The Tale Of The Woman Who Is Trying To Get Her Shit Together

No matter how many times a month I try I can never seem to get to grips with my finances. I need a PA. A life manager. A God. Someone anyone please help me get my shit together. Every month money pours from my Monzo account like a small waterfall where I am waiting at the bottom with a little bucket collecting the drips and drops of leftover subscriptions and small change. I have always been chronically bad a managing money. Or life in general really.

I have been wondering recently how other people keep their shit together under financial pressure. As a low income earner I am surprised to find myself struggling to balance my priorities when the answer is clear. It is time for a new job. But I love mine so much and as a creature of comfort I am reluctant to remove myself from anything that brings me that sense of peace when the rest of my life feels so raw and chaotic. I find myself sitting in the beginning of the month and already I am worried for the future of weeks to come. It is not like I am wanting to live a life of luxuries and lavishing. I just wish to live peacefully knowing if my squarespace and tails subscription come out on the same day I am not financially crippled for the rest of the month. We are always taught is is vulgar to talk about money, but is it vulgar to talk about it when you don’t have any to talk about?

When I was younger we moved house every year. We are a big family and often shared bedrooms in small flats and houses well into our 20s. It was jovial and an adventure and we never worried emotionally but financial scarcity loomed all around us. Yet we made the best of it, I never noticed the pennies my mum gathered in Tesco Express ramming them through self checkout machines paying for another dinner time meal for a family of 7 plus dogs and cats. I never realised the amounting debts accumulated by my Dad who had depression and low impulse control spiralling my family into chaos. Even the holiday we took to Hastings to stay in my Nans caravan that one time became a family event of fun and not, as I later learned, was a necessity because we had been evicted and were now essentially homeless. We moved from home to home so frequently I didn’t unpack boxes as it wouldn’t be long before we left again. And yet I didn’t feel the impact this had at the time, yes it was sad to leave behind homes and yes I yearned for a permanent place to lay my head with marks on the walls from growing when you are two, or that secret hiding space for your diary in the floorboards, or the memories of an ever changing garden worked in and ever different over the years. I have yearned to settle somewhere for a long time and continue to wait even now.

I was once told by a doctor that moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do in life. But we moved with such momentous effort, no vans just cars and manpower, overnight and suddenly in new and unfamiliar spaces it became part of the background thrum of low level stress and adventure. Why live in one house when you could live in many? Why settle here when you can go anywhere? What is the point of a mortgage anyway? Or why bother to make savings when tomorrow isn’t guaranteed and the next days not looking great either.

It comes to little surprise to me now living in my own flat I struggle to understand money and priorities, this all feels quite familiar. Just when I feel like I have things under control and all my rent is due out on the same day as my council tax and my bills are set up on the social tariffs and my phone contract has come to an end, bam! I am left hooked with a sucker punch to the gut as a unexpected bill hits me, jam! I am kicked in the back with a delayed payment from trainline who didn’t take their money straight away, boom! I am smacked in the face with my Barclays overdraft over its limit and whining for more. Does anyone else live like this? With their money juggling in the air while you feel like the court jester just waiting for the drop?

I have been trying my best to get things in order. I have been slowly shifting my payments to the same dates, collaborating my debts into one. I have made charts for my payments that cant be changed and have narrowed down my subscriptions to the bare minimum of things that keep me sane like the gym and Phoebes dog food. So what next? I have been working out ways of improving my life. Getting my shit together one task at a time. Orienting myself to a more secure future. I am trying to put out my good energy, building my brand identity, making a Linkedin profile, looking for clients on Fiverr. But more than that I am giving myself the permission to do it. The promise to myself that I am capable is far more valuable to me than monetary gain. For the first time I am seeing myself as a fully working artist, putting my ambitions to portfolios and sending them away to companies who I could only dream of working with an actual possibility. Finally looking at myself as a independent woman who has managed so far not to make a massive mess of her life. I see myself as a baby starting at year one, teaching myself the bare minimum of what it takes to survive in this expensive world.

And do you know what I have found so far? I have found kindness. Kindness and acceptance in the strangest of places. When I went to the food bank they gave me coffee and cake and shelter from the rain, they offered me humanity in a time when I felt embarrassment and fear. I have found softness in the sweet environment around me in my home by the sea. I have learnt to live from very little money but have made my priorities reflective and sweet, I have spent more time in the sunshine, more time reading, more time appreciating the world around me. I have discovered the love of dancing and singing and the real strength of friendship or the listening and understanding ears of strangers, always there to support and guide me. I am discovering love and its understanding unwavering blanket of safety where fears are met with soft voices and gentle movements. And through all of this I am discovering determination. My inner monologue is strong my narrative remains resilient ‘ You can do this! You were made for this life! I believe in you!’

Finally I am taking pause to listen. Finally I am leading the way.

I believe things will get better. I always have.

Until next time babies,

Love from Bitsifind x