Ordinary day...

Work is work, moving forward on some of my professional goals though, and that feels good. I am happy with how 2008 is proceeding thus far. Work on my personal goals is going well, and the best part is, I'm allowing myself to "fail" at certain things and not beating myself up over it. This all by itself is a major accomplishment and an unwritten "success measure" of where I want to go in the future.

I've had a very productive day from a goals perspective. I need to go pick up a shipment at my mailbox tomorrow after work, however, as my Options Trading courseware has arrived. One of my goals for 2008 is to learn Options Trading. In the past, with various fantasy stock games, I've shown great intuition. Now, I want to educate myself on the various techniques and "dabble" a bit to see if this is a viable way to increase my overall wealth. We'll see. It's possible I may learn what it's all about and see minimal success and decide it's not worth my time. Or, it might wind up encouraging me to retire even earlier than the 10-yr. goal that I've set for myself.

Retire. Heh, I'm funny. When I say "retire" - I mean retire from NASCO, not "stop working for a living." I'll most likely be like my uncle Gene, who said, "The day I stop working is the day they put the nails in my coffin." He did just that. He passed away a few years ago, well into his 80s. It's not because I will not have enough money to live comfortably, I will, it's because I'll just need to be mentally active or die of boredom.

I submitted PTO requests for January, February and March amounting to 25% of my accrued PTO. I'm going to try to keep everything balanced throughout the year so I don't get burned out and start using PTO because I'm sick from pushing myself too hard, etc. I'm going to take the week of January 21-25 off, partially because S has his birthday that week, and I'm hoping we'll get to spend time with one another. (I can dream, can't I?)

Ciao for now.