smiling on foot

I’ve been telling my co-workers how “done” I am with this tag line. It’s on everything! Even this blog! Well, it was more towards the beginning of the year, but I’m a little late with this post. I only notice it because the emails I worked on in January of last year included this slogan so I’m more sensitive to it appearing in ads all around me. I even received a religious calendar in the mail with “New Year. New You.” on the cover. Can we think of something else, people? Or are the marketing geniuses of the world too busy making their co-workers crazy to come up with something new? In my experience, it’s the latter. Speaking of which… I won’t go into details… but just want to say it’s been an interesting 2010 thus far and I’m seriously considering changing my career. What could I do with myself that would not require me to stay at work until 7 p.m. three nights a week? Something that would allow me to have a life? I don’t know where these 5:00-release jobs are, but I can’t seem to find them in my current career. I guess I’ll just keep plugging along and hope that things get better… either with a change in career or without.

I do have a new assistant, however, and she just started this past Tuesday. Training is HARD. I have to use my brain so much more and I barely have time for these hours of training. The hardest part seems to be explaining how the different parts of an email swap out based on what type of customer you are… how to recognize and think about the changing pieces, how to code it, how to set it up in the online tool we use and how to know if you did it right. If you’ve never worked with this sort of technology, it’s tough to wrap your head around. And if you’ve been swimming in it for 5 years, it’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t have much experience in this sort of thing how to figure it out. But it’s her first week and she did pretty well. I’m going to have to think this weekend on a better way to explain dynamic content for her for next week… a “lesson plan” if you will (for all my teacher friends).

Speaking of technology:
My American Express online account just sent me a 2009 summary of expenses. It’s pretty cool how they’ve categorized my spending in 9 different categories: Business Services, Communications, Entertainment, Fees & Adjustments, Merchandise & Supplies, Other, Restaurant, Transportation and Travel. These categories are listed down along the left of the chart and along the top are the 4 quarters of the year of which the spending happened. I’m proud to say I did not use this card TOO much in 2009, but I did falter a couple of times… especially at Christmastime. About $1,000 falls into Merchandise & Supplies and you can expand this category for a more detailed breakdown… where you see this spending was exclusively on clothing. Shocking. Bad, bad LK. The other $700 falls into Business Services but when you break it down the spending is exclusively on Health Care Services. This was all my dental work I had done last fall. How cool that American Express can automatically create this chart? And it’s completely accurate. I love technology. Now I just need to put this S back to zero balance for 2010.

A couple of weeks ago, I used kodakgallery.com’s cool little sidebar app to drag and drop my favorite photos from all my 2009 online photo albums and created a “year in review” of photos. This is always an excellent project. It’s time consuming for sure and I remember last year feeling like I’m never doing this again because it’s so tedious to choose the photos, order the photos to my liking and put little captions on each. But I think the sidebar app made it a little quicker for this year. Of course, the captioning is what takes most of the time, but it’s mandatory in order to tell the story of the year. It took me about 2 hours to put this together and the final product always makes me feel great. No matter how depressed I will be about the cold, snow, work, living with my parents, etc… the Year in Photos is a powerful reminder that my life is pretty damn good.

Click here to see my 2009 year in photos! (Apparently, I attended about a million birthdays in ‘09 – apologies for the lack of variety.)

Now as for 2010:
I’m not going to make any “resolutions” this year, but I do have some general plans. #1 is I’d like to move out of my parents house and support myself like a normal 32-year old (33 in 2 weeks!). I’m afraid to live by myself, but it’s something I’m going to psyche myself up for and force myself to do. Sort of like a “personal challenge” instead of a lame “resolution.” I’m close to paying off one of three college loans and then I’ll start saving for the move. I’m still undecided on the condo vs. apt. decision.  However, I’m leaning towards the apartment after hearing about Xtina’s $3,000 termite damage in her condo and year 2 of water ruining the carpet/wall of KDM’s condo. It’s all their issue that they need to deal with and I think owning has just so much monetary risk that’s scary to take on by myself. (Especially if I’m looking to change my career, right!?) #2 for the new year is just to keep up with my health and try like Hell to get to the gym at least twice a week and continue to eat right. I know that everyone else on the planet has this new year’s goal too, but that doesn’t mean it’s less important. I did really well with it in 2009 for the first time in my life and hope I am able to continue with 2010. #3 is just to continue to enjoy time spent with my friends and my boyfriend. I had been so lonely before I met NF and have had some really good laughs and conversation with him in 2009. I really hope this works out and we have a fun 2010 together too. But, of course, the friends play a big part in my happiness too and will continue to make time to see those smiling faces as well.  Hopefully, with the new assistant, I can do more weeknight outings and have that much more of a more fulfilling life.

We’ll see if the new year brings a new me, I guess!  Happy New Year, Bloggos. :)