Making Moves

[Consumerist via Penelope Trunk]
The uncertainty of jobs in these days on the brink of recession is nerve-wrecking to say the least. I often ponder on when it would be a good time to change career paths and if staying within my same field is wise. Anyone that knows me knows the basic me. I work business, but long for art. The endless internal debate of what to do and where to go and how to do it.

Penelope Trunk has a phenomenal post on this very topic that, through the blog roll, I discovered.

Here’s how you figure out what to do next in your career: you line up all the stuff you like to do and you figure out which one will pay best. Don’t complain to me that I’m too focused on money. Really. Just do the exercise. The ones who are complaining the most right now, after reading just this far, are the people who are most in denial of what adult life is about.

Look, figuring out what you should do is actually a hard task. Because you have to start eliminating stuff. [PT]

Wow. Have I just been fooling myself all along? No. Definitely not. I know what I like. I know what I want. Entrepreneurship, food, and art are in my future. Paperwork? Not so much.

Baby steps

In the new year, although only 17 days in, some things begin to look a little bit more tangible. Being out of debt is finally a couple of steps away. Clarity in mind about the future sets in.

Clarity in such a way, that I believe the right steps need to start taking place. I talked about how I believed in only working for myself for the rest of my life. About how no matter how much of my time I spend in academics, ultimately I want that to be for myself. I keep reading stories on applying your hobbies into your professional life in order to find a career in doing what you love.

Well I love many things and I think all of these can come together in unison to reach my ultimate goal. I'm planning on owning my own business, hopefully no later than 2011. Music. Food. Art. Furniture. Socializing (!!!). All of these skills will come into play soon enough.

First things first, I am working on researching my options as far as financing. Clearing my credit is sure to be the first major stepping stone into financing. It will allow me to have more room to work with when I make it into the bank to ask for a rack of cash. It will also ensure that the only payments I'm making are to the bank and not a million creditors wanting my head.

Secondly will be taking full advantage of any programs available for grants and loans. I have a couple of points on my side. I will be a start up, small business and I am Hispanic. The business plan in development will play a major role in acquiring the necessary funds, but one is definitely in the works.

It had been suggested to me to start an offshoot of what will at one point become the main business. Like say you wan an art gallery, you start painting first. You want to own a hair salon, you freelance. You want to own a restaurant you cater. Which seems like a viable option and a fun idea to get my product out there, my name known, and start working out a lot of the details. What sells, what doesn't. Cost forecasting and trend research.

I've been doing some reading and a lot of note taking, taking full advantage of the many courses offered by the Small Business Administration online, about business management and administration. That site is full of usefull iformation and it's all free.

Clearly we have taken some insight into my love of food and art. so I've decided to heed the advice and get the gears running on this food business. I'm actually excited, since all of this is becoming more and more tangible with each passing day and each dollar sent into the pits of creditor hell.

Does anyone out there know of any Government or private programs for Latinos that maybe I may have missed?

Educated guesses

Next school semester begins in about a week. After this last semester of chaos, underachievement, and disillusion, I've signed up for one art class this semester to unwind. What still lingers in my mind is whether or not I should compliment it with a design class as well. Seems like a waste of a semester to take just one class. Recreational culinary classes even.

I'm definitely not signing up for the death trap that last semester was again, but I think this semester I should do something else than just drawing.

I think my undying need to complete a degree I hate just for the sake of security is not the right choice. I need to clear my mind. Reassess my situation. And figure out where all of this falls into my long-term goals.

I feel like I've hit a point of no return. Something needs to be done without regression. There are plans and ideas floating around that will soon have some light shed on them on this blog, but not quite yet.

GRS, had a write-up today on completing college education and the difference it makes on a financial level.

I've always been of the idea (perhaps this being the very same that deters me from enjoying corporate-land and accounting classes) that going to school for four years should not be so I can waste away my life working for someone else. Making someone else rich. I am a firm believer that if I'm going to spend the rest of my life breaking my back to survive, I may as well break it for myself.

= Breakfast Toast =: Stupid Mondays

Perhaps this is also why all the courses I actually excell in, are courses I can apply to my every-day life and not some pipe dream of cubicles and artificial lighting. Seriously. Who ever thought the American dream was to live like an iguana?
The monitor your heating rock. The cubicle your tank. Lunch hour to eat the same crickets every day for the rest of your life, just hoping your tail doesn't get cut by some asshat who's having a bad day.

2007 was a year of realizations. A year of advancements. Physical. Spiritual. Mental. Moral. Financial.

2008 will be a year of applied theories and progress.

Lord knows I've got plenty of role-models to measure up against, and a list of their mistakes to compare notes with and try to not do the same. I will not submit to mediocre pre-dispositions of society. Not to sound like the idealistic, anarchy-pumped non-conformist, but I will become more than life chooses to grant me.

What would appear to be the first day of the rest of my life.

Belated New Years

It took me a second to get this entry in due to some personal technical difficulties, which still withstand, but will work themselves out as things usually do.

Well, here we are again. The end of one year and at the beginning of another. We've crossed the path almost reaching 2010. Which begins to sound even more like the future. Flying cars and things of the sort.

I hear people talking about resolutions and changes and everything they want to leave behind. Almost like the year before was the worst. Thick on the bad connotation of 2007.

I would like to be the first to say that 2007 for me was not a bad one in the least. (for once?). It was actually one where I had set goals to take on that I had failed to accomplish in 2006.

I cooked a lot more, like, a lot more! I quit smoking (although a little late in the year). Maintaining a steady gym routine (although losing routine a bit into the year, but going even if out of schedule). Took classes throughout the year. Read a whole lot more. Last, but not least, getting my finances back in order.

Getting the money on track has been a resolution probably since I first left El Paso, and through a series of life lessons, numerous written sources, a few role models, and a handful of encouraging peers, I did it! I'm months away now (months I can count with one hand) from atonement.

Which in the long run, will be the first step of a new track and a continuance 5-year plan to reaching the my goals.

This coming up year I don't have very many goals, much further than keeping up with what I've been doing.

The only new ones, which some I've set in motion in December, are:

• Keep piling up the cash into the ING savings accounts. (I've opened 3)
• Finish up the draft of my business plan. (Got the software and the sources)
  
• Keep up with this blog - for once. (Trying!)
  
• Take writing, art, and culinary courses. (Signed up last night)
  
• Finalize debt. (Mid-April)
  
• Go visit my friends on the West Coast and abroad. (Waiting for my passport!)
  
• Get started on getting myself a car that isn't a Ford Probe. (No. Seriously. I don't want a Probe.)
  

That's it. That's all I want. Considering how far I've gotten thus far, I see no problem getting there by 2009.

Happy New Year's everyone! The best is yet to come!

I would eat, but...

"I would eat, but I don't have the time or patience to get home and cook!" A pattern-line I've heard from more than a handful of my friends. Working in D.C. and living in suburban Virginia, I spend about a third of my time commuting. Leave early enough to withstand traffic and distance, and make it to work barely, if at all, on time. Drive back home through the same gridlock motorcade to arrive at ungodly hours when all I want is to grab a bowl of cereal and get to bed.

I try my best to keep my pots and pans active as often as possible, yet I too fall victim to the terrors brought by a mixture of fatigue and laziness. I have, however, given up on fast food altogether, scratched it from my routine. The only things I eat out of a can these days are corn and beans. Tortillas, cheese, and beans are a staple in my house and default breakfast, lunch, and dinner ingredients, if not the dinner itself.

I try to make my meals, even when out, as hearty and healthy as possible (with the obligatory exception every now and again when I fall weak at the sight of a gigantic Bacon Cheeseburger and fries), and ideally I would like to eat at home every night.

The best laid plans...

Killing time on the interweb, as I am known to do whilst bearing high and proud my Procrastinator Badge, trying to think of what to eat today, I bumped into an article full of fun eating facts for those of us that lack time, spirit, or even skill around a stove.

Preparing your own nutritionally balanced meals every night of the week does take effort and advanced planning. Naturally making your own is the preferred, but in a pinch, there are helping hands out there for all of us! [Start Cooking]

The post mentions a place by the name of Nutrition DeliverD, which promises to:

...help busy Bostonians who want to cook and eat more healthfully.

I'm trying to find a similar place in the D.C. area, but to no avail. (Any venture-capitalists out there?)

Another place, which I may drop into today, recently opened literally across the street from where I live:

Come in and select an entrée for dinner tonight, or take home a month's worth of hassle-free dinners. We make it or you make it — the choice is yours. [Super Suppers]

Oh man. Makes me miss Chihuahua. Where we had places like these with buffets and a pluthera of choices all in true Mexican form.



There's money to be made in this here land.

There's quite the number of options available for me. Now if only they had a Motivation Delivery for Rainy Days with No Food In the House Service, I think I'd be all set.