Pace and I have opposing money issues. She hoards, I spend. Mayhem often ensues.

I’m not a wild crazy stereotypical debt-accruing wife.

I’m the House Maintainer, the Logistical Manager, the Caretaker, and the Errand-Runner. I get groceries, make sure we all have clothes that fit and shoes that are comfy, keep track of eye exams and dental appointments, doctor and vet visits. I make sure Dru’s education needs are met, that he gets to take classes when he wants (when feasible), that he gets workbooks and videos. I make sure our entertainment needs are met, that we get to see a movie now and then and get to eat out on occasion, and that we’re spending quality time with our friends.

Also, my primary love language involves gift giving and receiving, so it’s important for me to be able to spend money on that from time to time as well.

But we were having major money issues. All the time.

Our biggest problem, the one thing we fought, argued, bickered, and discussed more than anything else in our lives was money. We made budgets, we made agreements, we made promises. We fell apart and reworked things and tried again and tried harder. We yelled, we cried, we struggled.

And then I solved it.

I solved it by admitting I couldn’t solve it.

One night, we had another major money battle. We were facing off; Pace was on one couch, arms crossed, eyebrows down, anger in her eyes. I was on the other, arms crossed, trembling, frustrated tears running down my face. We’d been at it for an hour at least, and I was getting weary and heartsick.

Then I took a deep breath and burst into tears. “I can’t do this alone. I’m addicted to money, I’m addicted to spending, and I’ve got all this responsibility but no power and am constantly feeling like I’m stealing from you!”

Immediately, Pace was on my couch, arms around me. We were on the same team, me and her against the problem. I cried for a good twenty minutes, and she simply held me. After I wept it all out, we started talking.

We talked until we came up with a plan.

We talked and talked and talked. We thought and thought. We discussed, we planned, we compromised, we discussed.

See what was missing? We didn’t argue. We didn’t bicker, we didn’t fight, no voices were raised. Not even for a moment, not even once.

As soon as we realized we were on the same team, we started acting like it. And it made all the difference. But we couldn’t have gotten there had I not admitted that I have a serious problem. I asked for Pace’s help, she promised to help me, and we went forward together.

I grew up in an environment where money was invisible.

We always had it. We ate out all the time, my brother and I never wanted for anything, and I never heard my parents discuss it or argue about it. The only thing missing was education; I had no idea how to manage money. I didn’t learn it when I moved out on my own, either. I would spend rent money on a trip to the movies and eating out, and then panic when I didn’t have rent money.

Over the past few years, I’ve gotten considerably better. But our budget had holes in it, and I wasn’t careful at times, and it all added up to constant strife between me (the spender) and Pace (the hoarder). It was difficult to see the problems because I’m responsible for the family spending, but we figured it out.

Our solution is cool. And annoying to the bank.

We switched to cash.

Now, every week, I go to the bank and withdraw the week’s spending money (groceries, gas, education, well-being, etc). I divvy it up and put each section in a compartment in my awesome accordion wallet.

This way, it’s impossible for me to overspend. When we’re out, we’re out. End of story. We wait til the next week for anything else. For myself, I opened my own checking account for my personal spending money, and I keep close track of that with the help of an app on my handy-dandy iPhone.

And I learned a cool thing.

Money isn’t real to me if it’s not cash.

When I’m paying for things in cash, I get it. I grok that I’m giving away our money, the money Pace works hard for in the mornings and we work hard for together in the afternoons. It’s real, and I really get it.

When I’m paying with a credit card, it’s all just numbers. Math. Invisible. Endless! We’ll never run out of numbers!

But we will run out of cash. All-too-soon, if I’m not careful. I can see it dwindle from my wallet. I can see the compartments get emptier every time I buy something.

And you know what? I haven’t run out of a single section yet.

Two weeks in, nearly three, and I’ve still got carry-overs from the previous weeks.

At first, I was accountable by giving Pace receipts for everything. But we quickly realized that wasn’t even necessary, because I can’t go over. I’ve made promises not to withdraw money without talking to Pace, and I won’t break those. I’ve given up all my credit cards. And I deal only in cash.

In the end, it was realizing that I had a problem that solved the problem. I can’t solve what I don’t acknowledge, no matter how hard I try – and I tried hard. Over and over and over. But as soon as I admitted it, when I owned up to it, I solved it.

And things are already huge lots better, and improving all the time.

You gave us your feedback about this blog, and we’re listening.

You asked for more open and vulnerable posts. We’ll do our best.

You asked for more audio and video posts. We’ll continue posting those occasionally.

You said that the community updates were the posts you most often skimmed or skipped. So we’re cutting down on those. From here on out, we won’t post community updates weekly; we’ll only post them if we have interesting and/or important news to share.

On the Fridays when we don’t post a community update, we’ll post something about communication, how to be awesome, or revolutionizing the world instead. So our blog schedule, starting next week, is:

Monday: something awesome and unscheduled
Wednesday: Book Bonanza Wednesday
Friday: Community Update or something awesome and unscheduled

How does that sound? Leave us a comment if you have something to say.

Thanks for experimenting with us and finding out what works best!

Each week we give away the next chapter of our book for free. We hope you enjoy it! Here’s this week’s chapter:

Chapter 24: The William James zone

All the clear communication you’ve been learning can be completely muddied if you don’t communicate clearly with yourself. Part of self-communication is paying attention to your emotions and your body when you get angry. This helps stop your anger from getting out of control and muddying everything up.

When you get angry, your brain sends out signals to your body. Your adrenaline pumps and your body releases hormones. Anger prods your body, saying, “Get ready to act!” Anger is an emotion, but it’s also a physical state. Once that adrenaline starts pumping, your body becomes angry. Even if the cause of the emotional anger goes away, the physical anger is still there, and it starts a feedback loop. Your brain asks your body, “How are we doing?” Your body replies, “We’re really angry!” Your brain reacts by becoming emotionally angry in response to the physical anger, causing your brain to send out anger signals to your body again, and the feedback loop continues.

…and here’s the rest:

• Read The Usual Error ebook, Chapter 24: The William James zone (web page)

Politics is a big fat waste of time.

Why don’t you get a Ph.D in engineering, then never build anything?

A lot of people consume a lot of politics, but never do anything with it. They stay up to date on current events and political news, they lose sleep over it, they talk about it incessantly, but they never do anything with it. It’s like spending a decade in college and graduate school to get a Ph.D in engineering, but then never actually building anything.

Either produce something instead of endlessly consuming, or do neither, and do something useful with your life instead.

Activism doesn’t work.

And if people do decide to act instead of simply consuming, they usually choose activism. They make a bunch of signs, get together with other people who agree with them, and stand around.

You know what? Activism hasn’t worked since the 60′s. Why did it work back then? Because it made people uncomfortable. Now it’s expected. It’s part of the background noise. Oh, activists. Oh, they’re having a rally.

We expect protesters to protest pretty much anything these days, pro or con. Activists have lost their power to make us uncomfortable. We’re jaded and we’ve seen it all before.

And so, activism is also a big fat waste of time.

Politics distracts us from what’s really important.

We get so caught up in what the politicians are going to do that we lose sight of the bigger picture.

Why have we given up our personal power to these people?

Why do politicians even have a say in our day-to-day lives?

Why are other people authorized to kill on my behalf? I don’t want that.

It’s like the manipulation trick that parents use on their kids. Instead of giving them a real choice, you give them the illusion of choice. “Do you want to take a bath now, or do you want to take a bath later?” Note that “Do you want to avoid taking a bath entirely” is conspicuously missing from the list of choices.

But without politics, we’d have no laws, and there would be lots of crime and war and stuff!

Yup, you’re probably right — but only in the current paradigm. Politics is possibly the best way to make the current system suck less. So if that’s your goal, if that’s your life’s work, then I wish you luck. You’re helping make things better for us, and that’s admirable. You keep on doing what you’re doing.

We’re doing something different.

We’re changing the world into a world that doesn’t need politics.

Why would there be lots of crime and war and stuff without politics and laws and people to enforce them? Because we’re living in a control paradigm instead of a connection paradigm. If we all lived in community and connection with one another and with ourselves, then we could come up with a better solution than politics. Politics is inherently anti- connection paradigm. It forces you to give up your personal power to someone you don’t know. Even if you feel a connection to your politician, the feeling isn’t mutual, simply because of the way the political hierarchy is arranged and the 150-person cap on any one person’s monkeysphere.

Local and community politics aren’t necessarily broken.

When you get to a smaller scale, where the number of people involved is less than 150, it’s possible to work together in community to make things happen. Moreover, it’s possible to do it without resorting to control paradigm tactics and systems that require isolation to work.

Due to the fact that we’re living in a control paradigm, these systems do often break down into petty politics, power plays, and fighting without ever really listening to each other. But they’re not inherently broken.

So what’s the alternative?

A paradigm shift.

Right now, most of the humans on Earth are playing the Politics Game. They believe that the way to change the world is by doing well at the Politics Game. And that’s true — if everyone else is playing the same game.

What we’re saying is that we can choose to play a different game.

Sounds lovely, but how exactly do you propose to do it?

Without players, a game is nothing. If enough people stop playing the Politics Game, the game becomes meaningless. The politicians no longer have power over us, because the people who enforce the rules are people too. When we create a paradigm shift, those people won’t want to play the game anymore either. The game board will have lost all its pieces, and there will be no one left to play.

After that, it’s up to us to create a new game for ourselves. Maybe a bunch of smaller games, because there’s no one right way. Maybe a game without rules but with principles instead — rules are so old paradigm!

One thing for sure, we can’t do it alone. We’re only two people.

Would you like to help?

Gravatars

We have Gravatars! We figured that seeing each other’s faces is a good way to get to know each other, so we added gravatars (globally recognized avatars) to the comments section of our blog. If you leave a comment and your picture doesn’t show up, sign up at gravatar.com and upload an icon. It’ll appear not only here, but at oodles of other blogs that use gravatars! It’s pretty nifty.

Pace and Kyeli

This week has been mixed between stressful and awesome. On Tuesday, we talked with Naomi about our business plan. (Reminder to myself: post about why the Freak Revolution is a business rather than a nonprofit, a hobby, or a charity.) That was wonderful. Naomi is always lovely to talk to, and we came up with some great ideas together!

With that, plus Pace taking the Heart of Money course, there’s been a lot of soul-searching. We’ve been asking a lot of big questions, about our business, about our blog, and about all sorts of things.

It’s time to stop asking each other and start asking you. (This seems embarrassingly obvious in retrospect.)

Tell us what you want.

We’re writing this blog for you. Please, tell us what you like and what you don’t like. We’re listening. We want to write things that will help you, inspire you, make you happy, and maybe even change the world.

Here’s a short, anonymous, three-question form for you to tell us how we can best do that.

(If you don’t see the form, click here.)

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Thanks oodles!

We appreciate you, and we appreciate your input! With your help, we’re an amazing force that will change the world.

Each week we give away the next chapter of our book for free. We hope you enjoy it! Here’s this week’s chapter:

Chapter 23: The only way out is through

Communication is rewarding, but difficult. It takes effort to figure out your own communication style and to figure out how it differs from the communication styles of those around you. It takes work to identify and hold your boundaries and to respect others’. We feel at odds with those closest to us, even when they’re on our side. We feel trapped in the messes we create.

Sometimes, we get overwhelmed with all this and we want to stop. We want to stop talking, stop having problems, stop everything! Can’t we take a break? Can’t we just go a few days without communicating about anything important?

…and here’s the rest:

• Read The Usual Error ebook, Chapter 23: The only way out is through (web page)

Our new friend Tracy of Fiercely Loved wrote a blog post about how she’s expanding her monkeysphere and her concept of God by exposing herself to people who aren’t like her, listening with an open heart, and seeing the Divine in each of them.

Sounds pretty darn connection paradigm, right? Pretty darn freak-revolutionary? Most definitely. It touched both of us very deeply.

Some of the phrasing she used, however, triggered one of Kyeli’s landmines, which was planted there long ago by some bad experiences with Christianity. The two of us had a conversation about what came up for Kyeli when she read Tracy’s post, and about our different concepts of the Divine.

We recorded it, asked Tracy’s permission to share it with y’all (which she graciously granted), and are posting it here with all its beauty and warts for you to hear. Here goes. *deep breath*

Kyeli and Pace have an emotional conversation about Christians, pagans, and different facets of the Divine. (12:41)

Favorite quote: “It’s like putting funny glasses with a nose and moustache on the face of God. That doesn’t make it Groucho Marx; it’s still God!”

I’ve been super stressed out and overwhelmed and weary lately. In a fabulous and much-needed conversation with the Marvelous Ms M, I realized (for, like, the 50th time) that I’m trying to wear far too many hats at once.

I eventually came up with the perfect solution to all my problems: All I need to do is hire a Hydra.

So I wrote a want-ad.

Wanted: one fully grown, well-trained Hydra for assistance with small business, in a Personal Assistant-type role. Weary woman has far too many hats and needs extra heads to share burdens.

Please contact me if interested; position needs immediate filling.

I’ve posted it to my creative writing site, and also on Craig’s List.

Maybe I’ll find one. Can’t hurt to look, eh?

News flash: Scientists make the usual error

Jodi pointed me to this article, which basically says “Be precise in how you want your work to be used, because other people are going to make the usual error.”

Guest Post!

Pace wrote an awesome guest post about the usual error for Social Work p.r.n., a social work company based in Pennsylvania.

We were connected to them through our dear friend, Bob Poole – thanks, Bob!

OMG Daniel Quinn!

The brilliant author of Ishmael and The Story of B, two of the three most boat-rocking, life-altering books we’ve read, put a short blurb about us in his news column last weekend.

This is a big deal for us, as these two books were a huge part of what inspired us to create the Freak Revolution! We’re honored to be featured on his site.

We made a new friend!

Our new friend Tracy, of Fiercely Loved, wrote a very interesting and touching blog post about how we’re pushing her boundaries and her journey from fear to acceptance.

It’s beautiful and well-written, and managed to accidentally step on one of Kyeli’s triggers – who is currently still processing, but we’ll post a podcast about it on Monday.

Decluttering Goddesses is happening soon!

Leonie and Lisa’s course, Decluttering Goddesses, starts this Monday! It’s all about creating sacred space in your home so you can do your Work without the clutter-stress impeding you.

Kyeli is particularly excited about this course. She’s very sensitive to her environment, and clutter stresses her out big time. She’s already signed up and hopes you join her! It’s going to be amazing!

Time’s almost up to register, so why don’t you click here right now and check it out? Even if you don’t buy anything, you still get to look at Leonie’s luscious handwriting and art. (:

Here’s a taste of what’s going on in the Freak Revolution Community.

Member Tiara won third place in the New Talent category in Brisbane’s Cabaret Burlesque! Congrats and well done!

Member KN is getting ready to lead a Summer Solstice ritual for a conference of the North American Interfaith Network, which will happen on June 27th as part of a long weekend of workshops and religious services from various faith traditions. Kyeli wishes she could be a part of that; it sounds super cool.

Member Ari is going back to university after a two year hiatus – excellent! She also gets to meet her godson for the first time – he’ll be 10 months old.

Member Rachael is reading Zen to Done in hopes of finding something peaceful and helpful; we wish her luck!

What’s going on with Pace and Kyeli?

We had a schedule change last week; Dru started spending weekends with his other mom instead of Saturday through Monday, so we’ve been adjusting to that. It’s been a bit rough.

Kyeli has been working on optimizing her life. She’s been feeling stressed out and overwhelmed with the many hats she wears, so we’ve been working on a hat-rotation schedule so she can only worry about one hat at a time. A hat for everything and everything in its hat! She’s also been working on letting go of some superhuman expectations of herself that she picked up throughout her life. We’ve had ups and downs, laughter and tears. Progress (and hats) are being made, but this week has been pretty rocky in the emotional department.

Pace started Heart of Money with Mark Silver, who is amazingly awesome. She’s just into the pre-assignment, and is already 100% convinced that this course is going to change her life! (And she says “Thank you, thank you, thank you” to Kyeli for convincing her to sign up.)

And you?

That’s it for us, how are you doing right now?

Each week we give away the next chapter of our book for free. We hope you enjoy it! Here’s this week’s chapter:

Chapter 22: Giving permission to disappoint

The myth of the perfect romantic relationship has inflicted a lot of damage. We see it primarily in its most common manifestation: the myth of “one true love.” It tells us to spend our early lives looking and waiting for “the one.” We hear it in movies all the time: “Could she be the one?” or “I’ve finally found Mr. Right!” The myth says that “the one” will drop into your life and be perfect for you. The two of you will fit together like puzzle pieces and live happily ever after. All your problems will be solved now that you and your soul mate have finally found each other, because you’re perfect for each other.

This is utter nonsense! People are not anything like puzzle pieces. We each have rough, irregular edges, and even the most compatible friends or partners in the world won’t fit seamlessly. There will be conflict, difficulty, and friction throughout the entire duration of even the healthiest relationships.

…and here’s the rest:

• Read The Usual Error ebook, Chapter 22: Giving permission to disappoint (web page)