The End of the Year Emo Post

In a few days another year will come to a close and new one will begin, bringing with it a new set of opportunities and challenges. As I look back over the past 33 years of my life, I see a lot of disappointment and failure. Yeah, I’ve had some success here and there but for the most part if someone were to give me a letter grade for my progress in life so far, I would get an E for Epic Failure.

*sigh*

The way I see it I have two options. I could get all Emo about this sad state of affairs, dye my hair purple and develop a nasty cutting habit OR I could actually stop whining about how bad things are and create a better life for myself. Although that whole purple hair thing sounds kind of cool, I’ve decided to go with option #2.

As such, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to accomplish in the New Year. My number one priority is that by the end of 2009 I want to be working from home. I’ve been working for other people since I was sixteen. I’m done with that insanity. Although I’ve worked for a few good companies during that time, I’ve found that the reward you get from having a job is always less than the effort you put in. And, as the current economic situation is proving, a job really does not provide any security or stability.

My second priority is to get a handle on my finances. I want to get out of debt and eventually buy a house. My problem is that I am a spender. I love to spend money. My whole philosophy about money is: ‘Why work this hard to get it if you’re not going to use it to get the things you want?’ However, often times I find myself buying things I really don’t want or even need. I just think I do. I suspect that I have some emotional baggage tied up with this bad habit so therapy sessions may be on the menu in 2009.

These two goals are really just vehicles for two success habits I want to develop in 2009 which are Focus and Self-Discipline. I realize that most of my problems come from my propensity to jump from idea to idea and, even worse, trying to multitask and work on way more ideas than I have time for. I also have this bad habit of allowing how I feel at that moment dictate what I do and that needs to stop.

Because you can’t really track the development of character traits in any tangible way, I had to put the goals in concrete terms that I could measure with charts and graphs that will show me just where I sit between Absolute Success and Epic Failure. So my specific goals for 2009 are:

1-Develop a home based business that consistently generates $577.00 per week (about $30,000 per year). When I hit this magic number then I KNOW I can quit my day job.

2- Pay off all of my debt. The only things I should have are my monthly expenses such as rent, food and utilities.

I’ve been working on goal #1 for the last year but because I lacked focus I haven’t gotten very far. But today I was able to sit down and create a plan for 2009 that I believe will help me achieve the goal. I’ll go into greater detail about it in another post. I can already tell the goal #2 is going to be the hardest of the two to achieve.

So that’s what I’ll be working on next year. What about you? What goals are you going to pursue in 2009?

Thank the editor. Buy me a coffee!

2 Responses to “The End of the Year Emo Post”

1. Kathy Chavez says:

   January 12, 2009 at 12:26 am

   Here I am again, Arwen. I read your hope-filled post for 2009 before this one, and I’m glad I did.

   We sound a lot alike, you and I. We want to do the same thing in 2009, only I want to make like triple per week that you are hoping for, and I am fiscally challenged, as you are, with a roving mind.

   The roving mind is not always a bad thing,that’s how I found your blog. The fiscal thing is. That’s how MyBigFatDoOver.com came about. But, it suffered the fate of the ‘too many ideas’ affliction. I need to give it some attention.

   I don’t think it was by accident that whilst pondering this same dilemma today I came across a bunch of ‘help yerself’ type of sites. FluentSelf.com looks like one of the good ones. Check it out and I will too. And DissolveProcrastination.com, by the same person. (I was going to read that one first, but I think I’ll get back to it later… :p )

   No, lets not go Emo. Lets get this party started!
2. ArwenTaylor says:

   January 14, 2009 at 8:06 am

   Hi Kathy,

   Thank you for visiting me. Love the site MyBigFatDoOver.com. You did a really great job with the template. Yeah, I’m attempting to do a Do Over too but it’s proving to be more challenging that I thought. I have all these bad habits that I’m trying to work around.

   I’ve become disillusioned by self help people although I’ve visited Havi’s site and bookmarked it for later reading. I used to follow the blog of a different self help writer but they had a sudden change in their personal values and I didn’t feel like I could trust their advice any more.

   I’m hoping that by blogging about it will help me meet other people going through the same challenges and maybe we can all inspire each other.

   Anyway, here’s to a new year. May it be the bestest evar!