Spent the better part of tonight dealing with the checkbook and bills. And you know what, I can do it, but I don't like it, and on top of that I am pretty sure I'm not especially good at it. This is not about how much money we have or don't have. Even if we had gobs of money I still wouldn't like the process of figuring out the stickier logistics of managing it. In fact, the thing that really started to give me the headache was trying to figure out what, in the h-e-double hockey sticks, to do with the small increase we're going to have in our budget. (Save or pay off debt? Which debt? How do I save when the savings account options suck? ARRGHHHHH!!!) Still, since I pretend to be a responsible adult, I make myself do this stuff anyway, at least to a minor degree.
My mom, on the other hand, is a whiz with this stuff. Not only in terms of responsibility, but in terms of learning about financing. She happily reads books about budgeting and finance, will listen to television programs about finances, and could, I'm guessing, if she were feeling comfortable with sharing that information, discuss exactly why she does what she does with her money, including stuff like investments and retirement, you know, the kind of things that would make my head explode. It might not be the most exciting thing in her world, but she's got it under control.
On the flip side, in a conversation with some of my professors at the U today I was talking about the fact that writing a dissertation, this big scary thing, that so many people seem to detest, has actually started to be fairly enjoyable to me now that I have the time to do it. Seriously. I'm not kidding. I like doing research, I don't even hate theory, assuming it actually has to do with what I'm talking about. And while it's hard work and not "fun", it suits me.
Having these two experiences in the same day has made me even more certain that we really are born with inherent talents and weaknesses. Yes, we can overcome some of our weaknesses with education and hard work. (For example, my willingness to learn to use Quicken and Automatic Bill Pay.) However, I think there are always going to be things that we love and things that we loathe. This has lead me to two very important thoughts:
1) How grateful I am that everyone is different, while I may not know what a mutual fund is, or how to change the spark plugs in my car, someone out there does.
2) I need to be kinder to myself about the things I'm not that great at. Yes, I need to be responsible and do the right things, but it's okay to hate balancing the checkbook and have an irrational grudge against Suze Orman. Really, it's okay. I'm a historian and a fiction writer and a good cook and a Sunday School teacher and a fairly good wife and daughter, I'm even nice to people in traffic.
So really, I am, in fact, allowed to hate balancing the checkbook. I just still have to do it.
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