A Meat Coma and Some Spendy Habits

 Greetings! 

Another afternoon spent with the Rollofs. They finally got through the divorce so most of the Sad FM storylines are over. 

I've been making some weak attempts to curb my food spending, but apparently it's untenable. I got about $80 worth of groceries and supplies from my Walmart grocery pick-up yesterday. Mostly some staples, but I found I still had a lot from last big haul in Feb of this year.

I mostly got paper and plastic goods, cleaning supplies, condiments and some easy summer eats - popcorn, cereal, tuna, french fries. Unfortunately, I have never been great at bargain shopping for groceries. So I just get it as I need it. This stems from just poor planning, a desire for convenience, and 5 years in a studio apartment with no room for stock piles. 

In April, I had an intensely busy season, so I frequented the hot bar at my local grocery store almost daily for some easy eats. 

That's died down considerably, but then today I bought $40 worth of take out at a bbq place. I wanted to try all the meats! 

I realized I'm not going through things as quickly as I thought. I had 1 roll of paper towel left, so I stocked up, but I think that roll will last me another month or so. Same with some lotion I bought in February. I still haven't opened the new bottle and I was sure I'd be out by now. How do you get  the bottom 1/10 out of the lotion bottle anyway? 

Work at this point is always a trip. I have been finding ways to carve out time during the day to actively not work. It's more a mental game because I still find a reason to log-on at nights and on weekends, so this is ongoing. I read another article on ESI Money that speaks my truth at the moment - the fallacy that if you do good work for your employer you will necessarily get rewarded. It wasn't true at Call Center #1 and it's not true here. I should just call my new job Call Center #3 because that's essentially what I do.  Can you believe it's been a year?!

I've been doing more with reporting from our telephony system so that's a little bit of a new skill - sort of. Not a completely marketable skill, but it's been a fun find for me at least. So not marketable and not profitable. Seems to be on brand with my career choices so far. 

The ESI Money article I was reading was talking about leveraging an external offer to get your company to pay you more. I was hoping to at least have that option with the Med Info Mgr role but in this moment I'm a little disappointed that didn't go as planned.

And then not really hearing back from the internal Med Writing job was a little disappointing.  So there goes that.  I don't think my boss really has the appetite for hearing about it anyway, so I'll just have to find a way to compensate myself in other ways, i.e. less hours. 

I'm about 2 weeks into delineating my daily To Do list into regular To-Do and "Extras." I think just mentally knowing and acknowledging that I'm doing extra work I won't be compensated for helps. So if it's not done by 5p, I can rest a little more easily. And if I log in after 5p to complete it, it's for my own benefit and I know I won't be paid or recognized for it. 

Eventually, I'll move to not doing the things on my Extras list at all, so baby steps. 

I think I just had to realize I wasn't going to have a whole different mindset overnight. 

I have had more appreciation about my total compensation which has helped - the 6% match and the annual bonus.  For next year, I'm setting my expectations much lower and just hoping for 100% of bonus.

I'm not looking forward to sending back some work to the Dinosaur. As has been my fear, this will involve more of me than I wanted. I don't actually know how my other colleagues got roped into it. 

Ongoing goal - try to enjoy the rest of this ride. 

Honestly, I am tired though. I'm out of 100%s to give. I just am. 

I was on Frugalwoods and the latest case study was a family trying to move back to Spain where one of the parents was from. It occurred to me, I wonder if there are websites where people can trade visas.  Like, transactionally...let's get married for the visa. I'm sure there must be Spanish people who want American visas. Is there someone trustworthy who would only do it for the visa. And not try to steal from me. 

I remember Spain and Portugal popping up for places I might retire to. 

I think in terms of Work Goals for this week:

Small Goal: Log off at 1p on Friday (oh I think my boss is off so that should be easy, actually!)

Big Goal: 8 hour day for non Extra work.