Buying a car today

Today is the day I will pay my brother-in-law 600 dollars for his 2004 Toyota Camry. It's in pretty good shape, and it's 10 years newer than the Tempo was, so it's really a good deal. And I know they can really use the money, just like we could really use the car. I hate to let go of 600 dollars, but it's not as if we will get a better chance at a better car. They have been letting us use it for free for a couple of months now, so it is basically time. They offered to let us pay 100 dollars a month for it, but there's really no reason to draw it out like that. I've had a couple of good paychecks and we knew this day was coming, so the money is there for it. The money won't be there later, because my hours keep getting reduced at work.

Oy, money. We have a lot of past due bills we are making payments on. Fifty dollars a month doesn't sound like much, but when you are doing that for a bill here and a bill there and another one over yonder, it adds up. That plus the fact that there aren't a lot of hours for me at work right now means that I'm worried. Of course, we could just not pay them. They can't put us in jail for owing money, but they could put us in jail for bad checks if we paid the bills with money we didn't have. But it would be nice to have some kind of credit rating left, because credit rating gets looked at for lots of things. And there's the whole ethical concept of paying what you owe. I received health care services and education, so it's appropriate that I pay for them. It's just nerve wracking and I want to hide my head in the sand. But I can't do that.

Doing some reading online for my Happiness Project, I came across something in the "Beyond Blue" blog: the idea that you never unlearn progress. There might be times when your footsteps go backwards or that you fall back into old ways of doing things, but the good things you have learned are still in your brain. That's very comforting. I am trying so hard to change right now, and I'm starting new ways of doing things each day, so it is very hopeful to think that they are getting lodged in my neurons. Even if I do go into a downcycle, the good things will be waiting for me to access them, if only I can think of them. Just reading that in the blog today has made a difference in my outlook. I hope that it is true.

Today I will be writing down the time I spend doing different things. The idea is to find out where my time goes. I either need more time or more energy, and hopefully this record will give me an idea of where I need to focus my efforts.

Now it's time to take a walk, before it gets much later in the day. I've already been jumped off shift an hour early, so that's time I wouldn't have had otherwise. I'm going to take advantage of it while I can.