Impatience and Frustration

I don't use my Blogger account much. I tend to do most of my blog articles on my Wordpress account. However, my Mum subscribes to it and I'd quite like to just vent without worrying her.

We've already talked anyway, but the underlying problem that's bothering me is still there. Nagging at me to succeed, so I can help my family be happy.

My Dad is a Vicar (an Anglican Christian Minister) and he's been put in charge of six churches. He believes it's a spiritual calling, and he's frequently frustrated by the workload. He gets himself so stressed out about it that he ends up with migraines. I see how miserable it's making him and I can't help.

What he wants is for members of his congregation step up and help. Some of the services he has to do have only five or six people in attendance. If they were willing to attend another church it would reduce heating costs and Dad would only have to do one service for ten to twelve people instead.
They could also help by leading their own worship instead of requiring Dad to lead them.

Dad feels trapped and stressed, and I want to help him. I'm not religious, far from it, but I respect my parent's beliefs and if having someone else do the work for him gives him more time to pursue the spiritual aspects of his faith, then I want to do that for him.

I've asked him how I can help repeatedly, but he says I can't. He needs the congregation to volunteer, but they aren't. It occurs to me that he needs to hire people to do some of the clerical work and organisational aspects of the job, but they can't afford that. The Church is entirely funded by the collection plate. There's no government funding. There's not even a tax break like American churches get. One of the things he's stressed about is that they need to organise a fundraising event to get the church hall heating repaired.

Today he told me that he doesn't feel like he can relax. Even when he's home. There's currently six of us living under one roof. Mum and Dad, my sister, her two daughters, and me. Plus my sister's little dog. The dog stresses Dad out because it rarely behaves for him, or my Mum. In fact it tends to growl and snap at them both. He likes me and my sister, and he never hurts the girls, but he sets my parents on edge.

The girls, my nieces, are great. They don't always behave themselves either. The older girl has dyspraxia and will have a breakdown if she doesn't understand what she's being asked to do, or just doesn't want to do it. The younger one is just belligerent and will answer back if she feels that what she's being asked to do is unfair. She often thinks things are unfair because her sister can use her dyspraxia as an excuse, but she doesn't have that excuse. The fights are another source of stress for Dad.

My sister works two jobs to look after the girls and save up towards getting a place of their own. Her fiance is trying to sell his one bedroom place that he co-owns with his parents. It's only a matter of time before they can get their own place. It will cause more problems when they do go because Mum likes having them around, but at least Dad will feel like he can come home to peace and quiet.

I feel like I could solve these problems in one fell swoop if I was half the writer I want to be. I could buy my sister and fiance a place in town close enough for my Mum to visit. I could hire my Dad a staff of assistants to manage all of his appointments and events, allowing him the freedom to visit congregation members that need his personal touch. I could fund my Mum's homeopathy practice, or any other activity she wants to pursue.

I have a plan, but if it works at all it will still take two to three years to generate an income equal to a full-time career, and much longer to build the kind of financial independence necessary to give my family everything they need. I've only been here three months and the electricity bill has already gone up. I'm picking up a few ghostwriting jobs where I can and keeping my eyes peeled for local work while I continue to work on my stories.

I feel like I'm compounding the problem instead of helping, and it's frustrating. I know I just need to keep working the plan, and that I need to let others solve their own problems. I'm just impatient.

I'm not asking for help. We'll all get through it. Like I said before, I just needed to vent.

Have a great day.