The Plan

I like to read blogs about people who have inspiring success stories. Mostly they live really unconventionally. They are self-employed, and spend their time doing work they love and/or very little time doing work at all. They have flexible schedules and strange lives, but they also have enough money and resources to do all kinds of crazy fun stuff. Travel, mostly, and have cool hobbies. I don't know if there is a name for this kind of blog, but there are a lot of them out there. When it comes right down to it, many of them seem to earn awesome livings off of the fact that they have cool lifestyles so that people are willing to pay them for some sort of coaching or advice. This is a very strange infinite loop, and a pretty amazing racket. I wonder, how did they get started? Is it a fake it 'til you make it sort of thing?

I think that it must be a little like the psychic scam where you start out predicting, say, the outcome of football games. Tell half your customers one answer, and the other half the other. Repeat this over the course of, say, five games, and for every 30 people you started out with, about one should end up convinced that you have pierced the vale of time and space.

What I mean is that a lot of people must start off trying to achieve an awesome, flexible lifestyle like that, but for the most part, you only end up reading about the ones who are successful in every sense of the word. I thought it would be interesting to try that process backwards - beginning at a point when, sure, some foundation has been laid, but I'm broke and unemployed and mostly uninformed about how to be a successful freelancer (which for blogging purposes should be close enough to point zero). Then we will see where I end up and, retroactively, how I got there.

I also want to take a close look at success, and how I'm willing to define that. Sure, I'd love to make enough money to feel more stable, to allow J to quit his current job, and to enjoy certain luxuries like travel. But nothing is ever perfect. If we could retire at age thirty-five I know I'd still have problems, and if we never make it above the poverty line I think I'll still feel pretty lucky. I want to define success in a way that allows for the human condition (specifically, the unique condition of this particular human) and lets me be happy right now, instead of maybe never.

A lot of success, I think, is figuring out the best ways to work through our problems. It's easy to write about that once it's done, and much harder when you're still not sure how well you're going to solve them. Since I'm going to write about this stuff, though, I'm going to try to do it honestly.

Gimme Sugar

Today I'm making brownies for breakfast.

I know, this isn't supposed to be a food blog. Food is a sort of shorthand for prosperity for me, though. When I'm eating well, I feel like I'm doing well. In my mind this looks like someone making delicious, healthy, balanced meals for me. Second best is making sure I get the time to do it myself.

Today, though, is not going to be that kind of day.

Look, I wasn't being entirely forthcoming when I said our refrigerator is full of food. Technically that's true, but besides special stuff for the kids, it's mostly things like raw chicken and vegetables - perfect for those delicious meals. This morning, though, a toddler woke me at 5:00, wanting to nurse for an hour or so and then leap out of bed. I think I got about five hours of sleep, total. And so...

The thing is, when I get stressed, I get really cranky and act about three years old about food. If there's nothing I actually want to eat, I whine. If I whine for a while and no one hands me something I want to eat, I feel like no one loves me and I pretty much stop functioning. In less prosperous times, when good food has been hard to come by, I've actually been known to burst into tears if J went out to eat and failed to bring me something. That kind of shit is not very good when I'm the parent on call.

This morning I am stressed. It's actually not primarily about the money. J came home with $50 yesterday, and today he's out cleaning gutters. We should be able to buy groceries by tomorrow. It's about the fact that yesterday was a long, long day I wasn't planning on, that we didn't get around to cleaning or taking any breaks, that last night was a short, short night, that the kids have been tired and cranky and the little one has been on a nursing spree, which really makes me feel depleted and even a little extra homicidal. Normal mom stuff, I think.

But it is bad, the state that I'm in, so I do what I can, which is eat junk food. In general, feeling like I'm being healthy and setting a healthy example for my kids makes me happy. Today, eating brownies for breakfast is helping me cope. My baby is covered with chocolate, and doesn't seem to be suffering much, either. And now I am about 300% more ready to face another day.

Point Zero

Yesterday we bought a frozen Pizza.

It was hard to do the math because the kids were sick of shopping and starting to scream like crazed monkies, but we also bought some bagels and other things and tried to spend our last thirty dollars in a reasonably sane way. We ended up with $11 dollars in change, which is not bad. Technically we owe this money to our son for his allowance. He is four and won't notice, but we try to be reliable anyway, because some day he will.

That was it, though. We have two bank accounts, and now both of them are empty.

We are kind of used to this because we've never really had steady jobs, but it can still be scary at times, especially because we haven't dipped this low since before we had kids. I spent a lot of the morning doing deep breathing exercises, and the rest thinking about what our worst-case scenario options might be. Sometimes, this is freelancing.

Even at times like this, we have a lot to be thankful for. We own our home outright, the utilities have all been paid, and we have a fridge full of food. James has two days of wages owed, and one day of maintenance work lined up for later this week. There are also a few recent purchases (some construction materials, mostly) that we can return if we really, really need some cash. This is the list, at least, that I found myself going through over and over as I tried to stay positive.

Things had been getting tight for a while, though, so we felt like splurging a little before we were out of money entirely. We baked the pizza and the frozen cookies that came with it, and made ourselves drinks. suddenly, while we were waiting to eat, J got a phone call from a last-minute client who wants him to DJ a wedding in two weeks. This kind of timing is almost unheard of and extremely fortuitous, and the pay is good. We can hold out until then! Crisis averted! (This is also freelancing.)

Today, J is helping a friend move some things, and I'm trying to clean the house while I keep the kids alive. When I counted the change that I found on all the floors, I had $1.07. I put it in the change jar. We are moving up in the world!