Looking Backward part 2

One situation that always comes to mind when I think of money dysfunction in our family was a meager attempt on my part to eat right when I was I was in my later teens. I was eating eggs and sausage for breakfast and my mother told me I couldn't keep it up because it was too expensive for them. That was utterly ridiculous, yet I didn't have access to their checkbook or budget to say, "Yes, you can, see here!" I felt I didn't have the right to argue the case (ie I felt powerless). I should have argued the case because really I think this was a low point for my mother, that it was motivated out of a jealousy of my burgeoning fitness which she needed to have challenged. My reaction was a disgusted: "Fine, I'll do without."

And so maybe I grew up with a sense of powerlessness around the things I wanted and didn't see ways to generate income myself to get the things I wanted. Living away from any commerce prevented me from getting a job (except the occasional babysitting stint) until I had a car. But I don't think the powerlessness is as important as the determination to do without, the withdrawal. It extends to other attitudes such as, "If the only way to be free to enjoy life is to work part time, then I'll live on less. If I want to explore different places then I'll get low level jobs where I'm not expected to stay and move on with less trouble for everyone." The more I was getting in exchange for the less money was hiking and mobility. Yet I set up a false dichotomy. I've been very guilty of a lack of imagination when it comes to money. Perhaps that's the most damaging non-legacy from my upbringing. Though my parents were more sophisticated than I have been, they still were stuck in the "you must be hired to make a living" mentality. They did not explore other means of generating income except a brief period during which my mother propogated plants for sale.

My mother also planted the idealistic seed of "do what you love." But there were conditions. Don't take your writing seriously because it's risky. You'll never be able to support yourself with it. So definitely a double message there that I did not completely break out of.

Still, my continued stuckness I think has to do more with how I'm digesting all that and something(s) I haven't let go of.

But now I have to go to work, so I'll continue this later.