Adventures in Frugality, Part 2: Challenges

There never was an adventure without challenges. Trouble, danger and fear are part of adventure. With nothing to be overcome an adventure becomes merely a journey, and it’s likely to be a tedious one. It is challenges that bring excitement. They stretch us beyond our limits and force us to learn and to grow.


I’m feeling very challenged these days. The prospect of losing my job is frightening. I’ve had it for nine and a half years and, even though I have little love for it, its loss will be wrenching. The rhythms of my life that have been built around my job are comfortable from familiarity even if they are sometimes irksome. It will be hard finding the new patterns that I will need to succeed in my life going forward.

Money is an issue, of course. I’ll have to give up some things I enjoy. So will Jennifer and so will Maura. I hate having to tell her that she can’t have something or do something because we don’t have the money for it, but I know she understands. We’ve never been rich so Maura is used to not getting everything she wants. It is just as well. If she had had all she wanted before she would take it harder now that she certainly can’t.

I’ve come to see the upcoming loss of my job as more of an opportunity than a disaster. My job in retail bookselling has been a side job for years. I hung onto it for the money while I spent more effort on other, more important things. The trouble was that it took too much mental energy and distracted me from what I needed to do, which was to write and to sell my writing. I’m not going to be unemployed. I may, unfortunately, be unpaid. My hope is that my time working without payment will be brief.