Lessons come when we are open

Posted by random olio

There are a few authors that I have read every book they have written, and a few of them I have had the pleasure of seeing in person. Ann Patchett is one of those authors. Her new book: “This is the Story of a Happy Marriage” is a book that is not in the usual realm of her writing. It is a compilation of articles she has written over the years, many that were published in magazines. While they are each stories that were written years apart, her writing, story, and life are weaved so well together that they flow so beautifully, you would have thought they were written together on purpose.

You learn about her younger years and the oddity of her childhood, about taking care of her grandma, about her early years of writing, her dogs, her marriages, and the ups and downs of a writer’s life. Her other books are novels, ones that once you open and get into the story, you are a goner. You might as well know that after the first few pages, you’ll be snuggling on the couch for the long haul. Cancel any plans that you have made, you will not want to put any of her novels down.

Patchett does have a memoir “Truth and Beauty” that is about her life with her best friend and author, Lucy Grealy, yet “This is a Story of a Happy Marriage” goes deeper in many more aspects of her life and she communicates many ideas that resonate on marriage, family, and the writing life. This idea particularly stood out to me about openness:

“It’s a wonderful thing to find a great teacher, but we also have to find him or her at a time in life when we’re able to listen to and trust and implement the lessons we are given. The same is true of the books we read. I think that what influences us in literature comes less from what we love and more from what we happen to pick up in moments when we are especially open.” Page 33

This happens so often for me. I gravitate towards a book and I am not sure why, and then as I begin to read and absorb the ideas shared, I gradually, page by page learn a bit more about myself. You know the books that do that for you. The ones with a plethora of highlighted, dog-eared, or post-it note adorned pages all with ideas that you want to remember, cherish, or share with another individual. This book did that for me. Her story and life experience made me think about my life experience and story and I found myself jotting down notes of special moments from my life that I want to put on paper.

I encourage you to read “This is the Story of a Happy Marriage.” It is slow in the beginning and takes a bit more to get into than her novels, but once you get to know her a bit more I know you will find a few morsels to take away.

Joint or separate checking accounts

Posted by random olio

I am a personal finance fanatic. I grew up poor, and while for the most part my basic needs were met, I look back and never want to live the way we did. Nor do I want my children to live that way. What has that done to me? I have become passionate about personal finance, and how to be careful over what I spend my money on, how I save, and how I think about my future.

Which is what leads me to my blog title. There are a few subjects I think are taboo in our society. We rarely talk about our sex lives, and we rarely talk about money. Yes, we talk in surface ways about money, but never about how much we make, how much we save, and how much we feel most comfortable about having in our savings account. Why is that? I often wonder why it is such a taboo subject. Is it because comparisons make us feel like we are lesser than, or better than others? Possibly. What is funny, is you could live next to a run down home, that gives the facade that someone does not have the finances to keep it up, and maybe they do. Maybe it is just a choice that they live that way.

So, about checking accounts. Do you and your spouse or significant other have joint or separate checking accounts? I know that I will probably piss someone off today, as I am from the joint checking account camp. When Chris and I got married we decided to pool our finances, or rather I should say to be politically correct, we decided to pool our debt. We did not have much cash when we got married, we just had debt. Credit cards, school loans, you know normal twenty-something-year-old debt. Not too crazy, but still money we owed. So maybe it was easier for us to pool our finances, and make financial choices together. Would we have thought differently if we had plenty of cash in the bank? I hope not. Why? It works for us. We talk about everything, we discuss our purchases, and it all makes sense to us.

Yet, I know that a lot of couples fight about money. They fight about debt. Having separate checking accounts work for them, and I want to know why.

#pleaseshareyourexperience!

Appreciating my better half

Posted by random olio

I have not written about him directly in a few months, probably not since our anniversary, but I am inspired to tout my husband. His birthday is coming up, and it makes me stop and think about all the years we have been together, all that we have become, and all that we have accomplished. It makes me giddy thinking about it, but isn’t that the way it should be?

In many ways we are very similar, and yet we are so, so different. He is the calm to my fire, the balance to my scale, the voice of reason, the one you listen to when he speaks because he is not talking all the time.
Midnight snacks in no particular order: cereal or ice cream, or cereal and ice cream.
I lucked out that we have similar aesthetic tastes from wood floors, furniture, to the most important: artwork.
We both waver between being introverts and extroverts. Regardless, I love that we can have a badass time whether snuggling on our couch multi-tasking with our laptops and the DVR, or out for dinner with friends. It does not really matter what we are doing when we are together.
I found a boy who loves it most when I leave the house so he can clean (note: he really just likes to clean uninterrupted, he is not that passionate about vacuuming). We both agree that a clean and organized house leads to a balanced mind. When we feel at home in our home, we are truly able to relax. It is nice that those tendencies are common in both of us, and not something we struggle or have to agonize over.
I know that when we sleep in on the weekends, I will always have to get up first, he will always want to stay in bed, and the only way we will ever start our day is for me to sneak out of bed first.
He likes bourbon, chocolate, and cheese, oh and did I say bourbon?
He knows when I am at that tipping point between tired and exhausted, hungry and famished, and how to keep me from going to the other side.
Lastly, the boy has mad taste in women. I mean he picked me right?

Happy Birfday, Christopher.

What you say and do matters

Posted by random olio

It can feel like what you do in a day probably does not make much of an impact on others. You go about your routine, doing similar things each day. Your reaction and response to most events makes you feel like it is the “same old, same old.” It hit me recently that whatever story we tell ourselves about our impact is most likely bullshit (well if we are talking ourselves down).

I see it all the time at work. A colleague takes an extra step and picks up the phone to handle a nasty customer (instead of emailing) sings to them, and generally adds cheer to their day. That leaves a lasting impact. You leave an impact each day, by not reacting, by sharing your thoughts and opinions in a meeting, by reaching out with love and care. It is hard to know you have left a mark, is it not? We do not get to be omniscient to find out where the seeds we share get planted. Sometimes a seed makes its way back to us and we can see that the day we spent extra time with someone, showed them that they matter. We just do not always know.

All of this made me start to think of keeping a mantra at the forefront of my thought. It sounds a bit self-centered, but hear me out. “I IMPACT.” Just that. If we remember that in everything we do we have an impact, we then realize that when we are nasty on the phone with a customer service agent we just left an impact on them and their day. I really have to remember that. There are times when I have had to call a company more than a dozen times to resolve an issue and by that thirteenth time I lose it (well honestly probably earlier than the thirteenth call). What if I got to a place that I never lose my cool? Why? Because we have an impact in everything we do.

If we remember “I IMPACT” then hopefully we leave those we encounter with a positive, cheerful, uplifting mood. Good and bad interactions create a lasting memory, but maybe we all should work a bit harder to leave the good memory. At the grocery store, at work, with our spouses, kids, and family. I know it may feel like a lot of pressure, but it is food for thought.

#iimpact

Being Me and Being Seen

Posted by random olio

What does it mean to be me? Saying what is on my mind. Not having a filter. Laughing when the urge hits me, even when sometimes it might not be appropriate. Going there. Yes, I mean sometimes going there, to the gutter, and sometimes it is the wrong time. Listening wholeheartedly. Saying yes way too much. Rarely crying, but when it happens, it is because something hits my emotional core, or when someone sees and speaks to a raw part of myself.

I struggled so much during my childhood and even into my college years with being enough — wondering if I was enough. Was I pretty enough? Was I small enough? Was I smart enough? Was I good enough? Enough with all the enoughs. Eventually I got fed up. Eventually I lost it. Eventually I just wanted to be me.

As I got older, and I had the ability to see life in hindsight, I saw a little girl who loved children, who loved to be childlike, who wanted to play, but who had to keep life together and make sure that from the outside everything was okay. In many ways, having the facade of normalcy, was what she wanted. She just wanted to be normal, and in some ways trying to prove her life was normal concealed to those around her what was really happening. Sort of like a company that needs more employees, but rather than the current employees showing that, they just work harder and longer, instead of making it apparent that what was needed was more bodies and minds to help.

All this came to me after reading a recent blog post from Emily Parkinson Perry’s. I have shared her blog before, and her words are always an inspiration to me. This quote about authenticity made me think about being me.

“To me, being authentic means being unapologetically you. It means laughing out loud, accepting your faults, being present with pain, and okay with uncertainty. It means saying you’re sorry, or that you don’t know the answer. It means saying, ‘I love you’, and allowing yourself to drop into the free-fall feeling of it. It means allowing yourself to truly be seen.”

It took until I was a senior in college, but I finally understood that being me meant not hiding behind what others wanted of me, that I could be me as loud as I wanted without apology. And I am. I am loud, and sometimes emotional, opinionated, and strong-willed. I know what I want, and sometimes it is hard to get me to change my mind. Even if I am wrong. It is hard for me to say “I’m sorry” and I will always tell you if I do not know something. Then later she says:

“Your authenticity lies in the moments when you’re caught off-guard; when you blush at the compliment, laugh at your own mistake, or get caught singing in the car. Those are the precious gifts you give to the world—they are the moments when you let down your guard and allow yourself to be seen—you, as your beautiful, true, authentic self. When you let yourself be seen, it gives others the courage to do the same, and the world needs more of that.”

I love, love, love this. It happened last week when a co-worker asked me something out of the blue. She saw me at my rawest, and that made me cry. Or when I said burger instead of booger, and Chris could not stop laughing at me. I was seen, and I laughed and I cried.