This whole planner business...

...is going smoothly.  For the first couple of days, the genius ideas that usually mill around in my head, repeating themselves so that I won't forget them, all got written down in a big glob.  It's nice to be able to let them go, rather than seeing the same old parade go by.

I've also been making a list of things I'd like to get done in July.  No particular dates, but things that occur to me at mile 2 of an 8-mile jog, or in the shower, or walking to my building that I forget when I'm in a place to actually get them done.  Some of those things are:

- Replace the cord on the vacuum cleaner.  It is the slowly dying victim of a bad cat's chewy teeth.
- Bleach sheets and duvet cover.
- Buy kitty kennels for moving.
- Take Caspian's synth and our futon frame to Caspian's parents'.
- Write 1 letter per week (I hope I can continue this - my grandma would love it).

After a few months, I tend to amass all sorts of weird files on my desktop, and when it finally gets unbearable, I systematically go through them.  I feel like I finally got all of my mental miscellany organized into folders and deleted unneeded things, and now I have more space to think!

My next goal is to look in my account transactions to find the dates that bills hit, since almost all of them are set to automatic draft on random and unrelated days.  Caspian and I have a detailed budget, but after setting it up and knowing what amounts need to be where at what time, we don't pay much attention to it.  We had a whole bunch of odd bills this month (veterinary, property taxes on vehicles, completely paying off credit cards, boxes, semi-annual insurance payments, etc.) and things are mayhem in there.  Budget went completely down the tubes.

I also started tracking our moving-related expenditures to make it easy for his company to reimburse us.  A list of potential sewing/knitting projects was also started.  I'm going to be taking my knitting (and I am the newbiest of newbies) on my camping trip, along with some good, motivating journey books.

On Monday, I ordered a pastry/bread keeper that allows enough moisture to remain in the bread that it doesn't go stale, and also doesn't grow mold.  I also sent it to my old address, where it was stolen by the new occupant.  So I ordered another, and Amazon will refund me the value of the stolen one in four weeks.

Dropping Out of the Rat Race

I thought for sure I'd pinned on my number, tightened my laces and warmed up my little rat hamstrings in prep for my stint in this unhappy contest. I hadn't even imagined that there was another option, or that the other option happened to be a healthier, happier, more deliberate (and rebellious, a big plus) way of life.

Luckily, I had only made a few turns around the track before I realized it just wasn't for me - despite my natural aptitude for rat racing.

I've looked for an analogy in the animal kingdom to help describe this kind of slavery, but I can't find one. Do you ever see an unhappy hawk? Cricket? A depressed red panda in the deep Chinese forest?  Do gazelles on the Serengeti choose to do something other than graze, make little gazelles and gambol?  Nope. They're only unhappy when you put them in cages. I'm sure there are very few people whose natural habitats are cubicles.  Imagine how you'd live your life if, at any moment, a lion might take you down.

You and I exist to be happy and fulfilled. We are an altruistic species, and social, and appreciative. We were meant for an existence characterized NOT by self-denial and suffering, but by pleasure and joy. It's funny - most people associate self-denial with saving, living on less, unhappiness and sacrifice. These people don't see that they're selling 50 hours per week of their lives on average to The Man, a soulless entity with no higher purpose, for the hollow, temporary joy they get when they can afford to go to the Lexus dealership, or to sleep in on Saturday and veg out all afternoon, or buy extra-soft towels from Macy's.

Is your time up for sale to the highest bidder? Your life? Your soul?

Imagine a life of meaningful work in which weekends and weekdays have no particular meaning. Sounds too good to be true.  What?  A Monday that isn't characterized by dread, mope and foot-dragging?  Money is just the glue that holds it all together; if you make enough, you don't need any more, or things get sloppy. Imagine knowing exactly where your money is going, directing it rather than wondering where it went.

With this move, Caspian and I will take steps toward being more accountable to ourselves, living more simply and becoming post-consumers. Neither of us wants to take it to the utmost extreme (which in my opinion is needless sacrifice to prove a point, and kitschy in a sort of counter-culture way), but being debt-free and productive are definitely a couple of our goals.

Neither of us has any credit card debt, but I have about $24,000 in student loans to pay off - not a huge amount, and probably a good amount to help establish credit. We have two compact cars that we are likely selling (oh, I should get my bike back from my ex-boyfriend...). The one huge area that we could totally save in is our food expenses - that will be a trek into unexplored territory with a very gingerly companion (Caspian likes convenience foods).

In my planner, there's a little box for every day where you can write your daily expenses. I plan to make full use of that and track exactly what I'm spending on what, day by day, down to the gumball.

Goodwill Bargain Hunting

Redhead and I are going camping this weekend for four days of tree-laden, waterfall punctuated, cricket be-songed days of reading, hiking and chatting.  I haven't been camping in about 10 years and all of my clothes are dressy, so, after donating about half of Caspian's clothes and some other things we don't care to bring to Montréal, I went camping-clothes shopping at Goodwill.

I was looking specifically for cropped pants and bermuda shorts and thin cotton button-down shirts.  Caspian went and read on one of the couches, which left me to poke around uninhibited.  My purchases:

$3.68 - Banana Republic dark green khaki cargo pants, 1 (tags on)
$3.68 - GAP khaki wide-legged trousers, 0 (tags on)
$3.68 - Linen knee-length skirt in red/black/cream jacquard print, S
$3.68 - Black and white polka dotted miniskirt, S
$2.38 - American Eagle red, black and white checked cotton shirt, M
$2.38 - American Eagle turquoise and brown checked cotton shirt, S
$2.38 - Light blue tailored oxford cloth shirt, XS
$2.38 - Heather gray fitted t-shirt, S

Gah!  Why haven't I done this before?  Why was I comfortable with trekking to Banana Republic at the mall to spend $68 on a pair of khakis that I could have spent $3.68 on in a thrift shop?  I spent so little on them that I didn't hesitate to bring them home, crop them, and hem them in bright turquoise thread.  Now they're capris perfect for traipsing in the woods.

This was really the first time I've ever gone to a thrift shop with the intent to clothe myself.  I've gone in the past to find Halloween costumes and to look at old furniture to refinish...  Or to oogle at the clientele.

I used to think of thrift store shopping as extreme and not suitable for the general population and/or the realm of hippie-ish youngsters and off-color cultural niches.  What a snooty brat I was.  I'm glad that other snooty brats donated their sweet GAP khakis so that I could rebuy them for under 4 bucks.  It amuses me that my co-workers find me so cutely-attired...  In an outfit that cost under $8.

Anybody else have any thrift store tales?  Do you shop there to save money?  Think they're creepy?

Spontaneously Planning

Last Thursday, I spent much of my workday in a seminar about time management.  I've always been what I call an intuitive time manager.  Meaning that, if I remember, it gets managed!  If I don't like doing it, or if there's not a deadline associated with it, I will probably do something else until the last minute.

Still, I didn't have a problem as an undergrad.  I graduated at the top of my class in grad school, which required loads of time management, or none at all if you're me, because of one simple rule I followed:  "If you're awake, study."  Deadlines are great, as long as they're reasonable.  Deadlines stress some people out, but they are excellent management tools in my case.

Anyway, our seminar teacher is a very successful guy with a very boring, successful, corporate life and its accoutrements.  He.  Plans.  Every.  Second.  Of.  His.  Life.  He schedules meetings (business talk) and dates (anything but business talk) with his wife and daughters.  He scripted his dates.  In his relationships, he consciously asks himself how he can improve the relationship, and writes down in his little planner the date upon which the relationship-improving task is "due."

I spent the whole course tsking and thanking my lucky stars that I wasn't him or married to him.  But then, I got to thinking...  Would a planner do me good?  I will hopefully never take it to the level that Mr. Micromanage does, but what would I gain?  Probably a lot!  I thought of all of the random genius thoughts I lose to the ether, simply because I don't write them down.  I remembered all of those times I forgot things I really needed at the grocery store while I remembered most of the things I didn't direly need.  How many times has Facebook informed me that my close friend's birthday is, oh, today?!

The one excellent suggestion that this man had for us was (and I can't use the acronym because it's copyrighted!) to immediately write it down.  Whatever it is, write it down.  If applicable, assign a date to it.

Hmm!  Despite all of my recent efforts to buckle down, I bought myself a rather nice planner.  Not outrageously nice, but worth $36, made of bonded leather, produced by one of the top industry planner makers.  I am absolutely giddy about using it when it arrives in a couple days.

Do you plan?  Do you make lists?  How do you keep track of your own genius thoughts?  In order to get anything done, do you have to block out hours for this or that task in your day?  Smartphones?  Google?  Tips?  Insights?

Welcome!

What is this place?

You've found yourself at the new blog of a seasoned blogger trying to rid herself of the extra baggage of her old and very personal blog.  It's always nice to start fresh.

My husband and I are also on the cusp of moving to Montreal from southern USA.  I'm leaving my job and we're moving for his.  This is an almost 180-degree flip from our plan a month ago, which went something like:  I continue my [boring] technical work, and he pursues his dream to become a professional opera tenor.  It's a lot less linear than that, though, since he's been working and pursuing that path at the same time.  I hope he will continue singing as he moves up in his career in the videogame industry.

I say we're moving for his job, but that's really not what we're doing.  We're moving for our sanity.  For our relationship, for our growth, for our love and for our future.  Relocating to another country, learning a new language, exploring our career paths, exploring our marriage.  We can't wait!

It's going to make for a whole bunch of (hopefully entertaining) changes, trials and tribulations, which I hope you'll enjoy reading about.  We're losing about 2/3 of our combined income, which means that our lifestyle will need to change a lot, too.  We're selling both of our cars and going from a suburban American lifestyle to an urban one.  We want to embrace this new culture, not remain stuck firmly in our old one.

What do I hope to accomplish?

This time around, I hope you'll talk to me.  Don't just snicker there behind your computer screens - openly mock me!  Tell me your stories.

On a more bloghousekeeping-related note, I want to cut down on the tags.  I think I must have had a thousand tags on my last blog, which defeats the purpose of having tags in the first place.  If I stick to a particular topic in each post, maybe I won't ramble so much.

EDIT 7/11/2010:  This has been rethunked.  I spent so much time catering to what I thought people might be interested in reading, and pretty much lost sight of what I was interested in.  Everything became boring, overly-enthusiastic, and I thought, inane.  Looks like this blog will likely be much like the last - full of ponderings and rambles.

Why "Tales of a Supernova's Daughter" and Shinseiko?

I was watching Discovery Channel one night, and an incredibly dorky physicist was explaining some fact about novas and their planet-generating powers.  I was just so touched by her words.  We're all children of novas, of massive, cosmic rebirths.  Our very atoms are time-travelers.  We've all been stars.  Isn't that beautiful?

Shinseiko can probably be translated as "child of divinity," "child of a nova," "child of truth."  It's also the name of an asteroid discovered in 1999 by an A. Asami.  Other than that, it's pretty much pseudo-Japanese gibberish.

So, in the spirit of starting anew, and in honor of all new starts, aaaand to assert that there are a million new starts just waiting to be embarked upon, I give you Tales of a Supernova's Daughter.