Posted on April 6, 2020 by dragonspitapothecary
You know you’re an adult when you have a regular day of the week you pay the bills. Each week without fail this is you designated time to make sure all your bills are caught up, check the account balances and touch base with your finances. It’s not sexy at all but something all of us do as a regular thing to make sure life keeps going as it should. My day for this has always been Friday.
At first it was because Friday’s meant paychecks. Then as I became a salary person with odd pay times like the 1st, 15th, every other or twice a month I still kept my day as Friday. By this time it was just routine and I had a system. It still wasn’t an easy process but like anything else it took time to figure out a method that worked, process that ensured everything could get paid and figure out how I was going to make it until next pay day. I’d like to say it gets easier but it’s an intimidating process at points when I feel worried about my job or we’ve had extra expenses come up.
When we became a single income household it wasn’t planned at all. My husband got sick, very sick to the point he couldn’t get out of bed with his PTSD. When he did get up he was angry and difficult to be around. He couldn’t leave the house due to anxiety and stress. Without a second income I became very stressed and worried. I also became overwhelmed with trying to keep our family going with basic things like grocery shopping and keeping the lawn mowed. It certainly was not a fun time in our house. Fast forward 3 years and it’s still at times not much fun. I knew we had to make changes to live on just my income. I had to figure out how to make a volatile insecure work situation something we could depend on. I had to get ahead of bills so there was a cushion if something went wrong. There was some major changes needed and it was all pretty scary with a lot of unknowns.
I won’t say Dragonspit Apothecary can pay our bills or be our sole income for my family to live on because it can’t (at least yet). I also won’t say that at times I overwork and worry about how to work full time and run a small business because that’s not true either. However, it was the very best decision I made to at least give my family an ounce of security against a job that I can’t rely on. We’ve all been there. At the mercy of our employer not knowing if we’ll be impacted by layoffs. It’s one of the most devastating experiences you will go through especially when you’re a family living on one income, a young couple just starting out or a single person just trying to survive. This is why almost 4.5 Million people have a second job! No those second jobs don’t pay the bills but they help give us hope.
Working two jobs is not easy but in today’s world it is almost a necessity. Our corporate world is too insecure. The payoff is wonderful in some respects if you can get high enough in your career but you always at risk. There is no security in being an employee where someone else makes the decisions on what you earn, how well you performed or if they like you or not. Yet the majority of us live and depend on jobs with those conditions every day. We pay our bills each week praying that job we really don’t like and that we are working really hard at continues to support us. We trade our freedom for a paycheck and hope it is consistent. Well at least we can pay the bills we think. Our happiness doesn’t really matter and we can figure that out later. We make the best of it and move on.
When we tell our children to dream big, do well in school and find something they love to do it is because we don’t want them to endure what we do in our jobs. We want them to be spared of having a pink slip handed to them. We want to protect them from getting a less than expected bonus because someone else judged their performance and didn’t find it as good as they thought it should be. We want them to know happiness, fulfillment, creativity and inspiration in their work. We want them to invent, innovate and make the world better. Yet how many of our children grow up and end up in situations just like our own?
Sometimes when I’m in the office paying bills our son will come in and talk to me. He see the spreadsheet I keep and the check register I’m using. He asks questions and I tell him how I pay our bills. I explain about the importance of checking and double checking the numbers and being careful about where money is going. We talk about buying things and choices we make in that process. He knows mom works really hard to earn the money we have. He sees me already up since at 5AM to write and work on Dragonspit Apothecary when he gets up for school. He finds me after school still in my office on conference calls and working at my corporate job that thankfully I can do from home with not so much travel these days. He knows what it takes to live like we do. I use this as a foundation for sharing with him the importance of doing well in school, exploring what he really wants to be when he grows up and all the things he could be doing in life besides working.
Yet I know he will need to work and earn his way. He will need to set a time where he pays bills and reviews his budget. He may have these situations where he is uncertain and scared too. Will I be able to help him if that happens? Will he have an easier way in life working than I do? This is why I started Dragonspit Apothecary.
Being an entrepreneur may not be for you but I beg you to reconsider. Where else do you have complete autonomy in your work? Where else do you get to determine how well you performed or what you deserve? Where else do you get to be truly creative, innovative and inspired with your work? Work that pays you? Paying the bills is a never ending necessity but being able to do it with something you personally earned through work that filled your soul and bank account now that is real. I live for the time I can set my own hours and schedule. I work for the day I can say all of our bills are paid as a result of our family small business that isn’t so small anymore. I dream of the day I can offer my son a way to live and work differently than how we do now. Where he can truly experience living on his own terms, enjoying life and earning a wage that pays his bills while giving him a wonderful life.
Each Friday when I sit down after working all week to catch up on bills that have arrived and check the bank accounts this is what I think about. I look at how much closer we are to having that dream come true. How wonderful it will be to say Fridays are about celebrating wins and accomplishments rather than being exhausted from having poured it all out for some corporation’s gain. To me this is truly living naturally on my terms. It is exactly why I encourage everyone to shop small businesses, shop your friends network marketing business and look for your own opportunity to do the same. Lift each other up in the process of being free from that which is not filling our cups and souls.
Are you ready to align your work with your body, mind and soul?
Take the Grow Your Own Path Assessment to find out what this means for you and explore the options. I’m happy to answer questions and support you in finding your natural life journey in health and well-being that includes finding work that inspires and pays your bills. https://forms.gle/v1fmWp5iuHaxvYf88
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