30 Days of Happiness, Day 19: Re-Realizations Revisited

It's been one week since I stood in our concrete back yard hanging Charlie's diapers out to dry and re-realized, "Hey, I want something different than this."

My head is crammed full of ideas. I've had so much energy (well, as much as you can have when your baby sleeps like crap), and I've been getting a lot of things done. Roy and I keep talking and making something resembling a plan, and that is exciting. Just a short while ago we were kind of in the space where we figured we'd buy a house here and stay in it for five years, finish having kids, and then move away to a place that suits us better. And I guess that'd be the most convenient thing to do. But I have never wanted to raise kids here. And I've never been able to see myself here for the long haul.

So this past week, we started acting. We took an honest look at our finances and came up with a budget. We decided to take a cue from Dave Ramsey and put aside our emergency fund. Next up, we are going to tackle our debts, smallest to largest.

That's going to take awhile. And our debt is a disheartening situation. It's manageable, but I hate that we owe so much money.

This past week we also came up with a meal plan. We didn't follow it, but I think making it helped us. And after listing a huge amount of books in our Amazon book store, we sold 22 books just last week.

We're still cleaning and purging. I've got a stack of stuff that I'm giving away to different people who I think would appreciate it more than me. And we have a lot of stuff to donate as well.

Lastly, I've decided to make a daily to-do list. I haven't really been doing this since Charlie was born because every day is so unpredictable. But there are things that need to get done that I forget all the time, like taking my supplements and vitamins. I have about 1500 emails in my inbox that need to be sorted and filed or deleted. My computer desktop is full of photos that need to be edited and then filed. All this daily maintenance stuff just isn't getting done. So today I made a list and then printed out five copies to hang on the front door - and these will be the things that need to be taken care of each day. I'm also going to make a weekly to-do list of extra tasks that I can do as I have time.

So as another week comes to a close, I'm feeling really good. I feel like we're moving in the right direction. I'm excited to see what the future holds. I know there's no way I can ever predict what will happen, and so at a certain point, it's kind of silly to make plans. And that's okay. I'm sure whatever happens will be something we can handle.