Meet George Jetson

Total Black: $2,364.76
Total Red: $270,000.16

Talking with Officemate yesterday got me thinking about my plans after clerking.  Officemate will be finishing up soon and moving on to something new.  I feel confident that I’d have the opportunity to continue for a second year here.  Whether I want to and whether I should are two separate considerations.  But I got thinking about my career path.  I don’t know that I have one. 

Keeping It Down

Total Black: $143.32
Total Red: $226,236.75

Finally!  My debt is slipping back!  In fact, I’m so ecstatic over this news because it is the lowest my debt has come since starting this project!  Even if a portion of the reduction in total red belongs to an as yet uncapitalized amount, the total is still down.  At this point, I’ll take whatever I can get.  Now just to keep it down.  And speaking of keeping it down, I arrived home to a curious piece of mail with another set of my financial data kept down in records.

Purpose

Total Black: $83.81
Total Red: $228,811.79

My day started at 7am when I was woken by my mother calling.  I haven’t been able to speak with her much lately because of the hours I’ve been pulling.  I’m also not much of a telephone person these days.  Once you and a friend or family member fall out of touch for a bit, it always seems like it’s going to require a long telephone conversation to catch back up.  So more time passes.  I mentioned this back in Never Been Further Apart.  Perhaps I need to be the one to start telephoning people.  I am good about texting though.  And to that end I created a monster in my mother.  I told her I’d send her a text message when I returned to New York.  She’s the type who invents every scenario of disaster until you’ve informed her you’ve safely arrived.  Well, in turn, my sister taught her how to text message back.  Now she’s enjoying it to the fullest and texting fairly often.  And teaching other older ladies too.  (If your moms all start texting you unexpectedly, it might be all my fault.)

Dreaming In Tongues

Total Black: $85.68
Total Red: $229,309.51

Total black is down even further from throwing money at another of my credit cards.  I sent over three hundred dollars through to the card in smaller payments.  As I noted in Change Is Gonna Come, who says you have to make your minimum payment to a credit card in one lump sum, especially when, as with Bank of America, you can just transfer money from your checking account directly to your credit card accounts.  That’s one way I intend to get my Bank of America accounts down—slowly and steadily chipping away at them.

Back to Basics

Total Black: $88.80
Total Red: $230,621.20

The focus of this blog has strayed a bit afield of late.  I started on this path with two goals: to eliminate my debt in a year and to blog about debt, my efforts to get out of debt, and all things debt-related in general.  Perhaps I’ve let the blog devolve into a bit of an online journal.  That isn’t the focus.  While chronicling my efforts to get out of of debt are a component, I started the blog as a means to an end, not as an end in itself.  I need to keep that at the forefront because I think I’ve found myself slipping into the blogdom a bit too much lately.

Secret Santas

Total Black: $6.70
Total Red: $230,660.74

It’s nearly Christmas.  The time when gift-giving abounds and generosity’s cup runneth over.  At the temp job yesterday, I bought twenty dollars worth of $2 scratch-off tickets, ten a piece, for my two fellow contract attorneys.  They were pleasantly surprised.  One had never bought or received an instant lottery ticket.  He won ten dollars.  The other won seven.  Nothing extravagant, but a nice gesture.  Of course one possible downside to such unexpected giving is that people may feel obligated to give something to you in turn.  Today one attorney bought me a coffee at Starbucks while the other bought Starbucks gift cards for me and the other attorney.  I was happy to receive their gifts, but I just they purchased them out of a desire to give and not a feeling of obligation.  That’s why I understand the urge to give quietly and anonymously.

The Powerful Process of Gratitude

Total Black: $63.41
Total Red: $230,611.32

Between interviews with temporary attorney staffing agencies today, I took time in the afternoon to read a bit more of the The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.  I’ve been reading a bit each night before bed in an effort to finish the book.  This afternoon I got as far as the first few pages of the chapter titled “Powerful Processes” before I got too antsy and had to leave.  Perhaps because I was reading the book on my iPhone in a Barnes & Noble cafe on Fifth Avenue.  The first process the book discusses is the power of gratitude.  This morning I had a brush with gratitude as I awoke.  Unemployment benefits did not come through today as they should have.  Luckily, I received a donation of fifty dollars.  My second donation and it came from the same person as before.  I owe him much, particularly today, because without that donation, I wouldn’t have been able to pick up my suits from the dry cleaner.  I would have had to wear something nice, but clearly not appropriate for an interview.  Explanations and apologies may have helped, but they wouldn’t have erased first impressions left by me arriving in cargo pants.  So, I thought I’d take the opportunity to note my gratitude to my benefactor, if you will, as well as in general.