dreaming out loud…

The days before and after St. Patrick’s Day have always been busy in my family. Birthdays and anniversary’s all over the place. This year is no exception. Yesterday was Molly’s sister’s birthday, today we are going to Shamrock, OK with my parents for it’s annual St. Patt’s festivities. Tomorrow is my brother’s birthday and finally Monday is the actual holiday.

I’ll have pictures of the trip later. And some thoughts on it. It will be fun to compare it to the party down in Savannah, GA I went to a couple years ago.

Oh yeah. I got a new car. The Jeep was getting too expensive to drive. I’ll have some pictures of the new toy as well.

Here is a nice little list of things that things that many people hear, but ignore. Including myself. I am currently working on at least 3 of them right now.

1. How to control impulse spending. If there’s
   anything that got me in trouble financially, it’s impulse spending.
   Buying clothes when I don’t need them. Buying gadgets because I gotta
   have them. Ordering stuff online because it’s so easy. Buying that new
   shiny SUV because … well, because it was going to help me with women.
   I’m not proud of any of that. I’ve learned to control my impulses, at
   least a little better. Now, I give myself some time to breathe. I think
   over my purchases, see if I’ve got the money, think about whether it’s
   a need or a want. That would have been a useful tool 15 years ago.
2. You gotta stay active. I was in track, cross
   country and basketball in high school, but once I started college, the
   running and basketball began to slowly fade away. Not right away — I
   played pick-up basketball for years after high school. But even that
   went away, until I became sedentary. Playing with my kids outdoors
   winded me. And I began to get fat. I’ve reversed that trend, and am
   very active now, but I’m still trying to burn the fat I gained in those
   inactive years.
3. How to plan finances. I always knew that I was
   supposed to budget and track my spending, when I became an adult. I
   just was too lazy to do it. And I didn’t have a good idea of how to
   actually do it. Now, I’ve learned how to plan, and how to stick to that
   plan. Sure, I deviate from my plan, but I’ve learned how to handle that
   too. Maybe that’s not a skill you can learn from book reading. You just
   gotta practice. Well, I hope to teach it to my children before they go
   out on their own.
4. Junk food will come back to bite you in the butt. Yeah,
   it wasn’t just the sedentary lifestyle that got me fat. It was all the
   damn junk food too. I would eat pizza and burgers and Twinkies and
   sugar cereal and desserts and donuts and … well, you get the picture.
   As someone used to being able to eat whatever I wanted, it never seemed
   like it would be a problem. Bad health was something to worry about
   when you got old. Well, my jeans began to get way too tight, and to my
   horror, I climbed several pants sizes and developed a gut that only now
   is going away. I wish someone had shown me an “after” picture when I
   was young and downing the Big Gulp sodas.
5. Smoking is just dumb. I didn’t start smoking until
   I was well into my adult years. I won’t go into why I started, but it
   didn’t seem like a problem, because I knew I could quit anytime I
   wanted. Or I thought I could, at least, until several years later I
   gave it a go and couldn’t do it. Five failed quits later and I realized
   with horror that my addiction was stronger than I was. Sure, I
   eventually beat the habit (quit date: Nov. 18, 2005) but it took a
   piece of my soul to do it.

20 Things I Wish I Had Known When Starting Out in Life | Zen Habits

It’s been a while.

I’ve actually been pretty busy the past two weeks with the new apartment, work, friends, family….

I’ll fill in all the details tomorrow.

I have to go pick up a cat right now.

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