Happy New Year from Nova Scotia where, like elsewhere, we are in the thick of the Omicron wave of the pandemic. I am happy to report I got my vaccine booster two days ago.
The last quarter of the year includes Christmas so it’s often difficult to meet a budget, but I participate in a low-stress gift exchange with family so the shopping (pre-Omicron) was all fun and not a big expense.
In October at the beginning of Q4, I also had more car maintenance* costs: the front brake pads and rotors were replaced, and the winter tires put on. The following week as I was driving through the downtown, I saw a hubcap rolling in traffic in front of me and a pedestrian chasing it. I decided I could trail the car that I thought had lost the hubcap and let the driver know what had happened. I hadn’t committed to how long I was going to follow the car on this little adventure when it turned off the main street. I was able to find the car in a public parking lot and let the driver know where the pedestrian had propped the hubcap. I guessed correctly that they’d just had their winter tires put on.
With some of the monetary gifts I’d received for both my birthday in October and at Christmas, I’d treated myself to a few new hardcover books. But I realized something this week: since moving home almost five years ago, I’ve bought a lot of new non-fiction books and I have not finished about half of them. I realized something else: I wrote about this habit way back in 2014 in the early days of BITNF! I’m all over the place like I am on the Internet. I read a bit here, get distracted, pick up another book, read a bit of it, and repeat. So after donating most of my books in Seattle before moving east, I’ve already started a new collection of unread books!
Well, I like to challenge myself (no, this is not a resolution) so here’s my new-book challenge: for the entire year, I will not buy any new books (even with gifted money). I will borrow, use the library, use the Libby app (online library books), buy used, but mainly READ WHAT I ALREADY HAVE.
Two other habits I have acknowledged before and are related to each other are: 1) procrastinating and 2) driving myself crazy trying to time-manage the heck out of my day. After meeting my goal through September to publish twice a month on BITNF, things fell apart in Q4 due purely to distraction and procrastination and I only managed once-a-month posts. So, after buying another inspiring time-management book (that isn’t supposed to really be a time-management book), I’m ready to make another commitment: even if this book turns out not to be THE ONE that will CHANGE MY LIFE, it is still the last time-managementish book I am buying. Ever. And if it is THE ONE, I’m sure you readers will be the first to know.
*Expenses on 16-year old car still worthwhile at this point.
References and related links:
- CY21Q4: Calendar Year 2021, Fourth Quarter (October to December). Calendar Year distinguishes from a company’s Financial Year (FY) which has a different start date than January 1st.
- simpler-living report: CY21Q3 (post #172)
- to done (post #99)
- (re)learning how to read (post #15)