Spending Money
Due to not coming from a filthy rich family, I am always very careful in spending my money. I remembered my sister and I would collect all the coins scattered around at home, and asked our parents whether could we save them into our coinboxes. Usually, they would say "yes". 5 cents those days were big money. We could buy two sweets. Now, we can buy zero stuff from 5 cents.
However, I do not particularly have a system on how I should spend money. It was in-built inside of my system to always weigh the 'needs' and the 'wants' before purchasing items. If those items are my 'wants', I usually tossed them out the window the idea of buying. Had I ever spent money on something and regretted it? Yes, of course, especially on those sales and discounts and promotions season. After bought, I realized I did not really need those kitchen utensils or T-shirts. I regretted buying and I learned from my mistakes. My family had our share of poverty once during the bad economic crisis and I remembered my sister and I ate rice with eggs happily while our parents ate rice in the water happily too. Later on, we found out they acted happy because of us.
Becoming a parent entirely changes the way I spend my money. You will choose to spend money on your children. You rather not buying anything for yourself so that you have more than enough for their food, books, and clothes. I am glad to say I can live a minimalist life if I want to. It is like the lesser you own, the more you have. Then, when you have more, you can be generous to give away. When you give way, the more you receive.
I spend lesser these few years because I no longer work. Being a stay-at-home-mom, you must be careful with all the money given to you. The hard-earned money by husband always goes to paying off bills first. The hard-earned money from Hive also used for paying bills. I told my husband I want to be able to share a bit of the burden. Since I do not like to owe money, I make sure to prioritize paying off bills over food on the table. Seriously... So far, we still afford to buy food after paying off all the bills.
And when you got into crypto, the funny thing is, it teaches you to save more rather than spend. I find the earning from cryptos are very precious. Not sure how to explain but you will like holding it, saving it, instead of using it. I think some of you will understand how I feel. So I spend very little money on myself since I am a super-duper very low maintenance lady. I count my husband lucky because I do not need to have a lot of attires or shoes or bags or pieces of jewelry. I also don't go for a haircut, never been to pedicure manicures, massage, facial beauty places. Nothing. Sometimes, in a group of ladies, I felt I am the odd one. I love having just that one bag, that one sandal, that one hair clip, that one lipstick, that 5 T-shirts and 5 pants and I am good to go.
**Or, maybe, I am just very out-to-date. Haha. No fashion sense, perhaps.**
*On top of all the above, I absolutely feel very satisfied if I can spend money to care for someone else, like buying food they like, giving them gifts, buying supplements for my parents. That's just me, my love language.*
New Goal
Do you set a YEARLY goal for yourself?
or maybe...
DAILY goal for yourself?
MONTHLY?
Ever since the pandemic hit us badly, my goal-setting is haywire. Because I was needing to keep adjusting to the new transition of how things going to work. Adjusting to the new norms is not easy. Even though we have online classes run by teachers, the total hours of online classes are much lesser compared to the hours spent at school. It used to be 7:30 am to 1 pm school time. And now we have 2 hours of online class daily. After the online class, the parent needs to step in to further guide and coach the said child in all the subjects.
Before this, I can set a schedule for cooking, cleaning, and homeschooling my youngest son. But now, I need to be flexible to attend to any last-minute class cancellation and parent to step in to guide the child in homework posted by the teacher. You can't expect the child to be a genius to know how to do the homework by himself. Practically, I am also a teacher now at home. I mean, I don't mind. I love teaching and was once a private tutor. But the amount of jobs as a mother and homemaker and now a co-teacher at home is simply overwhelming at times.
If I set the same goal as I used to, to achieve a list of things-to-do, I will be left stressed and frustrated because many on the list will be left undone. Being a high achiever, that feeling is kind of sucks.
Besides, I also love to spend some time on crypto-based work but as much as I wish I could, sometimes, I just can't achieve all. If it's not the laundry left undone, it would be I didn't teach my son any lesson that day, or the house is in a mess. I have to admit that I can't achieve all on the same day - cooking, cleaning the house from A-Z, teaching the son, blogging here, posting there. Certain tasks just have to give way and be postponed the next day, or the next day.
Anyway, I cut down my time on Facebook and Instagram tremendously because it can be a waste of time scrolling the feeds up and down, and then you felt lost like "what was I wanting to do?" It was like keep on eating but never feel full. Never feel satisfied, in fact, it made you feel even drier on the inside. Thirsty, like you need more water. Hungry, like you need more food.
Not until...
I joined Noise.Cash on 10th January not having any high hope, but mind you, I was wrong. After one week of spending time there and got to know more new friends as well as gaining knowledge on BCH, I like to say that I love the platform. It even gives free tips daily for you to tips others. Due to I did not pay anything to get those tips, so I choose to give 80% to others and 20% to myself. It is a win-win situation. Ever since I joined Noise.Cash, I learn to love BCH and believe in its potentials. And I have new goal for this year.
My new goal is to save as much as BCH as possible and to see the success of BCH. I saw some users posting about Club 1BCH and secretly, I want to reach the goal too. It is fun to connect with people there and you also see some familiar faces from other platforms like Hive, Publish0x, etc. In other words, it is not just a platform to post and kill idle time. You get some BCH and you get to know more people of the same heartbeat. And shame to say, this year 2021, I start my journey to understand more on other cryptos. It used to be only Steem and HBD, now I am expanding to BCH, and I foresee more to come as I learn from other people here.
I am also readjusting my time so that I can set to write articles here on daily basis, if not twice a week. Hopefully, I can be more composed and able to manage better in between all the tasks at home as well as at the cypto world.
So, let us have goals in life to stay alive. Let us wish for it, hope for it, dream for it, and JUST DO IT!!!
=) Thank you for reading.
Outburst
I can relate with this!
Especially nowadays when I am approaching 40 and feel like some imbalance hormone is disturbing me monthly. I think most of us can relate to outbursts. All of us have a sudden 'splash' or 'volcano' of strong emotions. Sometimes, we manage it well, and often we flop.
Early parenting years opened my eyes to a new horizon. Every now and then, I witnessed outbursts from my eldest son (my second had not borned out yet), it could be as little as a ripple in water or as huge as volcano, depending on the trigger. And I witnessed how they slammed the door, how they talked back with words, they sounded and looked like none other than **me.** It was embarrassing. Thank God, this was few years ago and I had then changed alot after reading tonnes of parenting articles, subscribed to alot of parenting newsletters for **self-improvement.**
And recently, started end of last year, I started to notice weird behavioral pattern in me monthly. There would be two to three days when I felt extremely down and beaten down - **for no apparent reasons** - that's the scary part, because usually I got upset and frustrated for valid reasons.
Then I read about hormonal imbalance as women grows older in age. But, 40 years old is still young, isn't it? Anyway, I read more about it and found out that the best way to cope with it is by proper diet. Cutting down sugars and excessive carbs. I am not a sugar eater but I eat alot, like alot of carbs. Bread for breakfast, rice for lunch, rice for dinner. Rice is our staple food. So I stop eating rice too. If I cook meals for family, I eat only the vegetables and protein.
Then, I also started intermittent fasting using the 16:8 ratio and started drinking black coffee without sugar since January 2021. 18 days had passed and I noticed a big difference in my emotion and feelings. I got better day. No longer had that foggy heads and uncontrollable feeling or outbursts. Even my boys said they notice the difference in me.
I was like....
Yay!!!
It is true, mummy usually holds the key or set the pace of the house atmosphere. When mummy has outbursts, the children have more. When mummy is calm, children follow suit. I hope I will be even better than today.
As for the children, whenever they had outbursts, I changed my approach. In my early days of parenting when I didn't know much, I would scold, and I would have outbursts too, joined the party. Everything got worse. Eruption happened. It was bad.
Now, when my children had outbursts, I was calm, took a deep breathe to tell myself it wasn't an emergency. I waited for the child to calm down before I approached to give a hug. It usually melted the child then he would open up to express his feeling better in words.
Growing up surely has its outbursts. I hope as I am better in handling mine, I can impart the skills to my children.
Thank you for reading my article.
If you like what you read, a tip will encourage me, if you don't like what you read, a comment will help me to improve. Thank you for your time here. 😊
❤️Love, Jadeline
Life can be imperfect
And that's OKAY.
If there is anything that parenting had taught me, this is it - that imperfection is okay.
I used to be a perfectionist. Needless to say, in my growing up, I performed very well in my studies and activities. Every single project must be done top notch or else I would not pass up. If passed up the not so perfect, my joy was robbed for whole day. I would beat myself up.
However, taking care of kids is not according to a fixed content, specific instructions or a comprehensive manual. They are human beings with wisdom, strength and will-power too. Each has his or her own uniqueness and character. You just can't confined them to one-type of parenting style. And they are random. They can love scrambled egg today and totally hate it the next day. Also, you can't control them to be who you want them to be, nor can you managed them in a way that they will follow your plan 100%.
**Children love to play.** Messy play is the best. It boosts their imagination and their brain power level up. You cannot have a clean squeeky shiny house anymore. No more imperfection. Stickers on the wardrobe. Drawing on wall. Some permanent markers on my marble table top. Alot of fingerprints on my glass table.
**I embrace imperfection.** Imperfect is OK. Messy house is OK. Schedule upside down is OK. Because, along the imperfection tagged along the cheeky laughter of the little ones, the funny imagination talk of themselves coming out from their creative brain, the mysterious moves of dance or jump.
Suddenly...
I go to my Autodesk Sketch app in my phone and drew this out without erasing or editing. Telling myself imperfect drawing is okay too. Colouring out of the line is called unique art. Why the pink hair? Simply because I love pinkish purplish colour.
So, you don't have to be perfect to be ok, or to feel adequate. You can still be okay, eventhough many things around are not perfect. It's the mindset that matters. It's how you perceive the situation or happening around you that determine the aura of the day. Whether it is cheery or moody, radiates from inside us.
Thank you for reading my article and my thoughts. If you like what you read, you may give me a tip. If you don't like what you read, please comment some tips/advice for my improvement.
❤️Love from Jadeline
@iamjadeline
