While I’ve never believed in New Year’s Resolutions, I do see why January is a great month to get back on top of shit. The exhausting amount of chaos, distraction and expenses of the holidays are finally over, so much so that it creates a hunger in many of us for productivity, action and self-focus in multiple ways.
Earlier in the day on that third day of 2019, I enjoyed a $10 burger and a beer deal that I have for years at oube of our crusty and beloved local dive bars, The Tilted Stick, while my laundry, filthy from an underground NYE burner festival I went to in the Los Angeles mountains (SO COLD!), washed at the equally old and beat up Voltaire Coin Laundry next door.
Earlier in the morning, instead of jumping right in the car to hustle driving for Lyft and delivering for Amazon or Office Express (no shifts came up to grab anyway), I forced myself to sleep in and then curl up in a blanket while doing “real” work. Being that self-care in the relaxation sector was a weakness of mine, I was already in for a good start. From there, it was both good and bad. Coming down with a cold = no yoga or hiking. Bummer.
On the upswing was refreshing research on getting out the book I wrote years ago, which gave confirmation that I was still on the right track. The results of that not so much on the upswing, however, was that I was once again reassured that the $10k to pay an editor and cover designer, what has kept it dormant for years, was still a requirement if I want to keep creative control by staying an indie writer. The only realistic way I had found to make those funds was through a plan to teach ESL abroad. Relevance due to my book being set in the backdrop of the subprime mortgage industry, the lengthy time of getting the book out was a concern either way but at least the story would stay mine.
Teaching ESL required a TELF or TSOL certification and I’d been sadly rethinking the plan of heading to Barcelona to get one due to costing an also painfully high amount of around $4k. Talk about taking money to make money. Looking at the details of that plan again as well, it still seemed close to if not the most cost-effective of my options, so whoo hoo to still going to Span.
Then there’s this, my blog. Oh my blog. I’ve been better at consistent content but need help cleaning up the web design as well as SEO, marketing and monetization. So there I was at Te Mana, the Hawaiian-themed coffee shop I most regularly hung at, while my clothes dried. As always seemed to happen when I’d been frequenting a cafe a lot to write, my social cirlce there had grown too much to get any work done. Luckily one of those people was Chuck Hardwick from Dancing Panda Marketing, a man who had run our local business networking group until teceltly and whose services I had been looking at just that morning for design, SEO and marketing. Setting up a consultation for the following week, my awesome day of advancement wrapped up.
Folding and dropping off my laundry at home, it was finally time to go Lyft. What a day of reflection and touching back into the big picture. 2019/2020 was looking to be a year of accomplishing finish lines of lifelong dreams. It was finally time. Just…wow.