My Worst Client

by | Dec 20, 2017 | Money

My Worst Client

It’s December 19th. I’d planned to go Christmas shopping; it was getting close to the wire, but it started to slush, and after a short walk, I was left soaked and cold, so I decided to leave it until tomorrow, when it’s supposed to be sunny.

I can shop mid-week because I’m self-employed, one of the perks.

When I sat back down at my desk after skipping the slushy shopping, I thought: I can do anything I want right now. I’d already booked the time off in my head.

What had I been putting off because of more pressing deadlines?

My own bookkeeping.

I am one of my own worst clients. I throw receipts in the drawer next to my desk or leave them buried in my inbox, where most of them live these days. If I’m honest, I didn’t want to. But it needed doing.

When I started my business, it was a slow start, and I made barely any money that first year. As a sole proprietor, I hadn’t paid any tax through the year, no employer withholding it for me, so when I filed, I reported my pitiful non-earnings, and that was it. No tax owing, no refund. Slightly anticlimactic.

By my second year, I’d turned a profit. I still hadn’t been making tax instalments, since I hadn’t owed enough the year before to require them. I scraped some savings into an RRSP to lower my taxable income, and had just enough left over to cover my tax bill. Phew.

A couple of years in now, the business has become a real, full-time job. Not nine to five, but at least forty hours a week. I’d been keeping half an eye on my billings, enough to know that the “savings” sitting in my account weren’t really savings. They were this year’s tax bill. But I kept looking at that balance and getting a little happy feeling anyway.

That’s the danger. Once you start imagining everything you could spend a balance like that on, you know exactly where that leads. Spending.

So today, close to year-end, I finally sat down to see how much of it was actually mine to spend, and how much was tax.

It was tax. All of it. It turns out I’m a pretty good accountant. I’d saved the exact right amount, to the dollar.

Sigh.

All the little happy feelings drained out of me at once, replaced by one loud thought: what’s the point of working harder if I end up exactly nowhere?

That spiralled into everything I’d sacrificed that year, all the hours, for what felt like nothing.

I let myself wallow for about ten minutes. Then I turned it around.

I’d spent the year doing exactly what I wanted. My business had grown enough to support my family. I’d had the freedom to do things when I wanted to do them. That’s not nothing. That’s proof I can keep building a life on my own terms, one that’ll need to keep growing as my kids head into their teens, then university.

Today’s little exercise in self-pity taught me something else too: the thoughts you let take up space in your head shape your life just as much as your actual finances do.

So yes, pay attention to your money. Clarity matters. But pay just as much attention to what’s running through your head while you look at the numbers. And don’t leave your bookkeeping until December.

Bringing Back Time

by | Oct 9, 2017 | Divorce and Separation

Bringing Time Back

I start new posts all the time. Most of them are about time, fittingly, since I usually run out of it before I finish writing them. Lately even the starting has slowed down.

I noticed this a few months ago and didn’t want to admit it. I’m admitting it now, on the tail end of Thanksgiving weekend, visiting my sister, kids fed, dishes done, nothing left demanding my attention for once.

I sat with that stillness and asked myself what I actually wanted to do.

Last week my life felt out of control. Everything felt like too much. I was close to doing something dramatic just to feel like I’d taken my life back, my old way of dealing with pain. Drama changes things for a while. It doesn’t fix the actual problem. But it feels like it will.

The actual problem was that I’d taken on too much.

So instead of anything dramatic, I took time to figure out what I actually needed. I stopped trying to finish everything on my list and started figuring out what could wait. I did only what was essential. I ate properly. I finally went grocery shopping so my kids could eat too. I went to bed when they did. I told clients clearly what needed doing and by when, and started turning down new work and social invitations I didn’t have room for. I made it back to yoga for the first time in weeks.

As I built that space back into my life, things got better.

It reminded me of the hardest stretch of my separation and divorce, when my instinct was to plow through and just get it over with. That approach didn’t lead anywhere good. I got through the divorce, but I paid for the way I got through it in other ways too.

Now, working with people navigating their own separations, I’ve noticed something: the ones who take their time, who let their emotions settle before sitting down with a spouse, who take care of themselves instead of taking their frustration out on their kids, come out the other side in better shape than the ones trying to force it all through at once.

I’m reminded, again, that time and care is how I want to live, and that I should probably practice what I preach.

This Thanksgiving, I was grateful for the extra day the long weekend gives us. It was that one bonus day that gave me the space to remember what I’d stopped doing for myself.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Custody of Kitty

by | Aug 15, 2017 | Divorce and Separation, Parenting & Co-Parenting

This is Kitty And this is Kitty out enjoying nature. 

Looks like a fireman Lego with a Darth Vader cape and falling-off headphones, you might think. Oh, how wrong you’d be.

Kitty, the combination of Lego man and Lego cat, the unit is called Kitty, caused a lot of conflict in our household last week.

I was dutifully cleaning up the dishes when I started to hear screaming coming from the area my kids had disappeared to. They always make themselves scarce when there’s work to be done. Someday soon they’ll be trained on dinner dishes.

I went to investigate, and as I got closer, the screaming became clearer.

“You’re an idiot!”

“No, you are!”

“Get out of my room, you’re always taking my stuff.”

“Kitty’s mine! Give it back!”

As I rounded the corner, my youngest hurtled by, clutching something in his hand. I reached out to grab him.

“What’s going on?”

I got a stereo synopsis of the situation. The kids were fighting over Kitty.

I yelled, ” Stop, ” and asked them to hold onto Kitty while we figured things out. The yelling continued, so I yelled stop again.

I called a time-out. “Okay, we all need to calm down, and then in ten minutes we can discuss what’s going on here, but we all need to get to a point where we can talk and not yell. I can’t help you two figure out anything while you’re yelling.”

So my kids went to their respective corners, not easily done. When my eldest is ramped up emotionally, he needs ten minutes alone in his room. Really, he needs twenty-four hours, but we’re working on ten minutes so he doesn’t lose an entire day. My youngest gets thirty seconds of screaming his head off, stomping, slamming doors. Thirty seconds. It’s fun, but it’s what we have to work with. It used to be three minutes. We’re whittling it down.

The kids had their time-outs, and I used the time to strategize and breathe before becoming mom-mediator. Not enough time.

We started to discuss what to do. Both kids wanted Kitty. Both were convinced Kitty was theirs. So first we explored that.

“How do we prove who Kitty belongs to?” I asked.

They started arguing over which set Kitty must have come from. A fireman set? Seemed reasonable. Then they argued over which kid had gotten the fireman set. They tried to get me to cast the deciding vote, but honestly, I couldn’t remember. I tried the analytical approach: you, oldest child, never liked firetrucks, you liked SpongeBob, so in theory Kitty is more likely from a set belonging to the youngest. This led to a lot of protesting from the older one, who explained that various pieces had come from multiple sets he’d creatively combined.

Still stuck. They dragged out every Lego manual to trace where each piece had come from. We did this for a while, until my oldest remembered he’d taken most of the manuals to his dad’s.

All the while, I was trying to help them think past “this is mine and therefore not yours.” Could we find equivalent pieces to build a second Kitty? Apparently not, there was only one cat. Could they take turns? Clearly not.

So I tried getting each of them to see the other’s point of view. I asked my oldest to explain what Kitty meant to him. He walked through the whole inspiration behind Kitty’s creation, how he’d picked each piece and why they belonged together as one unit. I’ve since forgotten the details, but at the time I could tell he felt real pride in what he’d built.

As he explained, my youngest rolled his eyes and huffed. I asked him to stop and listen, he’d get his turn too.

He did. And he repeated almost exactly what his brother had said, for nearly identical reasons. He loves his older brother and wants to be just like him.

I believe my oldest actually created Kitty. I also have a very non-self-aware youngest who genuinely believes he did.

After hearing what Kitty meant to each of them, I wanted them both to get to play with him. But they were still dug into their positions. I’d hoped that hearing each other out might lead somewhere, a duplicate Kitty, a sharing arrangement, even one of them stepping back and saying Kitty clearly meant more to the other. No such luck. They were stuck, and so was I.

I had to pull out the judge card.

“Well, it looks like we need a custody arrangement for Kitty. I’ll hold onto him overnight while I think about who gets the first play shift.”

I’ve had Kitty ever since. He’s been living in my car, riding around with me. I’ve become quite attached.

Rest Got me here

by | Jul 24, 2017 | Divorce and Separation

Rest Got Me Here

My blogging has taken a hit lately. My last post was February 3rd. That’s a long time.

Blog hiatuses are a pattern with me. Tax season, kids, summer, Kits Pool, biking, hiking, life in general- they all get in the way.

In the past, guilt would have made that list too. I’ve learned guilt doesn’t actually do anything for me except drag me down and eat up time I don’t have. Its voice still shows up, but I face it down and send it away now. That takes about thirty seconds these days. It used to take weeks.

Self-blame used to eat up even more time. I’d spend hours arguing with myself over why I wasn’t blogging. It went something like: you spent every night this week watching Netflix after the kids went to bed; you could’ve been working, or blogging, or exercising. And my answer: I was so tired I probably would have made mistakes, written badly, or hurt myself. Then I’d eat some chocolate chips to feel better, and pass out.

None of that guilt or self-blame ever actually brought me back to blogging.

What did was taking time for myself.

Last week I was at camp with my kids. Someone else cooked every meal. No laundry. Tax season was finally over. My kids are at the age where they disappear with friends, and I only see them for our daily hour together and at bedtime. I had time. I read a book. I swam every day. I actually got to talk to other moms.

Five days of real rest, and here I am blogging again, from a place of calm instead of guilt. It’s so much easier this way. This post took me an hour. The guilt-and-self-blame ones used to take days.

This theme keeps circling back for me: rest leading to everything else working better, and I see the opposite of it constantly in my work with people navigating separation and divorce. So much angst and blame gets wrapped up in that process.

I understand it firsthand. The years around my own separation and divorce were brutal. I used to sit on the couch wondering if I was having a heart attack. I felt guilty any time I took time for myself, so I kept pushing through, certain things would get better eventually. I blamed myself, my co-parent, probably my parents too, for the state of things. I took almost no time for myself, and my life was hard because of it. Arguments with my co-parent could drag on for weeks. Nothing worked.

Things got better once I started actually resting. That took time. It’s been four years since my separation, and rest still isn’t a permanent fixture in my life, but it’s getting closer because I can feel what it does when it’s there. Blame is mostly gone too. Mostly. It’s a sneaky one.

When I’m not in emotional upheaval, everything runs more smoothly. Simple to say. Not simple to live.

I’ll come back to this theme again. It’s the kind of thing that needs repeating.

Four Years Out

Four Years Out

by | Apr 11, 2017 | Divorce and Separation

Four Years Out

It has been four years since I separated from my husband.

My kids have gone from four and seven to eight and eleven.

I have a pretty fantastic life right now. It has its struggles, but I’m in a new career that still excites me, and I get up every day looking forward to work. My co-parent and I now share the burdens and joys of parenting far better than we ever did together. Most of my days are content. Some are genuinely amazing. The bad ones last a day, sometimes two, and then I’m back to content.

If someone had told me four years ago how long it would take to get here, it would have made things worse. But I’d have been just as surprised to hear how happy I’d end up. Back then, I thought of my life purely in terms of being a mom, and when that job was done, I’d be done too. Except moms are never really done, so I’d never have been done, and I’d have spent the rest of my life in a smaller, sadder version of the one I actually have now.

I was reminded of this recently.

I met someone in an unhappy marriage. She wants out. Her husband doesn’t. They each have their own reasons. In my case, it was the reverse: my ex was the one who wanted out, and I didn’t. I wasn’t happy either, but fear kept me there. He was probably afraid too, but his unhappiness must have outweighed it, because he stepped out first. I’m grateful now, both for the end of that marriage and for the path it put me on.

Before, I lived in fear, and fear drove almost every decision. I took jobs I didn’t want because I was afraid of not finding work. I stayed in a marriage I wasn’t happy in because I was afraid of what divorce would do to my kids. I stayed small and contained because I assumed change would only make things worse.

Change was hard. I had to change nearly everything I thought I knew about being a woman, a mom, an accountant, someone single with children. All of it. And I couldn’t do it alone.

None of it was easy. But every step down that new path opened up a life I never would have believed I’d get to live in.

So if you’re hesitating: reaching out for help is what puts your feet on your own path forward.