I got a bit off track.  Focus went *somewhere* else and my rah rah new life faded into a bit of a 'poor me' slump.  Obviously I have nothing to whine about.  I’m in excellent health, I’m at a good weight, my child is thriving (and adorable), I am working full time making the most money ever and I have a roof over my head blah blah blah.

Yet, I’m still not fulfilled.  I don’t exactly see this as a bad thing.  It’s what drives me, what motivates me to keep going and bring ‘better’ into my life.  I don’t want too much, just to live a life at my leisure and have the opportunity to do things that I want, instead of have to.

When I ran my “Dollars & Sense Divas Money Group” in 09/10, we had a session on Vision Boards by the lovely Trish and with paper and markers in hand, I set off to make one of THE best vision boards I could come up with.  It would have magazine cut outs, appropriate quotes and block letters in different colors to outline my future life.

By the time I was done, it looked like a bad cut and paste job and I’m not even going to insult a five year stating that it looked like a Kindergartener had completed it.  It was ugly.  It was even more ugly when I had the ‘reveal’ session with my Divas to see how creative they were with their boards and they all looked FABULOUS. 

My sad little vision board with it’s luxury SUV, motorhome and café pictures was thenshoved in a closet, never to be displayed proudly.  Where is it now?  It has been repurposed into something.  That’s right…I threw it away (threw away = recycled).  A bit dramatic but hey I was going through a very stressful time and my fantastic future looked bleak and miserable.

Well that was a year ago (which I just realized now) and I’m on to bigger and better things and my life is definitely not bleak nor miserable.

So it’s time to get back on track and start making these dreams a reality.

I am in transition.  I am working full time but my brain is not on work tasks.  It’s on building a new business I just registered last month.  It’s determining next steps and how I will make this the bestest business ever!  It’s about networking and coming up with ideas.  It’s absolutely terrifying and thrilling at the same time.  (Kinda like child birth).

So while I’m still in the ‘seed’ stage, I’m doing a lot of background planning.  Stuff you won’t hear about through my blogs.  Not yet.  But I’ll share soon.

Oh yes, back to the goals.  SO in order to keep me focused, I created a few documents that outline different  areas of my life:

Relationship (or lack thereof), money, Mason, health and career.

Then I thought long and hard about each topic and how I wanted to improve my life over the next 12 months.  This is what I came up with:

Relationship – oh hmm, this actually didn’t make the cut.  I have never really met any boyfriend ‘out of the blue’.  It’s always been through online dating or speed dating…something resulting from the Internet.  No more. I’m done with that.  I want fate to introduce me to my soul mate.  So until that happens, I’m fine being single.

Money – More of, is usually what everyone wants but it never is a blessing.  Somehow bills always seem to gobble any extra money that comes your way.  So instead of focusing on more, I’m focusing on directing it to one place.  DEBT.  Yes, that ugly word.  The one word that I’m obsessed about.  With my excel spreadsheets, consistently monitoring bank accounts and living like a poor person so I can get rid of this horrible cloud hanging over me (Goal #1).  I have approximately $16k left to pay off and I’ve given myself 12 months to do so.  With a tax return in 2012, $1k devoted each month and a reduction in Mason’s daycare costs (as he’ll turn 3), I KNOW I can do it.  Unfortunately it means penny pinching, wearing old clothes and not going out much.  The payoff? August 2012 I will have an EXTRA $1000 each month to do whatever I wish with.  SO far the plans are to use one month towards Laser Eye Surgery (Goal #2).  Then put more money towards my RRSP contributions (Goal #3)

Mason – Masey obviously isn’t a goal but he’s my #1 focus and priority.  I’d do anything for him and I’m working very hard to ensure he has a happy and healthy life. 

Health – After completing my makeover challenge in the Fall of 2010, I was taught how to improve my eating habits which ultimately resulted in about 15lbs lost.  (I swear it’s more but the scale disagrees).  The shape of my body changed and for that I’m grateful as my self image improved quite a bit.  The only thing left to focus on slimming down (opposed to reducing the # on the scale). The dreaded Mummy tummy.  Some women have amazing bodies.  They stretch their initially flat stomach to accompany a large basketball and post birth – it disappears back into a flat stomach.  Aside from plastic surgery I have NO idea how this is possible.  Where the hell are your stretch marks?  Ridiculous.  Blessed with the curvy body I was given, I don’t have a miracle stomach and after eating a huge heavy dinner, my 4 month pregnant stomach returns, except I’m not pregnant. Oh the dread.  Anyhow, sorry for the rant (will blog on this later).  This would be (Goal #4).  Achieving this goal would include magic pills, ahem, I mean exercise...of some sort....some time...oh gee, this one will be tough.

Career – Ah yes, the other constant thing on my mind.  From reading my posts from November onwards, you would know that I’ve been struggling with my career.  To be honest, I haven’t enjoyed my position since 2005.  I was an Account Manager, single and travelled often. I loved it.  The economy got wobbly and I bailed.  Going through series of jobs that were ultimately bad decisions.  Okay, I know most of it wasn’t my fault but *I* took the jobs!  So being laid off gave me lots of time to think (when not spending 8hrs a day submitting resumes) and the common theme in my brain was, “There has to be more to life than THIS.”  I started throwing the idea of becoming an Entrepreneur.  The more I thought, the more I liked.  So (Goal #5) is making my business a reality, not a dream and quitting my ‘job’ to run it.

Car – I guess this falls under ‘money’ but I’ll give it a new label.  I really like my car, it’s a 2003 Toyota Corolla Sport.  It was the new model after Toyota abandoned the old ‘lady’ model and went sporty.  As soon as I saw it in a magazine, I knew I had to have one.  So in 2004, I bought one.  I traded my trusty 1993 Toyota Tercel (that lovingly spewed blue smoke wherever it went, so embarrassing) for it’s  newer cousin.  From the time I bought it to 2009, I loved this car.  It never had anything wrong with it.  Then I went on mat leave, new baby and the tranny decides to die.  With literally no money (hence the debt), $3,000 went on my visa so I could keep this car running. 

Luckily it hasn’t had any problems since (I should HOPE not) but thinking ahead I need a bigger vehicle.  Everytime I pull Mason out of his carseat, BONK goes his head on the doorframe.  He’s not THAT tall (3 ft at 2 years) but it’s clear that eventually he’ll grow more, acquire tall-ish little friends and suddenly my trusty 4 door isn’t going to cut it.  (Side note to new parents considering upgrading, SUV all the way.  You *need* the extra cargo space !). Vehicle of choice? For now it’s the 2011 Kia Sorento.  My parents  bought one and I love driving it.  It’s very roomy and Mason loves being high up enough in the back seat so he can see out the windshield.    Buying a new car would be (Goal #6).  Now this goal comes with a catch.  Paying off quite a large sum of debt is a great feeling but I can’t justify purchasing a new car at at least $25k only to do it all over again.  Soooo, I may just wait til the Corolla dies and save up (there is a new concept) for my new ride.  Oh and it won’t be new off the lot, it will be used (new to me). 

Another money related goal, okay two but they are farther off in the distance.

Vacation (Goal #7).  No definite plans yet, not even sure where, how long but my thoughts are 2 weeks somewhere nice or a Disney cruise for a week with my little man.  This is something I WILL do next year (or I may just go crazy).

And finally…

(Goal #8) Buying my first home.  At this point it seems the furthest off and I highly doubt this will happen in the next year (or maybe…who knows).  It really depends on what city I’ll be living in and how my business thrives!  I’m not ruling anything out but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do (Preferably with a husband) but life doesn’t always plan out how you want.   I have a decent down payment set aside, being ever so patient in it's little bank account. 

So now that I have these out in the open and now on paper (I improvised on a vision board).  I will be proudly displaying them in my home and crossing them off with a HUGE jiffy marker when each is complete. 

Can’t wait to say that I identified my goals, reached them and came up with better ones!

Here is to my journey…