Something that’s a challenge for new blog writers is really maintaining a consistent schedule in their writing. Even though this is something that I gain a lot of joy from, it’s not my full time job.
Usually, I’m teaching middle school band all day and then I come home to a young family that keeps me pretty busy.
So when I write a blog post or post on social media, you can bet that I didn’t actually write those words the morning that I post. I have to get ahead and then prepare stuff to send when I feel like the time is right. One social media post that I had ready to go was this one:
This post rang home a little more true this last week when the snowstorm came through and wiped out texas.
We’re lucky because our neighborhood seems like it never loses power. This week, however, we found ourselves without power for around 32 hours.
We lost power around 2am on Monday morning. At first, it didn’t seem like a big deal. Sure, we were concerned about the power outage. But I dug up our coffee press that we’ve never used once and heated up some coffee. We got everybody bundled up and went outside since our kids hardly ever get the chance to see snow without traveling.
I will say there were a couple of key things that made this way easier for us. We were able to light our gas stove, and we had a gas fireplace that we were able to start and at least keep our living room from getting too cold.
But the longer and longer we went without power, the more we worried and the more bored we got.
What made things worse was that since the cell phone tower seemed to have been knocked out as well, we were able to make some unreliable phone calls but that was it. So normally, we’d be able to get on social media to check in with others and to see the update from local news sources. But not this time. We just had to sit there. No phones, no electronic entertainment, and we couldn’t even go anywhere.
While we can look back fondly on the time we had together as a family without distractions, and the chance we had to all sleep around the fire in the living room, we really started to get worried about how long this was going to last, and the damage it could cause to our home and us.
It’s during times like these that we remember what our needs really are. I’ve said before that most things in our budget really aren’t needs. They’re fancy wants dressed up as needs.
And I’m not preaching here-because I definitely struggle with this.
And on the other edge of an experience like this, we remember how lucky we really are to have what we have.
The truth is, our budgets are bloated with a ton of stuff we don’t need.
How deeply could we cut our budgets down if it really only included the essentials?
What goals could we hit this year?
How aggressively could we pay off our debt?
How much more room could we make for the things that really matter to us?
We ended up being luckier than most. Even though we lost power at the very beginning, we only ended up being in the dark for 32 hours. Some went much, much longer. We kept our water the entire time. Some people lost their water or their pipes busted and now they have a huge home emergency on their hands.
We’re feeling thankful for what we have this week.
And although it’s not easy, the trick would be remembering that without the need for a natural disaster.
Jared
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