Author: littlepet

I’m trying to find my way through this new year. So far, it hasn’t been entirely horrible, but I’ve definitely had moments where it could have been better.

The one question that keeps popping up is what some people have to be shady fucks. Seriously. I get that when people make a mistake it’s human nature to pass blame or avoid or hide or whatever, but when the sun is shining every which way on that mistake and there’s no where to hide, why not simply own it? Say sorry, make it right however you can, and move on.

That’s basically what I’m dealing with right now. Someone did wrong. It ended up costing me a lot of money and now I want it to be made right. Of course, the person who did wrong is trying everything to get out of paying.

But I’m doing my best not to dwell too much on that. There are better things brewing for me this year and I’d rather deal with that.

I’ve taken a step toward rebuilding my online empire. (Despite it being the most minor possible step, I’m counting it because at least it’s something.) I still harbour some ill will toward myself for letting my first internet empire crumble, but trying not to live in the past here.

Next I’m looking to work on my writing again. I’ve rekindled my passion for the story I started some years ago and maybe this year it will even see itself finished, edited, and published. That’s the goal anyway. I’ve even set up a tiny savings account solely for the making of this book: cover design, editing, marketing, and incidental publishing costs. It sends butterflies fluttering in my stomach each time I think about it.

Finally, I’m in a relatively comfortable financial position right now and that makes me feel somewhat good. Granted, it could be a better position, but it’s getting there. I just need to practice my good habits each day until they become second nature.

Now. Back to the grind.

It still hasn’t fully settled in on me that 2018 is over. I put in my planner that I should take some time today to consider my life choices, but when I sit down to do just that, I become sad. Why? I’m on the wrong side of 35 and haven’t accomplished near the amount of stuff I thought I’d have accomplished by now.

The reason? I’m not entirely sure. It’s not for lack of wanting. For the most part it’s not for lack of trying. It just seems my life has a habit of going sideways just when I think I’m heading down the right path. This year I’m hoping things will be different. In fact, I’m looking to make them different.

It began with the last few days of December 2018–officially the first week of 2019. I’m using at a way to trick my mind into believing I’m continuing to do something worthwhile rather than sitting down on the first and hurrying to catch up with my resolutions.

And early in December, I was chatting with a acquaintance–someone I hadn’t really had a true conversation with before then–and our discussion drifted onto the topic of self-sufficiency. She told me about finding the “why” for my choices. So, I’ve been reminding myself to consider my why each day. What I hope to achieve.

Based on that, I’ve come up with a baseline of good habits that I hope to develop over the course of this year and years to come: exercise (for health, and on a completely shallow level, a bangin’ body) and meditation (for sanity) first thing each morning. There are other habits on my list, but I figure if I can get those two in line, the rest will be cake.

Now it’s a matter of getting my habit tracker notebook in place and documenting my progress. So far, for the first week, I’ve been pretty good about it–haven’t missed a day of exercise yet, and only skimped (not skipped) on meditation once.

This year is filled with so much possibility. It truly is time for me to flip my life around and start going after what I truly desire because I’m positive that what’s going on now isn’t it.

Well. I’ve been silent for a while. I used to write stories, but then I didn’t. I started, I stopped, and I started again.

Now I’m learning how to write in this day and age. Let’s just say it’s quite different from when I started out in the early aughts.

It seems like a completely different ball game and I’ll admit I’m not excited about the prospect of learning how to do everything all over again, but I realize that it must be done if I want anything to significantly change in my life.

This means I’ll need to re-learn blogging, being social, and simply writing. One cool thing I did learn, though, is that I don’t need to worry about Dragon Naturally Speaking anymore. I can use Google Docs.

Although I’ve always been the type to type my words (hehe, pun intended), I’m going to try dictating as much of my current novel as I can because despite how fast I may be able to type, speaking is even faster. Granted, this means I’ll need to edit much better than I used to because I’ve noticed Google makes a lot of mistakes especially with character names.

Still, I’m excited and nervous, but ready, to embark on this new journey of writing.

Today I realized something: I’d forgotten to tell a friend “thank you” when she’d done something very nice for me. This seemingly little thing niggled at me because I also realized it wasn’t the first time. It seems that I’ve become quite lazy in my old age when it comes to proper manners and offering gratitude to those around me. Put another way, I’m beginning to take those closest to me for granted.

Why is this such a scary thing for me? Because I understand loss. I understand that deep hole that gets carved into you when you lose someone you love and worst still I understand the regret of not having appreciated every moment you had with that person. So, yep, I’m bothered by my current trend.

Now that I’ve made this assessment, I need to work on making sure I don’t slip back into this distasteful habit. (A part of me wonders why I slipped into this habit in the first place. Maybe if I could find the answer to that I’ll be less inclined to let it happen again.)

Remember that mini laptop I purchased back in April? Well. It sorta gave up the ghost. Sorta.

I noticed that a few months ago, typing became a tricky affair. Sometimes the keyboard would work as a keyboard should. Sometimes it would type a letter a zillion and one times when I hit the key once. Sometimes it wouldn’t even register a keystroke. But it was intermittent and I shrugged it off as a quirk.

That quirk then ballooned into something entirely different and disruptive. It soon became that I couldn’t use four of my letters or numbers without fear of being locked out by the endless repetition of them. And then…nothing. The keyboard itself just stopped working.

Sure, Windows recognized that there was a keyboard and all the drivers were up to date, and when I ran the Windows troubleshooter, it would simply tell me that the keyboard was an older version and I should try plugging it into a USB 2 slot instead of 3.

When I contacted the company’s chat support, the only suggestion they offered was the reset Windows. Tried that, didn’t work. I Googled a bit and discovered a trick that I thought* solved the problem (which, oddly enough, didn’t involve resetting Windows at all).

*I thought it solved the problem because my keyboard began humming along like the day I’d purchased it. No repeating letters, no nothing. Just keyboard type-y goodness. Until I began installing all the software deleted during the initial Windows reset, and then kaput. Nothing. Na-da. Zilch.

Finally, after all of this rigmarole, I broke down and emailed the address the chat support told me to in order to get it fixed under warranty. (Luckily it didn’t die two months later.) Now, while I’ve already packaged it up–several layers of bubble wrap since I’d already pitched the box–and sent it on its merry way, priority mail and fully insured, I don’t have much confidence in this company. Why?

Well, when I saw the form they sent for me to fill out and return with the netbook, the amount of typographical errors and the sheer childishness of it made me cringe. It’s like they didn’t even run a simple spell-check, not to mention it spoke only about tablets.

Crossing fingers and saying a prayer that I receive my mini laptop back in better condition that I sent it away, or at very least with a working keyboard.

Oh, and as an aside, I went ahead and purchased an actual laptop. It’s huge compared to my mini laptop, but it also has more power, a more well-known name, and I can upgrade it myself when the time comes. I’ll probably write a separate post about it. When I’m not falling asleep on the (backlit) keyboard.

Those who know me in real life would be hard-pressed to believe this, but I hate change. I find myself in a nice cozy comfort zone and never want to leave. It seems, however, that life has other plans. And so did one of my favourite websites.

After not checking in with said website for a couple of months, lo, they completely deleted their community forums. (From that little tidbit you can already guess which site I’m talking about.) That hurt in a special way because it was where I went with my bowl of popcorn to watch those with more drama in their lives than me verbally bitchslap each other until I felt that much better about my own personal situation. (Don’t judge me.)

Now they’ve replaced that community-oriented feature with a watered-down substitute that is not only difficult to find (apparently, it’s not available in their Underground app), it’s difficult to use and constantly crashes…and it reminds me of a poor man’s Facebook. (Chances are, I’ll do a proper review and overview of this new “feature” in a future post…and I emphasize those quotes emphatically because there is nothing feature-rrific about it.)

Maybe I’m just a little more prickly than usual because there are other changes happening in my life and as I’ve already said, I don’t like change.

Generally speaking, I don’t enjoy being taken for a ride. It’s never a good feeling. Especially when it’s done by a small business owner who should know better because chances are that same business owner has been taken for a ride or two in their lifetime.

Well, I was taken for a ride today. For the first time, I visited a large local farmer’s market. It was an amazing experience in and of itself, soured only when I decided to break my own rule and purchase from a vendor before making the full first round.

Let me back up and say I went in with a plan. The plan was to walk the entire market, take photos of the places I wished to revisit or farmers I wished to purchase from, and only take out the money on the second pass.

This particular vendor had some exotic produce I’d been looking for and overcome by joy and stupidity, I decided to take out the money. I picked out my fruit, placed it in her care, she weighed and rang it up and boom I was hit in the face with a huge price tag. That, however, wasn’t what rubbed me wrong.

When I paid with my credit card, instead of charging me the exact amount she quoted, I learned later when I checked my account that she’d rounded up the total, thus stealing $2 from me.

Now, that’s not a lot of money by any stretch, however, that’s still $2 I could have used at another vendor to purchase a couple avocados or several oranges or some other fruit. Not only that, she didn’t offer me any type of receipt, not even when I asked. She and her daughter were too busy fighting with each other to focus on decent customer service.

What rubbed even more salt in that wound is had I waited and gone two more sections down, I would have saved a couple dollars per pound on two of the produce items I purchased from her. All in all, I ended up spending $10 extra dollars with her and she provided no service that would justify the extra cost either.

Needless to say, I won’t be returning to that vendor again. Period. Plus, she won’t be getting a great review from me either, which is a shame because her produce was actually quite nice.

I just finished reading The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. Sure, I’m several years late, but better late than never.

First off, that book is awesome and makes so much sense. When I started the book a few months ago, I immediately started by konmari-ing my tops. It was freeing and actually worked. (A part of me thought it strange that I might hold an item and immediately know if it sparks joy.)

Then life got busy again and I was working 40+ hour weeks and I set the book aside. Now, I’m actually glad that I took a moment to pick it back up and finish it because it reinforced my need to get my physical shit together if I want to get my mental shit together.

Actually, I wish it were possible to konmari my mind. Let go of the crap that weighs it down, doesn’t create joy, and had outlived its usefulness. But that’s another task for another day.

Instead, this being the final day of my vacation, I need to really focus, put my back into it, and just konmari all day long as much as I possibly can. It just sucks because Friday is garbage day–not just garbage either, but bulk–and if I weren’t such a lazy bastard, I would have spent the entirety of Thursday doing the konmari dance so I could put all the bags out for pick-up.

But, too little, too late. Nothing I can do about it now…except that next time I will do better. (Hmm, that’s a sign I should put right above my bed so I can see it every day.)

Earlier in the year, I had plans for a major purchase. A purchase which required saving, planning, and credit-building. In reality, I hadn’t envisioned making the purchase until at least May of next year, but an Act of God forced my hand. Luckily, however, it all came together for the best.

I ended up getting a car I love, that’s fun to drive, and within my budget. Not only that, but it didn’t require an unseemly down-payment and I was able to leave the dealership with a few pennies in my coffer.

The only quibbles I have, overall, are with the fact that they charged a dealer fee (bullshit, IMO), the extended warranty I was snookered into is backed by an even shadier company (still, I’m keeping it because my car is notorious for problems in higher mileage life), and I was so starry-eyed that I didn’t ask more questions and negotiate a much better deal for myself. Mind you, the deal I received wasn’t a bad one, just not the best one.

So far, I’ve had my amazing little buddy for roughly a month and a half and I’m still over the moon. I do, however, need to give him a bath. (Yes, my car is a him, not a her.)

At least that’s one of my 6-month goals accomplished. I only have one and a half months to accomplish the rest of them, and between you and me, it’s not looking so good. But, hey, maybe they will come together like my car and surprise me.

I have a plan. I map it out and have every intention of seeing it through. Then before I know it, the day is done, and not a damn thing was accomplished. That seems to be the story of my life.

Somewhere in my mind, I know that I need a routine, especially when I first wake up in the morning, otherwise I’ll just roll over and go back to sleep because nothing cues my mind to say, “Hey, rise and shine it’s time to get shit done!”

There are some good days, though, when I’ll spring up from my bed and set in on the ceaseless to-do list. They never seem to last, however. Because on the flip side of that coin, I’ll spring up from my bed and end up flipping on Netflix. (And we all know that one episode of a TV series quickly becomes a binge.)

Of course, in the especially rare instance when I do begin the tasks I lay out for myself, finishing them is another beast altogether. It makes me wonder how all the people around me who seem to have all their shit so neatly packed together do it. Do they sacrifice one of the following: 1) sleep; 2) family; 3) life; or 4) soul?

Really, though, it’s time I stopped making excuses. I need to really consider what I most want and see that it happens–do whatever it takes to see that it happens. If that means waking up 30 minutes earlier or staying awake 30 minutes later, do it. No excuses. (Oh, but sleep is so yummy. Yeah, no more whining, too.)