Well, first of all, I should change the title to "The Weeks in Review" since it's been two weeks since I've reviewed my progress on my goals for 2012. I've been on the computer constantly during the last two weeks, but my focus has been on the development and content of our church's website.
Enough about that....let's get to this!
1. Financial - one week good....one week not so good. It seems like this has been the trend lately. I've come to some conclusions regarding this. #1 -- I can often put off buying necessitates (groceries, gas, etc.) for a few days to make sure that we meet the budget for that week. However, when I do that, it affects the budget for the next week, and we usually exceed the budget. #2 -- it's hard to say "No" to my children. Many weeks the budget is surpassed because we have had extra expenses that were a direct result of helping out/loving on our children and grandchildren: tanks of gas, pizzas, train tickets, McDonald's, etc.
For example, I knew that this past week would be a challenge to our budget. I had put off buying groceries and a tank of gas for a few days to make sure we made the previous week's budget. After filling up the gas tank and the pantry on Monday, we had already spent more than half of the weekly budget. I also knew that I had a hair appointment scheduled. With this added expense, I knew that the budget was going to be tight. Even knowing this, we made a dinner date with our son and his family to take them out to eat on Friday evening. Before we went to dinner, we had $23 left in the budget. I knew that there was no way that we could feed six of us on $23 at the restaurant to which we were going. The cost of dinner was $50. At the end of the week, we were over our weekly budget by $51!
We're five months into 2012. Because I was getting a little frustrated with the good/not good trend, I decided to take a few minutes and get the big picture on how we are doing. So, I went back to Jan 1st and calculated how much our credit card debt was on that date. Then, I calculated what our credit card debt is today. We have been able to reduce our credit card debt by over $3000 in that time frame!!! That's worth celebrating! :)
I don't expect the next five months to mirror that success. I know that the reduction in debt is a direct correlation to the amount of officiating that my husband does. His officiating season is about to be concluded and doesn't really begin again until November. So, the goal in the next five months is to not increase credit card debt. Part of the strategy is to have money saved up for the month of September when we have to pay property tax, car insurance, and house insurance -- an extra $1500 -- when we don't have extra income being generated by his officiating. I am happy to report that we are well on our way to having this money available!
2. Spiritual -- once again, my self-evaluation would be good/not so good. I'm not totally ignoring spending time in the Word, but I'm not in it consistently every day. When I get absorbed into a project, my focus in life is that project -- it doesn't matter what type of project it is....making a video, planning a wedding, writing a news story, developing a website. You guessed it -- right now I am completely absorbed by the website! When that happens, often other areas in my life get neglected, including time spent with my Saviour.
So, my struggle is balancing a high-priority item that has a deadline (the website) with a high-priority item that does not seemingly have a deadline (time in the Word). And, yet, this past week, I've had a great time of worshipping my God, listening to Christian music that led me to worship! And, the reading that I did in Ephesians was SO practical and timely for me this past week! And, my prayer time was an example of "praying without ceasing" -- thinking about and praying for others at random times during the day.
I've finished Ephesians and am now headed into Philippians -- my favorite book in the Bible!!
3. Personal -- I'm all set to begin my classes. In fact, I got up early (well, early for me) on Saturday with the idea that I was going to spend the day on the computer, ignoring the website and working on classwork. I logged into the website for the class, put in the access code, and was promptly told that the access code is not valid until May 29th -- the date that the class is scheduled to begin. Whoops! I was sure that our professor had told me that he was going to let us start early! Oh, well, I changed my direction for the day back to the website and got some really cool things done on it! :)
So, Tuesday night....it will be begin! My husband is in Fort Wayne overnight on Tuesday this week so he won't even mind that I am on the computer all night! :) As you might recall, I have two classes that I am supposed to finish in a six-weeks time frame. I want to get off to a quick start, knowing that this next weekend, my computer time will be limited because I'm babysitting our youngest grandchild!!! At 2-1/2 months, she doesn't really like to play on the computer!
Working on the content of the website, I realized that I'm doing a lot of writing. The writing is a combination of news story writing and non-fiction writing. When I'm working on a webpage
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