I’m feeling strange today. Unsettled and anxious. A little down.

I can’t quite pinpoint where this feeling is coming from. Is it the grey weather? Is it a hormonal swing? Am I forgetting something I should have done?

I’m not sure. I know I’ve been feeling stressed about money lately, but that’s not unusual. Not enough to make my heart race and my chest feel tight.

I wish I could be home with Lewis instead of working. Maybe that would settle me a little bit.

The only conclusion I can come to is that every aspect of my life is a little “extra” right now, and the sum of all of those small “extras” is a bit too much for me to handle and still feel normal. But because no one thing is a huge glaring issue, I can’t zero in on exactly what is throwing me off.

Or you know what… another possible explanation just came to me: I have all these long-term goals and large-scale problems that are eating away at me, and not only can I not achieve/solve them in a day, but I also literally have nothing I can do to make incremental progress right now. I’m stagnant, and I’m not good at that. I always like to be doing something to work towards goals/solutions, and I’ve got nothing right now.

Yes. That’s it. That’s what is happening.

There are a decent sized handful of things on my long-term to-do list, and one of those large-scale problems that I’m trying to solve is our finances. Like the other things on the list, the small things I can do financially right now are yielding no immediate results.

I’ve decided to cancel our house-cleaners, for example, because they do a crappy job – I had to mop yesterday after they came… –  and we can’t afford anyone better (you get what you pay for). So we’re just going to save the money and do it ourselves (sigh… with what time and energy, I don’t know). But saving that small sum each month doesn’t exactly make us instantly financially secure.

I also made some toddler pillowcases to put in an Etsy shop (small time investment, virtually no overhead, fun to do), but the odds of actually selling anything are slim, especially when my inventory is small. I’ll put some baby quilts up there as I finish them, and my mother in law has a couple things to sell, too. But even if I do sell something, it won’t make a large financial impact. It’s more of a fun hobby than a financial solution. And it is fun!

Lastly, Kyle and I have started to consider some creative solutions with our debts and a cash-out refinance. But our property value hasn’t increased enough quite yet, even if it is going up quite steadily (10% in 6 months! wooo!). And when it does reach the magic number we need it to, will interest rates still be low enough for it to make sense? Will it even be the right solution for us? It is risky, and the pros and cons lists are equal in length.

Yes, I’m sure the stagnation of my problem solving and goal achieving is what’s eating me today. I can’t solve our financial puzzle today, but I’ll have to see if there is at least one goal I can make some measurable progress on. That would probably make me feel better.