Work

Net Worth

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I know I’ve been MIA for a while. Life got crazy, and often this blog ends up on the back burner.

But I’ve been happy to see a lot of people are still visiting it anyway. Thank you all for your support.

This year has been one of the hardest I’ve gone through since before my dad moved out.

Just a list of things that have happened:

  1. I went to the ER while on vacation.
  2. My new (used) car needed two major repairs within the same year and a few smaller ones.
  3. I lost one job and wasn’t able to continue the other because of school work being too much.
  4. I had an ear infection that cost me some of my hearing in one ear.
  5. I had my laptop break down and it took three tries to find a replacement.
  6. I cut off my dad again.
  7. My cat disappeared for 4-5 days straight (luckily someone found her).
  8. Debit card got hacked and I had to freeze it.

Honestly, there was more, I just can’t remember it all at once.

At the same time, I did accomplish some cool things this year.

I had three yard sales that raised near to $1000 in total that helped me repay my car debt.

I had friends who contributed to a GoFundMe for another $600.

I was able to finish some stories and start a podcast.

I organized almost my entire house, cleared out the garage, got rid of unnecessary things, sold others, and fumigated our shed for termites (all with my families help).

We cleared out our storage unit also so we don’t have to pay for that anymore.

Despite all the setbacks, I was able to set aside some money.

Thankfully, I caught the debit card fraud before anyone used it to buy something.

A friend of ours at church actually gave my sisters and I each $100 to start investing with, just out of a wish to help us out.

Somehow, though I’ve been wrecked financially, I’ve still had enough to cover my basic needs. I cut down on spending, but was able to find other methods to get stuff, and my family has been nice about paying for things when I can’t.

Through all this, I admit, it’s been hard to feel like God is really helping me. Not because I haven’t had blessings, but because they have not been what I wanted.

I really wish to be more financial stable, even if I can’t be fully independent. I wish to have a different job in childcare, one I could actually grow in.

I wish to have accomplished more in my life than I have.

I wish I wasn’t single still at 27.

The fact is, I wanted a family by this age, I wanted a better job. I never imagined I’d still be in nearly the same financial place now as I was when I was 20.

“Try everything” like the Shakira song says has been my motto this year.

I have learned a lot, I admit.

I’ve heard that if you end up in the same place over and over again, it’s because you haven’t yet learned what God wants you to learn from it.

The truth is, my idea of success is too important to me.

Blame it on my dad for beating into my head (against my will, really), that jobs were all important. He criticized me so much for not having one, and not looking for one once I’d realized my methods didn’t wokr in the modern job market (once I switched to online job sites, I had success finally, but he never told me to do that). He also used to say he wanted to kill himself when work was bad.

He and my mother also made some poor financial choices and didn’t always think ahead, though they had some back ups, but we had to file for bankruptcy when I was 9-11. And we moved, not for the last time.

I had a life coach briefly also who blamed me for not having a job when I told her the same thing I told my dad… she wan’s my life coach after that point. The 30 minute long lecture I don’t ask for just killed it for me.

My dad also encouraged me to put up with toxic bosses which led to my first several jobs being very unhealthy ones.

So yeah, I wasn’t set up to take this job thing lightly. Even when I know it’s not my fault and the market is bad, I find it hard not to take it personally.

When work is going well, I tend to feel good about everything else, and when it’s not…I feel depresesed.

Funny, I always thought my dad’s attitude towards it was stupid, but now I’ve found it hard not to adopt it.

So, maybe, God has allowed this reoccurring joblessness in my life to teach me both how ot rely on other people (as I’ve had no choice but to do), and to not make jobs all important.

I can’t say I’m happy about it, but I’ve gone on with my life, chosen to pursue hobbies, home organizing, doing what I can when I can’t work, to keep busy and productive and not to see it as only worth doing if I’m making money.

I have many days where I still feel stressed about it, and I’ve had dozens, if not hundreds of set backs on this journey.

Still, I know that many people wish they could have what I have. I don’t have to pay rent since I live with my grandma still. I have support. I’ve been able to pursue my interests because of free time.

Is it really so bad?

The truth is, I know it’s not as bad as it feels.

I wish, honestly, that I could be as grateful all the time, and as joyful, as I think I should be, conciser how much worse it could be.

Sometimes, I do find it funny, the struggles I have, since they are almost cartoonishly numerous this year, but most of them were small, compared to some.

My nature is to worry, really. To let the problems I have steal my joy. I’ve been that way since I was 5 or 6. The same time my anxiety disorder started.

I used to think if I looked forward to things, they were more likely not to happen. I’d try to trick fate by thinking against things happening…which we know now, actually makes it more likely they won’t. Positive thinking makes success more likely.

I still sometimes feel jinxed, and I hear the same things in my head that I heard my dad say, over and over again.

As if God is testing me, as if He has abandoned me. As if he will keep me afloat, but not let me do anymore than survive, which is stressful.

And that that is not fair.

Yet… do I really know best?

Perhaps, like my father, I’ve not been responsible enough with money to really warrant making more of it.

I’ve learned a lot more this year, and I do feel more ready to make wise choices financially once I go back to work.

Perhaps it’s that simple, God didn’t want to give me more when I wouldn’t be a good steward of it.

One thing He’s put in my head, many times in the last two years, is “he who is faithful with little will be faithful with much’ and “I have better things for you.”

Better than to settle for the same crap as before, I hope.

But have I been faithful?

I hope so. I try to be.

When I do have money, I do try to give and be generous with it. Not always maybe as much as I should, I’m never sure how much we should, but, I try.

Yet, the thing I keep thinking is, maybe God is not doing this to punish me.

My dad would say that, but I never believed it in his case.

He thought job success was proof God was pleased with Him, and anything less meant he was failing.

Well, he was failing, but not at working. He failed us at being a good father and husband. The areas he needed to grow.

I have learned more about stewarding my home and family this year, as I’ve had time to make improvements around my house and rally my family to do so also.

I got us all to start taking more notice of our grandma’s health, and to start thinking of saving money together as well, and I got us all to sell and get rid of the unneeded stuff so we had room for our things and don’t need the storage unit anymore.

I’ve cleaned more, rearranging more, and gotten more cost effective lighting options even for our rooms.

All in all, I’m proud of it. The house is almost a different place than it was last year.

All this is stuff my dad never did, and to be honest, I never used to do either. I might never have bothered to try if I was working more.

It has taken some of the pressure off my mom also, though she still has to do the heavy lifting financially for us. But by bringing more income and eliminating the storage unit cost, I feel I helped at least a little even if I couldn’t work. I did repay her for the money she loaned me for my car, almost all of it. Still have $900 to go.

I would love to do more, but, I can’t right now.

Still, I wasn’t useless. I wasn’t wasteful with what time I did have.

If God looks for us to make the most of what we have to work with, I hope that He is satisfied with my efforts.

I can’t tell you all where I will land on this, but this year has been crazy for everyone. Everyone I know has had problems this year, so I guess we’re all in this together.

Still, while I’m struggling, my spirit is not broken.

Not many people my age believe they will have a bright future.

I think it depends on what you go by.

While I find it hard to be optimistic about the state of the world in general, I know I don’t know everything.

God finds ways to bless people no matter what goes on in the world, somehow. That’s always been true if you read books by people of faith.

So my fate isn’t tied only to the world din generals, however much it feels like it.

Success may not look like what I wished, but I might still find it, in my way.

The clouds have silver lining.

I can’t know for sure if the end of next year will see me in a much better place or not, but, I can hope.

Even if it doesn’t, I hope I will have learned not to take it all personally, not to base worth on money, and not to blame myself for things I cannot control.

Wishing all of you the same, and a good holiday season, stay honest– Natasha

Back to talk about Anxiety (and change).

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I’m back!

Whew, it has been a while.

What can I say? Life happens.

Since I last wrote on here, I’ve changed jobs, finished my interpreting course, started volunteer interpreting, and completed a few more fan fic. (Check them out on Wattpad, @worldwalkerdj. If you’re interested in my fiction. Which is probably better than my non fiction in my opinion, but I’m biased towards fiction.)

What to talk about today…

Maybe I should talk about Anxiety, that’s always a popular topic.

With all the changes listed above, I’m sure some people already could imagine how anxiety inducing it could be… and you have no idea.

Anxiety is something I’ve struggled with since I was a kid. Unlike many people, it was not triggered in my teen years, or by poor health and life habits, though, I’m sure that plays a part.

For me, anxiety was just how my life was, after 5 or 6. Before that, I don’t remember having it, I was a pretty bold kid at 3 and 4, the earliest I can remember.

My anxiety surfaced partially because of an overactive imagination, and partly because I think of things my father told me as a young kid. But also, as a Christian, I’ve always assumed it’s spiritual too.

Whatever the case, it was quite crippling from age 11-13, and since then, I’ve been battling it.

The interesting thing is that, no one ever suspects this about me.

I know because people have told me many times that I seem confident, even courageous (more of a church word), and tough.

I have not seen myself this way for very long, I never understood what they saw in me.

While I was bold enough about some things, I know myself and my fears so well, that I assume they are obvious to other people.

But perhaps that’s not the case. Honestly, I’ve found with others, I often can’t see their fear of something until they tell me, because they’ve learned to mask it, and I suppose I’ve learned the same.

Also, like many of us, I was taught to overthink about my actions and behavior and personality, by mean spirited people who told me I was wrong for being the way I am.

(I certainly don’t believe that I’m perfect, or that I don’t need to improve, but the way some people tear you down, you know they’re not really trying to help you, just make you feel bad.)

I was thinking after I logged on here, that I was 16 when I started this blog, and I’m 25 now. I haven’t kept it up consistently.

Anxiety probably had something to do with that also, I started to feel like no one would care what I have to say. After all, I have no degree (yet), and I have no big success story to tell to prove I’m credible.

Personally, I even get annoyed with all these bloggers and YouTube influencers who act like they know what they’re talking about, but they really don’t. How am I any different than them?

Well, I can’t prove to you all I am. But one thing I will never do here is lie about where I’m at, or how successful I am. I figure it won’t do anyone any good for me to be fake, and it won’t help me either.

And if I do know what I’m talking about, it’s because I’ve had to walk all this out, as a regular woman, living in this century, with the same challenges as many others. I might be young still, but I’ve had plenty of difficulty for my age.

I’m not entitled, and I’m not angry at everyone, but I have my frustrations, and issues.

I used to write this blog with the assumption that my ideas were usually right, and that I was explaining them well. Now if I read my old posts, I’ll cringe. But it’s not really my fault, at 16, all of us are unpolished, if I was reading someone else’s writing, I’d be judging it by how good it was consider how little experience they ahd, and I Think I wasn’t too bad, then, for my age.

But I’m too old now to use that as an excuse, even if I wanted to do mediocre work, here or anywhere else.

I’ve learned a few things since then.

One: I write way too long posts.

I wish I could say I was just that self aware, but it’s really because since I started working more, I realized how time consuming it is to read something 4,000 words long. I’ve been blessed with the ability to write thousands of words daily, easily, but, then, I’ve also been blessed with the free time to attempt that, and not everyone is.

Two: I should branch out what I write about.

It’s honestly nice that I could actually share work stories and other stuff now. Though I still like analyzing content and may do that still.

What does this have to do with anxiety?

Well, see, I get worried about all this. I figured I’d never be a popular writer or blogger because I like unpopular topics. But, you know, in a lot of ways, blogging was more to help me grow as a writer than it was because I thought I’d be a popular blog.

I figure, it doesn’t matter anymore. I should just write what I know.

And hey, I know a lot.

I’m the type to always feel like I’m not doing enough with my life (one of the things I’ve been anxious about).

And hey, adding the pressure of blogging again may not even be necessary, but I’m taking a break from classes, so I should have something to do when Im’ not working on creative stories and job stuff, right?

But, the thing is, for someone with a lot of free time, I do keep pretty busy. And I think the pressure I feel is because I was always told I was special and smart growing up, and I always wanted to do something meaningful to impact the world.

Whether it’s being the first writer to really commit to making Christian fan fiction a thing.

Or it’s finding a career that’s meaningful and personally, one on one.

Whatever it is, I wanted to feel like I did something really important with my life.

And all the cliches about small things mattering, they are true, but they aren’t always comforting.

I can’t say I’ve figured out yet how to be satisfied with everything, but, I’m getting better at it. And as I do, my anxiety has decreased.

I could devote a whole separate post to how my social anxiety has changed or grown or shrunk over the years, but that would take a lot longer to delve into.

The point I’m making is, in 9 years, I’ve changed a lot, but in many ways, I have not changed at all. I still want most of the same things I did then, and I still believe the same things I did, I just have a deeper understanding now.

And my fears have changed, they have not gone away, and some of them are the same, and some, I hope, are mostly gone.

It’s also been 5 years since I started recovering from the abusive situation I was in with my father. My father and I have spoken more times, and we’re on fairly good terms considering.

The reason I reopened community with him, was, other than God told me to, also that I knew I would never lose my fear of what happened, if I didn’t face it.

The same reason, maybe, that though I have mild to moderate acrophobia (fear of heights), I somehow always want to climb a mountain, do an obstacle course in the trees (Treerunner, it’s in Michigan, check it out if you ever go that way), or otherwise rock climb in higher spots. Sure, it scares me and I hate it at first…but eventually, I feel stronger because I faced it.

This is old advice, but in a day where we’re told to coddle ourselves and that our fear is an excuse to quit because something is too hard, old advice about it is the best advice.

Let me tell you all, I would never have the job I have now, have finished the stories I did, or done any of the other things, if I listened to my feelings and if I told myself “it’s okay, it’s too hard right now for me.”

It’s just the truth.

You may feel that you’re too afraid to do something now, but, I promise, it does not get easier if you put it off. Honestly, I dreaded those things more the more I put them off.

I also found that once you commit to doing something, you can find ways to make yourself feel better about it.

Like when I first called my dad, I had other people with me for morals support.

When I had to job hunt again, I finally used a website to help me make my resume better, and I watched a YouTuber for advice about how to interview. (Advice with Erin if you want to know.)

Or how I was anxious about making new friends, but I still invited people to hang out with me and join the life group I’m in at my church, and it worked out.

It’s still hard sometimes, and nothing is perfect…and that used to scare me. Sometimes it still does, but I’ve learned that I can press on through the disappointment, and eventually, it gets better again.

If I quit because I didn’t feel ready, I’d never have even tried. And I wouldn’t have succeeded. I don’t win every time, but I win more when I try to then when I do nothing.

All this is, again, old advices, but I’m telling you, it works. Probably why i’ts such old advice.

And no, that doesn’t make it easy to follow. I’ve realized that all this has to be walked out individually.

I had all the advice about conquering fears in my head from a young age, but you have to build up your strength. I figured that out finally. What works for me may not work for everyone as quickly or completely, but it does work.

What does not work, is excuses. And I’ve used plenty, but they never made me feel better. Actually, they lowered my self esteem. You start to feel damaged, and like you’ll never be whole and able to live the way you want.

But that’s the fear talking, and fear, as Dostoevsky said, “is a lie.” (The Brothers Karamazov).

Or as the Crane Wives sang in their song:

“No amount of waiting will make you brave, no amount of fear will keep you safe.”

[Keep you Safe– The Crane Wives.]

It’s all true, but it’s hard to live by.

But that doesn’t make it okay for us not ot try.

Things are hard…all things are hard if they’re important. At least some of the time. But they are not always hard, for all of the time.

Some things that used to be hard for me, are not hard now.

Like saying “I love you.” It was hard, but now it’s mostly easy.

Or talking to boys. That’s been easy for years, but it wasn’t for a long time.

Or driving. I’ve been afraid of it a lot of times, but I’ve always kept getting behind the wheel, and now it’s much easier.

These are small things, but I think big things have also gotten less hard for me. Anyway, what’s a big challenge is relative to everyone.

So yeah, I practice what I preach.

I think that’s about all I got for now. If you’re back, thanks, I know it was a long wait.

Or if you’re new, welcome.

And as always, Stay honest– Natasha Queen.

An existential crisis and other things.

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 I might like Evanescence…who knew?

Well, I got a job at last. Yay!

My performance anxiety is still kicking in over whether I can maintain this one, it’s pretty hard to mess it up, the first day went mostly smoothly, but I lost my last job because I dusted a bookcase wrong, so I realized anew how temperamental people can be. That’s unusually picky, but still…

Especially in childcare, it’s hard.

Oh yeah, so I am working as a Nanny. I prefer that word to babysitter, since technically, the parents are still at home (mostly the case right now) but a lot of people need extra help.

It’s funny to me because I was homeschooled by a stay-at-home Mom, and we rarely got a babysitter. My dad never taught us, and rarely was home with us alone, so My mom didn’t get a break very often, somehow she stayed sane and manged to cook us dinner.

Now, some things got let slide, I can’t say we were very neat kids, and we’d go through phases of fighting a lot. There’s three of us girls.

But even so, it wasn’t bad. We were always well behaved kids, usually, in public. Of course, our parents believed in spanking.

Now, it’s weird for me to go to work for other families, and no one spanks, many people have only one child, and don’t leave their kids alone ever. My mom used to let us play for hours outside or in our room unsupervised, she knew we wouldn’t try to do anything stupid.

Now even if parents are in the house, they want someone to watch their kids while they work. I guess I can understand that, my mom didn’t work, and now she works out of home, not the same thing. Though she did lots of volunteer stuff with us there, and she never found us distracting. Heck, she taught me to help out the adults and she didn’t mind if other people were watching us more than her. I never supposed that was unusual until I got older and found out it’s rare. Rare in my culture anyway, in some parts of the country that might be fairly standard.

I admit in the American West, it’s seen as good parenting to be constantly around your child, involved, attentive to their emotions, etc. In the Midwest or East, it can be more about the child becoming independent and sensible early on, not needing to be carried through life.

There’s something to be said for both, I’ve heard that in cultures where kids are coddled and held more, stress levels are lower later in life; but what comes with that is also a lack of independence from other people, free thinking, or willingness to break from your community even when it’s going the wrong way.

America’s emphasis on independence drove its citizens to become stronger on their own, if the community is less strong than in other countries, we always felt it was wroth it to be free and preserve our Moral Integrity. That’s going away, but it’s not bringing unity. We now have a belief in independence without the reasons independence was ever important.

In the end, the American Dream was originally that if you had to leave your family to follow your beliefs, you could, and the early Pilgrims recognized that Religion has to come over all else, if it’s going to be real. It’s part of Christian Doctrine not to love anything more than God.

I won’t say that’s a less stressful life, but God has never promised us a less stressful life, and stress is not always bad. It can be, but the right kind of pressure makes us into better people, more than anything else can.

I was thinking today how lately it’s hard for me to know what to say when someone asks me “How are you?”

How can I put “I think I’m good, but I don’t really know how I am one day to another, and I’m confused, and I’m up and down, and I’m great, and I’ve never been so strange to myself” into a glib response that someone will accept? 

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I feel like I’m having an existential crisis… and yet I’m not.

It’s funny, I’ve been questioning what does make my life worth it. I guess when you have intrusive thoughts about suicide, and you choose not to follow them, to reject that as being what you are, then the next logical step is to wonder why. What’s driving you? What’s making you different from thousands of people worldwide? What do you have that they don’t? Is it arrogant to think you can conquer a problem so many people fail to beat?

I know I can’t be the only one who feels that way. I remember when I read “Soul Surfer” Bethany Hamilton described wondering why it was her, but not in an angry way, just like she wanted to know the grander purpose of what happened to her. And it was weird to many people that she wasn’t more devastated.

What if your feelings just don’t make any sense?

Even my therapist can’t figure me out every time.

I remember one of the recent episodes of Fruits Basket (I will probably review that show once season 2 ends) had a moment where two characters met each other, and the curse of their family took hold. They felt “Beloved, Hated, Drawn, Repulsed” at the same time.

That’s so accurate to the life of a victim of abuse. Both toward your abuser and to the rest of life, you feel drawn and repelled at the same time. You love them, you hate them. You want more, you want nothing.

Abuse is perhaps the most contradictory kind of brokenness in the human experience, because the nature of it is to be contradictory, to combine love and hate in an unholy way that never should exist.

I love my Dad still, a lot, and don’t want him to suffer, yet I want him to feel the weight of what he did to me, even if it hurts him, and I don’t want to see him, or talk to him. What do you make of those feelings?

I want to live, but I don’t want to live the same way I always have. I do many things, but I don’t know why I’m really doing them anymore, I don’t know if I believe they matter to anyone in the long run. 

“Vanity, vanity, all is vanity” Ecclesiastes says.

I am a student, I am a blogger. I have a YouTube channel. I read, I write on average 10 pages a day by hand, I knit, I watch kids, I go to Church. I dance. I sing.

I have goals and dreams and things I want to do, and I wonder why I want to do them. Won’t the end be I’ll feel the same as I did before? Are they just escapes? Isn’t everyday life the only real experience I will ever have.

One of my favorite things about the Bible is how much it lacks false sentimentality. You won’t read the fairytale , wishful thinking mindset in the Bible. None of this “escape” stuff.

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When the Bible has heights, it claims those as fully real, as normal as the lows. When things are dull, the Bible records them as faithfully as when things are exciting. We have whole books of Laws, Numbers, and History. We have books of Spiritual Revelation. We have a book about sex that beats any porn crap, both pure and passionate. (Did you know the Bible had a book about sex? A lot of people don’t know that.)

The Bible sees everything as important, it treats life as a journey, I picked up that attitude and I’ve always been less discouraged in my life because of that.

I guess right now, I’ve just had doubts about whether the Bible is right. Is my life a journey? Or it is dull. Don’t thousands lives never go anywhere? (At least in our eyes).

You have to really learn that you can’t know everything, if you want to make it through life sane.

I recently reread Ecclesiastes all the way through, I noticed that what that book is about is how the World’s pleasures, and man’s own pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, do not satisfy us. They don’t make us happy. Indeed, the end sum of wisdom is realizing everything is empty. That’s why Eastern religions have their goal as to be removed from the world and other people, they have reached the pinnacle of man’s wisdom.

Yet it’s strange that the Preacher in Ecclesiastes says to still do our work, because it is what God has given us to do, even if there is no point in it, because good things happen to both the good and the wicked person, and so do bad things, and we can take nothing with us.

It wasn’t until Jesus, the only man wiser than Solomon, that we got the answer s to why God would have us still spend time on earthly things. Jesus told us that we could lay up treasure in heaven for ourselves by our faith and works here.

The Bible does not teach that we are saved by works, but that we are rewarded for them. We can be saved even if our works are empty, but it shows our faithfulness to God is they were of value. 

And of course, human beings are not earthly things, strictly speaking, and we need to be concerned about each other.

Still, there are times I feel I am failing even at that, that I’ve hit a dry place in my life where I have nothing to give, and no one would appreciate anything I have to say. Like I’m just using other people for life support, but am myself a vegetable, emotionally or spiritually speaking.

I don’t know how true that is, but I suppose even if it was, everyone has seasons like that.

What I think God wants of me is to decide that even if I see no point in anything I’m doing, I will trust him, because I know He does have a plan. And that’s all I need to know, I don’t need to know what it is.

And even if I am not doing any other thing worth doing, if I Love God, and He Loves Me, then life is still worthwhile. Like the end of “Groundhog Day” when every day is the same, he realizes, the only thing with lasting meaning is Love. Love isn’t bound by time, or repetition, or memory.This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is groundhog_day.jpg

Like with Mary of Bethany, it is better to sit at God’s feet and worship, then to be busy doing everything for Him, but nothing with Him.

It’s easy to write that, easy to tell people to do that, it is not easy at all to do it.

It is amazing how it can take the most strength to be still.

Again, all the most true things are the ones we’ve heard so many times and just never understood the meaning of.

Maybe it was good for me to realize all this now. Rather than chase these things for decades of my life only to understand at the very end why they didn’t matter without God’s purpose.

Until next time, stay honest–Natasha.