Ah yes, the 8th day. One week isn’t enough. So lately I’ll slip another one in somewhere. Thursday has been a good day recently, but this week it’s happening on Tuesday night. Thursday’s past, it translated to a 13 or 14 hour work day which allows me to travel and basically take Friday mostly off.
Today at work somewhere around 3pm I came to the powerful realization that all the things I took on are not getting done. Powerful because what I am doing now isn’t working. I will have it work. I will do 3 triathlons by the end of August, the last of which I have already registered for in August. I will meet objectives I’ve set for myself at work, both written and agreed upon as well as the ones I set for myself. I will do all the things I said I was going to do. Period.
So at 3pm rather than get sleepy (it was already happening), and basically get that feelgood feeling that comes later in the day when you decide to forget, (or at least when *I* decide to forget), most of what is going on in my life and drift into the silent reverie that is the lie. The lie that says the day is almost done, and because I have put in a good effort, that I can safely rest.
It makes me remember a scripture that goes something like this – “A little folding of the hands to rest and calamity decends on us like a heap of burning coals and a 7 headed dragon”. Ok, I embellished a little, but folding of the hands and consequences were definately involved.
So I decided to move on from one thing to the next accomplishing as much as possible. I will not fret about being absolutely sure my priorities are all correct. We could be here all night for that to happen, and nothing would get done.
Better to identify from the whole pool of things I’m going to do, if the next random thing I pick falls into the pool of “top third”. As long as that’s true, it couldn’t be that bad. And there are enough things to do that that really is responsible. And conducive to flow.
So I looked at the texas iron workouts I received from Jamie, settled on a workout for the evening, then changed my plans a bit when I foudn out Burch, whom I work with was going for a run. Always preferable to me to run with someone than run alone. Same with biking, though not as critical.
So after I got a good start installing my dev workstation ( something that doesn’t happen in Tech ARch on my project – until now!!!), I followed Burch as we drove over to Town Lake here in Austin.
We ran mostly and walked a bit, the 4.1 miles from mopac to first street and back around. Inspiring native plants and limestone, majestic bigger than life Cypress trees, perfect surreal Agave that looks like something from Phantasia. It was a spiritual breath of fresh air. I thanked Burch for having me a long and pointing out Austin sites along the way.
Then I went ot the gym, got in a good swim, and then did some weightlifting. I did some deadlifts, clean and jerks, and some handstands. Handstands are getting better. I almost did 3 handstand pushups without support, but still needed a little support. Trying to open up my sholulders. They are really tight, but the weightlifting and yoga and everything else I’m doing is helping. In between sets I did some good deep stretches of my shoulders and neck. I can actually *see* a difference now! My neck looks way too long for my body when I’m doing these streches, but I think that’s just because it looks new. But then again I do have a large head and a long neck for my height. Yay me.
So now I made my way with box of external hard drives over to Epoch where I am copying, consolidating and backing up (won’t go into boring details here.)
With any good fortune, I’ll get a good start on my multi-pronged approach to save the financial disaster that is my house from further loss and attempt to not only keep it from plunging me 2-3 years behind my financial goals, but to see if it can actually *make* me money.
I have a financial mentor now. His name is Brady Johns, and I have homework to do. He helped a co-worker to get on his way to financial freedom which will allow him to retire young and retire rich. The book by that name is part of my homework. I’ll get to some of that tonight.
I’m about to identify my council person and put together a plan for beautifying my neighborhood, particularly my cul-de-sac. If the neighborhood is more valuable then so is every house. I’m thinking of putting together some kind of website or booklet that has all the great things about living at 6343 Limestone, and why a buyer, or lease-to-owner, or what have you would want to live there.
I’ve learned from this house, and my roommates. I’ve learned that loving friends has nothing to do with my responsibility to stand up for my interests. Getting a $125k house rather than the $40k condo made no sense whether or not roommate #1 wouldn’t have roomed with me if I hadn’t. A little loneliness never killed anyone. Better to be lonely and rich than lonely and poor. And in the end I kicked out roommate #1 because of a complicated turn of events.
Also, considering compatibility and roommates: Erika is a dear friend, but she likes privacy and there is a sanctity to her space. So when I agreed to room with her, I was agreeing basically to communicating anyone who would be at the house to her. It’s only fair really.
But Erika has a life of her own. So again, I was lonely in my house with no one there usually, because she wasn’t there, and neither was anyone else including the neighbors. All my fault. Shame on me.
That’s just an expression. I’m not ashamed.
Nothing wrong with any of this or anyone involved. Everyone is still a friend. What I’ll change in the future is to pay attention to my own interests before I consider anyone elses where $$ are concerned. Truly, if anything comes before my financial freedom, I am enslaving myself.
So here I am at Epoch, a wonderful vibrant coffeeshop in Austin, TX. Austin is quickly becoming my home away from albatross-house, partially because of wonderful places like this one. It’s 12:53am on Thursday morning/ Wednesday night…(who am I kidding – it’s day 8!!), and there are lots of people talking and visiting. Laptop to person ratio is pretty high. About 10-20 on and open. Wireless of course. Epoch never closes. 24 hours 7 days a week.
Well, I’ll stop writing now and continue with other things. Peace out! Peace in!