33

Yesterday was my birthday. I turned 33. There's nothing particularly spectacular about that age. Nothing important happens. I took the day off yesterday any way, and I did some thinking. I've actually been doing a lot of thinking lately anyway, but I've come to some conclusions, and I'm going to throw them out here to organize and validate them.

1. I don't care about money. I have to have money to survive, (right now,) and it makes life easier, but it is not how I measure success, and it will not make me happy. Toys are nice, but they are just that. I can live without them. I did the corporate money driven thing, and I hated every minute of it. I refuse to go back to it.

2. What does make me happy is making a difference. I want to make my community, my country and my world a better place. I thoroughly enjoy teaching. I like the concept of helping others help themselves. There's something else here I haven't quite worked out, something about the well being of the society. I'm not quite there.

3. I need to be a better steward of the things I have been given. This is a simple statement for a complex set of issues. I need to take better care of my self, physically, mentally, and spiritually. These are things I've been working on, with varying success. I need to provide for my family. For me what this means is I need to be a good husband. I'm pretty sure sometimes I miss the mark. I get so wrapped up in taking care of me that ignore my wife's needs until it's too late. I need to manage my property better. Part of this is maintaining the physical things I have better. I have a plan, and it's getting better, but it's still not where I want to be. The other part is managing money better. This appears to be in conflict with part one, above, but it's not. If I had no debt, money would become less of an issue, and would hold less sway over my life. To this end, I'm trying to live with a budget. It's hard to stay on track. The unexpected rears its head and I keep having to adjust. It's painful, but it appears to be life.

The question is where do I go from here. This little bit is a lot to balance. I have a short term goal, but how do I derive long-term goals from here? It's there already but it's very broad and very vague. I have more thinking to do.