At Capacity Full

I’ve pretty much accepted that I’m an inconsistent blogger. But, to my defense, I’m a busy mofo.

But! being a busy mofo pays off, even if it leaves you no time for blogging. Going over my finances a few weeks ago, I realized that I was a fourth of the way to my financial goal for my big trip. This was a Big Deal to realize because all my money making felt very abstract. I knew I was working for something, but before it built to anything, it just felt like working. And then I was like, “Holy shit! I’m a quarter of the way there!”

At work that morning after I realized this, I excitedly told my friend who is kind of in the same position, where she’s saving up her monies for a big change, her ETD being a year from now. She asked me when my ETD was and I realized I hadn’t really thought about it, but kind of assumed that it was two years away. Then all of the sudden I realized some things:

1) I started at my 2nd job on October 3rd, with the announced goal of saving $1000 a month
2) As of April 3rd (the day I realized all of this, and 5 months later exactly) I had over $5000 saved
3) To get to my target goal of $20,000 at this rate, I’d need to work for 15 more months
4) If I increase my saving by merely $250  a month, I could have that in 12 months.
5) I can leave in a year.

And then my mind was totally blown. This whole time I’ve been thinking about this trip so abstractly, something that was going to happen sometime in the future and be totally rocking. Now it has a time frame. I am leaving next spring. Everything feels so different. I’m so much more motivated at my jobs, because they are now very directly for a purpose, for a tangible goal that is with in reach and sight. I feel simultaneously thrilled and scared shitless, which I’m taking as a good sign. Like that’s how you should probably feel at the precipice of a big life change.

I also realized that this whole blog is basically a two year plan that I made without even thinking about it in those terms. I used the words, but didn’t even think about in the context of an official “two year plan”. It was just going to take two years to get to it. And I’ve basically stuck to it, with some very necessary and expected shifts and adjustments. I’ll be 5 months or so off of an exact 2 years, saving twice the money than originally thought.

So right now I’m working 7 days a week, Tuesday-Saturday at the museum and Saturday-Tuesday at Goodberry’s, averaging about 70 hours a week between the two. It’s a really doable schedule that leaves plenty of time for music and friends. I’m finding that the less free time I have, the more productively I use it. I’ve also upped my savings goal to a lofty $1,750 a month. I want to have a good guitar by the end of May and something lined up for a professional demo by then also. Those are my two main goals–after that it’s just trying to get as many shows/festivals as I can get with those two tools (a faithful instrument and a faithful representation of the music I make).

Woot! Be prepared to attend what will surely be a very rocking going away party for me next year!

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” — Mark Twain