I’m as poor as a church mouse…

Yours, Carolina - 5 Jan 17

Today my creativity has taken a sudden nosedive. It’s not January blues dear reader, it’s a cash flow crisis.

Cash appears to have gushed from my bank account into everyone else’s coffers in a rather haphazard way, that is frankly, living dangerously in January. Let’s just call it what it is: stupid.

Every month I budget and am super careful that I don’t exceed my means. So what happened that has got me in such a pickle? One word, investment.

I’m so busy investing in my future that I completely took my eye off the present. I find this an interesting concept. I am so busy thinking about tomorrow and next steps that I’m disjointed from today. Today is a necessary day to take the necessary step towards tomorrow but I’ve got my eye on a higher prize. The money doesn’t matter to me. It’s only money.

Money to me, means getting through the month, paying all the bills. Being able to get a Friday night takeaway pizza, books and shoes for the children, lunch out with the girls and the occasional amusing tshirt for £9.99. That is doing ok. For me.

If I want to buy something extravagant, then I’ll earn the money to pay for it.

But now, I’m struggling. I guess we all struggle. We’d like to be more comfortable than we are. I’d like to travel, but I can’t afford to, not without making a sacrifice.

I have, as many of you know, taken the slightly unwise step of following my dreams.
As a single parent – I dislike this phrase by the way, it doesn’t feel representative of the way I feel about my parenting. I am not on my own. I may not be married to the Father of my children, but I feel anything other than alone. We support each other, and our children know we are a team, a family. Anyway, I digress. As a parent not living with the other parent, (especially when that parent has the sort of job with ridiculous time commitments) finding a job to suit my circumstances has proved hard. Many of my friends have part time jobs and really struggle with childcare, and I’ve never wanted that for my family. I’ve wanted to be Present.

All these years, almost 10. I’ve wanted to see my family grow. And so that’s what I’ve done. There’s always a sacrifice these days. Now we don’t live in a world where generations of families live in the same house or street, or even Town. There’s no network on tap to help. The only network is heavily financially burdensome.

The truth is, if you leave your childbearing ’til your 30s, then your immediate family are going to be less likely to be able to help. The march of time.

Unless you’re lucky enough to marry your childhood sweetheart, and after a couple of years of careless travelling and carefree sex, decide it’s Time. Time to start a family. Then, dear reader, you’re quids in. Your parents are still spritely enough to really get stuck into the grandparent role with gusto and are many decades removed from hip replacements. It’s all good.

But, the reality is for many of us, that life hasn’t quite panned out like that. Our 20s were spent building careers and social lives. Not hitting pause and having babies. But, we probably would have done had the right gal or guy shown up a bit bloody sooner.

Maybe, as they say, we’re all like taxis. There are lots of taxis on the road but how many have their ‘Available for hire’ light on when you actually want one? You may get in a cab, only to find it’s pre-booked. Destined for someone else. The driver may throw you out forcibly, your crushed, broken, humiliated self lying on the pavement. Some drive around with you in the back for years and then suddenly, without warning, stop and ask you to get out. It’s all about timing.

So, I found myself, like so many of my friends, struggling to find jobs to fit in with my lifestyle. Especially a single lifestyle. It’s not easy. And when the going gets tough, what do we do, dear reader? We find a work-around. A solution.

My solution is investing in the future. I’m not talking stocks and shares. I’m talking about myself. Investing in myself.

I am taking the – hopefully – short term financial difficulty, in order to enjoy a future where I will be both personally fulfilled and financially secure. And this is a status quo that should have happened years ago. I should have got cracking on this in my 20s rather than dancing in high heeled boots to Men in Black. But I didn’t, so I’m playing catch-up.

My recent crippling investment, was in my new website. A slight oversight with the payment terms has me, with a shiny new website for the next three years, but struggling to buy food. It’s all very Renaissance France.

I have given myself over to this fact. I am an artist. Not necessarily the smocked, bereted kind. More the writing kind for now. I think the painting will come in due course. But one thing at a time.

I have committed to this future. I can see my future. I can see my books on shelves in bookshops at train stations, on Amazon and on your bookshelf, dear reader, nestled amongst your Martin Amis’s. This will happen. But I’m a great many electricity bills away from it.

I don’t think a dream necessarily should be a sacrifice. But sometimes it becomes one. Jennifer Lawrence in the film Joy was dogged in her pursuit of the dream, but it came at great hardship.

The suffragette movement gave their lives over to us women so that the future was less of a ignored, unequal struggle. Their husbands left them, they lost their children, they were thrown in prison. But the bigger picture kept them on track.
And sometimes life just hands you the right cards early on, and you get on with it. No drama. Wouldn’t make a particularly interesting film though.

Man/Woman gets brilliant luck at early age because they’ve got their shit together. Lives happily ever after with two Springer Spaniels and an adoring family. I wouldn’t go and see that film.

So dear one, with a hunger in my belly, both creative and because I haven’t had breakfast, I hope my tale of misappropriated funds strikes a cord. My family won’t go hungry, (I have a fully stocked freezer). But, I know I’m not taking the easy way. I’m following my ambition, wherever it takes me.

Yours, Carolina

Yours, Carolina

Writer and aspiring novelist who loves Jaffa Cakes, Michael Buble, Colin Firth, Audrey Hepburn, dramatic eyeliner and laughing until it hurts. Has children, which is nice. Once drank a whole bottle of tabasco sauce for a bet. Childhood crushes included Poncherello from Chips, Monkey (from Monkey Magic), Mr Claypole from Rentaghost and both of the Dukes of Hazzard boys. Doesn't like noodles.

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