Posts Tagged ‘money’

Hi… I was wondering if you had time to talk about God.

But first, let’s talk about the economy.

Normally, as I sit down to write this blog, I try to pretend that “the economy isn’t happening”… although, ironically, even Johnny Truant has recently been seen making occasional posts about the economy.

Sometimes, though, I have to face the facts.  Those facts are:

• Teachers in my system are being asked to “voluntarily donate” part of their salary to help offset our system’s budget shortfall.
• When teachers leave the system for any reason, their positions are not being filled with new hires (we can’t afford them, but that will increase class size).
• If I do have a job, the local school system may opt not to supplement the state’s salary I earn (resulting in thousands of dollars less for teaching more students… see above).
• There is no absolute guarantee that I or my wife will have a job next year anyway.
• Obama’s tax cut has added a tiny bit to my monthly paycheck, which may help offset a fraction of my lost income, but it has also significantly reduced the income of the government which helps pay me… probably resulting in a smaller education budget in years to come, which will (over the long term) most likely reduce my earnings by several times the tax decrease.  Save $50 (approximation) per month now so that I can lose $5000 (pure speculation) per year later… that’s the spirit…

At times like this, there’s one thought that does offer a little comfort.

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

(Matthew 6:28-31)

I’m toiling, and I’m spinning, and I’m doing the best I can for myself… but it’s nice to remember that God’s got my back.

I hope that this thought offers you some comfort as well in these rough times.

(Image credit and license)

One of my oldest, strongest addictions is taking me apart again, brick by brick.

 I could spend time blaming my suppliers and enablers… but I know that really, I am to blame.  It’s my problem, my issue, and no one can take the responsibility away from me.

And now, because of this addiction, I am going to commit the cardinal sin about which I have been warned… against which I have been cautioned… despite all the reasons why I shouldn’t.

To satisfy my born-again need for all things Lego, I will be starting a second blog.  (Ahh, Lego bricks… even better than colored duct tape…)

(It’s awful, I know.)

I know all the reasons why a second blog is a horrible idea.  I know it will provide yet another demand on my already thinly-stretched time.  I know that I’ve only recently returned to this blog after a few weeks of ignoring it (and you, my loyal readers… yes, all three of you).

I’m doing it anyway, and this time I’m going whole-blog — er, “hog”… dabbling in SEO, networking, and similar time-consuming ways of getting “biggified.”  Only, since it’s Lego, it’s more like “Duplofied.”

I’m even going to monetize (somehow… still working on the details) to benefit (hopefully) from the social media marketing I’ll be doing.  I don’t actually expect to earn much… the income will more likely be “minifigures” than “six figures”… but you never know.  If I do make some money, I could use it to buy my wife a nice gift… like some of the classic Paradisa sets she keeps talking about.

Just to make absolutely certain that my last shred of integrity is thrown to the wind, I’m even going to write an occasional post here promoting my new Lego blog.  In fact, I just did.

I know.  Put that way, it makes me want to say horrible, nasty things about myself.

PLEASE don’t give up on me!  I can change!  I can return to the old devil-may-care, keywords-aren’t-important, who-needs-money-anyway Aylad you all know and love!  I can!  I can!  I…

…will keep you informed of the details as things progress.  (C’mon, it’s not like I’ll actually make any money off of it anyway.  People won’t leggo of their cash just because I ask nicely.  Also, does this post, in combination with the one about getting rich quick, make me seem like even more of a hypocrite?  Yes?  Cool…)

I’ll also let you know if I come up with any more horrible Lego puns like the four above…

As a general rule, I don’t like people who think they can “get rich quick.”  They annoy me.  This includes people who claim that they’ll be millionaires before their thirtieth birthday.  They generally claim that this isn’t a get-rich-quick mindset, since 30 years of age won’t come for, like, six months or more… but they still have that… je ne sais quois… that bloody cockiness in their stride that says “who needs a career?  I have a glib tongue and a plan, baby, a plan.”

Remember that fellow from the Beetle Baily comic strips?  Cosmo was his name.  Wikipedia describes him as “Camp Swampy’s sunglass-wearing resident ‘shady entrepreneur.’”

Yeah.

So this, of course, makes me a total hypocrite when I come up with a new plan (yeah, baby, a plan) for a business venture that is 100% guaranteed to earn fat profits.

Even though I only come up with good plans.

Until I realize the fatal flaw (which usually is the fact that expenses would far outweigh any possible income from the venture).

Like a few weeks ago, I had (in a brilliant flash of insight) an idea that enabled me to stop spam from being posted to this blog.

I had been getting at least a dozen spammed comments per day (pathetically low, I guess, compared to most blogs, but enough to seriously frustrate me).

I implemented my new anti-spam idea.

In the three or four weeks since, I’ve had about three spam messages posted.

Three.  When it should have been three hundred.

I thought I’d found the perfect product… a nearly 100% effective spam blocker (I don’t mean a spam filter, like Akismet… I mean a spam blocker, where the software never even sees the spam).

I was going to make thousands.  Hundreds of thousands.  Millions.

Until I realized that a WordPress plugin for this would effectively be open source (the code would be easily viewable by anyone who wanted to install the same blocker without paying me) and I’m not sure that any value would be added by any related services I could offer.

So unless someone wants to pay me to install a few lines of code in their WordPress theme…

$5,000,000?  $50,000?  $5?  (*psst… it works on other applications too, like forums and such!*)

…I guess it’s back to finding the venture capital for that Spanish-language movie theater I want to open in a local Hispanic-immigrant neighborhood.

(I’ll be rich!)

Good things come...

Patience is not a virtue I often witness in people these days.  Our instant-gratification culture has eliminated the need for patience in so many ways that we rarely practice it at all; combine our impatience with our increasing selfishness and the results can be devastating.

In my college classes we sometimes discussed a method of studying the ability to delay gratification.  A child would be placed in a room, sitting at a table.  On the table were a handful of M&Ms.  The child was told by the researcher that he would be left alone for several minutes, and if the M&Ms were still on the table when the researcher returned, the child would be rewarded with more.  If the child grabbed the M&Ms while the researcher was gone, there would be no reward. 

Once the researcher left the room, hidden cameras recorded the child’s actions.  Some children were grabbers; some were waiters. 

Most of the students I teach, I feel certain, would be grabbers. 

So. 

I must have been about ten years old when my grandmother waved me over to the easy chair where she had lately spent all of her time. 

“Take this,” she whispered.  I had to strain to hear her, but I knew that she was speaking as loudly as she could.  She handed me a twenty-dollar bill with one shaking hand.  “This is for your graduation.”  She looked at me.  I was obviously confused.  “I won’t be able to see you graduate,” she explained, leaning back and closing her eyes. 

When I got home, I put the bill in the top drawer of the chest in my bedroom… the same drawer where I kept bicentennial quarters, the occasional Canadian coin that a distracted shopkeeper might give in change, and my favorite pirate ring. 

I didn’t touch it again for three years. 

When I was thirteen, I came home from school one day to find that my mother had locked herself in the bedroom.  Dad was in the kitchen, sipping coffee — rare for a man who almost never drinks it.  He placed his mug on the table with the patient care he uses for every action.  “Your grandmother passed away today,” he said, making direct eye contact. 

I think my mouth fell open at the blunt statement.  After a moment, I found my voice.  “Which one?” I asked. 

“Your mother’s mother.”  He cleared his throat.  “We’ll be going up there tomorrow night for visitation.” 

That was all that needed to be said.  He returned to his coffee, and I went back to my room.  I opened the top drawer of my chest and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill — the one my grandmother had given me years before.  I sat on my bed, looking at the bill, for several minutes before returning it to the drawer. 

When I was eighteen, I graduated from high school.  On graduation night, after I got home, I pulled out the twenty-dollar bill and put it with the checks, gift cards, and other gifts of congratulations my relatives had sent.  After eight years of waiting, my grandmother’s gift had finally fulfilled its purpose.

We shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it. — Abraham Lincoln