By Lisbeth Coiman
Many years ago, a friend of mine gifted me a kit advertised as a spiritual tool for affirmation. It’s a cute concept: write a wish on a piece of fine paper, roll the paper like a funnel, place it on a platform, and lit on fire. The paper quickly burns and lifts your wish into the air in a magical moment that lasts seconds. It’s cute.
Only I had stopped placing my intentions in the universe as wishes. Instead, I plan and design my life based on well informed decisions, considering risks and unexpected circumstances. The process is not always pretty and most of the time far from smooth.
Bookkeeping concept aside, budgeting is a way to keep an eye on where the expectations reside while we watch the colors of the balance sheet go from black to crimson red. Budgeting is mental health into the future.
Budgeting a small investment for retirement for the untrained entrepreneur requires a steady hand and an incredible amount of trust in the Self. Those monetary decisions should allow for the unexpected changes and turbulences pass through our lives without breaking us, even as they shake us.
Only five months into the pandemic, I took a risk greater than anything I had tried before and bought a house. Then the budge burnt with a puff in the air, like that spiritual tool for affirmation my friend gifted me.
After eight months waiting for a building permit, prices of lumber went up 400%. Plumbing material tailed behind. Inspectors found fault and the project was delayed even more. I am now into the one-year mark of building a tiny ADU unit and still no end in sight. At times, I wondered if there was any joy left. I felt depleted.
Then the past came back to threaten my sense of security. I reacted with more work and a flood of tears.
But I didn’t budget my emotions.
I allowed myself to feel all the anxiety, fear, abandonment, and anger. I considered these negative emotions as valid as joy and laughter and love, and they were necessary to remind me that being human requires authentic feelings, that my face doesn’t have to be IG ready every day. The reality is I wouldn’t have gone through it without friends holding me. They listened with patience on the phone when the sky turned dark. I am grateful they checked on me and offered advice, “Do not let anybody get into your head. Do not engage.”
With the help of those friends, and a good reserve of joy stored deep inside me I have hiked through this stretch.
What we can do to budget our emotions is to experience joy in its fullest whenever it steps into view because joy’s duration is unpredictable. Fill ourselves with its invigorating energy. Take the risk to love again. Get in touch with our senses. Jump into the cold waters of the Pacific Ocean and let that childish moment fuel the next heavy days. And write because the role of poetry is to survive and find beauty even in despair.
I don’t complain about my life because I am convinced I have done the right thing. Despite the budget being way into the red palette, I am content in my achievements so far. During all this time, I have lived intensely and with purpose. I am satisfied and impressed of my own ability to reinvent myself even when somebody threatened my sense of security.
All my decisions have been well informed. My personal life is on hold but not over. It’s compartmentalized into being a word artist, a teacher, an entrepreneur, a mother, a daughter, and a friend. All these parts of me come together to give myself what I didn’t give me before: a chance to design my own joy and future.
Both look spectacular from here, rough as the uphill road might be.
Lisbeth Coiman is an author, poet, educator, cultural worker, and rezandera born in Venezuela. Coiman’s wanderlust spirit landed her to three countries—from her birthplace to Canada, and finally the USA, where she self-published her first book, I Asked the Blue Heron: A Memoir (2017). Her poetry and personal essays are featured in the online publications: La Bloga, EntropyAcentos Review, Lady/Liberty/Lit, Nailed, Hip Mama Magazine, Rabid Oaks, Cultural Weekly, and Resonancias Literarias. In print media Spectrum v.16, The Altadena Literary Review, and Accolades: A Women Who Submit Anthology. An avid hiker, and teacher of English as a Second Language, Coiman lives in Los Angeles, CA.