is financial sobriety a thing?

Good Morning, my Beautiful Friends!

The weather isn't doing exactly what I thought it would today -- I thought that the rain would start today, but instead, it looks like we will have more oppressive humidity and heat, for the most part. I'm going to stick with the same plan of working on the budget and bills, though.  

I spent most of the time yesterday researching how to do better at budgeting and spending with ADHD, and I think I have a plan. I need to discuss it with my husband, because it affects him, too. I feel that we need to each have a preloaded card for our incidental purchase...you know, the stuff that you would have just used the cash you had on hand. Except we don't always have cash on hand, and there are some business which don't accept cash. We put nearly everything on credit cards, with the intention of paying off all new charges each month. And that often works. But neither of us are particularly good about tracking that spending, so we have some months where I have to say, "alrighty then, I guess I'm just going to pay *most* of the new balance," or I might react to a large unexpected charge by saying, "I'll deal with that next month." The problem with this thinking is that those extra charges accumulate.

This system would tie directly into SMART tools, like maintaining an urges log (which I haven't been doing...I've been neglecting my SMART Recovery handbook lately). I could write pages about the financial changes I want to make, but for now, I'll be putting more focus on maintaining an urges and spending log.

I feel confident in my sobriety and content with my eating habits. The reckless spending is a lot of work, but I do feel like I'm strong and capable enough to work through this. When I first looked at the upcoming bills for July, I felt frozen for a moment and almost set everything aside. Instead, I made note I had ahead of me, and decided I needed some budgeting tools (the type you learn, not the type you buy), which led to yesterday's research. Today, I'll be setting up a financial planner with the trackers and systems I think will serve me best, along with paying any bills that need immediate attention.

I hope that you find beauty in your day, and as always, thank you for being here.

and now, for something completely different...

This one, I'm going to post to my Bluesky and my Facebook account, because I want to know about other folks' "Dream Houses."

I'm not talking about Dream Homes, mind you, I mean the houses that you encounter in your dreams. Do you go back to the same dream space time and time again? Or is your dream space populated with lots of houses? Are they scary? Or are they comfortable?

Here is my description of the House that lives in my dreamscape. It's someplace where dream-Me often goes:

My House is very complex. It has a basement level that dream-Me won't enter anymore. In the first House dream I had, I was curious enough to go down the ramshackle stairs. I don't even remember what I saw, but I woke up feeling that I was being swallowed whole by something that was constricting me from all sides; I suppose you could compare it to being swallowed by a snake, though I've never been swallowed by a snake, so take that comparison with a grain of salt.

In the early dreams (I've been having these dreams for all of my adult life), the House belonged to my mother, but it is not the house I grew up in. In later dreams, it is usually a house I'm moving into. The glimpses of the exterior indicate that it is an old home of three stories; the interior tells a different story. There are two levels of living space, and sometimes the bedrooms are on a third level, but sometimes they are in the extension. I've never seen the exterior of the extension, but it is built over flowing water (definitely Frank Lloyd Wright vibes), and I am not comfortable with the room that the creek flows through. There is something dark and green in there that does not have good intentions.

My bedroom is always the end link of a chain of three rooms. The first room is a large, airy bedroom, and my room is small and cozy. The room in the middle? You have to walk through a field of psychic energy that is terrifying. It's not the same feeling as being swallowed that the basement has, but it's like walking through an ocean of ghosts, both horrifying and mournful. Then there is the attic. IT IS HUGE. But not terrifying. It's easy to get lost up there, and there is more than one access point, so you don't always leave the way you came. When I'm up there, I'm usually looking for something I've lost. (Yeah, the attic definitely now sounds like a metaphor for ADHD, doesn't it?)

This dream space has a lot of stairs. I opened a door in the kitchen that I thought was the pantry, and it turned out to be a rickety spiral staircase (not the same ramshackle stairs from the first dream, but those were also in the kitchen) going down to the basement, and I slammed that door hard and fast. There is a large main course of stairs, and in the extension, there are several half levels. I'd love to see an exterior shot of that extension someday.

I don't think that my House exists in "normal" space and time as it appears in my dreams (it would be a bit much, even for an HGTV weird homes show), but there are some parts of it that feel like they do belong out here, in non-dream space. I have no idea if this last paragraph makes any sense.

Anyway, if you've read this, share with the House(s) that reside in your dreamscape. I'm curious.

water, fire, moon

water, fire, moon

 

My words are water

being poured

over someone else's moon.

 

I wash their quiet

with crashing waves

they do not need.

 

When I am moon,

you are fire

and I swallow your flames

and then drink the ocean

to quench my thirst.

 

And my words turn to water once more.

 

2025.06.26

Inspired by another Bluesky poet, Gerhard:

Gerhard 🐦‍⬛: "Thorns in the Crown of the Moon #poem #poetry #writing #writingcommunity #poetrycommunity (Alt text available)" — Bluesky