livingwithintention

I’m wondering why this is so hard for me. I really believe that if I truly let myself go, be really immersed in something solely for the joy of doing it, that I’ll get some release from the other stress in my life. Perhaps therein lies the problem. Am I trying to find an escape route? Am I putting too much pressure on what I want the result to be rather than earnestly investing in a process? I wish I didn’t overthink things so much. If there were prizes for overanalyzing, I think I’d get a blue ribbon—it really drives me crazy. It seems I’m talking myself out of doing things before I even get started. I think I’m hung up on this idea that passion should come naturally and so anything I think I may be passionate about, but that seems like it’s going to take effort to get into/get skilled out, I toss aside.
The other week I was at a craft store and all these art supplies were on sale. I splurged and bought paint brushes and guesso to use with my acrylics sitting in a dusty box at home. Every few days I get the urge to go into my dining room and paint, but then I get hung up on what I’m going to paint and get stuck feeling like I can’t start until I have a vision. Problem is, I don’t really think about art in that way. Most of what I’ve done has been painting things that already exist, still lifes I guess you’d say, but my gut reaction is that I hate painting still lifes. Ugh, I don’t know where to begin.
I love to collage and have been really drawn to art in the past that incorporated collage and paint. I really want to try this style, but am a little worried it’ll look like a childhood art project mess. That or that I’ll be so controlled and exact that it doesn’t look like art…
Okay, enough overthinking.I’m just going to get my supplies out and play around.

5 years ago I adopted my sister’s baby (unexpectedly) and have loved being a mommy. At the time we adopted I was just out of school with some work and grad school plans, so we had our hands full and weren’t thinking about more kids just then, but 2 years ago, we decided we were emotionally and logistically ready to give our son a sibling and experience pregnancy ourselves.

We waited to get off birth control until Feb 2008, as I wanted to wait to give birth until after I graduated that December. Unfortunately after 10 years on the pill, my body had a rough time getting back to a regular cycle. There were times when it was 45-50 days between periods, not helpful when we wanted many chances to try to get pregnant. But then last August, after charting and taking ovulation tests, I found out I was pregnant! We were so happy and it felt like things were going to work out so perfectly w/ our jobs and lives. But then in October we had a miscarriage and I was DEVASTATED.

It was such a rough time for me, but even as I was healing I still so desperately wanted to ttc again. Then things changed in our jobs and we needed to move across the country sooner than planned. We put off trying for several months, but once it looked like we’d be in our new town soon, we decided to try again and right away I was pregnant again. This time I miscarried before even having a chance to tell people we were pregnant. On the one hand this miscarriage wasn’t as emotionally painful as I wasn’t as blind sided, I was more prepared in some way for this to be a possible outcome. But on the other hand I felt more worried that we might have some fertility issues. I think I had convinced myself that the first miscarriage was a fluke, I know they are common in women who have many babies after. But 2 (while still not enough to make a doctor concern) now feels like the potential start of a pattern….

We still so much want to add a baby to our lives and will begin trying again in September (I need to wait until baby would be due a year into my job so I can get FMLA time…). I hate “waiting to try”, there’s not much to do to feel productive. I’m taking vitamins and charting again to understand my cycle. But I feel both ready and a little scared for Sept to come. If we have another miscarriage, it’ll be really hard for me…

So I totally need to budget my money. I have been in school for many years and have gotten used to pulling out extra student loans and/or borrowing from my family when I need extra cash, but I am an adult with a family and a real job now and I need to learn to live within a budget and start saving $ for fun things/trips.

Super tiny steps I’m making right now: I’ve started buying my groceries from Amazon Fresh so that I can know what I’m spending and modify before I “check out”. So far I’ve just done this once, but it was awesome. I didn’t buy impulse junk food and I was able to easily price compare (even price by unit!) to get better deals on things where I’m not too attached to specific brands. I think I saved $30+ from what I’ve been spending going to the grocery store and we are not going hungry. I also signed up for a delivery CSA to get our fruits and veggies—a much better fixed cost for organic produce that would normally cost me much more! Now I just need to see if it’s enough food to get me through the week.

Other budget attempt I’m trying is to set up autopay of bills through my bank online so that right after my paycheck is deposited, my regular bill $ comes out of my account right away. we’ll see if i am more realistic about how much money in my account…