Squirrel in a Nuthouse

There used to be a time in the not so distant past that I believed I did not have any true passions. No subject or hobby cropped up to claim the reason for my existence, and I felt hollow, or somehow cheated. I tried many things, too. I tried horseback riding, but that got to be too expensive. I tried gardening, and at the rate I was killing green life, that got expensive, too. I also tried scrap booking, but I got bored. It was too tedious. I suppose for a while, watching television was on the verge of becoming a serious hobby, as well as surfing the Internet, but while they temporarily filled a void, they didn’t fulfill a passion.

I do, however, have some absurd obsession with real estate. I love houses. I am addicted to HGTV, especially the shows “Buy Me” and “House Hunters.” I have to admit that “Buy Me” is a regularly Tivo-ed show in our house, while “House Hunters” is a filler. I love looking at houses and cruising www.realtor.com like some kind of wanderlust land-shark, trying to guess how much they have risen in value, researching neighborhoods, and trying to figure out what is going on in the local economy that is causing specific sale trends in specific cities. I thought once upon a time that real estate was my passion, so I got my real estate agent license. It didn’t take long for me to discover my passion for real estate did not include the buying/selling process. Most real estate agents have bought into their own hype, and truly believe their reputation as being on the same rung as car salesmen has no merit. Having been on the inside, trust me, the reputation is well earned! It only takes one foul agent to sour a great deal.

So the real estate agent idea didn’t go as planned. Perhaps it would have if more folks in the business possessed a decent amount of integrity, but the dirtiness goes all the way up the chain, I’m afraid. Maybe someday I’ll get over my bitterness (sniff).

My other truly strange obsession is saving money and making money. I am definitely not a Spender. In fact, I am still trying to balance my spending habits and my saving habits so that I don’t turn into one of those people who is a mega-millionaire and then keels over from a heart attack before ever getting to enjoy their millions. This irked me for a long time. Most people have hobbies like video games and collecting things, or they reward themselves by getting a pedicure or massage. Me? My favorite reward is putting $50 into my savings account. If given the choice between buying a $30 sweater or putting that money in the bank, there would be no contest. Bet on me choosing to put that money in the bank and you will win every time. Fortunately, Stefan respects my very strange obsession and does not make fun of it. In fact, we have worked together for a good amount of time to set up our accounts so that both of our needs are met: we get to save a certain amount, and we get to spend a certain amount. This prevents me from becoming too miserly and dragging Stefan down into my miserable little hole, and it “forces” me to enjoy our earnings, which in turn enforces the idea that our money is working pretty darn hard at providing us with a very comfortable lifestyle.

I do know a few other truths about myself that have helped guide me on my quest to find my true passion. One of them is that I like to help people (hence the draw to help folks achieve the American Dream of home-ownership). I still have that draw, and it still pulls me on a string when I catch wind of someone who is in the home-buying or home-selling market.

The other truth is that I am somewhat of a natural born leader, but not a spotlight whore. I do like attention, but I don’t need to be the center of it for me to feel fulfilled. My natural born leadershipness is tempered by my desire to help others, thus making me a great behind-the-scenes person – someone who can calm others during times of crisis, yet can also step into the spotlight when necessary. I am the great woman behind every great man.

The leadership quality is what calls me to go out and research the heck out of things. I am never satisfied with the level of knowledge that I hold. With the advent of the Internet, my desire to research has grown to unwieldy levels. I am constantly reading, reading, and reading, looking to find that one nugget of information I didn’t have before. It is the one way I can help myself. The more educated I am, the better my choices will become.

Now all of the above has combined recently to reveal my true passion. Are you ready for this revelation? I believe I am an Economics junkie. The second definition by the American Heritage Dictionary seems to describe my interest pretty well: “Economic matters, especially relevant financial considerations.”

Now I wish I had paid more attention in Economics class in high school! Too bad most schools only devote one semester to it.

I never, ever pegged myself as having an interest in Economics. I always considered myself more “artsy” than that, and I always had a healthy fear of numbers, because they were too logical and cold, too calculating (pardon the pun – I couldn’t resist). But the study of the economy around us encompasses much more than the study of numbers or stock trades. I can focus my lens to cover a broad spectrum of the country and discuss the impact of the rising cost of health care, or I can narrow my focus to look in and see what might be the underlying cause(s) of a trendy issue. The answer very often is not what it appears to be on the glossy surface. There is so much going on underneath the covers that two seemingly unrelated events might actually be knotted together.

Anyhow, I’m really hot on this trail. I started waking up to all this about a year ago, and the more I read, the more fascinated I become. Like a squirrel in a nuthouse, I am on information overload. I’m not sure yet how all this will level out, or what direction I may ultimately take, but I sure am enjoying the ride. And I am sure I will be posting more about my findings as I go along, which may bore some of you, but fascinate others. My apologies to those who will get bored, and to those who share my sentiments, please feel free to comment and discuss!

Giving Credit where Credit is Due

Stefan says that I do not give myself enough credit for the things that I do. I suppose he is right, but it’s hard to view myself that way, because I feel like I do what I do naturally and without much thought. In other words, it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice. And why should I be given credit for something I do naturally and without sacrifice? To me, it’s the same as giving me credit for being five foot six with green eyes. I have no control over that. It just is what it is.

Now, if I were working three jobs so that we could save enough money to move somewhere like, oh, say, New York City, so my husband could pursue his lifelong dream that would be something for which I would deserve some credit.

I am not used to receiving credit, so it feels foreign to me when Stefan tells me to stop and look around and see all that I have done and achieved. He credits me for the roof over our head and all the amenities that go with it. He sees it as a huge thing I am doing for the good of us, while I see it as doing a no-brainer.

In fact, I often feel that I am not doing enough. I worry a lot about things that do not seem like they are in place. I hate to use the word “worry,” but it fits here. My worry runs like a ticker tape in the back of my head all the time, like those news tickers at the bottom of the television screen. It’s hard to ignore them. You have to force yourself to pay attention to the real story going on, and even if you manage to achieve that, you still see that ticker tempting you out of the corner of your eye. You are always aware of the ticker, even when you don’t want to be.

So this ticker has been running on autopilot in the back of my brain for many years. I kind of got used to it. For a long while, I managed to ignore it successfully. But ever since I started this contract gig almost a year and a half ago, I keep glancing at that ticker. Nobody else can see it except for me.

The ticker broadcasts nothing but bad news about the future. It tells me I am not making enough money, and that I am not saving enough money. It reminds me I have no health insurance. It tells me I am taking a gamble that I am not prepared to lose and that makes me very ill at ease.

Since this ticker has been broadcasting the same news for so long, I’ve become accustomed to my thoughts and feelings I get when I see it, and although I worry, I don’t give voice to my worries, because my brain tells me it’s all in my head. I should be happy with my successes in life. I’ve done well for myself and I continue to do so. So why do I feel uneasy and unable to achieve peace of mind?

I’ve been having this argument with myself for quite a while, and even those arguments have become a single thought, an automated thing I carry out every day. All this clanging happens at a subconscious level. Or so I thought.

What I didn’t know was that the fire alarm was going off, and although I was ignoring it, telling myself it was a false alarm, it was actually impacting my life. Stefan is used to asking me, “Are you okay?” because unbeknownst to me (thanks, Denial, for being such a close friend), I am most often distracted or I seem a little “off.” When I say I am all right, I am not lying. I am okay, at least as okay as someone can be who has gotten used to being on fire all the time and thinks the circumstances are normal.

As this contract draws to a close later this year, I have begun putting more focus on that ticker. I didn’t equate my ill feelings with the fact that I have been ignoring an innate need; that my generalized unhappiness was caused by me not giving voice to what was going across that ticker.

In a moment of “weakness” (and I use this term sarcastically, because I was not being weak; I was being strong; I was being weak by holding out this long), I let Stefan peak inside my head the other week. He clearly heard all the alarms and smoke was going everywhere. He couldn’t believe all that was going on in my head all the time, and he didn’t understand why I never mentioned it.

I never mentioned it because it had become so normal for me that I didn’t think anything of it. Either that, or since it’s on my mind all the time, I don’t realize that I am not verbalizing my thoughts (I think this is the guilt-side of me that I let prevent me from verbalizing when I should).

Well, all of that is about to change. Stefan took one look at what was causing the alarm, and rescued me. Although I view it as a huge sacrifice, he does not. He sees it as simply doing what you would do for someone you love. I’ve been doing the equivalent of saying, “Ow, my finger hurts,” once in passing, and then never mentioning it again. Meanwhile, my finger is swelling up and turning purple and hurts every day until one day, many weeks later, I say, “My finger still hurts” (of course, I wait until the pain becomes unbearable). So then Stefan goes to look at it and sees I have a huge sliver deeply embedded in my finger and he wonders how I dealt with the pain all that time.

It is time to pull out the sliver with the tweezers, while I look at him heroically. It hurts, yes, to pull that sliver out, but we both know we will feel so much better afterwards.

We are both consciously aware of what it says on that ticker, and it is not something to be ignored anymore. I simply must find permanent work. I will sleep better at night, knowing I am indispensable, and valuable enough for a company to invest in me. Sometimes I still try to fool myself into thinking it’s not that big of a deal, because I’m afraid of the pain I’m going to feel when it comes time to pull that sliver out. But we both know I will get better quickly after the big pinch. And the big pinch right now is facing the almost inevitable fact that we are most likely going to have to move in order for me to find permanent work.

I do not want to move. Rather, I wish we could just click our heels and be there already, completely skipping over the whole find a job, get myself out there, try to sell the house, try to find a house, try to move everything to the new place and get settled in part. I am scared because I’m still licking my wounds from the last move, and I don’t feel financially comfortable with moving, yet I know if I don’t do something soon, I’m going to be feeling a lot more pain.

If Stefan hadn’t been as observant and persistent as he is, I wouldn’t be writing this blog right now. I wonder when, if ever, I would have written it?

So Stefan is standing there, tweezers in hand, trembling a little because he does not like pain (nor being the cause of it), telling me, “It will be all right. We just have to get through this, and you’ll feel a lot better.” He is setting aside his fears and any squeamishness so I can get better and I am putting my trust in him that despite my wanting to ignore the alarms, he won’t let me anymore and that he will help me, because I’m afraid I’m going to feel awfully guilty. I’m not used to someone else making sacrifices for me and I know I’m going to feel guilty that my “need” is going to cause us much angst during the move process. Sometimes I feel so guilty it’s hard to breathe. But that’s just because I haven’t given myself, or my thoughts, much credit over the years.

It is also easy for me to start feeling guilty because I think, “If I had just said something a long time ago, we wouldn’t be in this mess right now!” And I start getting on my own case for being a slave to my own servitude nature, for not wanting to “make waves” and for not giving credence to my own needs.

This just goes to show how you think you know yourself, when in fact, you do not. I have made tremendous strides over the last couple of years and I am very proud of myself for the changes I have made. Obviously, there is still room for improvement! But I think whenever I start getting down on myself and start feeling guilty, I will remind myself of Stefan’s words, and force myself to credit where credit is due.