Overloaded Donkey Cart OR My Life as a Donkey

The last couple of months have been “interesting.” There is an old Chinese curse that says “May you live in interesting times.” 2010 has definitely been that for me! In the last couple of months my post-concussion syndrome headaches have reasserted themselves. They haven’t been as bad as they were initially, but they’ve still been very hard to deal with. I’m on a different headache preventative Rx, but they still come and go. They just make dealing with everyday life difficult. So I decided to make a few changes in my life in order to try to relieve stress and, hopefully, prevent headaches.

1. I decided to take a break from school. I’m not quitting. I’m not even stopping working on my dissertation. I’m just taking a few months off from classes. I’m thinking that I will start back up again after the New Year. I’ve just been so tired with everything and everyone but school has made the sacrifices for me. Work has been wonderful. My family and friends have been supportive. Mark has been phenomenal! I just need to take some time to relax a bit.
2. I’ve decided to stop watching so much TV. I have already cut out the commercials by recording everything I watch on DVR first, but so much of TV is just pure drivel lately. Even the “educational” channels like Discovery, TLC, National Geographic, and Biography have turned to mush with sensational, shallow, and hollow TV shows. It’s really quite sad… Not even the SciFi (now Syfy) Channel has embraced the lowest form of SciFi for movies and gone away from its original mission and started showing “professional” wrestling and Ghost Hunters.
3. To replace all of my TV watching I’ve decided to read more. I suddenly find myself in various stages of several types of books, depending on my mood. I just finished The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (more on that later…). I’m also reading Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Ethics: The Heart of Leadership, Socialnomics (as an Audible.com book), and Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason (another Audible.com book). All are interesting and the topics vary pretty widely.
4. I’ve also decided to take on a mini-project called Photo365. The idea is to take one photo each day for a year and post it on the web to share. Yes, this is another social media thing. I’m going to start on September 1st and go through August 31st, 2011. Once I start uploading photos, I’ll post them on http://365project.org/ and share them here, on Twitter, and on Facebook. It will be interesting to see what comes out of it.
5. I also plan to blog more often. I’m considering starting some series on life, photography, interesting questions to ponder, the aforementioned reviews of what I’m reading, and probably some op-ed pieces too.
6. I’ve taken a break from Toastmasters. I was in two clubs and was also being encouraged to participate in leadership roles. While I enjoy the Toastmasters program and have learned a LOT about public speaking, I find that a) I want to dive in and fully participate right before b) I collapse in an exhausted heap from even thinking about diving in and participating fully. I will return to it, but I just found myself having to say “No” and feeling lousy because I really wanted to say “Yes” to everything I was asked to help with.
7. Finally, I’m going to get into an exercise regimen. I joined Curves and really enjoy the program, but all of the headaches I’ve been having, coupled with all of the pressure I’ve been under lately, have made getting there to DO the exercise quite difficult. Starting Monday, I’m getting back on that horse and will go AT LEAST 3 days each week.

Have you ever had to do anything like what I’ve done here? How did you handle it? Any advise? Please comment. I’d love to hear from you.

Shasta is the Yellow Lab...

In the last month-and-a-half my husband and I have had to deal with one figurative blow after another. It started with my incident on December 9th, continued with 3-4 weeks of a head cold while I was on short-term disability, and has come to another two points in the last week.

First our oldest dog, Shasta (4 years old), became very lethargic and was not her happy, active self.  Thursday we took her in to the veterinarian for the second time and had x-rays taken. They indicated that she had a blockage between her stomach and small intestine. She required surgery. Let me tell you, surgery for a dog is expensive!!! We had to drain our savings account and make a withdrawal from my husband’s 401k to pay that bill and meet some other challenges as well. There was no other way we could cover everything. Thankfully, Shasta is home and doing well now.

On top of this, Mark’s truck has stopped working. We don’t know why it’s not working because there is no check engine light which means the truck won’t give us a code to tell us what’s wrong. Mark is taking it to a mechanic tomorrow and we have some funds set aside to handle that crisis, but we’re not certain yet if it’s going to be enough.

The lesson we will take from this past month is to plan for contingencies quite a bit better. We were lucky to have some funds in reserve, but I think we need to become more serious about saving for both crises and for things like vacations. There are lots of places that Mark and I would like to travel to, but we have no active plan for saving for those trips.

The frustration we are feeling right now would probably be less if we were saving more – a retirement fund (which we both already have) along with a separate contingency fund account (which we sort of have) and another vacation fund account (which we don’t have at all). Now we just have to figure out how to get ALL that set up and how to afford it along with our other obligations. Time for some long-term thinking… Do you have any suggestions?

Image Credit: The “Budget Pie” image was retrieved on January 25, 2010 from Village Park using Google Images.

• Develop a relationship with me. Pay attention to what I post here on my blog and on Twitter and then tell me how you can be of service to me. Within a few days after I bought my house, I got all kinds of fliers on my door offering to sell my house for me. Why on Earth would I want to sell a house I’d just bought? Those realtors obviously didn’t know or care about what I needed as a new homeowner.
• Provide excellent customer service. I return to businesses that find ways to help me achieve my goals. I am even willing to pay a bit extra if it means I can achieve my goals.
• Don’t engage in wasteful practices. I don’t like ordering items from online or catalog vendors and having a small book or other item come in a great big box with all sorts of padding or packaging. How companies interact with the environment is vitally important to me. Show me you’re a good steward of your little slice of the planet (and mine!) and you have a pretty good shot of keeping my business.
• Don’t make me feel like you don’t trust me. I’m not a big fan of the plastic clam-shell packaging that is next to impossible to get into. A majority of your customers are honest, law-abiding people who only want a good product or service at a fair price. Don’t engage in extreme measures because of what a few customers might do.
• Don’t preach at me. I don’t care what your religious or political beliefs are. Don’t put religious symbols or political emblems all over your ads or greet me with vigorous exclamatory statements. Treat me fairly and honestly and live your faith rather than preaching your faith. That’s the best way to get and keep my business.

Your thoughts on these points? What tips or pointers have I missed in this list? Please share with me in the comments area or on Twitter.

• Don’t cold call me! I don’t like being cold called with “special offers.” You’re not going to get business from me if you call because there is too much of a chance that you’re scamming me. I’m not about to turn over my credit card or identity information to some company I’ve never heard of.
• If you do cold call me, do NOT use one of those one of those automated systems that asks me to “Please hold for one of our operators…” That is the fastest way to get me to hang up on you. After these two tips, I suggest that you don’t waste your time on cold calling me for my business.¹
• Don’t send me junk mail. When I check my mail or email I go through and pull out the letters and bills and toss the rest in the recycle bin (snail mail) or trash (email). I’m a busy lady & don’t have time to sift through every piece of mail or email I get.
• Don’t have lousy customer service! Nothing clamps the lock on my wallet faster than snooty or lousy customer service. I understand when a customer service person is unable to help me because something is outside their skill level or access level. However, don’t tell me what you can’t or won’t do for me. Tell me what you can or will do for me instead. If I’m calling you for help I’m already a bit irritated. Don’t make things worse by telling me what you won’t do for me.
• Don’t use overly loud commercials that shout at me. I have become so annoyed by commercials that frankly I don’t watch them anymore. I record all of the shows I want to watch so that I can fast forward through commercials. If advertisers want my business they can offer me information about their products or services in a manner that is much less phony and annoying. I DO listen to commercials on my favorite podcasts². The commercials are either very short, very entertaining, or both. That’s the way to capture my attention and my business.

Your thoughts on these points? What tips or pointers have I missed in this list? Please share with me in the comments area or on Twitter.

My next blog entry will address what those who want to capture my business should do to get it…

¹Nonprofits that I have a relationship with are exceptions to these first two rules. However, don’t call asking me for money. You’re more likely to get me to volunteer or buy tickets to something than to get a donation out of me. Let me know what you’re after and give me information about events, but give me the option to send it in to you, check my calendar, or attend an event.

²You can find a list of my favorite podcasts on the right-hand side of this page.

I’m sure that if I sit and think about it some more I’ll come up with other reasons, but that’s not important. What is important is what is going to fill this space going forward…

I am on my doctoral journey and have decided to get back to writing about that journey. Not everyone pursues a doctoral degree and it is an intense experience that I plan to share here with you. I will not only be talking about school. I will also talk about work, family, and my social activities. All of these are part of the journey and contribute to the experience – both good and bad.

In the meantime, please follow me on Twitter or look me up on Facebook. I’ve also been working on some new projects. Please check out Student Tech, Good-to-Great Toastmasters, and GO Speakers! Toastmasters. I’ve got some other stuff in the pipe as well and will share with you as time marches on.