How to Get Yourself Out of Dumb Debt... I Hope

Confession: I am still a bit swamped in my dumb debt. I have not gotten myself out of it yet, but here I am, proclaiming to the world that I have been an idiot with my finances in the past (and present) and it is high time I gave myself a public shaming.

Source

It would probably make sense if I first explained what I consider to be "dumb debt". I'll start by explaining what I consider to be debt that is (usually) reasonable (there are exceptions to every rule): student loans, car payments, medical bills, and your mortgage. Dumb debt is most everything else.

What Is My "Dumb Debt"?
For me, most of my dumb debt is still related to my early years of "independence" when I got my first credit cards and thought I could get away with paying for most everything with them, including occasional trips across the country with no real purpose. Other forms I've incurred are the "I thought I could afford to pay just that much more extra on this bill, but turns out I can't do math" debt that actually puts you further in the hole than you started. The shit that turns into a truly vicious circle.

Source

I'm Back! (and) Am I a Jealous Lover? Discuss!

O! Hai thar!

I bet you thought I had left this blog to rot in its... not... being... uhm... posted in...ness.

Ahem.

BUT ALAS! You were fooled by my mere busy-ness with other aspects of life and blogging! To begin with, I've finally gotten Fun and FlirTea off the ground and begun posting there. This is where much of my writing time has disappeared to, so my personal blog has indeed fallen by the wayside for a brief time. Never fear, kind friends and readers! I am back and do intend to post with at least semi-regularity once more.

Other than the release of my tea blog, I have been quite busy in life and work as well! I've been spending more time with friends, going out dancing, attending an occasional concert, doing yoga more regularly, and... oh yeah. GETTING PROMOTED AT WORK! Success indeed!

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it here before or not, but I've been trying to get back into copywriting for quite a while and, after years of hard work and doing what I can in my company to get there... and suddenly I am! It took plenty of time and work, but I am the newest Copywriter (and Social Media Clerk) at Build.com. Yay!

Naturally, to celebrate my new position, my body chose my first full week in the job to get stupidly sick with a gnarly cold! Fortunately, I am getting over it now, but I still have a dry throat and slight cough.

But enough of the updates! Part of what brought me back to this blog at this time is something I've been thinking about lately. Not long ago, I finally was able to establish a friendship with an old ex-boyfriend I had very little contact with over the past 3 years since our relationship ended. And this friendship is a real one, where we are comfortable around each other and can even make jokes about the years we were dating.

Finding Mr. Darcy Didn't Work Out As Anticipated

I know I said my next post would be about my plans while I'm in the UK, but that will have to wait until next time. Right now I have something even more important to talk about - Mr. Darcy.

Oh yes! I'm referring to the glorious fictional hot piece of ass that is Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley. Before I get further into this, allow me to display a few samples of the modern actors who have portrayed Darcy and stolen so many modern hearts.

Colin Firth - See how nicely he glows here?

Eliot Cowan - Mmm...

Matthew Macfadyn doing Darcy justice!

Okay, I have a thing for Colin Firth and Eliot Cowan in wet shirts. The best part is that when Eliot Cowan's Darcy gets wet, it was 100% a reference to Colin Firth's wet shirt moments in the A&E mini-series that is one of the most watched versions of the Pride and Prejudice story. Mmm....

Ha! Sorry. Was drooling a little bit there.

Walking Around Naked Not the Best Part of Living Alone... Who Knew?

I have spent my entire life living with other people. I was born the youngest of 5, so always had my older siblings in addition to parents. When I went away for college, my first "roommate" was my grandma while I hunted for a job and alternative living situation.

The first house I moved into was with 3 other girls. I lived in that house with 4 occupants for a year and a half, then was in an apartment with 1 roommate (who had a boyfriend over regularly, so was more like 2 roommates), then in a house with 2 roommates, and two more places with a single roommate each. This made up the first 24 years of my life.

I have always had at least one roommate - most of the time I had more than one. I never wanted to buy anything too nice, because it would just be used and abused by my roommates, no matter how careful they were. Not to mention that, when we would separate ways, some of the items I had purchased or owned would inextricably be lost to the roommate for one reason or other (sometimes by accident, sometimes they would steal things, and other times they believed so fervently they owned the items that I just gave in rather than fight it out). In addition to the woes of losing property, I've even had roommates wreak havoc with my finances and, if you'll believe it, credit report. Those stories, however, are best kept close to home.

Personal Goals to Accompl.sh

Just over a year ago, I wrote a post about a list of 101 things I wanted to accomplish in the following 365 days (this original list can be found here). The website for this was originally called 101in365.com, but has since been renamed Accompl.sh. I actually quite like the new name! In any case, I did not complete all 101 items, but did knock out exactly 51 of them. A number were also in progress and partially completed, but others were not at all.

Before continuing, I'd like to give you a little bit of insight into this project. Before the name change, the tagline for the site was, "Avoiding mediocrity one to-do list at a time", which I found brilliant. Jenn, the creator, has brought it into a slightly different realm. Instead of limiting users to lists of 101 exclusively, she allows you to set the length of your list and lock it at whatever size you desire. In Jenn's words, "Accompl.sh harnesses the power of the social web to support personal growth. Its mission is to create a place where you can develop, track and share your goals over the course of the next 365 days and beyond by providing the tools, network and support you need to accomplish great things!" I loved the concept of 101 to-do items, so when I built my new list, I made sure to come up with that number once more.

In creating a new list, I had to take a hard look at my original list and think about why the items that were not completed were left in that state. Some of them were very simple and I should have been able to accomplish them in no time, for example, "98. Post reviews of books I've read on Goodreads". This maybe would have taken me an hour. I could have taken more time and posted even more than a few or reviews of the books already in my Goodreads account. But it would have taken little time. Unfortunately for me, I was lazy. And that sucks. Because I know I could have done this easily.

Moving Life into Hi-Def

In the not too distant past, there was no point in using the words "Standard Definition" to describe the quality of pretty much all televisions and the shows and movies we had available to watch on them. It was just the norm for us. We didn't realize what kinds of details were missed until the (now typical) HD options came out.

Most people can remember the first time they watched an old favorite in HD and realized what a difference it made. Suddenly, the trees and bushes had defined leaves, the outlines of the characters' faces were clear cut.

Today, I experienced, for the second time in my life, a transition from Standard Def to HD - I got my first ever pair of glasses!

Love (?) in the Life of Dinah

I alluded to my recent break up in my last blog post, and I think it will be cathartic for me to write a little more on the subject now. Feel free to pass on this post if you just aren't interested (understandable!), but this is my personal blog, so.... there.... Ha.

In any case, I had been dating Paul for just over a year when I ended things and, to be frank, things had started getting bad after just 3 months. Whenever things got particularly bad, we'd talk and things would be better for about a week, then revert back to what it was before. I had spent my year or so of being single prior to dating Paul to build my personal confidence levels. Unfortunately, a lot of my time with him undid most of the work I had done on myself. It was through no active efforts on his part, but just the general way the relationship went, our closeness, etc. I can't really get more specific here, but suffice it to say that my ego took more than a few hits in the time we were together, and most of them were directly related to my relationship with him. The worst part about it is that I didn't even realize how low my own self-worth had gotten until a few days ago. But I'll get to that in a moment.

On House Affiliations

A couple weeks ago, a friend of mine asked me what I would do if I was sorted into a House other than Hufflepuff in Pottermore. My response at the time was, "I've always believed I had at least some of the other Houses in me as well. So nothing will stop me from feeling like a 'Puff. Not even if I end up in a different House on Pottermore. It'll just be another House to be associated with more strongly. To be frank, it's going to be the most accurate House quiz because it's from JKR, but it's not going to be a substitute for her knowing me and for me knowing myself. I am and will always be a Hufflepuff in my heart."

I finally got to spend enough time on Pottermore (without it being out of commision for once!) to get sorted. Here's the thing - I wasn't sorted into Hufflepuff. I have indeed been sorted into Gryffindor.

Trying to be More Active... How I'm Not Suceeding

The funny thing about making an effort to be more active is that when you miss just one opportunity to stay active, you lose almost all the motivation you've been building up. At least, that's how it works with me. I probably shouldn't admit this, but every now and then when I'm dedicated to some physical activity, I'll come up with some excuse to ditch it at the last minute so I can instead stay at home and watch a movie, TV show, or just sit around doing nothing. Perhaps recognizing this failing in myself is what will help motivate me to stop doing it.

There are two things in particular that I don't want to slack off on - yoga and soccer. I'm not going to lie, I'm not particularly flexible and I'm pretty crap at soccer. I'm the worst player on our team. Last game, I scored a goal for the first time. The problem is, it was against us by an accident of my foot being in just the wrong place at the wrong time. But it still happened.

Despite the fact that I really enjoy both soccer and yoga and feel the physical benefits of them afterwards, why is it that I have trouble motivating myself to go there in the first place when it's time to start? Even though I know how much better I feel physically, mentally, and even emotionally after engaging in these activities, I don't always go. And I don't always have a good reason for skipping the activity.

Chapter 4: Discovering Felicity, the Fierce Amazon Nook Within ("Amazon" in the Xena: Warrior Princess sort of way, not the company)

Introduction and Prologue
Chapter 1: The Rise of the eReader
Chapter 2: In Which Dinah Veritably Salivates Over the Nook
Chapter 3: How Magic and (Dare I Say) Karma Resulted in a Spur-of-the-Moment Indulgence (Or How I Learned to Stop Caring and Love Purchasing My Nook)

I don't know about you, but when I get a new gadget I always feel like I'm learning everything about it from scratch. It doesn't matter if the new item is a replacement, if I had played with other ones before, or if I had never touched one a day in my life. All I can say is that a new gadget is a new experience every time. For me, at least.

Despite the number of times I had handled the display Nooks, there was something different about beginning to use the one that was to be my boon companion. Once I set it to charging, I naturally began to register my Nook by connecting it to my BN.com account. When I started this process, it prompted me for the name of my Nook.

Chapter 3: How Magic and (Dare I Say) Karma Resulted in a Spur-of-the-Moment Indulgence (Or How I Learned to Stop Caring and Love Purchasing My Nook)

Introduction and Prologue
Chapter 1: The Rise of the eReader
Chapter 2: In Which Dinah Veritably Salivates Over the Nook

Not everyone who reads this will know me, so for those who don't, I have a tendency to keep very busy. I almost always have something going on and some plans in the works. What this has meant recently is that I have some rather expensive plans in the works coming up and, in addition to buying a car and the upkeep on that, all of my spare money was going toward trips I would be making in the future. For every new thing I had to pay for, I realized it was going to be yet another month until I could afford to purchase a Nook. In mid-September, by my calendar and financial planning, I determined that I would finally be able to buy myself a Nook sometime in mid to late November. By then I would have finished paying for my trip to China, I would be back from Wrockstock, and I would be caught up on my bills. In the meantime, however, I was living on the extra $30-40 per paycheck, and that wasn't going particularly smoothly.

One night, a friend told me a story of his good fortune to find hundreds of dollars in his account when he anticipated very few. To this, my immediate response was, "If the $3 in my account magically turned into $300, that would probably be the most amazing thing ever." Little did I know, things were already beginning to turn around for me.

Introducing a Short Series

As many people already know, I recently purchased a Barnes & Noble Nook eReader, which I absolutely adore. Not long ago, I read a short article titled something along the lines of "An Avid Reader Who Loves His Kindle More Than His Real Books". While that is certainly not the actual title, it is reminiscent. After reading that, I felt inspired to write up my own story of why I love my Nook so much for my blog. To say the least, I got a little carried away and now I have quite a long story. Due to its length, I've decided to release it in pieces. Today I present.... the Prologue.

Why I Love Felicity (My Barnes & Noble Nook eReader): A Short Story

Prologue: Why I Love Physical Books
In recent years, since eReaders grew in popularity, I've noticed a development in the book industry. Publishers have been forced to offer their books in a new form: eBooks. Welcome to the digital age. Now the consumers have the option between physical books and eBooks. Note that I carefully avoid referring to the physical books as "real." I believe this would leave the idea, somewhere in your mind, that I consider eBooks as less than real or less than adequate. Since this is the exact opposite of what I'm trying to get across, I want to make the distinction clear. To some, the choice is simple - they love the physical books too well to give in to the digital age. I want you to understand just how much I, too, love physical copies of books before I explain to you why I love my eReader so much.

I'm one of those people who will walk into a used bookstore just so I can breathe in the scent of books that have been handled by no-one-knows for however many years, picking up dust, absorbing the scents of the houses they have lived in, and, without exception, becoming the perfect blend of age and wisdom. Before you ask, the answer is yes. I am still discussing how I perceive the smell of books.

A Recurring Theme

I know I've done this before, but I always seem to come back to it. I think it has something to do with the fact that things never seem to get resolved. Or maybe I just can't seem to exhibit enough patience to allow for a real resolution to come about.

Most likely, there is just no such thing as a "resolution" to the way my life works. You see, I can't help but be preoccupied with the status of my love life, if you will. This is not to say that I feel the need to jump into anything. I just feel like it would be nice to get back on the horse and have some kind of legitimate... something. I'm not entirely certain. I'm not ready for anything serious, but I'm getting tired of being so lonely and, when I'm not totally lonely, I feel like my options are, to say the least, limited. Not always in a good way. In fact, usually not.

I went so far as to spend months thinking to myself that, while my options seemed many and varied, my actual possibilities were few and far between. Overall, a pretty cynical outlook. I like to think I've gotten a bit more optimistic (though I admit, it hasn't been much of an improvement).

Things You've Always Wanted to Know About Me

I posted this on Facebook as well, but wanted to put it here to get the full spectrum of ideas and topics to discuss:

In an effort to write more in my personal blog, I'd love to hear some questions or topics that my friends would like to hear me talk about (even though I'll actually be writing and you'll be reading, you get the point, right?). So if there's anything you'd like to find out my opinion on, any stories you'd like me to tell, or just curiosities about me you always wondered about... now is the time! Let me know and I should get to it at some point!

Double Post!

Woah! What could I possibly be thinking with this double post!?

I do have a point. I swear... I was just looking through my older posts to see when I last posted and what kinds of things I posted when I realized... I'm not very creative. Seriously. And I seem to drop the ball on multiple occasions. If you don't believe me, look at the titles of my posts from June this year and then look at the titles of my posts this month so far. Also, check out what I'm doing.

I need to actually complete things now.

Today

I go through phases. Everyone does, for that matter.

Some days I feel wonderful about myself, who I am, where I am in my life. And other days not so much. Today is one of the days where I still feel wonderful about my life and how I live it, but I start to understand why no one seems to show interest in me. Or, rather... why the people I have any interest in show none toward me.

Just one of those days when I get to be down on myself for a while. Just wait until I perk back up in a few hours.

The Life I Live and Love

Let's start this out right. I love my life.

I love the things I do. I love the commitments I make. I love the people I know. I love the places I go, the adventures I embark on.

But I've felt a sort of discontent in recent times. I'm trying to evaluate what is really important and what things in my life no longer hold the meaning that they once did. I've been considering the way I present myself - the clothes I wear, the way I speak, how I take care of my belongings - and what this means about me. I think about all the things that I dedicate my time to and what benefits I gain from them, the things I lose as a result of the time and effort I put into these things. I've been thinking about the way people view me - their initial reactions to making my acquaintance.

Rawr

I don't really have much in the way of anything to say, but I felt like getting a good old fashioned rawr out there.
Image from this site.

An Introduction

So this is it. Me.

A little about me. I'm Dinah. Fondly known in the Wizard Rock world as Dinah Saur. To be honest, I had the nickname Dinah for somewhere near 4 years before I realized that adding a "Saur" on the end turned me into the extinct beast with which I have so long been fascinated. Sometimes I'm just a little slow on the uptake. Similarly, one of my greatest weaknesses is probably the fact that I'm extremely gullible. No, not enough that I'll look it up in the dictionary when you tell me it's been spelled incorrectly, but I sometimes take a bit of extra time to figure out when someone is speaking in jest.

I am a huge fan of Harry Potter and pretty much everything created by Joss Whedon. I am a gamer and enjoy a good graphic novel or interesting comic. I not only listen to Wizard Rock, but I help run a site dedicated to spreading the word and the love of the genre.

More than anything else, I highly doubt anyone will want to read any of this. I don't see myself being interesting enough for people to check my blog or any of it. Despite that, I find it's just nice to have somewhere to let out my thoughts. So enjoy when it comes up!