Being Childfree

Over the past few years I have started to become more and more focused on my lack of children and how it effects my decision making on a day to day basis. While I owned and operated Free Bread I truly felt as though it were my child. My bread baby. I pushed and slept and breathed that business for 24 hours a day. I made decisions on behalf of the business that weren’t even rational, just for a sale or a new customer or another month’s preservation. I took out quickie loans, signed terrible leases, worked packing bread at night, popped bread in the oven, made a delivery, came back to the bakery to take out the bread and pray it hadn’t burned. I’d run to 8 different stores to buy ridiculously obscure ingredients at 3am, baked while drunk AND high. One time I left my delivery vehicle idling in a gas station overnight and forgot it was there. I went on medicaid and qualified for foodstamps but couldn’t navigate the paperwork and wait times so just opted out. During the delivery years I got arrested for vehicular cell phone and illegal left hand turns and spent 2 hours in jail. It all zipped by in a flash of desperation. These are some of the beacon moments of my life in fact- because it showed what I was willing to do for something. It showed me a full economic picture of life for the people with resources vs the people without.

When I stopped free bread I realized that nothing can protect me from loss. Part of me feels like I started the business in lieu of having a child. makes sense, I was 36 or 37…. like, here’s a safe thing that you can bring into the world that won’t crush you, like I know a daughter would. Like I know a man can, and has. Like my friends have. Like my own family has before. Crushed me.

But then after your crushed you’re still alive. I mean I am. right now. I was crushed and yet I’m still here. So now how do I fill this time?

I vacillate between feeling really lucky and really scared. I hope I’m not being grandiose (I can be) but I feel like I can cherry pick. I have no chains. no dependents. no mortgage. No encumbrances. I’m looking for a single or multiple positive moving distraction(s) that can participate or totally fund my living expenses. My living expenses change depending on what that moving distraction is.

I have no money but money has never been a motivator. So one question is: Should I cherry pick making money a motivator? Is that a goal here? Do I want to learn to make money motivate my decisions?