I’ve sat to pen this blog post several times and each time I’ve found myself getting distracted by something more “pressing.” I liken it to a dog seeing a squirrel after it’s owner just told it to sit. You want to do good, but you just can’t stay focused. So much has happened in this past week that I keep coming back to one single question “Now What?”. We supposedly have a new president, and I say supposedly because I’m still holding out hope that things will change come December 19th, so now what? I didn’t make the deadline to defend my Doctoral thesis this semester so,  now what? We finally got that student loan interest paid off. Now, what?

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Usually, when I feel like I have all the answers now, I’m wondering now what? Where do I go from here? I started this blog because I wanted to share our journey and I also wanted  needed another method of accountability. I started off great speaking from the heart, but now when I look back through my post, I feel like I’ve lost my voice and while I mean everything that I write I feel like I’m not letting you guys in on everything that I/we are experiencing.

I don’t have to tell you that this whole paying off debt thing is exhausting. I. AM. EXHAUSTED, and after we hit that milestone of paying off that student loan interest and wrote the new debt on the chalkboard I just wanted to scream ENOUGH! I don’t want to do this anymore. Almost extra penny I’ve made aside from taking out money for tithes and taxes has gone towards paying off our debt. We’ve spent the last 18 months of our lives giving away our hard earned money because we stupidly made a choice to spend it on a majority of things that never even needed. I get sick every time I think about what we could have done with $62,000, and yet I have to accept that the decisions I made earlier in my life are affecting the way I live my life now.  Last week my parents and I were walking in the mall, just window shopping, and we came upon some fabulous luggage. I can’t even remember the brand, but it was so lovely that my Mom and I decided to go in and take a look. My father decided to stay outside because as he put it “yall know you can’t afford anything in there.”, and he was absolutely right. He wasn’t only right about that store, but about almost every store in that mall. I can’t afford anything because everything goes to our debt and it drives me crazy!  This is not the life I imagined for myself at 33.

So what now? All I can do is look at my options, and there aren’t many. I have the option to throw in the towel and quit, but let’s be honest that’s clearly not going to be the choice. I can slow down and cut back on my side hustles, which means the amount we pay off each month will slow down, in turn, dragging this thing out longer than it’s already scheduled to be. Lastly, I have the option to take a deep breath and keep pushing. To push Mr. Broke On Purpose to help bring in extra income so I don’t feel all the weight on my shoulders.  We have $150K to go, and we’re not going to get there overnight, maybe not even by the end of next year, but come hell or high water we’ll get there. Thanks for letting me rant.

I again saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift and the battle is not to the warriors, and neither is bread to the wise nor wealth to the discerning nor favor to men of ability; for time and chance overtake them all. -Ecclesiastes 9:11