What do I want to write about???

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Over the weekend I’ve spent some time rethinking productivity and trying to reassess the different things that I want to be writing because truth be told, I’m really not writing as much as I would like to be right now.

And while it’s too soon to say for certain, the hunch that I’m riding on at the moment is that realistically I could be getting a lot more done by curbing the procrastination and a good chunk of the time that I waste griping about things on social media because if you were to really take me to task over how I’d like to be able to look back at my time, which do you honestly think that I’d rather be able to boast – a portfolio of great writing over all of these subjects that I’m passionate about, or having posted some really great zingers arguing with my Republican friends (and even complete strangers) on social media?!

I really want to try to refocus on creating and leave the petty bitching for those other people online who don’t create.

So going back over my repertoire, I’ve already tried to post a thing or two this weekend on Just Laugh, and eventually my rarely weekly humor column should stumble back into that fold, too.

I’ve also got this really swell Thing-a-Day project that I haven’t blogged about here or linked to just yet, but I’ve really been enjoying that because it sort of forces me to write at least something every single day!

So the question from here is … what else???

Though I’ve had fun with the editorials that I’ve been occasionally writing, I really want to keep them a limited engagement for topics that I find myself motivated to write more serious and in depth about, as opposed to it becoming a regular feature where I have to actively hunt for stuff to comment on every single week.

The one that I keep circling back to is Disney World, although at this point I admittedly have conflicting thoughts about it…

  • Pros:
    • I love Walt Disney World.
    • I always find myself overwhelmed with things I could write about whenever I’m there.
  • Cons:
    • It’s a great place to unwind for me and I’d hate to interfere with that by adding deadlines, scheduling, etc…
    • I’ve tried a few different ideas in the past and none have really caught on … humor, reviews, general commentary.
    • There’s always the possibility of hurting my other projects by further segmenting my time instead of really focusing on one or two things.

But then again, it could just be that I haven’t found my beat with regards to writing about Disney World yet and I really do feel like there’s a project in there somewhere that could be a whole lot of fun, so maybe I just need to put a little more time into it and really think about some of the things I’d like to read about that I can address in a unique way, and also don’t require twice-weekly, rigorous trips to the World and/or reposting the same park updates and press releases that a lot of other WDW bloggers already do today!

Who knows – maybe it even involves dumping MyTimeWithTheMouse.com and trying an entirely different approach using a nice, simple (and already done!) WordPress theme that I don’t have to spend a year custom coding to get exactly the way I want, only to later become horrendously outdated until I just want to scrap the whole thing and try something else a few years later!

This is clearly going to require some thought, so in the meantime – here are a few fun pics from recent trips this year that will hopefully serve to motivate me, and I guess you can feel free to enjoy ’em if you’d like, too… 😉

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Dream Journal : Dude, Where’s My Jacket?!

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I had ran into someone at the grocery store, and we chatted for a while as he made his way back over to his wife which was coincidentally the same direction that I was going. In route, I was distracted by a table where I had left my nice, leather jacket that was now conspicuously empty, and this made me genuinely upset!

I first got into a shouting match with the nearby checkout clerk who said that somebody had taken it, and when pressed as to why she had let them, she asked why *I* had left it there in the first place … which was also odd because additionally I had with me a laptop that I had deemed valuable enough to keep in my cart, but not this strange, leather jacket…

Eventually I got tired of yelling and she pointed to a group of guys in the parking lot playing football, saying that they had taken it and I should take up my issue with them.

This I tried, but oddly enough I could never quite catch up with them as they were running around in between cars. Plus, it was winter and there was snow on the ground, so it was really, really cold.

My continuing search for this special jacket then took me to a local video game store that was apparently one of the coolest stores ever – retro stuff galore, to the point where I actually pulled out my cell phone and was tweeting pictures of their stock as a temporary reprieve from my jacket-oriented quest.

At one point I even ran into James Rolfe who was stocking shelves there … I asked him where I could find their NES games and then we both went our separate ways…

Ultimately a manager of the store came by and inquired about my missing jacket, and I explained that because it was somehow a gaming-related jacket (it had a Playstation logo, I guess?), I wanted to see if the alleged thieves had tried to hock the thing already and maybe by some miracle she would have it in the back.

She ended up having a similar jacket, but not my jacket.

…

I’m sharing this story not because it was particularly interesting to me after I woke up, but more so because this was a dream that throughout it was somewhat disturbing to me, leaving me to wonder if there’s any real correlation between the quality of one’s dreams and the quality of their sleep.

I don’t know the answer to this – I did find one article that said to encourage happier dreams, one should “remove stress from their lives” … easier said than done! Not to mention that this was such a random dream to begin with – it wasn’t like reliving a bad experience through a dream and feeling those same emotions all over again.

If only there was some definitive book that could tell us The Meaning of Dreams… 😉

A special place in Gmail for advertising (that I actually want)…

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I like pizza, but I don’t need coupons for it every single day.

I noted the other day how it kind of bugs me to get promotional emails from likes of Pizza Hut and Domino’s several times a week when in reality I don’t order out quite that often, and even if I do it’s certainly not from all of the places at once!

Sure, I could go to RetailMeNot and look for deals there, which works for some eateries, but you’ve also got rewards programs – particularly Red Robin comes to mind – who actually require you to be on their mailing list in order to participate and get free stuff from their rewards programs.

So after mulling it over for a couple of days, I finally sat down and setup a couple of filters in Gmail to do exactly what I wanted to do – route my preselected ad emails to a separate folder (or label in Gmail), and then when anything gets older than 45 days, automatically delete it. The idea is that now my promo codes will be there when I want them, but I don’t have to waste any time sorting through them when I don’t.

Here’s what they look like:

Filter #1 routes any emails from the specified addresses to my new Ads label so I’ll never see them in my regular inbox…

(note: use curly brackets {} around multiple addresses to specify OR instead of AND)

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Filter #2 then does the dirty work and cleans up afterwards, monitoring for any old emails and deleting them once they’re 45 days old because more than likely any promo codes within will have expired by then anyways…

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PROBLEM SOLVED – that’s one less thing cluttering my inbox without actually unsubscribing from any lists!  8)

How Much Do You Pay Yourself?

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So you might have guessed that I’ve been in kind of a personal finance mood the last couple of days. Yesterday I posted about investing and the value of time, which led to another random question that I started musing in the shower this morning … how much am I paying myself each month?

Overall I like to think that our budget looks pretty ok. True that it still has way more debt than I would like, but we also make a conscious effort to save and put money away for retirement, so what exactly does that picture look like???

Turns out it looks something like this…

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To be honest, it only took me about 10 minutes to gather all of the data for this exercise – it probably took longer for me to format the graphs just the way I wanted, though I suppose your mileage may vary if you happen to have a lot of credit cards to sort out or something. For what it’s worth, I keep a spreadsheet handy with how much of each of our debts goes to principal vs. interest to help us decide which to pay down next…

It should also be noted that my figures above also include employer retirement contributions like matching and whatnot, so it’s not solely income – more like income plus benefits – if you’re looking for something like Debt-to-Income ratio or a housing ratio, though for what it’s worth our numbers seem to be well below the recommended limits for both (debt – 19% vs 36% limit; housing – 16% vs 28% limit).

Although I thought that this was a good start, distilling it down even further really got me to the meat of what I wanted to see…

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This chart takes the previous and groups everything into one of three categories – day to day expenses, debts, and savings – and so it’s easy enough to see here that right now about 21% of my household money is currently being saved aside for another day. Granted that 21% makes up multiple goals – emergency savings, Christopher’s college fund, and retirement – but I think it’s interesting and arguably a little more motivating to look at the monthly progress every now and then instead of simply net worth – debts vs assets which can be a little daunting!

Now to make that green slice a whole lot bigger as the light blue slice fades away… 🙂

Dream Journal : I Bought a House…?

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Similar to many other dream house dreams, this particular house was equally huge – my latest count was upwards of six floors that seemed to keep growing and growing with each subsequent exploration up and down the maze of staircases that began off the main foyer. Throughout the course of my dream, I discovered the following:

  • an incredible main living room with a 15+ foot Christmas tree and a giant wall that would be perfect for a flatscreen TV
  • multiple master bedrooms, to the point where it became difficult to determine which one was actually supposed to be ours
  • an awesomely secluded forest-view that was highlighted by the fun fact that it also overlooked a waterfall!
  • an indoor garage/workshop space in the basement – not for cars, but tons of tools, etc…
  • a great space on the other side of the basement to setup as a playroom, complete with a ball pit!
  • a home office, which admittedly was one of the least glamorous rooms because it was stuck in a corner of the basement like a dungeon
  • a neat grouping of kid bedrooms that all fed off a smaller living space perfect for video games, teenage lounging, etc…
  • a freaking sauna!
  • an exercise room … which was kind of weird in that the sauna had signs saying both rooms couldn’t be used at the same time (???)
  • so many stairs that I lost count of how many gates we were going to have to buy to contain Christopher!

The only downside was that towards the end of the dream, it bounced from having purchased / going to purchase / going to rent, with the renting scenario getting even uglier when it was rumored that this particular house was owned by our horrible landlord that ultimately led us to leaving to buy our first home. Mind you, he never actually made an appearance in the dream – thank god – but the rumor didn’t bode well nonetheless!

The dream started with having bought and deciding where to put things and ended with stepping to the side as another couple appeared to tour the same house in some bizarre, reality show fashion. And she was laying it on real thick for the cameras, too, which was weird because she had these super strange nipple piercings that were clearly visible to the world and I couldn’t imagine how they could show that on television… 😕

Unfortunately I woke up before learning whether or not we actually got the place, which is too bad because strangely I think that sauna was the most appealing room to me of all.

Life is Busy

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I don’t know how it happened, but apparently it’s already almost the end of February in this new year 2016 of ours.

I think I would argue that so far this year life has been busier than most, though admittedly it could just be that we’ve got way too much stacked up to do at the same time. Of course, birthday planning for Christopher’s #2 has been taking place since roughly December 26th, and getting ready to stuff another IVF bun in the oven has made hormones fun for my better half. High expectations at work have certainly made juggling “free time” a bit more complicated than usual, not to mention trying to get random stuffs in line financially for that post-baby time that could be upon us as earlier as about 10 months from now, or so I’m told! 😯

New Years resolutions, humor writing, the general wearing of pants … it’s true that the list of things I’ve omitted so far this year isn’t small by any stretch of the imagination, though for what it’s worth I do have these goofy photos of my son in an attempt to make up for this particular downfall…

I guess the important takeaway that I have here today is that although 2016 has been very busy and it most certainly hasn’t gone quite as I had planned for these initial 53 days, it’s still been productive in many other ways. We filed our taxes exceptionally early this year, that aforementioned work work is definitely building towards something, and despite our schedules being absolutely bonkers, we’ve still managed to spend a fair amount of time doing family things like taking Christopher to the local children’s museum or reinvigorating our fear of heights some 400 feet above the Earth, a la The Orlando Eye.

At this rate it wouldn’t really surprise me if brace for change is kind of the unofficial theme of the year, which as much as I’ve always been one to hate change so, so much, I suppose it doesn’t really have to be so bad as long as you make an effort to keep things in perspective. It can definitely be frustrating because I’m used to meticulous plans and organization as long as they don’t involve time, but one thing I think I’m getting a little better at accepting as I get older is that there will be some days when you’re uber productive and get to spend every last ounce of the day writing and developing and creating and there will be others where sometimes you’re lucky just to get in a shower, a load of laundry, and that one thing that ends up taking 10x longer than expected because … reasons. 😛

Anywho – I’m not really sure how much I’ll be blogging this year. It could just be a little, and for all I know I could post another five things yet this week! Right now life is this sort of crazy, whirlwind-tornado sandwich, but truth be told it’s also still pretty awesome so right now I’m just trying to hold onto that as we inch our way through 2016 here one silly face at a time…

I … sort of … want to go hiking…?

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I don’t know what it is about this time of year because in fact I had the same sort of notion last year and then promptly didn’t act on it in the slightest for the rest of the year, but I think I kind of want to give hiking a try … maybe?

Of course, I say this when it’s barely 60 degrees outside and I hardly even got out of bed because my toes were much more comfy nestled in bed where they belong! 😉

Still, I’ve been following more and more nature photography folks online and a few random hiking blogs, too, and in theory it seems like it could be a lot of fun. At one point I had even tracked down a couple of local trails that probably wouldn’t be considered “trails” by anyone who takes hiking seriously because they’re totally paved and whatnot, yet they would be a good starter for someone like me who traditionally only takes on suburban hikes and also has to account for both a stroller and a dog … sometimes both at the same time.

I think some of the reluctance might come from being leery about diving back into that whole outdoor world again because I’m not so much crazy about the camping aspect anymore, not to mention I can certainly vouch that the weather can often times be a fickle beast when one decides to venture bravely away from his hard-earned air conditioning and solid roof overhead and whatnot…

So maybe that means I give a couple of short, day hikes a try – something I can throw a sandwich and some water in a bag for and be back in time to not get eaten by wolves the same night! I know that I’m certainly in no shape to go adventuring for days on end, carrying all of my stuff on my back right now anyways, plus admittedly that kind of sounds miserable so if there’s another option to see nature for a few hours and then escape back to modern times, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.

I really think that I need to just pick a date and give it a shot, so let’s do this – next Saturday the wife works, so I’m going to throw the kid in his stroller, the dog in her cage, and go for an afternoon hike.

…as long as the weather holds out… 😛

movie thoughts … The Martian

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martianBest movie I’ve watched so far this year – hands down!

Ok, in all seriousness, it’s probably the best movie from last year that I’ve watched, too.

In fact, I’ve had this thing sitting here for a couple of weeks but we never felt like we were really in the mood for it I think because we thought it was more of a serious movie like Interstellar (which sucked), but as it turns out, The Martian was very much the opposite of Interstellar because it was fun, it featured science that actually sounded like it made sense, and Matt Damon didn’t end up being kind of a dick hole at the end, either! 😛

I mean, it’s no secret that Matt Damon is who really sold this movie because he’s the one who was on screen 80% of the time and his delivery was spot-on – they really did a good job of making a character with the desperation to live who never gave up. It’s why his monologue to close the movie out sent shivers down your spine – because you literally just watched this guy live every word he was preaching to the next class of astronauts going to Mars…

“At some point, everything’s gonna go south on you and you’re going to say, this is it. This is how I end. Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work. That’s all it is. You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem and you solve the next one, and then the next. And If you solve enough problems, you get to come home.”

I especially loved the humor that he interjected into what otherwise could’ve been a pretty depressing tale of being stranded 140 million miles from home. “The greatest botanist on this planet” … “space pirate” … “I’d get to fly around like Iron Man” – he just had some fantastic dialog that helped really turn an otherwise dreary situation into something much more anxiously motivated because just as I was curious to see what he’d do next, I was equally terrified each time something would go wrong because really, how many things can go wrong while you’re stranded on another planet?!

Turns out a lot of things can go wrong, but in the face of disaster you just need to keep going.

It was a sweet movie and I can see myself watching bits and pieces of this one a bunch in the future. $200 billion to rescue Matt Damon from Mars? I think we got ourselves bargain this time!

Dream Journal : Escape From Toyland…

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It started off as a random vacation to an exotic place … Africa, I think.

We had spent the day out viewing wildlife in the desert or something, and were on our way back to the resort where we were staying. The resort itself was isolated from the rest of the country with armed guards and a large, intimidating entry point, which for the time being we all thought was a good thing.

Back inside, I had wanted to try and upload a few pictures of the lions and other scenery that I’d just seen, but instead we found ourselves wandering around this area where everything was made out of Legos – from the trees to the benches, everything – yet something didn’t feel quite right.

It was when I took a closer look and noticed that they weren’t actually Legos, but some weird knock-off that I decided to do a little digging…

Wandering away from the group, I entered one of the buildings and quickly deduced that I wasn’t supposed to be there because it was filled with very nondescript hallways and secret passages. As I made my way deeper into the complex, I overheard some of our guides talking about our group and mentioning that “it was about time to turn us” … and a couple of rooms later I discovered what that actually meant when I walked in on another group of visitors being turned into toys.

Some were life-sized versions of themselves, but in toy-form, while others started at that point and then were quickly broken down into bricks to be used for building the mock Legoland that we’d previously been exploring.

At that point I ran and eventually found my way back to the others to try and warn them, but at the same time we were being led into another area where the transformation was to take place. I was able to break away with a couple of my closer friends, though we were heavily pursued as I ran through the secret hallways that connected the toy areas until one guy finally discovered this strange, artificial land that looked like it might be able to transport us out of there and back home.

This new area was kind of like an interactive encyclopedia, and pulling up a random area we disappeared from the complex and went deeper into the program, though later he explained that we’d never really left and were just hidden from discovery the whole time we were gone. Eventually the program itself slipped apart – we thought we had been discovered, but instead we were back at the very entrance to the resort and at that point we’d thought we could make a clean getaway…

The way we’d originally gotten into this trip was by winning a prize, however this was where we learned that winning wasn’t exactly the right word to describe it. Up on a giant, digital board were dozens of names – ours included, but also some very famous ones – and we watched as it began to spin to calculate who would be the next to win trips to the resort.

At first we thought we were in the clear because all of these other names had filled the list instead of ours, yet what we didn’t realize was that the wealthy people were able to buy special favors to swap their own names out with other people’s and so one by one we then watched them subsequently disappear back off of the list as they got replaced once again with our own.

Realizing that the system knew we’d escaped and that someone would soon be coming for us, the two of us that were on the list tried to run again and quickly got split up. I was about to run back into Toyland to evade my pursuers when he suddenly reappeared, though something didn’t seem right. It was then that he slipped and crashed to the floor in a pile of bricks – whether they’d sent a toy clone of him after me or they’d actually gotten to him already and changed him, I wasn’t sure.

The dream ended with me changing myself into a box of cereal to escape, with pieces flying everywhere that I knew they’d never be able to collect all of to reassemble me…