A month ago I took off “suddenly.” The thing to know about me, is I never actually do anything suddenly. Having been alone for most of my life I plan things out with great detail in my head, so when I act it looks very sudden.

The visit was months of discussion, months of persuasion and me resisting. Actually I had planned to go since April, but things didn’t work. Yet this new factor was both a temptation and a reason to resist. One resistance was budget in nature, but I will explain that later.

On July 3rd a classmate came to town from Las Cruces for a family wedding. A third classmate joined us, and we went out to eat around the corner from her hotel. Soon we were joined by her husband. He had already eaten so he stayed for a drink and left, then her brother showed up, a friend on facebook.

The 5 of us soon went out to a club, her brother and I danced the night away at the Mambo Club. We laughed and acted like we were a couple (see the image above). So the next week, I asked my classmate about him. She didn’t say much, but a few weeks later she said to talk to him.

The conversations were few, but comfortable. Often with him encouraging me to visit his sister and him in New Mexico. Finally in November, my resistance broke, and I am glad it did. Yes, it was nice to get away from home. But truth is I had a lot of fun, and all we did was hang out, like a first date (that lasted 2 days) Well, I guess it was… and soon we will try a 4 day second date.

Unfortunately for him, I have dated more than a few jerks, so he’s got a mountain to climb. Which really isn’t fair to him; but, something tells me he’s up to the task. 😉 Course this is going to be a bit weird if he reads my posts… although he’ll probably laugh.

Now drifting back to the first resistance and the related. Part of the disillusionment with taxes and bookkeeping is the pay has not gone up while the bosses have gotten progressively meaner. In my 20s I shopped for designer labels on sale, although I could buy them full price. My savings was nice.

In my 30s after a bad business deal, the business partner made off nice :). Followed by a period when no one would hire me, my savings disappeared, debts appeared, in droves.  A few years of work helped, but when I was laid off in April, I decided to quit in July (long story).  It was time to follow a 30+ year dream of being a writer, but the starving artist is NOT part of the dream.

I want to able to pay bills, even better to buy things again, without worry. But after New Mexico, my urge and urgency has grown. My debts need to be paid off, the sooner the better.

So what’s the plan o’ action? First are goals, $1500 to raise before the end of the year, $5000 by February 1st. That will be great forward progress.

• Sell my Wendi Friesen and Joe Vitale stuff on eBay to raise money ASAP (see if there is more stuff I can sell) http://bit.ly/6oBTJQ

• Promote my products more on http://RockstarGuideBooks.com,

• Produce new products.

• Find JV partners.

• Write articles.

• Do more graphics. I do graphics for fun but it’s a little bit of income.

• Offer ghost writing

• Make the ex-boyfriend pay his debt to me.

• Believe.

• BELIEVE.  (worth repeating)

• Make it so… (Star Trek: TNG)

So if you need to learn something in particular, have ideas to raise some funds, ideas of what I can sell, please leave some comments. If you know (or even better are) a potential JV partner, please leave a comment.

MJ Schrader