People keep telling me I should write a book. This usually follows a story about my early years. Instead of writing such a book, perhaps I should see how many people would wisely pay me not to share my experiences with them. How much would you pay for me to stop talking endlessly about cats, childhood trauma, and how I became addicted to chocolate?
But why would I possibly need money? Possibly to fund my corset, chocolate, cat, and fabric addictions? Maybe?
In actuality, the first issue is an age-old one. As a mother, I was offered the opportunity to stay home with my children instead of outsourcing their care to others. My husband felt that the pay wouldn’t be enough to offset childcare if I worked in an office or a bookstore or a library. And I wasn’t sure I’d want to miss their little faces for forty hours or more a week.
However, the constant need to advocate for extracurricular activities for my kids is exhausting. Yes, I have many random skill sets, but I didn’t pursue teaching as a career because I lack some of the required facets of a good teacher—unlimited energy and patience, for instance. This means I get to hear how bored they are despite my best efforts to entertain. Besides, as their mother, they don’t always give me the same attention they give to someone else who is sharing knowledge with them.
I want my children to learn and have fun. One of them definitely does better with a definite and consistent schedule repeated every day. This is my second summer trying to execute such a schedule. Thanks to advice from a group of like-minded mothers of faith, they are responding better to my attempts to keep their math skills sharp. What was that secret? Play board games with them and let them do the math, checking for accuracy, of course. They haven’t been as cooperative as I try to give them some life skills like cleaning, organizing, and resisting the urge to hoard.
On top of that, they frequently complain that they want to see their friends. So I try to make that happen. But guess where their friends are? In camps. Most camps seem to average about $300 to $400 per child for a week. That can really cut into the budget, so we stuck with the one camp that charges about $150 per child per week, but that leaves us flailing for the rest of the summer.
On top of that, a kitchen mishap has resulted in me needing to replace some cookbooks and magazines. I ended up photographing the recipes I like or still need to try from the magazines because I bought them so long ago, that people willing to part with them were charging upwards of $50. I may need to up the dosage on my heart medicine to recover from that sticker shock, but a couple of the books were reasonably priced, so I am convincing myself that it is okay to buy them or ask for them for my birthday.
In short, I technically have a very small cash stream. I finally have two paid subscribers on substack, so I will be able to afford those cookbooks by the end of the year. I also get the occasional interested party who wants to buy some of my up-cycled journals or other crafts, so feel free to send an inquiry if you need a gift for an upcoming birthday or other event. After all, it is never too early to plan for Christmas in July. (It might be too late depending on how extreme you want to get though, so choose carefully.)
No comments:
Post a Comment