Every January I pull together a budget based on the previous year’s earnings and expenses as well as projected changes in earnings and expenses for the current year. I hate it. Even though I’ve made it as simple as possible, I do not like writing the budget. Numbers make me nervous – always have since grade school where they were my weakest subject and would remain so through high school. (One of the many reasons I loved my college was because, back then, students chose between a language and math. We didn’t have to take both. Call me crazy but I signed up for Greek and said “bye-bye” to numbers in school!)

Since I do the budget because it’s necessary, first of all I avoid it by practicing the art of procrastination with creative and productive projects that keep me out of my study. Then when I commit to it, I spend the time at my desk bubbling inside with impatience and insecurity while wanting to be somewhere else, doing something else. Going to the movies is never as enticing as it is while I sit here and get the work done. In fact, I have interrupted the task of writing up the 2017 budget with this very reflection. Several minutes ago I interrupted the task by buying an MP3 album at Amazon, which now keeps me company while I do the budget. Actually, the music is keeping me company in this very moment as I write this.

Why did I start writing this? Because it occurred to me that numbers can tell tales – stories – memoir, if you will, about how the previous year was spent as well as the hopes and expectations for the New Year. I thought if I looked at it this way, it would help. I actually feel a slight sense of relaxation around the budget. I’m going back to it. I’ll be back in a bit.

It helped! Going back to the budget I felt calm and relaxed. As a writer I was surprised by my impulse to look at the numbers as story and memoir because I knew I did not want to take the time to sort of tell the tale about each number in the budget. That wasn’t what I was going for at all. It was a clean cut idea that the numbers would speak for themselves. Together on the page of the budget, in relationship to one another, and in relationship to me they are a memoir of last year and a story about this year. And my mind relaxed around the task.

Within the context of looking at the numbers as story or memoir, they tell a boldly honest tale. Something memoirists talk about is that in memoir the writer practices selective memory. In writing memoir, selective memory isn’t less than the truth. Sometimes it points to bigger truths. It isn’t biography nor is it fiction. Mostly, selective memory means the writer shares what she needs to share and not everything needs to be shared. Dani Shapiro asks this about memoir, “What is the job of the memoirist?  Is it to tell all?  Or is it to carve a story out of memory?”

But a budget as memoir – the numbers are there representing exactly what was, anticipating what will likely be. It’s a bold truth indeed. And, for me, it is now complete. Rather than running away from the completed task or shaking it off, I’m basking in the glow of a tale well told. Till next year!  

(For the sake of this reflection, I added photographs of bells because they can be counted.)  🙂