This may seem like whining, and as I write it I’m thinking, I should just really focus on the positive things like how AWESOME I”M DOING SO FAR! But I was thinking it might help others to share what are the challenges for me and my brain in making this big switch from online retail therapy to….Not online retail therapy. I haven’t figured out anything to fill it with yet.

At the beginning of this I went through my email and unsubscribed from the places I shop online with most often. My rationale in signing up for these emails in the first place is: “If I’m going to shop, I might as well get it on sale”, because these places have sales SOOO often that it’s ridiculous to pay full price. HOWEVER, as we all know. when something is on sale it creates that sense of URGENCY (sorry, I really love capital letters, just ask my mom) that “Oh my goodness, what a great deal, I can’t pass that up!” even if it’s something we don’t really need. I did this two years ago at the beginning of the year long challenge also, but this time I went one step further. I un-followed all my favourite bloggers on instagram.

My husband and I kvetch all the time about what our kids watch on Youtube Kids: other kids playing with toys. It means they know EXACTLY what all the newest, trendiest toys are, and they WANT THEM! And then I realized something. That’s exactly what I do on Instagram! I watch other women play with clothes! So I always know what the newest, trendiest clothes are, and I WANT THEM!Talk about creating a culture of lack and unfulfilled-ness (is unfullfilment a word? Likely not, but it should be, because there’s a lot of that going on in the age of Instagram and Youtube kids). I’m constantly bombarded by what I don’t have and what I lack. So, unfollow! Stop watching women wear clothing you want! (God I’m going to miss them. So sad.)
This will hopefully help with hardest thing number TWO. (In case you missed it, number one was Instagram = constant temptation.

Hardest thing number TWO is ONLINE SHOPPING. Gahhhhh. I love online shopping. I don’t know when it started, but it hit me hard. I do think it coincided with my Instagram addiction because about 90% of the things I bought online, I saw first on Instagram. (Especially for myself, stuff for the kids it’s often just easier to buy online than try and make it out to a store. But it definitely makes me stop and think “Do I need this” when I have to go out to a store for it, instead of it showing up on my doorstep”.

I was reading this book called “Dollars and Sense: How we Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter” and one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned so far is that the universe would like to distance us from what the author calls “The Pain of Paying”. To separate us from our money is painful, so things like CREDIT CARDS help by lengthening the time between the purchase and the actual payment for the item. Like, if you buy a bottle of red wine, and “age it” by leaving it in your basement for five years, when you drink the bottle, it feels FREE! It isn’t, because you paid for it five years ago, but who cares, that’s so far in the past that it doesn’t matter. This is kind of how credit cards work but in reverse. You buy something and enjoy it immediately (or in 4-7 business days, whenever it shows up on your doorstep), but because it’s on your credit card you don’t end up paying for it until 3 weeks later, and even then it’s in a huge bill with the other 10,000 things you put on your credit card which decreases the “pain” because you’ve already enjoyed it. Credit cards also decrease the attention we give to the payment. His formula is : Pain of Paying = Time + Attention. When you increase the time between payment and consumption and decrease the attention needed to make payment. Think about all the ways this is possible with things like tap cards (beep, didn’t even notice how much it was, beep, hey isn’t this fun? BEEEEEP!) and websites that allow you to save your credit card info so you don’t even have to get up off the couch to get it (Confirm order? Yes please, see YOU soon pretty bag!) or this fabled Apple Pay that lets you pay with your phone (it’s not REAL money, it’s PHONE money!). All these things separate YOU from the reality of LOSING MONEY!

So I’m trying really hard to use Debit for everything, and again, am posting all my extra purchases (besides food and gas and the boring necessities) on my Instagram page (linked in the blog header) so that it REALLY sinks in that I’m losing that money. That it is GONE and I’m never getting it back to save up for that new couch, or trip to Victoria (or ANY trip that doesn’t involve camping on wheels) or FOR THE CHILDREN’S SAKE! I’m also writing it down and creating a weekly total so we can really get a good idea of where the money is going. How do you separate the pain from the payment? Have a good weekend!

When I was in labour with Sebastian, it was the most intense pain I’ve ever encountered in my entire life. He was a week plus overdue, I was insanely sore and exhausted, and they had to induce for like 12 hours. After about six hours of oxytocin and antibiotics the contractions were ramping up and yet I was still at about 3 cm, which is about what I was at when I GOT THERE IN THE MORNING. I was so incredibly frustrated and disheartened and kept saying to my husband and my doula, “I can’t do this, I can’t do this anymore, I don’t want to, it’s too hard”. And the pain was just getting worse and worse. I spent I dunno how long, just bearing down in a squat, complaining that I just wasn’t strong enough to keep going.

And then help came from the weirdest place. I think either Mark or Eldyka said “You got this” and all of a sudden all I could hear was this song from the My Little Pony soundtrack that my daughters are addicted to. “You got this, we got this, we got this togetheeeeerrrrrrrr!” And with that song stuck in my head, I did, I got this. Everything shifted from that point and I just kept singing that inane song over and over and over and over. Even when it was still another few hours (probably) before he was finally born (at a whopping NINE POUNDS), even when his shoulder got stuck and we had to maneuver him a bit, I kept that stupid song going and thus kept telling myself I could do it. And it made allll the difference.

The last few months have been HARD. And the words in my head are not helping at ALL. I can’t do this. Why is this so fucking hard. Why am I so tired all the time. Why is this so fucking hard. Will it ever be any easier? Will I ever be strong enough to handle all three of these children? Why do they make it so difficult? Fucking hard, fucking children, how am I ever going to do this? Will I ever be a good mother? Will it ever get easier? Why is it so fucking hard?!

And believing it’s so hard and telling myself how hard it is, and how weak I am, has not helped. It hasn’t made it go by any faster. It has made me feel weaker and less able to cope. It makes me more susceptible to retail therapy because I NEED IT. Because it’s so fucking hard, that I need something to help me make it through.

And starting this journey AGAIN, the same thoughts are running through my head. It’s going to be fucking hard, how will I ever get through this?

I MIGHT pick another song other than My Little Pony…just cause I don’t think I can handle another three months of that song, but I might try something like Sia’s “Unstoppable” or something (any and all suggestions welcome) like that to give me some strength of mind. Some positive self-talk (self-sing?) might help?

Lame? How else does one get through the hard times? Tips? Tricks? Good fight songs?

My spending has been out of control. Again. Which I know I admitted about a month ago (two?) when I did a random but necessary blog post about how I’ve unlearned all the lessons I had learned, but I think it even got worse after that. I know I went into Old Navy and bought pants and a shirt (I didn’t even wait for a SALE!) for like $100, spent about the same amount on new earrings, bought a bunch of new things for the girls for summer (even though summer HAS NOT ARRIVED YET HERE IN ALBERTA) and was planning to order a bunch of new jewelry when the line launch came out on Friday, even though I haven’t sold a BEAN from my “business” in like a year…

So I need to go back to rehab. I just re-read my post from January 2018 that said I was going to do three months of consumables only, and that might be a good shock-therapy start. We are still living on one income since the baby is only 5 months old and I can’t realistically go back to work yet. He doesn’t need me need me as he’s been on formula/bottles for about a month now, but he’s still sooo little, I can’t bear to leave him yet. Also, I’ve been considering what I really want to do with my life (if you stick around I do this about every six months or so and come up with something new to try for a while. So far I’ve tried editing courses, I took a psychology course to see if I’d want to teach that…I almost applied for a nursing degree…)and considering going back to the old dream of being an English academic. This, as you will realize, costs money. Money that I am currently spending, on stuff.

And I struggle, because I loooooove shopping, I love getting a new thing in the mail, I love the “freedom” to just pick up what I want when I want it. Whatever it is, clothes for me, for the girls, for Sebastian (the baby), earrings, purses, shoes. It all brightens up a time that has been incredibly difficult for me. I have been at home, not working, for two full years now. That was never the plan. And it’s HARD. Being home with a four year old, a newborn, and a very precocious and busy 6 year old has been HARD. And I cheer myself up via shopping. Too bad I’m not an exercise addict instead of a shopping addict, then I’d have a six pack instead of a lot of jewelry. But realizing that as my kids get busier, their activities get more expensive, and we have less and less money for STUFF has had a big impact on me. I’m the reason we don’t have enough for their activities. It’s my spending that’s making my husband so stressed out, and making him question whether we have enough so that the 6 year old can do all the dancing she wants. That’s on me. And my earrings. And my purses. And my online shopping addiction. How embarrassed and ashamed do I feel?

I started reading this book that talked about “opportunity costs” which means that if you spend $100 on earrings (for example) then what is the cost of that in terms of other opportunities? For me that’s almost a month’s worth of dancing fees for my girls. A months worth of dancing is worth more to me than earrings, but I hadn’t ever looked at it that way before. SO it’s a two-pronged approach:

1. Look at how much things cost me in “opportunity cost”. If I spend this, what am I taking away from my kids?

2. Cheering myself up in other ways like exercise, fresh air, and possibly taking a graduate level English class and start moving towards a career away from my children so that I’m not facing ten plus years of drudgery/stay at home mom-life which is usually what makes me reach for my shopping. (This mayyy include cutting down my instagram use significantly as this is where I find allll the things I want. Leopard print earrings, shoes, the latest jewelry trends, allllll on instagram in one handy place.)

I’m still panicking internally about this, by the way. And likely will for some time. Do it for the children Meaghan, DO IT FOR THE CHILDREN!!!

PHOTOS. I have spent two days out of the last four dealing with the overabundance of photos I have. This has been an issue of mine. I take like 10 of the same shot, but then don’t go back and edit. Then when the mood strikes to upload them all into the computer, I think, mah, whatever, just throw them all on there.

But a few months ago I was pretty sure that some photos were missing from my computer. They were in my phone, but not going to my computer for some reason. I ignored it for several months until this message popped up about storage getting full. And then another one about storage BEING full. I got soo annoyed at this message, as I would have loved to delete some of these photos but I can’t because I can’t put them on the computer yet (and we are talking like 600 photos that weren’t going). Soooo I phoned Apple care and spent like an hour on the phone with one lady. She suggested upgrading my computer system (like downloading the update from the app store). We scheduled a call back for that afternoon for someone to check and see if it worked. It didn’t, and photos was taking about a decade to load the photos that were supposedly already in there (from 2009!)

So I spent an hour on the phone with THAT guy, but since it wasn’t working just decided to keep my Sunday appointment at the Apple store. THAT took an hour and 45 minutes and we got it mostly organized. But because there were so many photos, I had to keep plopping them into the computer and then it would stall etc etc.

The moral of the story is: There is ONE MORE THING THAT I NEED TO MINIMIZE!

Oi. There are literally 20,000 photos and video stored on my computer, which are slowing things down considerably. There are only about 600 photos on my phone, which is pretty darn amazing, as there has been close to 2000 for some time. Why, instead of flipping through Instagram, don’t I spend 20 minutes and clear out the 10 copies of almost the same picture?!

I never even considered digital clutter when I was minimizing and trying to cut down on visual clutter. But there you go. Yet another thing to remember, as it has cost me HOURS out of my week!

What are things that take up your time that drive you mental? Have a lovely week!