September 16, 2011

getting it together

this week has been driving me crazy. to start, i freaked out the other day about my finances. i'm still paying off my last minute trips to georgia, and i just got slapped with a $1500 estimate for car maintenance. the one item i absolutely need is the most expensive on the list, which i most certainly can't cover right now. although, the guy who wrote up the estimate put in the wrong quantities for a couple items so i had to recalculate. i think i might run by when my girl is working to get a proper one done. it's still gonna cost my first born, but at least i'll have all the right info

my first instinct was to take care of my car and not put money in my savings. this is when i really started to lose my shit. all of my savings goals are carefully calculated. i'm already not sure i'll meet my "quitting my job to be a full time intern for a semester" goal, but that's only one of five goals that i am actively working on. there are seven others on hold. i am a saving fiend! one of those current goals is for a new car at the end of the year. forsake the new baby for my old lady? um... um... no? but then i'll be giving the car back to my mom in double crappy condition. she also needs some major body work done. i usually treat my things very nicely, but i could never afford to have the damage fixed. and i refuse to let my mom pay for it. so i'd like to at least have her regular maintenance taken care of; i'll figure out the body work some other time. i know i can give the car back with the understanding that i would have her fixed up over time. i just dunno if i wanna do that. and mom still doesn't know what she wants to do with the car

so i started thinking about my budget options. looking at my debts and living expenses to see if there's anywhere i could squeeze some extra cash for car expenses. not unless i want to pay the absolutely minimum on my debts. uh no *sigh* i need an extra paycheck, but that just ain't happening. on the upside though, i realized i might be able to get my credit cards paid off sooner if i made a few small adjustments. double nice because i want to close one of the accounts after i get the car. i need the credit history for now, but i'm really not liking the issuing company. two days later, i'm feeling much more confident about the new plan to take care of business financially, staying within my current means

making better budget plans led to a new homework plan. i have a million pages of reading each week plus a video to process and workbook pages to complete. i constantly feel like i'm going in too many directions, and i haven't been able to keep up. this is week three, and i was still catching up on reading from week one. no bueno. so i sat down with my syllabus and planner to figure out what the fuck was going on. instead of focusing on catching up, i also looked at the next two weeks. basically, what needs to be done through the end of the month. instead of trying to read as much as possible during a certain block of time, i gave myself one assignment per day. narrowing my focus to avoid "i'm such a procrastinator" frustration. i walked into work wed with every intention of reading a chapter because i normally have nothing to do. instead i had my second panic of the week...

last week, my team informed me that they hadn't, as yet, found what we were looking for in this audit. really not good. i had a file on wed of what had been researched so far. i opened it and immediately ignored it. ugly spreadsheets make my head hurt. instead i putzed around online for a couple hours. wed is my short day so putting off work until 2pm was not my brightest idea. i spent the next two and a half hours trying to make sense of the file and freaking out. i was pretty sure my team was confused about a certain point. however, i was convinced i was also missing something important. not having an inkling of what it was, i couldn't formulate a question to pose to my POC. so i put it off until yesterday. i spent most of the day refreaking out over the file before i just gave up. i sent a note back to my team to clear up the confusion. i could wait another day to see if i could sort through what we could possibly be missing...

in the midst of all that work insanity, guess what didn't get done. my fucking homework. frustrated, agitated and convinced i was gonna give myself an ulcer before the week was out. by some miracle of awesomeness, i got the two chapters i wanted to read done with plenty of time for other stuff. i even dozed off for a minute last night halfway through the chapter. new plan of attack might actually be working. it probably helps that last night's business meeting was cancelled. i had a couple extra hours to play with... i walked in today to a response from my team and my boss. i touched base with my POC, and i think all is ok. we may be missing a piece, but it's not vital to the audit. i've checked all my usual time wasters this morning and even spent some time looking at car dealerships. dude i want to work with hasn't responded to my inquiry yet so i'm searching for a potential replacement. i'm very selective about who i do business with. i need to find someone i feel comfortable with who isn't going to harass the shit out of me until i buy something...

i hate these occasional panics, but i just might be in a better position because of them. today, i've got my shit together, and i'm ready to face the next stretch head on. now i'm gonna go make my lunch and start this next chapter. should be a good one; it's conduct disorders :)