♦Welcome to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop!♦
Topic #157
What keeps you up at night?
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At any given moment, what keeps me up at night can change. It either morphs, grows, or resolves—because that’s what any problem does. I hate when I can’t resolve something, especially when I’m made to sit on it and wait. I don’t mind, as much when the steps I take each have results in a positive direction. Patience, I have in excess, although to some it may seem that’s not at all the case. But, to them I say, not allowing abuse and negativity isn’t a lack of patience.
This world could use a lot more straightforward action in the face of abuse and those things that enable it. But, I don’t let that keep me up at night, because abusers would be so excited if I did.
What keeps me up at night is usually financial concerns. It’s not something I can resolve right away, or without a lot of effort. Certainly, this isn’t a problem that I experience alone. So many of us struggle to make ends meet, and there’s not going to be any reprieve without major reform. Good luck with this, when people ignore the truth for what they want to hear, or have bought into silly propaganda that holds them back from making effective changes across the board.
Financial concerns have kept me up at night for as long as I can remember. It used to be something that would resolve in a couple months, but now, as a single mom, the struggle stretches on. Daycare is a large part of that, as is rent and grocery bills. I haven’t gone on vacation in twenty years, because I can’t afford to. I rent a house with another woman, so I can keep a roof over me and my daughter’s head. A few groceries, and the basic supplies like shampoo and toothpaste, diapers and wipes, add up to several hundred every month. Car payments, insurance, doctor visits, and random other things that come up round out the list of my responsibilities and my pay doesn’t cover it all. My savings is all but dead. The kicker is that I still have about three years of daycare to pay before any semblance of relief will happen.
And yet, there are those worse off than me. I have no idea how they manage it. My mother grew up with nothing, and her fear of falling back into that is my fear. Neither education nor experience on the job is any guarantee that poverty isn’t waiting next month. A lot can happen to change everything, and it takes just a moment.
The fear of not being able to provide for myself, and now my daughter, is what keeps me up at night. My fingers are crossed that I will weather this difficult time, and I have the assurances of colleagues who have gone through this that I will. Yet, the struggle is still mine to experience and survive in this moment, and the stress is very real. Dismissing my feelings won’t help me through, but neither will wallowing in them.
Stress takes a toll on one’s health. Balancing in order to mitigate any extraneous incidents, such as stress related illness, is a job. And let me add, it can be yet another cost: healthy food/supplements, gym time, preventative care, prescriptions, and so on.
See how cyclical it gets?
Let’s hop on over to see what keeps the other authors up at night…
INLINKZ.COM
We sure had money worries too when our kids were small. At one point all the disposable income I had every week was 50 pence, and I spent that at my son’s playgroup – 10 pence every day to buy him a drink and biscuit so he had the same as the other children. I weathered this storm for 14 years until both boys were at an age where I could go to work full time. I bought clothes from boot sales, and we never had a holiday for years. As a single mum you must have it doubly hard though. I do sympathise, because I know how it is.
Thank you for understanding, Stevie. I’ve worked very hard my whole life (first job when I was sixteen). I have a master’s degree, and so many like me find it difficult to make ends meet in a world that doesn’t compensate you properly for the work that you do. There is literally no where in my country where a minimum wage job pays for rent of a two bedroom apartment, and I can tell you that in my state, a single person making $50k a year and paying for daycare, car payment, and other things is not making ends meet. My grandmother struggles with about $800 a month. She’s amazing, because I have no idea how she makes that work. She made it work when she raised my mother and my uncle, too. When she raised my cousin, and took him back in each time.
If I can get past the daycare costs, I will be in a much better place, but I will still need to rent space with someone instead of affording my own home. That is the truth of how things work where I am. I’m certainly not alone, and that is why I am drawn to the work I do (day job), helping others.
Diapers are expensive! When my daughter was staying with us, I’d pick them up when I stopped by the grocery store and it always amazed me at how much they cost.