My good buddy Jimmy is a preacher. You'd never know if you met him, that's of course, unless you start discussing God with him. And despite his occasional showings of extreme compassion, I never really saw the spiritual helper/therapist inside him come out until the last couple days. He started off by sending me an extremely nice email with some great advice and followed it up with some in person. I'm not talking about that unwelcomed "here's your attention pity advice." I'm talking straight from the heart, truly awesome advice. It's given me even more to think about and I think it's given me a nudge in the right direction. Something I'm extremely thankful for. If Jimmy ever gets a congregation of his own, I know they will be in very capable and caring hands.
I was also able to rant and rave with my friend Erin and Steph. Both offered tidbits of welcomed advice and both allowed me to continue to pull out all this stupid shit. Slowly I'm finding that the person I've become isn't exactly who I want to be. I want to be the immature gamer from a couple years ago. Not this guy who almost talks about games as if he's ashamed he plays them. But that's for another time.
But what I'm hear to talk about is the steps I took after writing my last blog. See... before I even finished it I had started a list on notebook paper. It was affectionately titled "Shit That Stresses Me." This list consists of anything that came to mind quickly that bothers me or causes me to stress in the slightest bit. Things as small as how much I hate my pizza pan (it's got baked on Pam and looks like it was dipped in copper cow shit) to larger things like debt. I quickly scribbled out this list and went to bed to let it all soak in.
The next morning, while working my early morning Sunday shift (number five on my "Shit That Stresses Me" list) I added a couple of additional notes and then began a new sheet with the title "How to Fix."
From here I started listing the easiest things I could fix and what it would take to do it. I was thorough to make sure I covered all my bases. Here is a short example of a few things I put down:
-Couch
-buy a new one $300-$500
-throw out old one
-truck/disassemble
-carry it out to garbage
-Working Sunday mornings
-STOP!
-Dress shirt arms that are too short
-organize & remove
-buy new shirts
See... stupid and simple things, but the steps I would have to take to fix them. And immediately I put things into action.
I came home and told Steph about my revelation and that we needed to go shopping. I came home around $150 lighter, but I had a bad ass video game rocker chair, a new pizza pan, cookie sheet, a copy of "Diary of the Dead" and more assorted crap. Maybe none of it was absolutely needed, but it was all a welcomed addition to my home. Most were small things I deprive myself of for whatever stupid reasons. Except for "Diary of the Dead" that was just one sale, and I'm a sucker for George Romero commentary tracks and zombies.
As the night went on and we came home, I started thinking about my little eeePC that crapped out on me. I miss having a netbook and would really like to buy another. It seems that Acer has a great netbook for under $300! After shopping for a while, I almost convinced myself to run back to Wal-Mart and grab one. Instead, I decided to look at new couches for the twentieth time in two weeks. After struggling to properly surf on my iPod, I got out of bed followed by Steph and headed to the trust Vaio (a netbook would have prevented this unnecessary exercise!). Thirty minutes later, I bought a couch.
Rooms To Go seemed to have the best deals, with reasonable shipping rates/times. As I went back and forth on the couches, Steph mentioned that she loved my buddy Jimmy's couch and we should find out where he got his. I was pretty sure it was at Rooms to Go and as she started to describe it I ran across a picture. A picture of the same freakin couch. It was within budget, and perfect for what we need. After some quick budgeting, a loan from the emergency fund, and the moving around of some money, we paid for our couch and set up a delivery for Wednesday, August 5th. Whoo hoo!
I managed to also tell my boss I was done with Sundays and life has gotten just that much better.
My moral of this blog is, I'm not just bitching, I'm actually working on getting this stuff done. Who knows, maybe after enough time I'll start writing scripts and dreaming big again!
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I must say that couch looks pretty comfortable. I think you conquered half the battle right there: most people complain and complain but never fix their problems. You said you haven't fixed all your problems but you have taken steps to eliminate some of them and you're happier b/c of that. I think that puts you ahead of the game :)
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