Working on saving these so I can owe less of these…
Two Christmases ago, I remember thinking to myself, “this sucks. I have less than $500 in savings, over $7000 in credit card debt and can’t even charge anything even if I want to because it will put me over the limit, and I have less than $30 in my checking account. HOW did I get here? I’m 39!”
Yes, I look at this moment as my financial rock bottom.
Today, my savings account is much healthier, and I can afford to rent a car this week to go home for Thanksgiving. (I found out Budgetwill let you rent without a credit card if you fit certain qualifications.) I have zero credit card debt (and zero personal cards–the only credit card I have is a corporate one.) I have $1169 due on a personal loan and I will have that paid off by Dec. 31st, “come hell or high water” as my mom used to say. The only debt remaining will be my student loans. Read more →
Since I’ve been single these last few months, I’ve had more time to think, and I mean really think. I sometimes look back to who I was just a few years ago and wonder if I’m the same person. I used to have what was called (to my former father-in-law’s coveting eye) the magical snack-cabinet. You opened it up and every kind of unhealthy snack could be found within it. I used to be content to watch hours of TV every week. I would work out a lot but if it wasn’t an actual running workout, I felt like I was kind of cheating for that day. And, while I loved animals (and still do), I was afraid to go to an animal shelter and volunteer my time because I thought it would break my heart to leave the animals behind every day. It still hurts, but I now know I’m doing something when I volunteer at the Animal Rescue League of Boston rather than just thinking about doing something.
Meet Buster – up for adoption at the Northeast Animal Shelter in Salem, MA
Here’s the thing – I don’t feel like I am doing enough to help animals. Sure, I’ve adopted a few more over the past few years and while that helps those lucky few, it doesn’t help the hundreds of thousands or millions of other ones out there. While I was taking an online writing course, some class members thought that I was a strong writer and so that I should combine that strength/skill with my love of animals and try to give them a voice. So, that’s what I plan on doing. I’d like to write more regularly on this blog, and I think it would be a good place to highlight some animal issues every week, whether it be highlighting an animal that is up for adoption, or some of the more touchy issues relating to animals. I may also touch on my life as a new vegan from time to time, because the main reason I chose to go vegan was to reduce my impact on their suffering. I know that, alone, it isn’t much. But multiply my situation by many and it starts to add up. I just don’t feel like I have the right to consume animal products. Not anymore.
So, I won’t lie and say I won’t post pictures that might be hard for you to look at sometimes. There are many times that I see something on Facebook and it makes me want to cry (and sometimes I do) but it’s because it has such a huge effect on me that I feel the need to do something MORE. This blog is about chasing my dreams, and one of my dreams is to help a lot of animals, including my own but not being limited to them. Writing is a skill that I have so I need to use it for some good in this world. This blog will just be the start of something that allows me to give a voice to those who don’t have one.
Every week, in some way or another, I am reminded how fortunate I am. That’s a good thing.
I met with a former student yesterday who is from a country that is pretty much run by a dictator. It made me realize how much we take technology for granted here, as well as our individual freedoms. I’m able to see my family whenever I want. He cannot.
I met with my financial advisor yesterday and she told me my goals are definitely doable. That makes me feel so empowered. Just need to keep on staying the course.
The other night, my cat Bonkers was making some strange noises and making these weird squatting stances. It seems to have cleared up, though, thank God. I really didn’t want to have to make an emergency trip to the vet where walking through the door costs you $150 and that’s before he even sees the vet. If it’s an emergency though, have no doubt about it, though. I will do it without question for my animals because they are everything to me.
I have gone VEGAN this week, diet-wise. Threw out my dairy products or took them to work for others to enjoy if I knew the time lag between my place and work wouldn’t make them go bad. Now working on replacing my personal care products to be vegan friendly. (Oh, I also went through my clothes and filled up another trash bag with clothes that contain wool. I’m a tiny bit allergic to them anyway, so it’s the right choice in my mind.)
My brother just ran his best marathon time EVER in Philly this past weekend. He smashed his PR by ten minutes. Oh, did I mention his old PR was already UnDER three hours?? That’s right. He is 39, and came in 9th in his division of men aged 35-39, as well as 90th OVERALL and 89th in his gender. (Yep, there was a female in that top 90. Wahoo!) His new PR is ….. Wait for it….. 2:45:31!!!!That is an average mile pace of 6:18. I’m so super proud of him! (And he has agreed to let me interview him for the blog….yay!)
I feel like every week, I am getting closer and closer to knowing my true purpose in this life. It energizes me to get up every day and to continue enriching my mind and learning from others.
Now where do I sleep?? (clockwise: HoneyBun, Callie, Osito and Max)
During my online writing class was asked to write about our obsessions and how they affect our writing. Do they get in the way? In a word, no. Unless their walking across my tablet counts as getting in the way. 🙂
(My other obsession is checking out tiny houses, RVs, simple living blogs and videos, but more on that in another post…)
The above photo says it all. I might pay the rent for my apartment but my place really belongs to the animals. At least three of them sleep with me regularly at night, and sometimes a fourth one joins us. They all have their usual “spots” on the bed too. When I wake in the morning, the first thing I usually do is put the dog down on the floor (she’s blind and teeny tiny so she can’t really jump down on her own), and then my white cat, Max, turns to me for his morning snuggles. It can make it hard to get up some mornings but I do it!
Does this mean I will never make space for another human in my bed? No, of course not. They will just need to understand how important my animals are to me and accept that they are staying. If they don’t, we’ll, then they (meaning a guy) won’t understand me, and just won’t be right for me. It’s as simple as that.
Do you have any obsessions you would be willing to share? If so, please leave a comment below. (Or, you can just let me know how cute my animals are.)
I am so grateful for this big ball of love, Sebastian.
Every day and every week, I am reminded of how lucky I am to have a roof over my head and a job to pay for it. When I go to the animal shelter on the weekend, I get off of the T at the Copley station. Most people probably now think of the Copley area as the site of the Boston Marathon bombings but before that, it might have been known for the Boston Public Library. Apartments and condos in that area are SO expensive. Parking spaces alone can cost more than $100k. Yet, on a Sunday morning, you will always see homeless people wrapped in blankets, sleeping on the library’s steps. When I go to work, at an extremely rich university, I pass by a church that usually has teenagers or young adults sleeping on its steps. I find it ironic that these kids are sleeping just steps away from a school who projects students’ annual living expenses of upwards of $65k. A school that trains the elite of the elite. It blows my mind, quite honestly. Read more →
I ask myself this every time I have moved and can’t figure out where all the stuff came from. You know how it is. In the beginning stages of packing, you’re all about being neat and orderly. You label boxes with the contents and room where they should be placed in your new home. And then, as the move date nears, your decision-making skills go on vacation and you end up with a few boxes labeled “random crap/stuff.” If you say this has never happened to you, well, I don’t want to call anyone a liar, but…..
Many things to be thankful for this past week. So, let’s get started with the list!
My birthday was this week. I felt a lot of love from folks and it was also very nice to hear from some how I don’t look my age. Exercise pays off, people! Read more →
On my day off yesterday, I meant to get rid of a bunch of stuff. The day went by and the intentions were still there, but I hadn’t taken action. Until a friend told me someone from a woman’s shelter was coming by to take some donations and did I want to get rid of anything? They especially wanted yarn and knitting needles.
When you don’t have a car, it’s hard to get rid of stuff sometimes. It’s that extra effort of getting the stuff to the donation box or the Good Will, that stops you. Or, at the very least, slows you down. But this took that problem out of the equation.
Well, I ran around my place like a crazy woman. Got rid of pantyhose (they need them for interviews), blank note cards, resume paper, gift bags, and yes, yarn and knitting needles. The needles were my grandma’s and were the old school type-metal! I had been hanging on to them for sentimental reasons. Knitting had been important to my grandma, or at least I remembered her doing a lot of it. Ergo, they had to be important to me too, right. Didn’t that make perfect sense? Long story short, I kept a pair and donated the rest.
I’ve bought a wand scanner with the intention of scanning photos and putting them into a digital photo frame. If I’m going to live in a tiny house, I need to economize where I put things. A digital frame just makes sense. But, I do have a fear of losing the printed photo and then the technology changes, and eventually, I just can’t see the photos anymore. Irrational fear? Perhaps.
Last night, I went to the boxes below my bed and started pulling out the photo albums. I then remembered that’s where I have kept the photos from my wedding and my married life, as well as the years leading up to my marriage with my now-ex husband. When I left, he gave me all the items that we had taken or accrued together of sentimental value. Some thought that to be harsh of him. i realized it was his way of dealing with things, so I took them. At the time, I thought I deserved the guilt of having to relive those memories every time I looked at them. Now, the question is–do I keep the photos? Do I scan them into a separate disk so I still have them but they won’t inadvertently show up in the random display of photos I want to see regularly? Because that would be like a dull knife stabbing me every time, I think.
I watched the video of Dee Williams (embedded above) a few weeks ago and a few times since. In it, she mentions she was engaged to be married at one point in her life. She said she kept the wedding engagement announcement for decades. She finally realized she knew that happened and could let the written record of that happening, go. She knew she could hold it in her heart and inside of herself.
Similar to Dee, I know it (our relationship) happened. I know we had 12 years together. I know that parts of it were very good but it just wasn’t meant to last forever. If it had, I wouldn’t be who I am today. And when I look at them, it doesn’t make me feel that great. I feel a tinge of sadness. So, I think I am getting close to letting the photos go. It doesn’t mean the memories aren’t in me. They will always be there unless I get a mental illness that robs me of them (please please let that not happen!)
I keep thinking of what Dee says in the video–what would you want to hold in your arms as you die? I know that my answer to that question may change over time but I don’t think it would be photos of my wedding and subsequent marriage which ended a few years ago.
What memories do you have difficulty dealing with? Do you have photos like I do that you can’t get rid of or have had difficulty doing so in the past?
I saw a friend’s resume the other day and was really impressed. She is a writer in the tried and true sense of the word. She has her MFA in creative writing and has been published many, many times. I asked her how she got so many pieces published and said how I would feel so afraid of rejection. She acknowledged she has been rejected many times, but it just fuels her to keep going. This person has gone through a lot in life so I was really inspired to hear her say that. And it got me thinking…
This week has been much better than last week. Even took a day off all for myself. “Mental health days” as I like to call them, are much needed sometimes, especially when you are facing the longer, colder nights of the Northeast. Not looking forward to looking out my window at work and seeing that it’s dark out by a little bit after 4 p.m. But I have a plan to combat that SAD syndrome I usually go through! (See number 4 below.) Read more →
Chasing Simple Dreams 