This blog, The Year of Soup©, is about my venture to adjust my work and family life to quit or reduce my work hours in the corporate world and my sons' hours at daycare, and begin creative writing while spending more time with my children. I also plan to use the blog as a record and for critical thinking about my writing process and about the story.
It had been my idea--dream--to take some time off from work and career and write fiction or creative non-fiction. It sounds like a pipe dream even to me...and a dream that so many people share. The things in my favor? 1. I just had a baby so I'm ready to take some time away. 2. I'm already a writer although I write technical documents. I earned a BA in writing before returning for technical communication. 3. My husband supports this experiment (investment?).
Money
The money is probably the first hurdle. I worked up a budget with all our bills and standard and "extra" expenditures in Excel, with high and low amounts from 2010. I included a cost-cutting column and figured what we could cut and how much it will save us. With me at home, supposedly with support from hubby, we will cut house-cleaning services and daycare with the exception of cooperative preschool for our oldest son (i.e., we supply some of the supervision and administrative support at the school, splitting the effort with other parents). We will limit eating out quite a bit and forgo many of the fancy foods we like to get at the market. We will cut phone services and remove a car from our insurance (and hopefully sell the clunker). We will adjust our homeowner's insurance. We will pay off a credit card with our tax return. We will put a freeze on most spending.
I mined some ideas from a friend who cut her household budget sharply last year in an effort to send her to college without loans. I asked her if they "got out" of Christmas last year. She said they did, but that certain family members didn't take it very well. They rolled their charity spending into Christmas gifts but not everyone appreciated this expenditure in their name. Her advice was to set expectations early in the year. I've considered writing family members to tell them we are taking a break from spending this year (and maybe for good) and to not buy anything for us (but cringe to think of the response I might get). My friend also brought up that they like to use a couch-surfers group for travel and several ideas to make good living cheaper (like streaming a yoga class instead of attending a live one). Another thing that she didn't mention, but I know they did last year, was to simplify their diets and habits.
Time (more to come...)
I expect that time will be the second hurdle.
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Have you heard of stone soup? I've been thinking about this lately. The story is that a traveler arrives in a village and raves about his favorite dish, stone soup. He say's that it is very savory but would be better with an onion or two-and one villager pipes up that they have an onion and can bring it for the soup. Another offers carrots, another beans, another a chicken, etc. So the village comes together to create the soup and commends the traveler on the fact that yes, stone soup is the best soup they've ever tasted.
ReplyDeleteMy thought was that we should sit down as a village and see what we can bring to each other in exchange or giving that will make this 'soup' better for us all both figuratively and literally. I'm also really ready for some village time. :) Let me know what you think.
I'm so proud of you for taking this leap and following your dreams. You have all my support and love!
~K