Why wait?
Posted: October 19, 2012 Filed under: advice, budgets, DEBT | Tags: advice, diet, finances, procrastination 16 Comments“I’ll start my diet on Monday”, “I’ll start paying debt down next year”, “I’ll start working out next month”, and “Ugh, I missed 2 days to my exercise program so I might as well wait until next week to restart.” All of these are excuses I’ve used to excuse myself from doing something NOW. That comment about starting to pay off debt? I made that in a February and wouldn’t allow myself to see the silliness of the comment. After all, I had missed the New Year’s “deadline” to create goals so I would just save it for the next year. Which, in case you were wondering, went by and this was not one of my goals. Instead, I waited another few years to start doing something.
Just this past week I found myself starting to do this cycle of waiting all over again to re-start something. It started out simple enough: I missed 3 days of work outs and when you add this to the 3 days I had missed the previous week, I really wanted to just say “I’ll wait for…”. But thankfully I recognized the cycle and on Sunday, I got my butt out of bed early and went for a run. Granted it was a slow jog and I didn’t feel nearly as great as I normally would have but I at least did something. And yes, on Monday, I was a little bit sore as I re-started Insanity week 3 (missed all but 2 days of this workout the previous week) but I feel better already!
With finances, I try very hard to stay in my routine. If not, I’m afraid I’ll go back to the old ways. So yes, I might check accounts every day or look at my budget, but I want to stay on top of things. And last year, I finally started repaying my debt but I started in September. It at least got me some momentum going and I was able to come up with a loose plan of attack. The “scariest” part was a few months into following my budget and I didn’t write it down to carry with me. I hadn’t memorized it yet so didn’t realize how much money was for what category-but we spent anyways. Thankfully we managed to switch some savings around and stay in budget but I did have a moment where I wanted to say I would start again next month.
The point to all of this is I had no real reason to wait. There is no time like the present to implement a change. Waiting to start it a few days probably won’t help you out-it might even hinder you farther.
Just one more time….
Posted: October 17, 2012 Filed under: finances, random | Tags: mistakes, success 17 Comments“Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall.”
-Oliver Goldsmith
I love this quote and have some real life experience in knowing that it’s true.
Way back when I was younger, I believe around 10, a family friend took my two brothers and I down to a local swimming hole. Of course, it being local, a lot of high schoolers were hanging around and doing front flips and back flips…well, a lot of cool flips and twists and dives. My brothers, both being more coordinated than I am, were able to copy these moves and were diving in no time. I, on the other hand, stunk. But I really wanted to do one cool thing-a shallow front dive. Our family friend showed me how to do it numerous times.
We were there for 5 hours. I know this because for four and a half hours, I did belly flop after belly flop. My stomach was bright red from the sheer amount of belly flops. I was sore and my muscles were aching. Yet, after every single belly flop, I’d pull myself back up onto the rock and go over in my head one more time what I needed to do. I’d ask the family friend what I needed to correct and watch one of the high school kids do another fancy back twist or whatever. And I’d try it again.
My brothers kept asking me if I just wanted to quit and go home-they were tired after being in the water for so long but I told them I just really wanted to try “one more time” and I think the family friend recognized my stubbornness-I wasn’t leaving until I did one. Part of it was stubbornness and part of it was the fact that my younger brothers could do it but I couldn’t. And then, the stars and moons aligned or my body was just sick of getting hurt or I positioned myself just right or something because after all my times of belly flops, I did a perfect shallow dive. I came up to everyone cheering for me—apparently I’d been watched after so many times of trying this out. I was so excited and proud (and sore, don’t forget that!) and knew that I was awesome.
How does this apply to other areas of my life? I’ve “failed” budgeting many times but I seem to be on a roll right now and am glad that I tried it “one more time”. I’ve failed at my finances but have picked myself back up (for the last time I hope!) and seem to be doing fine.
I try to keep in mind that it doesn’t matter that I failed before-yes it sucks but I’m going to fix it. The stars and moon will align and I’ll have that moment.
Blogging schedule?
Posted: October 12, 2012 Filed under: blogging, Link Love | Tags: blogging, good reads, link love 11 CommentsRemember that blogging schedule I wanted to create? Well I semi created one and then promptly forgot about it. Or maybe forgot is too hard of a word and should use the phrase “wasn’t able to stick to it”. So I need to refine it. Part of the problem is the end of the year projects that are piling up at work-no way to avoid this as they are last minute issues and not caused by delays or other such things. So while I thought I had a great blogging schedule worked out, it might be a little hard to stick to it for a few weeks. But even if I’m not commenting, please realize, I’m reading your articles and have thoughts to comment but…I just never get around to that actual writing out my comment.
I’ve got some thoughts though and hopefully things will be back to normal! I’ve even got one or two posts in the works—which is a big improvement for me as I was normally typing up something a few hours before I went to sleep. So a nice little step forward there right?
Weekend reading because I haven’t done one of these in a LONG time:
Average Joe writes about what keeps him inspired.
Over at Enemy of Debt, Travis is interviewed about getting out of debt marathon style. I loved this post and I wanted to say congrats again to Travis for running a marathon!
Over at Debts and Taxes, a camper loan was paid off! Congrats again-another step to being debt free!
T at Budget and the Beach wants to know what your success looks like. Go share with her!
Daisy gives some advice on how to save some money when shopping for Christmas.
Jana wants people to write what you know. I agree-most of the blogs I read are filled with stories of personal instances. (And as she says, some people who either research extremely well or are trained for it have that exception clause!)
Have a great weekend!
bogofdebt 