February 9, 2009

Alright, I'll touch on my New Year's resolutions again.

I've figured out my plan to pay off the ring and my car early! After I get my federal tax return this Friday I'll put that, and my state refund towards the ring. That should take care of that loan! That's a big one, because if I don't pay that off by July the interest rate goes WAY up, so really, it can be considered an investment! Then in March when I get my profit sharing (which will probably suck) then I'm hoping I'll be able to pay off my car a couple of months early. Paying off those two loans will give me an extra $500 per month! With a combination of that extra money per month and my new second job, we should be sitting pretty good, and we should be able to enjoy the Twin cities more.

I haven't been working out as much as I'd like to. But the other day I ran for 30 minutes and didn't die! So that was a good sign! Then for the next few days I'll be back out in LA, so we'll see what I can get accomplished out there. I know my eating is going to be terrible out there...but I'll try to keep it reasonable!

My focus at work has been alright, I've been able to prioritize and try to get some things checked off my enormous list. This has allowed me to focus more on the 80% of my projects that are actually going somewhere and put off the 20% that are pretty much meaningless. And some of those projects will never get spending approved anyway, so I choose to ignore them. It's the classic 80/20 rule!

I haven't started a new book yet, but I've been getting through my magazines and blogs pretty well. I have a few blogs that I really love reading. Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist Blog is excellent! Ramit Sethi has a lot of good points in his I Will Teach You to be a Millionaire blog. I've also subscribed to his Scrooge Strategy, which, so far, hasn't really been worth my $8 investment. Tim Ferriss has an interesting blog, he's the author of The Four Hour Workweek. Evidently he made too much money on his book deal and now just spends all his time traveling around and doing some really cool stuff! I also have a couple of guys that I knew in college that are doing some amazing things and blog about them. One of them is Chris Deal, who is a great guy and a very accomplished leader, he's been blogging about traveling in Africa. Another guy is Wes Meier who is traveling around Nicaragua and blogging about it. Both of these guys, along with Greg McGrath have started an organization called Emerging Opportunities for Sustainability, and they're doing some incredible things in third world countries.

We cleaned all the carpets in the house the other day, and it looks so much better! It really brought the carpet back to life and probably extended it's life by a couple of years! Other than that, we reorganized the furniture a little bit and I really like it.

I learned a lesson today. I was talking to one of my friends at work who is constantly bitching about her job and the people that she works with. She feels like everything gets dumped on her, and the people that she manages, basically can't/won't help her out. I've tried to give her some tips, but she's not receptive to them at all. So I learned that some people are perfectly content staying in a crappy job, and just complaining about it, you just can't help them. So I'm going to choose to just leave these people alone, their lives will play out just the way they think it will.