The power of money

The power of money .. or the lack thereof. And I'm talking about within the household. Now that I've quit my part-time job and now that my daughter is in preschool, I am trying to devote my time and energy into online writing, and hopefully generate some income within a year. At least, that's the plan. But now that I'm not a financial contributor to the family, I can't help feeling like I'm sometimes being treated with contempt. I'm possibly exaggerating, but I'm beginning to hear hubby making "suggestions" on things I could do around the house (today, it was to wash the windows). Mother-in-law, who lives with us and doesn't really do anything around the house and barely contributes anything, has conveniently begun to not take the trash out on trash days (that used to be her only job around the house). Or she would do laundry and leave the wet clothes in the washer for me to hang them up.

And I won't complain much if hubby actually has a stable and good-paying job. He doesn't. He works as a freelance computer graphic designer and there have been months when he didn't have any work and we have to dip into MY savings to pay the bills. I have always been supportive of him and never asked him to go get a "real" job, but now that we are feeling the pinch (we haven't even been able to pay into our national pension fund since last November), I would assume that any normal man would either go get a stable job or at least try to find some other source of secondary income. I mean, he has already been doing this freelance thing for 10 years .. obviously, it's not getting us anywhere.

It's ture. If you want to get things done, you have to just do it yourself. I've started contemplating just giving up my writing thing and maybe go get an outside job to support us. I don't really know how much longer we can go without money. And then again, we live in rural Japan .. there aren't really very many job opportunities for foreigners.

Not that anybody reads this ... but it helps to get things off my chest. I will just have to work harder and smarter to make this work.