Clock Fighting

Tuesday July 15th, 2008 - Lake Villa, IL

July is half over and the clock keeps ticking. I wish I could make it stop for a while so I can get caught up with everything. Things get out of control and then it’s hard to have any kind of organization because things are piled up everywhere and it’s hard to manage it all.

I tried to have an objective eye as I looked at my life today and where I want to go in the future. It’s a constant battle with time management and there just aren’t enough hours in a day to accomplish everything I want to do so things need to start getting cut. I need a plan that allows me to keep making constant improvement but also allows me to survive now.

This is a rough time for a lot of people. The economy is not looking good and no matter what anyone says it’s all about the money. Dreams are great but unless the bills are paid it doesn’t really matter. I have been chasing dreams for years and just barely squeaking by.

I want to oil up that squeak. I have a lot to learn about making money and especially the skill of what to do after I get it but at least I’m aware of it. I never really had a windfall to deal with other than the one year I worked at the Loop and I’m still living off that money.

Granted, I did some questionable things with it like buying sports cards and tin can cars from the auction but at least I had fun with it. If I get a serious windfall I won’t make that same mistake but I need to educate myself so I don’t. There’s just too much to focus on.

Good news from the mechanic today. I took the Cadillac Catera in to have him look at it a couple of weeks ago and he finally got to it. He said he looked it over today and it had a problem with one of the spark plug holes that wasn’t threaded properly and someone tried to redo it and did a bad job. He thought he could fix it and it shouldn’t be too expensive.

I felt a whole lot better about life when he said that. He asked what I wanted to do and I asked him if he thought it would last a year. He said he thought it would. That model has an aluminum engine block and that’s the reason I had the problem with the spark plugs. I should have researched this model before I bought it but I took a chance and got stung.

It could be a LOT worse though. That noise I heard driving it home was not funny and I thought I was in for a lot more trouble. I still could be but at least there’s a little hope now and I’ll take it. He said he can’t fix it for another week because he’s backed up at the shop and that’s totally ok with me. It gives me more time to get other things in life sorted out.

These are all things that take up lots of time and no wonder I’m as far behind as I am in just about everything. Things like this come out of the blue and have to be dealt with but I would rather be doing something else. Who the hell cares about fixing bad spark plugs?

I want to be performing and writing and making as many people laugh as I can. I need to get my priorities straight and use my time wisely. There is a limited amount of it and I’ve wasted enough over the years. Having a plan and working it is more important than ever.