I am taking the plunge and leaving my current job for a new one that I can do from my home office. It isn’t freelance work, but this is the kind of change I need to have happened in my life.
I read an article the other day that talked about switching lanes in your 30s, and I realized that I have hit many of the points brought up. Rather than continuing to loathe the hours I’m away from home, I’m going to start working on my next career move.
Edited 2/10/2022
The owners are set to meet up today, and hopefully, they will change their tune and come to the table with a new offer once this group of meetings is completed. We have progressed to a spot where the owners want to turn to federal mediation, yet the players are not interested in that route. The players have come down from their initial numbers a couple different times, and now it is time for the owners to come up with their offer. This has been dragged on long enough, and it is beginning to look like the 2022 season will not be starting on time.
I watched an interesting video the other day from the guys over at Talkin’ Baseball and they explained in detail why the players rejected the call for federal mediation. I’ll never be able to do their segment justice, so head on over here and watch the video.
It’s been nearly a week since the meeting between the owners and the player’s union of the MLB. There seems to be no second meeting on the calendar, and the world of baseball remains silent. The fans are beginning to get restless. Again. While we all knew the talks that began last week weren’t going to come to an immediate conclusion, I think everyone expected there to be something happening. Trades aren’t being made, players aren’t able to work out and use the sports complex athletic trainers and other staff. This entire shutdown to the world of baseball is so detrimental to the sport itself. It felt like baseball was just gaining momentum again, and here we are, putting the emergency brake on.
Generally, at this time of year, talk is ramping up with the arrival of pitchers and catchers for spring training. Fans would be getting ready to make the trek to the various sites to get the first glimpses of their team in action. Sure the preseason games don’t matter, but it’s still fun to watch baseball. It is so gross to go look for the start date for baseball and see nothing but TBAs marked by all the teams.
The fans want baseball to come back. It’s already a long enough time from the last pitch of the world series to the first one the following season. Can we please just come to an agreement already? I don’t understand why the owners want a shortened season just so they can cram the postseason full of teams, and I don’t know why the two sides want to argue over numbers. Let’s be honest, if you have enough money to buy a baseball team, you have enough money to pay the taxes too.
I realize that 50 likes are nothing to be excited about (for some people), but I need to take advantage of every small success I get. I’ve had this blog for a while now, and until recently, it hadn’t received much attention. To be fair, I wasn’t really dedicated to writing a blog post a day, so it’s no one’s fault but my own that my blog wasn’t growing.
I’m trying out several different writing website systems, and eventually, I will review them, but for right now, I will continue to make this blog a priority. Thank you for reading the different entries and for the likes you’ve given me.
I didn’t intend to continue this subscription, but the renewal month caught me off guard, so I am signed up for another year to receive the Allure Beauty Box. I also have an Ipsy subscription, which I typically like better than the beauty box. Some months the box seems to be a bit empty, or the products are tiny when there is a promise of full-size products. Although Allure claims to send out unique products, I’ve also noticed repeat products.
My first box of 2022 arrived yesterday, and I have to admit I was happy to open up and see what was inside. Although it was a little messy looking, that was easy to overcome once I lined up the items inside and took a better look at what I had.
I can always stand a new brand of eye serum, and I’m really excited to start using every single item in this package. There isn’t a single thing sent out that I wish I could replace with something else. It also looks like all these products are worth the price of what I paid for my subscription. This month I consider it a win!
I only work four days a week (ten-hour days), and I still feel like I have so little time to myself. I have an hour’s drive there and back, and by the time I’ve arrived at my house, I don’t feel like doing anything. I struggle to make dinner for my son and me, and then I attempt to use the rest of my evening hanging out with my kid. Once it is bedtime for him, that’s my cue to also fall asleep. It is next to impossible for me to do anything that I consider a “hobby.”
I feel like all of my coworkers are suffering from burnout. We do our work in a small clinic, and there are only so many patients that we can see in a day. We’ve never had the number of staff we need to accurately assess 50 patients a day, but we do our best. We have a new clinic being constructed, which can’t come fast enough.
With the surge in cases, we see a higher volume of calls from people who are afraid that they have covid. Although many of them have been vaccinated, the second someone sniffles in their household, they are convinced that it is the virus. I wish the media would report each night that if you think you have Covid, you need to take a deep breath and treat it as you would influenza. I’m not saying the two viruses are the same. I am merely being honest in admitting that there isn’t much we can do to treat Covid.
I am ready for the world to go back to normal. I don’t think that’s ever going to happen, but I’m hoping to at least find a new, less stressful career because Covid has made the world of healthcare unbearable.
We are always privy to videos like the one below whenever the snow shows up. Thankfully, this kind of snowstorm didn’t show up until halfway through January. This is a common occurrence, typically, early on in December.
Life in the midwest is impossible without a snowblower. A big snowblower. When there isn’t anything to catch the snow, it sure does pile up fast. The first big snow can be the last one if mother nature deems it so.
I’ve always had a slight interest in bookkeeping, and since I’m looking to one day have my own business, I got the idea to take a course that would teach me more about the subject. After researching, I noticed many different websites recommending the course offered by intuit. With tax season quickly approaching, I thought now would be a great time to dive into the topic. I went to sign up, and it offered me the chance to sign up with Coursera. I decided to try it, although the stiff price of $40 a month made me almost reconsider.
I’m one week into the class, and I really do like it, even if I still feel like the subject isn’t for me. I know that I will never do someone else’s bookwork, but I also realize that I will need to do mine because there is no way I will make enough, in the beginning, to pay someone else to do it. The sections are broken up into small chunks, making them easier to digest. I also like the discussion portion because tons of people seem to be taking the course simultaneously that I am. I don’t typically see anyone replying to others, but people’s responses to the initial question are fun to read. I look forward to getting deeper into the details. As with all topics, once you get past the surface information, you begin to get into the fascinating
Coursera is impressive because it has so many different classes that you can take. While I went there looking for the bookkeeping course, I found a ton of other avenues to investigate. I just enrolled in a class called “Inspiring and Motivating Individuals,” offered through the University of Michigan. All these courses are self-study and, while you’re encouraged to set a weekly goal for completion, you can always change your plans to fit your schedule.
For $40 a month, you get access to many top-notch courses offered by some of the elite universities in the county. Most of these courses are a part of some certificate that you can eventually obtain. I love the access to learning, and I love that all these different courses are available without going to a single one of these schools.
I will definitely be checking in periodically with updates to this product because it seems to have a lot of promise, and I want to share that with everyone.
If you’re interested in checking something out, use this link: here.
As someone who grew up in Iowa and eventually came back to Iowa in adulthood, I can tell you that #iowanice is no longer a thing. When I was a kid, you could expect to have every passing car wave at you, we knew the goings-on of our neighbors, whether good or bad, and everyone was willing to stop and help a car stalled on the side of the road. Back in the 90’s people truly wanted to live up to the expectation that Iowans were more admirable than the citizens of other states.
Before turning 18, I was a rebellious child, and I fled the state for a more southern itinerary: Missouri. I thought I could find something great in the show-me state, and I was eager to prove that I was a hard worker. After ten years of trying my hand at everything I could find (and striking out at everything), I decided to return to Iowa.
The belief that Iowans are friendly is antiquated, and after years of young flight, the people left are rude and unhelpful. Take today, for example. I was able to free my vehicle from the confines of the snowdrift in my driveway, but upon entering the alley, I found myself stuck again. I was right in the middle, people couldn’t miss me, yet no one would help me out. All I needed was a push. One tiny little push on the back of my car, and I knew that I would be able to reach the road and I would be free. For an hour, I sat out there and watched as the cars rolled past. I live next to the post office, and it was pretty fun to watch the cars pull up, drop off their mail, look at me in the rearview mirrors, and then take off down the street. I watched a car pull into the other end of the alley, notice my vehicle stuck at the other end, and they turned around and went back out.
Finally, after admitting that I would not get my car out without assistance, I called my parents. They rescued me like they have countless other times. Family is where you can find excellent, helpful people. The idea that our neighbors are willing to help is no longer accurate, which is quite a sad revelation.
This will be short and sweet:
Until Amazon decides to put out an e-reader with color, their devices are no better than your standard phone. I grew accustomed to using kindle on my phone, and yet, for some reason, I decided that I really needed to get a device that was specifically for reading. I had envisioned taking it to work to always have a digital A&P book handy. I liked the idea of having multiple ways to consume media. Kindle readers are useless if I can’t see the pictures in color.
A lot of the reviews mention the stellar battery life: I am willing to forgo a long battery life if it means I can see the images in color. I want to pull up a picture within one of the books and not have to play a guessing game with what I’m looking at.
Had I been paying better attention when I bought the e-reader, I opted to get a tablet instead. I already need to get a tablet for when I begin homeschooling in earnest, but I would have made that purchase before I got my Kindle Paperwhite.
The device itself is exemplary. It’s lightweight, and it holds a ton of different books. I love the Kindle app because I find numerous other free books beneficial for both my personal and professional life. I wish it could play audio because I assumed I could pair my audible app with the reader. I was wrong.
Overall, skip the e-reader and get yourself a tablet.
I’ve been using the budget planner for two weeks now, and besides its beauty, I’m not sure why I bought it. I think the majority of the issues are an error on my end, but it just doesn’t seem like something that can realistically be used to track your finances.
The bi-weekly budget doesn’t make sense to me like I thought it would. I think I’m someone who needs to see the day-to-day finances, and I’m sure that a planner will cost a ton more money.
Overall, I wouldn’t recommend it because it doesn’t seem very helpful. I have many more bills than the slots allotted for them. I, at some point, hope to be having multiple streams of income, and the pages aren’t very flexible for trying to change the layout. I’m pretty disappointed with this purchase, and while there is a money-back option- I don’t know if it covers the planner once you’ve started writing in it. I plan on chalking this up to experience, and I’ll never be repurchasing it.
The Redd Blog 