money

Creative writing gig?

/ dashtikalin / Leave a comment

I’m obviously not the best blogger on the planet. Shocking, right?? I mean, I’m bad about uploading on time, if at all. Schedules are my enemy. My life isn’t interesting enough to produce a lot of content for writing. I’ve discovered I’m all around terrible at marketing myself as a blogger. I’m basically the rebellious teenager of bloggers. I want to keep up for the sake of forcing myself to try something new and actually follow through with a project I started for once. I’m kind of tired of being the queen of projects started but never finished. However, I’m also discovering blogging is not the pièce de résistance of projects I enjoy.

Don’t get me wrong, blogging can be fun and a great creative outlet for me sometimes. But my true love when it comes to writing is creative writing. Technically this blog is a kind of creative writing, sure. However it’s not exactly the kind of creative writing I dream about. My creative writing love is found in the world of fantasy and fiction. Writing books about stories I created is the dream and goal I had when I majored in creative writing in college. I had even been working on a book for years before college. Now looking back, that book was pretty terrible in a lot of ways… But I loved writing it so much. I loved writing so much. Being able to create an entirely new world in my head and articulate it on paper for the enjoyment of others felt like my destiny and purpose in life, and it was a hobby I enjoyed with every fiber of my being.

These days, however, I don’t write much anymore outside of Facebook and blogging. It’s not because I no longer enjoy it, I just never feel motivated to start writing because I have this huge fear it will be another project I’ll never finish. And I hate not finishing books. I wish I could blame my lack of motivation on my kids, but that would be oversimplifying the real issue. My creative dry patch started in college. I had so many studies and so little time management skills, a lot of my creative hobbies flew right out the window. I joined an art class in hopes that it would help mold my artistic abilities and it burned me out so badly, I didn’t draw anything for years afterwards. I still rarely draw, and I used to draw every single day in high school. The same thing happened with writing. My English/writing classes were so drab and bland, I just lost all motivation to write creatively. I wrote well in my classes, but they were informative papers, not creative.

As far as my book went, I had a huge case of writer’s block. I think I still may have it a little. But something I read recently gave me hope. I had been poking around online to see what are good ways to make a little extra money online when I came across an article written by a man who had recently experimented in the business of writing short stories to essentially self publish and sell cheaply in online book stores. This made me so excited. I may not be able to sit down and write an entire novel, but I can definitely convince myself to write a short story. I could probably pump out a short story a week if I really wanted to. And now you’re telling me I could also make a little cash doing what I love? Sign me the heck up! This is exactly what I think I need to get my foot back in the door to the creative writing world. Even if I write these stories and make no money at all, I will be happy to at least get my creative juices flowing again. Fingers crossed writing again will help me get my passion back.

Debt, debt, and more debt

/ dashtikalin / 1 Comment

I’ve known of Dave Ramsey’s existence for years now, but I never really sat down and tried to understand his method. My mother-in-law is a HUGE Dave Ramsey fan and had made my husband learn all about Dave Ramsey’s methods and teachings and such. So when we finally moved in together after getting married, he just kind of naturally took over the finances and I took over the house. I trusted that he had better education on how to manage a budget than I did since my parents never really talked about budgeting with me growing up. I trusted that he would make sensible financial decisions and just went on my merry way living life and pouring all of my energy into trying to navigate my life as a new wife and mother. It was not only our first time living in our own place together, but we moved in with our first son hundreds of miles away from any familiar face. There was a lot of struggling on my end. I struggled with managing a household for thr first time. I struggled with all of a sudden being in charge of not only cleaning up after more people than myself, but actually feeding more people than myself. I struggled with not having any support other than my husband and long distance phone calls from my family. I struggled with trying to find compatibility with my husband who was, as most men are, totally different to live with than he was to date. I struggled with navigating my first child’s life with no family around to support me. And did I mention I am a horrible housecleaner and cook? I have always been that chaotic creative kind of messy person and there was one time I literally burned water on the stove. I burned it. But these things don’t mesh well with being a stay at home mom. You just can’t live in a trashed house when you have a baby. And you can’t starve yourself and your family just because you can’t cook. I was swimming in all these first time experiences and had no idea what to do with myself.

As I struggle with my new home life, my husband was struggling too. I love the man to death but he is far too attracted by shiny things… expensive shiny things. This was our first problem. Our second problem was that my husband saw how I was struggling and had no idea how to make things better for me. So he resorted to gift giving, the only love language he knows how to show me. And I don’t mean fine jewels and such kind of gifts. I mean like taking us out to eat so I won’t have to cook that night kind of gifts. Or cute small things I see at the local walmart that I like, such as makeup and sometimes even clothes. Somewhat practical gifts, but still expensive and not in our budget. And I was too self absorbed to realize we were living outside our means until it was too late. Even when I did start noticing suspicious things like him using what looked like a credit card, I didn’t say anything for way too long because I was afraid of offending him by second guessing his financial decisions. We were newlyweds and I was still lacking so much confidence at that point in my life. So I let these poor spending habits go on and on for too long until eventually my husband was the one to admit to me that we had a problem. I tried to write out budgets more than once, but none of them ever stuck. Looking back, I think I was way overcomplicating the budgets and it was just not working out for either of us. We also struggled a lot with communicating what/when we were spending money (I say “we” but realistically I was not the one spending money).

The budgets didn’t work and we essentially dug ourselves into a nice little pit. Recently, however, I have been in a position of unusual power in the household. I am now solely in charge of the finances. I sat myself down and watched videos on the Dave Ramsey’s financial freedom methods and have written up a comprehensive budget that does distinctly highlight savings, but also allows for a small amount of freedom money to have some fun. We are currently working on our emergency fund and then I will promptly start our debt snowball after that is finished. Sitting down and really adding up all of our debt was really hard for me. I am not proud of how far we’ve fallen, but I know what we need to do to remedy our problems and I am excited to start the process. Sitting down and put together a clear game plan has helped me so much. Knowing exactly what steps I need to take to chip away at our debt is exactly what I needed to move forward with really getting somewhere with our finances. I feel so relieved to finally know what I am doing with my life. This will be a long and difficult journey, but I’m ready and I will drag my poor husband with me whether he likes it or not. Our financial communication has come a long way and I am reallu proud of how we have matured together. I wish we didn’t have to build so much debt to get here, but that’s life. Know better, do better. Fingers crossed this budget and financial plan works for us!