Firing my Mom

My Mom and I have very different ideas about money, security, and the relationship between them. Recently she's transformed from a life-long Democrat to a Fox News junkie who thinks Glen Beck is a hero. Her parents grew up during the depression, so of course she's inherited patterns from them regarding fear and money. The differences in our outlooks on how to make enough money to live have been thrown into start relief over the past year of unemployment. I've finally realized that although she has set an excellent example in many ways by being as financially together as she is, her approach to money is too fear-based to continue to allow it into my own planning and outlook. I can think back to decisions like the one not to go to Burning Man last year, when the Austin crew build the Temple. It would probably have been the most rewarding experience I could possibly have there to go along and participate, and at worst the expenditure might have meant I had to get a job a few weeks sooner than otherwise on a time scale measured in months, but I didn't go. I can look at hundred other small decisions where I've let that small, nagging fear at the back of my mind finally tip the scales, possibly including my current decision to at least temporarily re-install myself into a cubefarm, and they can all be traced back to that powerful maternal voice whispering in my ear. No more. I'm firing my Mom from her role as financial adviser. From now on, she's going to have to take it on faith that her son is an adult who can manage his own financial life, and she's going to have to figure out how to find her own internal security without knowing the details.

I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to deliver the message, and I'm a little concerned about what I might have to do to enforce it, but I'll probably send her an e-mail with the general idea sometime tonight.