i am doing every-other-week therapy right now but i really want to start doing it weekly. it's going to cost me an additional $500/mo to do so.
i have just asked my dad to please consider funding half of my therapy. i think i thought i could never ask him, but then it occurred to me that sometimes people feel that their life holds value if they can find some sort of purpose and so you never know if giving in some way is going to be fulfilling to them. all this while i have complained at / on behalf of him for continuing to give-give-give to these orphans he's taken under his wing at that property he calls the ranch, where they take-take-take and don't respect him at all, but i never asked him to give to me instead. i just felt resentful. but here i've said, okay, here's a way you can contribute to your grandbaby's life. he always wants to give gifts. so many gifts. it almost always makes me feel sad b/c he keeps trying to find ways to show he cares by giving material things, and we don't want material things. so i tell him to stop giving us things, but it means he doesn't have a way to show he cares. especially with the pandemic, he's always at arm's length. so i figured maybe if i ask him to help in this way, he can finally feel like there's something he's giving that's being received and appreciated. it also occurs to me that maybe, just maybe, he will now have a fire lit under his ass to hold those tenants to account. to say to them, no, you won't get away with not paying me this month, i need this money for my daughter to get therapy, i need my grandbaby to have a whole parent, and that means she needs therapy. and i won't let you take that away from her. and he can embrace his papa bear. if he can't stick up for himself, maybe this will give him purpose and allow him to stick up for me and his grandbaby. maybe. just maybe.
on the other hand, it may be interpreted as cruel. that when our household brings in significantly more income than he does, in retirement, it isn't fair for us to ask for such a financial contribution. i mean, it's possible he'll see it this way. i have no idea. but i'm hopeful it won't be this latter way.
regardless of how he construes it, the fact is, he may not be able to make it happen. and if that is the case, i need to find a way to bring in either $500/mo on a regular basis, or find a few projects where i can earn some lump sums to add up. maybe for now i don't even need to think about the whole future that stretches before me, but only need to try to figure out the next year. which is $6000. it's not THAT much money. i feel like i should be able to raise that amount of money.
so sometimes brainstorming and thinking "aloud" (typing it out) can be helpful. so that's what i want to do.
i first had the idea that it's probably time for me to develop my curriculum for the parenting classes. it's something i want to start doing, and while i initially envisioned it as something i would do for free for a period of time, to get my bearings, i wonder how i would feel about actually starting out by charging for it, but not charging that much. i mean, let's say i had 10 participants and they each paid $100 for the 10-week class (or maybe i can abbreviate it to 6 weeks, which i've thought about doing in the past, or maybe even 8 weeks, to make it an even 2 months), well, that would be $1000 in 6-10 weeks. this way, i'm not charging very much, so i can feel less anxious about whether i've really got my bearings. this would be enough to fund therapy entirely, if i could pull it off. there are a lot of contingencies, though. like, whether i get enough people (which requires me to advertise, which is certainly not easy). it's also not something i can hit the ground running with. i need to develop the curriculum. i need to think about it carefully. i want to be so very thoughtful about how i put it together. i want to remember what i thought did and didn't work about pacing in the 10-week class, and also we can't do break-out group activities, so some stuff will be different. and i need to think about whether we want to reserve a segment for (essentially) a support group format, as i do feel that parents who show up with so much intention and desire to parent more thoughtfully are going to want a chance to discuss their specific challenges, and so we need to leave space for that. so much to think about.
another possibility is to start doing some web design / programming work. this feels just as challenging to figure out how to find clients for. i just have no idea how to advertise. i don't really want to take on a ton of projects, i want JUST the right amount of work so that i can do a minimal amount of work that i actually have time for on top of parenting. that seems like it'll be a challenging balance to strike. so i will have to be careful. i don't think i want to get roped into long-term site maintenance. i've already seen what a beast that can be with the NC.
i've also had the thought that maybe i could do some handiwork for folks around the 'hood. i'd only be able to really do it on weekends, most likely, but it might be kind of fun. this might be a little easier to advertise since i could use nextdoor. maybe i could even help folks with some gardening and pruning and whatnot. that might actually be a great option. it might be nice to be outdoors and working in the dirt. well, at least when it's not too hot... :\
those are my ideas so far. i was sorta hoping that once i started to articulate those ideas that more new stuff would occur to me. the only really new thoughts i had during this writing were the possibility of an 8-wk parenting class and the idea of not only doing handiwork but also gardening stuff. i guess that's not nothing. but seems like a lot of journaling only for those two tiny ideas.
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