What Drives Us? Motivation

Wow.
Awesome.

(via Adland.tv)

Positive

I've been quite sick lately WAY too often. In preparing for a relay race next Friday (!) this isn't very useful.

However - as a result of how crappy I have been feeling, and only feeling a little better today, I have decided that it is really time to increase my positivity in my life. I have SO many great blessings in my life, I need to remember that. Wife, Family, Friends, LIFE!

I am working on a 'bucket list' - 123 things I want to do before I die. I honestly won't beat myself up too much if some of them don't happen, but at least it'll give me something to work towards. I'm not even a quarter of the way through, so this will take a while!

We are working on getting our house ready to be put up for sale. Our hope is to get completely out of debt and from there - STAYING that way. We have enjoyed owning a home, and I do think it is generally a smarter option than renting. However, being tied down with no options makes it hard to stay positive. We are looking forward to some FREEDOM!

This is the start.

The Trap in which I Find Myself

Very interesting article on how up until you are over $40,000 a year, a raise might actually make you earn less than you did at a lower wage.

I'm actually working on getting out of this trap myself... and it is a struggle to be sure.

Often times you hear people say that you just need to 'Work Harder' to get the results, but I think more appropriately people need to 'Work Smarter' instead.

(via Kottke)

Zazzle!

So I've had my Spreadshirt shop over on the side for a while... but it doesn't get much use. There isn't much there anyway, so I don't mind, plus I didn't do enough with it to expect anything.

However I've recently found a design place that is MUCH more fun to use, and I've already made a mousepad and a couple of shirts. (Really though, do you still use mousepads??)


make custom gifts at Zazzle

I've put it in the side for now as well, but will probably remove it soon. We'll see.

Anyway feedback is appreciated, and suggestions as to which art to use would be greatly appreciated.

Someday it'd be nice to make some money off my doodles, but for now I'm just playing around. :)

Life is like a bowl of fishes...

If the fishes were the money-eating type...

I've been in a bit of a rut with exercising.

I wish I had enough money to buy a whole bunch of Exercise DVDs and review them. I really like exercise programs and trying them out, then using the best of them.

I still plan on doing P90X again this summer, but there may be some complications in that it would be more beneficial for me to find a part-time second job in the evenings and weekends to help improve our cash situation until a promotion is supposed to come up in a few months. (Anybody know of any good evening/weekend part-time jobs in Northern Utah? Let me know!)

I wouldn't have to get a 2nd job at all if I could just get 1 million people to buy stuff from my (currently not very expansive) Spreadshirt Shop linked here and over on the side! If only!

I do plan on putting more stuff in there based on my artwork (which you can also find on DeviantArt linked to the right), so if you have any thoughts, suggestions, feedback, etc I would really appreciate it!

Life Without the Internet

I haven't had access to the internet on my computer at home for about a week now!

I did better than I thought I would. Yeah... A break from the internet at home was probably a good thing!! There are two reasons I was able to stay sane without the internet.

1 - I'm not playing WoW - if I were playing World of Warcraft still I think I'd be very annoyed that I was unable to connect. Then again I would have taken my computer downstairs and plugged it in, since it's just our wireless that we don't have right now.

2 - Books. I'm in the middle of 3 series right now. The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson, The Mercedes Thompson Series by Patricia Briggs (Got my wife into those ones too ha!), and as I've waited for my books on hold from those series I grabbed a random book by Laura Resnick called The White Dragon, only to discover it had a prequel and a sequel, so I grabbed that as well.

I finally ordered the wireless piece for our new DSL modem. We'll see how it compares to our old one. At least the internet hasn't cut off for my wife so far! So yippee I'll have the internet again on Friday, which is still a long time.

We are finally dipping our hands into the stock market... or trying to as there are all sorts of barriers and waiting periods for investing in non-marginable securities. We are only looking to invest $500 into a local business' penny stocks, and for some reason Ameritrade isn't letting me. Possibly because they want me investing THOUSANDS through them... but I don't have thousands to invest. Hopefully we won't have to go through somebody else again, because we've already gone through this. I guess as long as the stock stays down while we aren't in and jumps up after it's all good, right? :)

Goals: Financial/Career

In my original post on Goals, I forgot to include Financial goals in my list.

I guess it can be stuck with the Career goals, since that is a fairly small and unexplored category.

Financial:

• Get out of Debt. It's still strange to me to think that even on my small income with my growing family, we were able to keep out of debt for so long. And then fall in so heavily!
• SAVE! My saving has been horrible. I need to remedy this and FAST.
• Don't waste. Do you REALLY need a candy bar every day? I tell myself that I do. But I really don't. I've been good lately which isn't saving us that much - but hey every little bit helps!
  

Career:

• Work on marketable skills. The BEST thing about my current position is that while it doesn't pay enough - I am surrounded by supportive people and potential opportunities. So I need to work on what I need to know in order to move into a more lucrative and responsibility-laden position.
  
• Keep eyes open for opportunities. Talk to people about jobs.
• Don't give up on my(your)self and my(your) potential. Seriously - people will try to tell you that you can't do things or aren't good enough. And you can't and won't do or be able to do them if you believe those people. I had 5 years in my last position where the last two were spent doubting myself horribly. NOT good. You don't need that, so find something better.

And now both of those areas have been somewhat more explored. They definitely need more work and fine tuning. Things are looking up, and I'm excited.

Columbus Day

Today is when the United States observes the so-called 'holiday' of "Columbus Day."

I say 'so-called' because - well - I'm at work.

However State, Bank, and Credit Union employees all have the day off. This means I'm stuck at work, while others who might be getting my new HELOC through are NOT working. :p

Oh well, at least some people can enjoy a day off in the cold!

As for the holiday itself, my wife and I were discussing this on Saturday after closing on our loan.

Is it really 'discovery' if there are already people living there?

Boy it's nice when things come together!

Yesterday I had my Annual review.

It is actually hard to imagine that I've actually been in this position for over a year now!

The review and accompanying raise went better than I thought, which surprised my Boss, because I think he was expecting me to be wanting more... not that I don't WANT more, but I was happily impressed getting a higher percentage raise than expected.

So that's good news!

The other good news, and is GREAT timing along with the raise, is we are closing on a Home Equity Line of Credit that will save us well over $100 a month in various payments. We will have more control over our debt!

This will help in my major Financial goal of GETTING OUT OF DEBT.
Not amazingly - but it's a great improvement on the way things have been going lately.

Things are looking up! Hooray!

The Cough That Won't Go Away

It's been over two weeks since this cough started.
Definitely beyond annoying now.
The worst thing about it is that along with the cough I've had this strange lethargy.
I think today has been the best it's been so far - so hopefully it'll be gone soon!

Exercise has lagged quite a bit this past week, although I did go to Jujitsu on Thursday and played Soccer with work-mates Friday, but I just haven't felt great... which is probably more the problem than a lack of exercise. Part of it is also related to Finances, which just aren't going great.
Thankfully it is Review time at work so I should get a raise effective October 1st (Retro paid for the time before the review) - and I'm going to try to work more overtime since Overtime (if you can get it) is more lucrative than a part time job.

If I get some time I'll post my Music Goals today.

Allergies and/or Sickness are NOT FUN

Jujitsu last night was fun - but the other guy that was there last week wasn't there, so the two of us did more talking than Jujitsu. It was still fun and I did learn some and was able to roll a little bit. I'm still very excited to learn more.

There were three problems which made me a bit hesitant to do too much physically...
1. I had just eaten dinner - REALLY great salmon and salad and green beans - Delicious but too close to the physical activity.
2. Our new 80-90% Vegetarian lifestyle has been giving me some major bubbles in my stomach... NOT fun especially when wrasslin'. Yikes.
3. I had a horrendous allergic outbreak last weekend. Something got to me real bad. Now I THINK that as a result of my allergies my throat was really irritated and this was further exacerbated by the smoke machines, heat, and air quality at the SYTYCD Tour on Tuesday causing me to miss work Wednesday. My throat is still weird, I have this nasty wheezy-type cough, and occasionally feel feverish and dizzy. Those last two are what makes me worry it might NOT be just allergies... but they are usually only late at night as I'm trying to go to bed.

Very annoying.

I brought my soccer stuff to work today (nothing really unique for soccer though... I don't have cleats or shin guards or anything!) but I'm not sure if I will go play or not. I could probably use the sunshine and fresh air!

Yesterday we went to our Credit Union and applied for a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC). We are tired of our Credit Cards and want to have more control over our debt, along with a lower payment. Online the rates matched what the lady told us, but the payment threw us off a little, and we need to verify that what we think she said was correct. According to the online listing of loan options, the monthly payment on the HELOC was 1.25% of the balance. For the debts we are looking to 'pay off' with this that would save us approximately $100-150 a month on debt-payments, which is definitely a good thing. But for some reason both my wife and I think the loan helper person at the Credit Union said that the monthly payment was 3.5% of the balance per month. THAT would put us at DOUBLE what we are currently paying per month on Credit Cards and student loans... so that wouldn't make much sense.

We'll find out when we hear from the people that really make decisions about the loans. Hopefully this will help us get back on track a bit.

What I really need to do is find a job that pays more than I currently make. We won't be able to get out of our situation otherwise - we don't have any superfluous expenses to get rid of!

I blame our car, which is looking at another $1000 in repairs before we can even sell it... for hopefully around $2000. :(