The first work day of the New Year is coming to a close. I didn’t spend too much of the day properly working. It is a holiday after all. I did spend a lot of the day realizing that I slacked off way too much over the past few months.

Work really picked up. So did my social calendar. Combine that with the well known fact that I can really only handle two full time things at a time (in this case, work and social calendar), and law school seems to have suffered. It hasn’t beennoticeable yet, but with two weeks to go before the finals I did an audit of what I am confused about and what I don’t fully understand.

That list is far too long for my liking. I think a good deal of my problem came from merely going to class and doing the readings. I have a pretty good idea, generally, of what I’m supposed to know, but some of the finer, nuanced points are escaping me. I didn’t really brief all the cases I should have so I’ve forgotten some of the reading. Usually things stick well in my mind, but some of this legal writing from the 18th century can be a bit dense. Thus, it starts to leak from my gray matter.

The next two weeks are going to be devoted to diligent studying so that I come through contracts alright. Then comes criminal law which I’ll pay more attention to. Not because I want to or find it more interesting, but contracts showed me where my study habits are lacking.

Failure is a pretty solid motivator. I’ll need to prune my social situations I think. That’s a shame. I could use some solo time though. I have a hard time saying no, and sometimes just disappearing helps that situation. It breaks other’s habits of asking you to constantly do things. I like having the ball in my court as opposed to being at the beck and call of others. I’m just selfish in that way. Virtuously of course.

In other news, one event I will be attending will be the Young Dems inauguration bash at the W. Swanky hotels with martinis and suits are things that are right up my alley. Plus all the girls wear evening gowns which are both slinky and classy. Can’t beat that combination.

For many of us, the holidays have lost some of the luster they held as children. It’s just not the same being an adult, closing in on 30 and going to Christmas at your childhood home. Yet, it seems to be much the same for Mom. Which is fine. It’s why I still go.

A full half of my Mom’s brothers and sisters never really had families of their own. So for them, despite their generation, Christmas morning seems to hold the same sense of wonder it always has. Without starting their own family, their nuclear relationship remains with their siblings. I’m not really sure how that’s supposed to work.

My brother who is engaged to be married this spring seems to have made the transition smoothly away from “our family” to more or less, “his family.” It’s not as though he’s not in the family or anything like that, but there’s a recognizable change in allegiances. Which is normal and completely understandable.

I sort of wonder what’s going to happen at Christmas when all of the grand kids move into that latter realm. Ten years in the future, what’s it all going to look like. I really feel sorry for my Mom, who always feels responsible for hosting the spread. I don’t think that’s going to change when her kids have families of their own because there will still be the siblings. Life plays out in the most peculiar ways.

I don’t work well when it’s cold. I’m not really sure why, but I’m just not geared for it. I think all the blood I have pools in my core and renders my brain useless. Not to mention my digits. It’s nearly impossible to type when it’s cold. Today it’s cold.

I had grand aspirations for the day. I have two new projects in the works that I would like to have launched by 2009, but it doesn’t look like I’m going to get very far with that today.

I think if I lived in a climate that was generally cooler I would do better. I would certainly own sweatshirts and the like. As it stands now I’m shivering in our hovel of an office praying the heater will actually light. While I haven’t done anything productive, I have thought about a couple of things I’d like to write.

The first is a retrospective look at 2008. I didn’t accomplish everything I had wanted to, but I did get a couple of loose ends tied up and opened a new can of worms in law school. That was certainly a long time coming. Second, I’m going to make some Jim related predictions for the new year. Goals if you will that have quantifiable and measurable milestones. If I’ve learned anything from working where I do this year its that a lack of milestones means a lack of progress. The two are absolutely causally related I’ve decided. More on that later, but it’s safe to say we’re not going to be implementing milestones at the office any time soon. Seriously, hitching your success to the whims of others is just about the dumbest thing one can do. I should know, I’ve been doing it for two straight agonizing years.

Anyway, enough of this randomness. I thought that rambling would get my mind off just how chilly it is in here, but that doesn’t seem to be working.

Contrary to popular belief, I don’t like clutter. I don’t like the idea of being a packrat, of keeping everything I’ve ever owned and trying to find some nook or some crannie to place it in. That being said, my apartment has way too much clutter. Too many books, too much paperwork, too many wires and miscellanious pieces of junk line the walls and fill the drawers of my one room hovel.

It’s gotten me to thinking about why we end up with too much stuff. I think a good deal of the attitude stems from habitually not having any money. I’m doing better now, but for the longest time I was in a pay check to pay check status wherein I was never sure I would be able to afford anything. Any material good that is. For example, I was going through my closet looking for stuff to get rid of and I found, much to my dismay a little thought cropping up inside my head. There was a sense in which I should hold on to something merely because I’d spent money on it. So rare, my having money, that the mere expenditure of this medium of exchange had added some value to these items.

And that is frankly retarded.

So this week I’m going to be getting rid of things. Things I never use, never have used and never will use. There’s no reason for me to have what I have. I’ve been lugging around a box of promotional materials from a real estate training course I never completed. For three years. That makes no sense.

Wish me luck and wish me an empty dumpster.

One thing I’ve never really understood was the concept of working while being sick. In my own case, when I’m really sick, I can’t turn out quality work product. I can go through the motions and churn out something sub-par for sure, but all that really does is prolong getting better and secures a crappy outcome for whatever it is I’m working on.

Yet everyone does it. You’re expected to do it. I suppose I would understand that mentality if you could work while being sick and not have a degradation in your output, but even that seems wrong. That’s just a form of masochism.

I shouldn’t say everyone, because I’m painting with a broad brush, but far too many people for my liking. When did we become so obsessed with physically being somewhere that we completely left out the fact that physically being somewhere isn’t in fact the work… the product is.

I’ve never relished the idea of traveling for work. Work isn’t (well it isn’t supposed to be) such a high priority that it endangers the other social activities and commitments that I have going on at any given time. It’s bad enough having more to do with less time, but to combine that with being away from my own bed seems somehow cruel.

That being said, it’s nice to be thought of as important. And there’s a certain dollar value attached to a work trip that specifically quantifies that level of importance.

Anyway, aside from work I’ve been catching up on school. Those two activities have more or less come to dominate my calendar of late. I’m okay with that since they’re important, but I feel like I haven’t really learned anything new lately. Contracts is sort of a carry over from paralegal classes and work is well, work.

My thirty day personal challenges have been going well. Waking up early and exercising. I think for the next one I’m going to learn a marketable skill. Perhaps marketing. Who knows.

The waking up early has been going fairly well. I’ve been getting up, evaluating and showering early. It’s been a nice change of pace that’s freed up a lot of much needed prep time.

On the flip side, I’m noticeably more tired that I was before. I was going to attribute this to a simple lack of sleep, but there’s really no real reason I should require as much sleep as I was getting. Or if I really do require it, that’s, in itself, not a long term possibility.

I’ve been reading up on the quality of sleep and it’s relationship to exercise. Energy begets energy and all that.

Which is to say that the second of my thirty day challenges to promote a better Jim is to exercise regularly. I was thinking I could get that done in the mornings, but really, I don’t have much luck getting up and immediately exerting myself. I’m going to try in the evening starting this evening. Mondays are usually pretty good for starting something new.

I think that as one gets older the importance of choosing the right couch increases dramatically. When anyone first moves out, the first thing they have to find is usually a couch. It’s the central focus of any sort of sitting that is going to take place in the house / apartment. Obviously, if you don’t have a couch, say you have a series of chairs, you’re going to look like a weirdo. Something is communal about a couch that several chairs simply cannot convey.

While it may be the first thing to find, it’s also, by far, the easiest item to acquire. Because you don’t have any standards. Any couch will fit the bill nicely. If you’re moving out into a one bedroom you may not even be using the couch as your central sitting apparatus. So, any couch that happens to come your way is going to be your couch.

Last year when I moved out of my 3 bedroom apartment that I shared with various roommates and into my own one bedroom, I was once again forced to locate a couch. I found a slightly used one that happened to be in great condition. For the past year, I thought I’d found a gold mine. That was until about three weeks ago when I finally slept on the couch.

I was watching a movie and dozed off. When I awoke the next morning I discovered that this couch is far too soft for my tastes and that manifested itself through an intense pain throughout the middle of my back. Lateral pain that runs around the back of my ribs.

Maybe I’m just getting older, but the importance of the right couch has taken on a significance I never thought I would attribute to any piece of furniture, let alone one I rarely use. In my apartment, unless someone is over, the couch goes almost entirely unused. I have club chairs I use with regularity or I’m sitting at my desk. Yet when I look at that couch now, all I see is the discomfort it has caused. I’m going to try covering it, thus masking my associative reflexes. We’ll see.

I’m four days into my thirty day challenge of waking up early and I have to say it’s been going fairly well. Around 5 each day, although yesterday I got up and out of bed at 5:36am which was something of a defeat. It was cold. The predawn cold was something I hadn’t really factored into my plan. I’m going to need some early morning sweatpants and sweatshirts to deal with this.

I’ve been thinking, with my new found time, about how and why I’m working like I am. I’ve been caught up in the day to day rigmarole lately and doing so has made me lose some focus as to the ends of my endeavors. Why law school, why working so much at work, where I want to be… what are my goals?

Working in the trenches without keeping eyes on the 5 year prize means a lot of spent energy. Spending a lot of energy without a lense through which to focus it just slows down accomplishment. I realize I’ve been doing that a lot lately. I’ve realized that I’ve been frustrating a lot of what I’ve been trying to get done, be it through having one too many cocktails or just not thinking before I work frantically. I’ve been frenetic without foresight which, in my humble opinion, is a less than a stellar way to work. I know it’s an exhausting way to live. Simply waking up early in the morning isn’t really going to fix that.

The Thanksgiving week was something of a catalyst for my refocusing. I’m fairly certain I’m going to get back on track this month. I don’t mean to imply that I’ve been losing ground, but I have without question been sitting on a plateau for a month or two longer than I would have liked. A comfortable rut developed of my doing the absolute minimum and that’s no way to get ahead.

So, the next goal is to set a list of goals that are compliant with my five year plan. Something quantifiable that I can reach as if it were a sales goal. I think unless the goals are quantified, billable hours, account balances, etc. you have a hard time reaching them. In fact, they’re less a goal than an aspiration at that point. I guess my next goal is to quantify my five year aspirations into attainable (or at least theoretically attainable) goals.

I spent the vast majority of my holiday weekend either driving or working. There was a nice two or three hour break when I sat down to a somewhat awkward dinner at my brother’s fiance’s grandparent’s home. Sitting there eating a delicious meal I couldn’t help but wonder how I ended up there. It was a nice time and I felt welcome, but the circumstances were a bit odd. I wasn’t really relaxed, which I think is the crux of just about any vacation.

The day after Thanksgiving wasn’t really any better in the relaxation department. I spent the day working in my hotel room on a bid that’s due on Tuesday. Saturday we spent in the car driving back from Carson City, which was ten hours of non relaxing travel and today I have been working solidly on the same bid since 7am.

I think that my work/life balance has become somewhat askew. I’m not really comfortable with the level of work I’ve been doing. I’ve become ensconced firmly within the rat race… something I really didn’t think I’d do. And having done so, it’s not as though I’m really producing great work product. I’m working very hard at spinning my wheels, or so it feels. This is the exact opposite of the efficient work model I’ve always prided myself on having. If something is scheduled to take eight hours and you can finish it in four, why work the extra four hours?

I’m not sure if there’s a corollary here or not, but I was thinking about Quantum Psychology, intention manifestation, the Secret, etc. All of these quasi-philosophies that have the Universe as an active agent in our lives. While I’ve never really liked the pseudo religious aspects, one thing always stuck with me about those “programs,” throw religion in if you like as well. They all have some serious reliance on the notion that it takes people about a month, or thirty days, to develop a behavior habitually.

Personally, as it stands now, I like most of my bad habits. Having a drink, watching the occasional television show, etc. But that stands in stark contrast to the fact that most of my good habits have been lost to an unregulated and grueling work schedule. The unpredictable nature of work has made it all but impossible to maintain my good habits (exercise, writing, reading, studying, extra income generation) with any real success rate.

If this blog is going to be good for anything, and I have serious doubts as to it’s worthiness in my life, then it’s going to be good for accountability. I would like to be able to keep track of what I’m doing, and share that personal accountability in a public arena. For all my protests to the contrary, for some reason, I do care what others think. I shouldn’t… or so I’m told, but high school stuck with me in that regard and I think the publicness of the accountability is going to prove more useful.

I think with tomorrow being the first of the month, it’s as good a time as any to start making some habitual changes and to regain some semblance of control over my time. I’m running myself ragged and that’s not good. So, first, I’m waking up early… at 5, with a little help from Garrett’s suggestion.

Meaning that the next post on here should be shortly after 5am tomorrow morning. Then I’ll go from there.