Apologies to myself and any readers out there are in order for the lapse in blog posts. I left for a visit at my parents’ home (an hour and a half drive each way) on Saturday morning and have had no opportunity to blog about my finances until now.
On the long drive to work here in Raleigh this morning (I left Goldsboro at 6:30am), I had the opportunity to listen without distraction to XMRadio. I was scrolling through the stations looking for a financial show when I heard Oprah Winfrey interviewing J.K. Rowling.
The rightfully revered author of the Harry Potter books made a statement in response to one on Oprah’s questions that blew my socks off. In essence, Rowling said she hit rock bottom and that became the solid foundation upon which she rebuilt her life.
Admittedly, this doesn’t look like much of a statement when written on paper. However, it really resonated with me because I’m now at rock bottom. It’s ironic that not having any further to fall is the strongest position I’ve ever been in from a financial standpoint. I agree with Rowling; rock bottom is incredibly liberating, very freeing.
Think about it….I live so close to poverty I can smell its rank breath as it kisses me ‘Good Morning’ on the dawn of each new day. What do I have to lose now? Zero is about as final as it comes – well, besides death of course and I’m NOT planning on that anytime soon. So my freefall from grace has ended. My feet are on solid ground. I have nowhere to go but up.
Rowling said in her 2008 Harvard Commencement speech that she’d always known she wanted to be a writer. However, circumstances steered her otherwise. She told of her life story – how she ended up a single parent without a job, her clinical depression upon the death of her mother six months after she began writing her first novel. She was as close to poverty as one can be without being homeless (sound familiar???? Yeah – that’s me).
After coming through her financial hardships through finally having her first Harry Potter book published she came to the conclusion that “Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticized only by fools. …
“So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. “
And here’s the Amen Sister part of her speech: “I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me [her writing].”
That’s what I’ve done as well. I’ve stopped pretending that I’m anything other than what I am: a writer. A broke writer, hanging on to the hem of poverty’s skirt so she doesn’t slide over the edge and carry me with her, but a writer still.
And that’s the bare bones of who and what I am – a writer. I’ve stripped away all the ‘just a’ labels (I’m just a mom, I’m just a secretary, I’m just a daughter, just a sister, just a, just a, just a….). I’m not ‘just a’ anything.
So what does this have to do with Financial Peace University?
Well, I finally have a tool to put a plan in place to be the writer I know I can be. I have a story I have to tell the world. However, I have to work everyday and can’t indulge my muse every time she comes to visit me. Using Dave Ramsey’s plan will get me to the financial level I need to be so I can quit working and write.
Hey, I’m realistic. It won’t happen this year or the next. But it will happen in the next five years and I can and will work my plan to achieve my goal.
I’m tired of where I am. This financial yoke has caused numerous hours of stress and fear and hiding and embarrassment and as many negative emotions as I can think of.
However, it has also shown what’s really important to me. It’s made me sharper, has forced me to define who I am, what I want, and what I have to do to achieve my goal.
I’m taking control of my financial future. Through a failure, I’ve succeeded.
It seems Rowling and I have lived very similar lives and apparently we both have a newly discovered indomitable spirit as well. She closed her address as follows:
"Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned. "
Until next time....
What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. ~ Plutarch
