Category: Heather Rae

Money and Control

posted 30th June 2010    Written by: Heather Rae    CATEGORY: Heather Rae, Money, Season 2

Money and I have an interesting relationship.  I mean, I like money.  It’s great to have around when I need to do something like, say, pay the rent.  But, other than that, I kind of wish it had no part in my life.  Seriously.

Like most people, I struggle with a lifelong love-hate relationship with cash. I want it.  I want lots and lots of it.  But not so that it can be front and center in my life.  Rather, because I want the chance to completely forget about it — for once.

If my friends were to choose one word to describe how I handle my finances, they’d probably choose one of these:  frugal, cheap, careful, thrifty…or, perhaps, tight-ass.  And if we’re being honest here, I’d have to admit they’re right.  The reason I hate money is not because I don’t have enough.  For all intents and purposes, I do.  It’s because I don’t feel like I have enough.

Between having parents that fought about money pretty much every day and having a mother that told me, “It’s just as easy to marry for a rich man as it is a poor man”, I imagine it was somewhat inevitable for me to end up having anxiety when it comes to handling my finances.

There was a plus side to this.  I became fiercely financially independent.  I learned to save.  (And I mean seriously save.)  With the exception of a few student loans, I carry no debt.  I don’t use credit cards unless I can pay them in full at the end of the month.  And I’ve never depended on a beau to support me.  Never.

But then, that’s also the problem.  This fierce need to be independent, to never ask for help, to do it all on my own — well, it’s tiring.  And not only for me.  It’s tiring for my fiancé, too.

Let me give you an example.  As you know, I left my job in February.  Before making that decision, I saved for two years.  I had enough money to support my lifestyle for a year before having to return to work.

I’d say it was about two weeks after leaving my job that I broke down in tears, sobbing to the fiancé that I was afraid we’d run out of money before the year was up.  He said, “Heather, how much money do you have?”  (After a freak out like that, he was worried that perhaps I was right.)  So I told him.  He looked at me, confused.  “So what are you worried about again?”

I knew I had enough money to last the year.  But that didn’t stop me from breaking down and freaking out.

And just to make my point really clear, I’ll give you another example.  My fiancé and I are very careful to live below our means.  We figure it’s better to have extra money than risk not having enough.  Because of this, we could easily get by on one income.

You might think this would make me happy.  When the year is up and my savings run dry, I could potentially count on his income to carry us through as I continue pursuing my writing goals.  We’ve discussed this possibility.  He fully supports me and encourages me to keep doing what makes me happy and not worry about going back to work.

But instead of being happy about this, I stress.  And I nag, and I worry.

I don’t know how to let go of control when it comes to money.  I don’t know how to trust someone else to pay the bills, to take care of me, to be there for me.  And if I do.  If I let go of that control and let him take care of me, does that somehow make me weak?  Am I setting myself up for financial disaster in the future?  Am I letting another person have too much control over my life?

Yeah.  You could say I have money issues.  (And trust issues.  And control issues.  And all sorts of other issues.)

All I can tell you is I’m working on it.  I’m not there yet, but I really am making progress.  In some ways, walking away from my job was the best decision I could ever have made.  And I’m not saying that because I’m taking an opportunity to chase my dreams.  (Though that’s wonderful, too.)  Rather, It’s forced me to face my control issues head on.

I’ve had to let go of the security that comes with a stable job and learn to deal with questions. (Will this book ever sell?  Can I make it as a writer?  What if I run out of money?  Can I allow myself to trust that I don’t have to do this alone?)  So many questions.  More questions than answers.

Facing these uncertainties has helped me to make progress in so many ways.  Little by little, day by day, I feel myself letting go.  I feel myself getting more comfortable with uncertainty. And, honestly, if things do go terribly wrong, I’m pretty sure I would handle it better than I would have prior to this experience.

It’s funny how that works sometimes.  I left my job for no other reason than to chase a few dreams.  And I’ve ended up getting so much more from that decision.  Now that’s a good thing.

photo credit: Toban Black

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Thoughts on Love

posted 23rd June 2010    Written by: Heather Rae    CATEGORY: Heather Rae, Love/Relationships, Season 2

Have you ever wondered how different life would be if you said I love you more, gave more hugs, told people what they meant to you without a second thought?  I have.

Perhaps it’s just me.  I’m an introvert.  And I tend to be shy.  So I often keep my thoughts to myself.  I let them run around a few times in my mind before I ever let them out.  And by then, they’ve been edited.  Sometimes, I really wish I wouldn’t do that.  I wish I would say the things I’m thinking without censoring myself. I wish I would be open, completely open, with the people I love.

For that matter, I really wish I would tell the people I love that they’re part of that circle in the first place.

There are a few in my life that I’m totally and completely comfortable being all sappy with.  I tell them I love them every chance I get, I hug them at every opportunity, I let them know how much they mean to me.  And I’ll let any random thought that comes to mind slip out without a second thought.  But those people are few and far between.

Actually, I’d limit it to one.  Make that two.

But then there are others, those that I assume must know how I feel.  I don’t need to say it.  They get it.  Whatever. I wave it off as a whatever, like it doesn’t matter.  But it does.  Think about it.  When someone takes the time to tell you that you mean a lot to them, to say that you matter, how does it make you feel? I don’t know about you, but it makes me feel pretty damn good.  I smile.  I’m happy.

I don’t assume that everyone has this issue, this inability to speak their mind, to release their feelings.  But I’m pretty sure I’m not completely alone in this either.  There is no lack of song lyrics that tell you to say what you need to say or ask how come we don’t say I love you enough.  And it often takes a large scale tragedy to wake us up and cause the phone lines to fill with calls home, people asking — are you okay?  And by the way, I love you, I really do.

Perhaps I’ve been thinking about this a lot because I’m in the process of moving, to a new city and a new state. And it’s far.  The last time I made a long distance move, I moved close enough that I could get back home by car.  It wasn’t that big a deal.  I knew if I got home sick I could hop in the Civic and be in the midst of visiting loved ones in four hours.

Because of this ability to drive home on a moment’s notice, I’ve developed two basic groups of friends.  I have my community of friends in the Los Angeles area, a place that I now call home (even if it did take six years for me to utter that phrase).  And I have my community of family and friends in Las Vegas.  Although not everyone is super close, most people aren’t that far either.

But this time I’m moving 1,200 miles away.  I won’t be able to drive back when I’m home sick. I’ll have to buy a plane ticket and make real plans.  That sounds easy enough.  But I’d bet we can all remember times we let friendships fall and relationships wither because someone moved.  It takes more effort, it becomes complicated, and eventually, it drops to the wayside.

I really don’t want that to happen.  And I certainly don’t want to leave with words unsaid.  I don’t want to leave friends not knowing how much they mean to me, not realizing that in the grand scheme of my life, they really matter.

And so, in my last couple of weeks in L.A., I’m giving myself an assignment:  tell everyone that matters that they do, in fact, matter to me.  And be genuine.  And real.  And honest.

Of course, this plan of action is easier said than done.  Genuine?  Real?  Honest?  We so often spend time hiding our feelings; it can be hard to dig out the truth.  But I’m going to do this — cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.  I figure the returns will be well worth the investment.

What about you?  Is there anyone you need to say I love you to?

photo credit: @ly$ in wonderland

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A Day in the Life

posted 16th June 2010    Written by: Heather Rae    CATEGORY: All Posts, Heather Rae, Inspiration, Season 2

A few months ago, I completed The Joy Equation course.  One of my favorite exercises for discovering my big dreams was to write down a perfect day in my life at some point in the future.  Every so often, I like to go back and read through that perfect day.  It’s an inviting reminder of what my journey is all about, of where I want my life to take me. Not that I expect it all to go the way I plan, but it’s nice to have something to aim for.

Today, I think I’ll share that perfect day with you.

I decided to write my perfect day for when I’m forty, in the year 2018.  Here goes:

Writing, teaching, dancing, reading, husband, baby, house, art, decorating, classes, travel, friends.  That one run-on sentence pretty much sums up my perfect life at forty.

(Keep in mind, this is about to be one jam-packed day.  Fitting everything neatly into one day is somewhat impossible in reality.  I’m sure most days wouldn’t look like what’s about to follow, but for the sake of my fantasy — well, I’m simply putting it all out there.)

The morning starts early, around 6 a.m.  Steven headed out a few minutes ago to check on a patient at the hospital.  I check on our daughter.  She’s four years old.  I can’t believe I have a four year old.

She’s still sleeping, so I quietly walk into the kitchen and make breakfast.  I sit down with my book of the moment and start reading while I eat.

A half hour passes without me even stopping to look at the clock.  Little feet tap the floor, moving down the hallway.  My daughter is awake and looking for something to entertain her.  I give her a hug and ask if she’s hungry.  She is, as usual, so I make her a quick breakfast and then work on getting us both ready for the day.

After my daughter is dressed and she’s occupied with her toys, I work on myself.  Our neighbor is driving the kids to pre-school this week.  I look out the window and see the car out front.  We grab her things and walk outside together.  I chat with the neighbor for a few minutes, then buckle my daughter in the car seat.

Back inside, I walk to my office.  It’s not your usual office.  For one thing, it doesn’t have a desk.  As a writer, some people might find this odd, but I prefer to work at the chase with my laptop.  I’m working on two projects at the moment.  One is a travel memoir.  I’m writing about the last summer I spent with Steven and our daughter traveling through Central America.  A New York publishing company already bought the book, and I’m working against a deadline.  Today, I’m putting the finishing touches on my final revision before sending it to my agent for review.

The other writing project I’m working on is a novel.  It’s the third book in a young adult series.  Books one and two sold incredibly well, and we just signed a deal with a production company for the movie rights of the first book.  I’m still in shock that my book will be made into a movie.

After writing for a few hours, I can’t take sitting much longer.  I look at the clock and it’s almost time to head to the studio.  I take dance classes at a small studio a few days a week.  Dancing has been the perfect way to blow off steam while I’m in the middle of writing.  It keeps my mind fresh, and I’m always ready to return to the page after a good class.

I change for class and head out.  Class is filled with student’s I’ve danced with for about a year now.  I love this particular class because the women all get along so well.  We often go to lunch after class just to hang out.  Today, we’re getting ready for a performance, so the energy in the room is even more than usual.

I have a lunch date with an old friend and won’t be able to stick around for lunch with the girl’s from class today.  We meet at a favorite restaurant and talk for what seems like hours.  I look at my watch and see that it’s time to get my daughter from school, so we head out.

I pick up my daughter from pre-school and say hello to the teacher.  My daughter made me a necklace out of macaroni and asks me to put it on.  I tell her it’s beautiful and dutifully wrap it around my neck.

Once we get home, my daughter asks if she can paint.  Sounds good to me, so I get out some supplies and we both work on our ‘art’ projects.  I’ve been painting for several years now.  I’m excited that I’ve continued to get better and take classes and workshops whenever the opportunity arises.  I’ve actually started selling my paintings — more because I don’t have any place to put them than anything else.  I wouldn’t call myself a professional or anything.  But every once in a while I paint something that even surprises me.

Steven calls while we’re painting and says he’ll be home at about seven o’clock.  He asks if he should bring anything for dinner.  I’ve cooked every other day that week, so I say yes.  I call for take-out at the new vegetarian place near our house, and Steven agrees to pick it up on his way home.

Our daughter starts work on a new finger painting, so I go to my office and get some papers to review while she paints.  I’m an adjunct professor at the city college near our house.  Twice a week, I teach a class on culture and health.  The semester is almost over.  My students turned in their term papers a few days ago, and I still need to read through most of them and assign grades.

After reading through a few papers and making some notes for class tomorrow, I set aside that project and start leafing through the latest college catalog.  It’s almost time to register for Fall classes.  I want to be sure to take another French class next semester.  At this point, I’m pretty fluent.  But I like to continuously improve my skills.  Also, I happen to love reading college catalogues.  It’s sort of a hobby in itself.  Once, I took a class on Middle Eastern History just for fun.  I do that sometimes.  If my schedule doesn’t look particularly full, I’ll take random classes for no reason at all.

My daughter and I are reading together when I hear the garage door open.  Steven is home with dinner.  She jumps off my lap to greet her daddy.  We eat dinner together in the dining room, using all the good china, as usual.  I hate to save that stuff for special occasions.  Every day is a special occasion.

After dinner, Steven spends time playing with our daughter.  Then he reads to her.  They have a ritual of reading together every night before she goes to bed.  If he’s at the hospital, she’ll try to wait all night for him to come home before she’ll give in and go to sleep.  Luckily, it’s rare that he’s not home at night.  Some nights he comes home just for dinner and bedtime, then heads back to the hospital.  It’s really important to both of them to have their time together.

After the tucking in and kissing goodnight, Steven and I relax together for a couple of hours — we talk for a while, watch a movie and make love.

We have a good life.  That’s what I’m thinking as I drift to sleep.

photo credit: yogendra174

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Letting Go of Control and Expectations

posted 9th June 2010    Written by: Heather Rae    CATEGORY: Heather Rae, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 2

I’m going through something these days.  There’s something inside of me that wants to burst out and be free.  I keep getting these urges to do something crazy and step outside of my comfort zone – as if some part of my being has been stifled all these years and is finally ready to show itself.

I’m not sure what’s going on. Or why I feel the need to do things that are so out of character.  I find myself craving adventure and the unknown – I want to jump out of airplanes despite my fear of both flying and heights, go skinny dipping, have wild sex, go hang gliding and quit my job (oh wait, I already did that).

All of my life, I’ve been a control freak.  I’ve done everything just so and have fully expected said things to turn out exactly as I planned. Why?  Because I needed them to.

The truth is, I put a lot of pressure on myself to be perfect – a perfect student, a perfect employee, a perfect friend, a perfect fiancé, a perfect daughter.  Only now have I stopped to ask myself where this pressure came from.  Who was it that first told me I couldn’t make mistakes?  And, for that matter, is there such a thing as perfection?  What I described sounds more like a Stepford Wife than a real person.

As you might expect, life hasn’t met my expectation of perfection.  Sometimes things have worked out the way I envisioned.  But the opposite has generally been truer – things have worked out in completely different ways than I anticipated.  And in these situations, I often ended up feeling lost or out of control.  I know it may seem odd, but I’ve just now realized that being in control of everything isn’t even close to possible.

And this ridiculous need to control every outcome has had a way of making life rather difficult.  So, for some reason, I’ve found myself moving in the exact opposite direction.  I’m taking chances and calculating risks and putting myself in situations that I don’t know how to navigate. I actually want to make mistakes and just see what happens.  Loss of control is a weird feeling.  At times, I’ve even found myself trying to control my loss of control.  Now that sounds ridiculous.

I guess right now I’m just working to let go of expectations.  And one way of doing that has been to let go of my need to be in control.

When a person wants to control every aspect of life, they often end up feeling the need to do everything themselves, as counting on other people for that level of perfection is almost impossible.  I’ve decided I don’t want to be so independent anymore.  I want to learn to lean on people, to ask for help and count on friends for support.  I want to cry on someone’s shoulder and feel okay about it.  I want to be completely open for other people to see.  I hope one day I’ll figure out how to do that — without hiding behind a smile and vague niceties.

Wow.  I feel like what I’ve just described sounds more like a midlife crisis than a quarter life crisis. It’s the type of thing you see all the time when a middle aged man hooks up with a twenty year old, buys a Porsche and goes bungee jumping.  In an odd way, it’s kind of comforting — to know I’m not alone in this confusion.  Does that sound absolutely crazy?

I don’t know.  What I do know is that in reality I have so few answers and so many questions.  And maybe life isn’t about seeking answers.  Maybe it’s just about experiences.  And growing.  And learning.  And finding ways to accept yourself for exactly who you are.

photo credit: her wings

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Taking Time Out To Appreciate Love

posted 2nd June 2010    Written by: Heather Rae    CATEGORY: Heather Rae, Love/Relationships, Season 2

The last couple of weeks I’ve been taking it easy with the writing.  Instead, I’ve been soaking up every last minute with the fiancé.

You see, once Steven starts his residency, he’ll be working like crazy.  According to regulations, residents aren’t allowed to work more than an average of eighty hours per week over a four week period.  They could work one hundred hours one week and sixty hours the next.  Needless to say, once he starts at the hospital, he’ll be busy.

When he was in medical school, we were used to the crazy hours he put in.  Those days, I knew that I wouldn’t see him every day.  Sometimes he came home, and other times he spent the night at the hospital.  It was the usual.  But now, things are different.  Over the past few years, Steven’s been in the Army.  With the exception of when he was deployed, his work hours at home were pretty regular.  He worked forty hours a week, a normal schedule.

The reality of us not being able to spend much time together is starting to hit me. On June 13, Steven will be driving up to Seattle to start his orientation at the hospital.  I’ll be staying back in Pasadena for a few weeks, getting things packed and ready to go, and I’ll be heading up at the beginning of July.  To be honest, I’m nervous about the move (more on that another day), but for the most part, I’m nervous about what this means for our relationship.

I’m not concerned about the residency being too much or pulling us apart.  Over the seven years we’ve been together, we’ve been through a lot more difficult times.  I think I’m just going to miss being able to spend so much time with him. I’m going to miss knowing that he’ll be able to be there for me whenever I need him, at the drop of a hat.

Not that he won’t be there for me.  He absolutely will.  It’s just that I also know that when someone’s sick child is in the hospital, that child will sometimes come first.  And that’s the way it should be.  You certainly don’t want a doctor treating your kid who can’t stop thinking about the issues he’s dealing with at home.  No.  You want that doctor to be focused on your child — and only your child.

Anyhow, I’m not writing this to complain.

I guess what I’m really trying to say is that it’s easy, sometimes too easy, to get wrapped up in the every day, to forget to appreciate what you have right in front of you. It’s easy to stress about how much money is in your bank account or the problems at your job or if you’ll be able to achieve the goals you set for yourself this year.  But relationships are so much more important than any of that.

Appreciating the love you have in your life, not taking others for granted – that’s what counts.

So Steven and I are spending our days holding hands, taking long walks, laughing like kids, kissing like newlyweds and reveling in the adventure of it all.  And for the next couple of weeks, that’s exactly what I will be continuing to do.  I’m loving it!

I don’t know where life might lead me.  But I know one thing for sure – with my best friend by my side, it’s bound to be a fabulous journey.

photo credit: Shanissinha

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