it, so I’m going to give it a try. I’ll keep updating you all about how it goes.

My daughter gets to start practicing with a swim team! It’s just one hour a week (because the practice starts at 4pm and her school doesn’t get out until 4pm except for early-release Wednesdays), but it’s a start! And we got her into an art class that meets for four weeks in February! These are both big deals.

And I’m going to press publish now because I had four personal items on my to-do-during-PD list and this was one of them, and it’s the only one I haven’t completed yet. Look at me! Setting goals and revisiting them!

I’m not very good at goals. I was thinking. maybe my goal for 2023 should be to get better at articulating goals and then checking in on my progress with them. So my goal for this year would be… to get better at goals?

Blerg.

The good news is there isn’t a lot about my life I’d like to work on. That is a positive! There was a time when I would spend this part of the year lamenting how much weight I’d gained, and devising strategies to lose it. But this year I’m not worried about that. I have definitely gained some weight, but as long as my clothes still fit I’m refusing to get on the scale to see exactly how much I’ve gained. I think, in the absence of old Halloween candy and holiday treats, I’ll stabilize again.

I do want to test for my blue belt before summer, but I have a community at the dojo to help me with that goal.

Professionally I have no goals right now, which strikes a part of me as sad, but not a very big part of me. I’m trying to embrace the general satisfaction I feel at work, and to not think too much about my lack of ambition.

I guess the one thing I want to get better at is planning, in my personal life. I am VERY good at planning at work – sitting down with my teaching planner is one of the ways I calm myself when things feel especially hectic. I always have a general idea of what I’m going to do for the coming month (in each class) and every Thursday and Friday I spend time writing out detailed lessons for the next week.

But my personal life is not like that. I do use a personal planner now (this is the second school year I’ve used it) and it definitely helps, but I’m not taking full advantage of it. It even has a space at the top of every month and each week to articulate goals, and reflect on what I did well and what I could work on, but I only sometimes fill those parts out. I’m just not very good at long term planning in my personal life. I kind of let external forces drive a lot of timelines (like I start thinking about summer in early March, so I am ready for the Rec and Park summer camp sign up on the second or third Saturday), which works well enough but doesn’t provide much satisfaction.

When my kids were younger, these systems (or lack thereof) worked well enough. We couldn’t do much with them, travel wise, and we mostly just looked for camps that would help them kill the summer hours. And then the pandemic happened, right when that would have changed. And now they are older and suddenly everything seems to need more forethought.

Maybe my goal should be to meet with my husband once a month to talk about what is coming up and decide who will do what. Maybe that change would be enough.

I also want to get my kids into the habit of doing their chores without so much reminding. Focusing on that would be provide dividends that would compound naturally.

And of course there is money. I always want to get better with my money, because the truth is I’m not intentional about it at all. I don’t think I would say I’m bad with money, but I believe I’ve gotten this far without ever paying interest on a credit card because of privilege and luck (just another way to say privilege in this context), and really nothing else. But I don’t want to teach that mindset around money to my kids. And we’re finally at a place financially, where it’s clear that if I were more intentional with my spending, it could really make a difference.

We have big trips we want to take with the kids in the next few years, trips that right now feel prohibitively expensive. But I don’t think they have to be, if we plan for them. So far our international travel has been geared toward affordability, but as the kids get older and we can count on one hand the number of summers are daughter will reliably be home, I’m realizing that if I want to take them to Hong Kong (where I grew up) or Japan (where they want to go) or Australia (on everyone’s bucket list) or Spain, we’re going to have to have WAY more money saved.

Camps are also much more expensive, and not just because Rec and Park opens priority registration to kids in need early, which leaves almost no spots for middle class families in mid-March. My kids actually want to try new things at camp, like baseball and basketball for our son and art for our daughter. And those kinds of camps are $600+/week, instead of the $200/wk we were spending before the pandemic. Even if my kids just do four weeks of camp each, that is a $3.5K+ price tag! If we want to go to St. Louis AND anywhere else, we’re talking $10K+ a summer (much more if we manage a big international trip).

We also have to rent a car in St. Louis now, which means that trip costs an extra $1K. And my daughter wants to try a week of sleep-away camp, which will be three times more than a week of day camp. It all adds up.

Again, we have the means to do a lot of what we want, but only if we’re spending intentionally.

I’ve already talked to my husband about setting up monthly meetings, where we can have a couple drinks and review our spending. The good news is my husband doesn’t spend much, so I could make big changes without his participation. The bad news is, that means it primarily falls on me.

So I guess that will be my main goal: intentional spending. Which hopefully will lead, eventually, to financial intelligence. I’m (re)reading Your Money or Your Life (which I bought year(s?!) ago and never finished), which should help. The thing is I’m not the kind of person who wants to buy a car every few years, or dreams of upgrading her house (we joke we’ll stay in this one until they wheel us to the assisted living center two blocks away). We don’t even splurge on vacations (you may remember we only went to Hawaii this summer because we had a(n almost) free place to stay and the airfare and car rental were incredibly cheap).

So many of the examples of unnecessary indulgence in the book don’t apply to us, but we absolutely have too much stuff. And it was my credit card that purchased most of it. Those relatively small purchases add up. I know that being more discerning with my spending would make a difference, possibly a really large one.

And now I have actual financial goals to work toward. I never felt a particular draw to FIRE, and we’ve always been so fortunate to be able to live within our means (at least since our son left childcare, that has been relatively easy). I do stress some about college (okay a lot) but that feels like such a giant price tag that daily decisions couldn’t really touch it (of course they could, but it never felt like that enough for me). So now that I have actual vacations I want to be ready for, I think foregoing little daily doses of consumer pick-me-ups will be easier to forego.

It seems like meeting with my husband once a month is the first step. We could talk them about spending (and I’d have that meeting to hold me accountable), and how the kids’ chores are doing, and the general state of our lives.

It’s already January 3rd and I’m fighting something inside myself to sit down here.

The only thing I know for certain is that there will be no New Years post in this corner of the internet. At least I don’t think there will be. And I want to write it out, and put it into the world, if only to absolve myself of my own expectations.

Things with my friend have been hard. And heartbreaking. It’s hurt me and hurt my marriage. I’m feeling pretty lost and alone.

But I took today to recoup. And I’m feeling a little better.

I’m going to step away from the situation with my friend for a couple days. It’s clear to me now that I cannot help him. It’s just beyond me. And it doesn’t help anyone, least of all him, for me to let myself get taken down with him and his mental illness.

So that is where I am at. And I wanted to check in and let people know that I’m okay. Or I will be.

I’m so thankful my break is not over yet. I really need the next three days.