Sunday, February 26, 2017

Two Steps Forward and Then Falling Backwards

Why graph, why!?
Sometimes I don't set goals in my personal life because I am too discouraged. End of 2015 Asay family had a sunny outlook, bravely going into the future. Beginning of 2017 Asay family is still recovering from 2016 (not going to complain about that, read the other blog post). If I'm honest with myself I am going to work very hard to get back to where I was at in 2015. Hopefully the 3 years will average to a flat line. Pretty discouraging stuff!

But the alternative is to not set goals at all and to bob around like a pool floaty hoping not to get sucked up by a pool vacuum. Not everything in life is financial. Our family is fortunate enough to mortgage (someday fully own) a house. The life quality of that has greatly improved. We planted our avocado trees into the ground. One is doing good, the other has about five brown leafs on it and may not make it to summer. That's a bit of a shame since it would produce the most consistently throughout the year. I'll most likely need to replace it during summer.

My kiddo has been a trooper and has already learned that possessions are temporary. Unfortunately, that makes her a bit more clingy than the average child. Our family has grown much closer to each other, but wary of circumstances. My faith in people's kindness has never been stronger. I'm still drawing in the courage to try new and old things.

Moral? Uhhh, check back another time? This post is shouting to the internet about how things are going. This is definitely another season of learning to say "no" a lot and being thankful when a "yes" is possible. For example, we live farther from my job right now so 2 cars would be very ideal. I have been researching a car purchase. I am thinking in the $4-$5k range. I've browsed Craigslist for Versa's, Yaris', Crown Vic's, etc. and the conclusion is, I still have insufficient funds. By the time we have enough $, it will probably be towards the end of the year. So...going to have to wait and say "no" to a lot of other things. But that is life. I'm just trying to be glad to be alive without becoming a worse iteration of myself.

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Finding Purpose Again

To say 2016 was a bad year for my family unit would be an understatement. It completely took me off course for goals, made me very discontent, and also made me question why I am who I am. Religious people will often use the words "refining" or "making a great testimony". I prefer the concept that it burned up the good and bad in me, and I'm left trying to figure out what is left.

This is also why I haven't posted in a long time. Here I was having a blog saying how nice it is not to feel the need of participating in the rat race while I am losing everything and questioning my sanity. If I was more humble I'd have documented every moment of it, but that isn't the case.

To go back in debt is like going back to an abusive girlfriend. She regularly takes from you every month and doesn't care that you don't like that. I'm sure financial people would yell terrible sentences at hearing we went back into debt, but the choices were limited. How many people lose everything they own, a place to live, and their only car in just a few months, oh and almost die? Something had to give and our emergency fund was only set up for 1 or two of those things to happen at once, not all 4!

Family and coworkers were what made us not slip through the cracks, we could have easily become the family on the street corner living off a gym membership to keep the hygiene and going to a motel when possible. One coworker in particular let me live with him for months until we were back on our feet. I don't know what we would have done without him (remember, we had 0-1 cars during this process).

Theologically, I am having a hard time compartmentalizing why all of this happened. I thought I was doing okay in avoiding greed. I had more time for my family back then and was much less stressed (abusive girlfriend debt! She stressed me out man!). We've also had to deal with the joy of people helping us by donations, and the grief of trying to forget all the items that are gone while we quietly replace them without going into more debt. Also, I've never been one to look at what others have and become angry, but that is another good that was burned up in this process. Why do regular people not go through Job like fire? Sure the 1 arm, 1 leg veteran with 1 kidney and no job is shaking his head at that question from me, but from my vantage point, what underlying cause made our family have to go though this? I'll probably never know and just want to forget it ever happened.

You can only stay in the "poor me" zone for so long before that becomes you. I don't want to become the resident bitcher. You know, the guy who is the opposite of Dilbert's topper who bitches about everything. You talk about how you got a raise, and the bitcher talks about how he hates his job, and debt is a nasty girlfriend.

Who did this to us? That dives into legal stuff, which I can't do on a public space. If you want that kind of information, feel free to talk with me in person.

For the 1 reader out there, thanks for reading this. This is definitely written for you, cause who else is out there? Have a great week.