Same Old Shannon : October of Opportunity

Happy October, Everyone! I thought I'd follow up my September of Self-Improvement with another theme for October.

So ... welcome to October of Opportunity!

Let me explain why I picked the word opportunity for my October theme. I picked it because it starts with the letter O. Seriously, I Googled "adjectives beginning with O," and I found some lists, and I picked opportune from one of the lists. Other adjectives were either completely inappropriate for the tone I wanted to convey (obnoxious, omnipresent), or else too ridiculously positive in a cheesy way (outstanding, overjoyed). Opportunity, on the other hand, conveys the idea that the world is your oyster, so long as you reach out and grab for what you want. And that's the kind of attitude I want to have. So, October of Opportunity was born.

And, as a side note to my grammar/mechanics-loving friends (which is pretty much all of my friends), I am aware that opportunity is a noun. As I indicated in the previous paragraph, the actual adjective version of opportunity is opportune, or else opportunistic. But since I needed a noun of sort of a descriptive nature, I felt I would be more successful Googling adjectives. If I Googled O nouns, I would end up with words like ox or outhouse, and October of Outhouse just doesn't make any sense. Though I'm sure I could tweak it to work for me. Like: "Welcome to October of Outhouse, where I work to eliminate the excrement of my life!"

Anyway.

For fun I'm also interspersing this post with autumnal photos my dad took last week when we visited the apple orchard. Because everybody likes photos. The photos are for aesthetic purposes and are not necessarily related to anything I have to say, other than that they are sort of Octoberish.

In October I want to spend more time focusing on our finances. I came up with the goal of "Find 10 ways to save money each week," although I recognize these things are sort of hard to quantify. I just made up that quantity because goals are supposed to be measurable, but I'm probably not going to stop and write down my cost-cutting measures. For one thing, that would be a really boring chore. For another, sometimes it's hard to define a cost-cutting measure. Like, one thing I'm trying to do is cut back on take-out and random midday purchased snacks. So, an example of a cost-cutting measure might be that I don't grab a soda at 7-11 when I go to pick up my dry cleaning. That makes sense as a cost-cutting measure, but pretty soon I'll find myself thinking of snack purchases I never even intended, just so I can add them to my list of expenditures I didn't make. And at what point does it count that I didn't buy something? Is it just a vague thought of Hmm, a soda sounds good but then not acting on that thought, or do I have to have the filled Big Gulp in hand and dump in down the drain right before I get to the register? (Note: The latter is cruel and wasteful, and I wouldn't do that.) So, the "10 things" goal is more of an attitude than an actual quantity, at least as much as a number can be an attitude.

Oh and anybody who suggests that a good cost-cutting measure would be to start washing/ironing my husband's dress shirts myself, instead of taking them to a dry cleaner, obviously hasn't seen my ironing skills. Nobody has actually seen my ironing skills, because I don't iron. I can't iron. The other day I found myself in a situation where some older ladies and I were folding t-shirts for a charity walk (and I mention the charity walk t-shirts part because it's relevant to why some strangers and I were sitting around discussing issues like laundry and wrinkles in laundry, and not because I want to imply that I'm like the Mother Teresa of giveaway t-shirts or something), and this one woman said she still irons pillowcases, but she finally gave up ironing sheets. I had no idea that you were even supposed to iron sheets, but the woman said that she always feels uneasy about not ironing her sheets, because she feels like somebody is there judging her for having wrinkled sheets. So, there are obviously worse generations to be a member of.

Let's pause for a picture.

In October I want to try to be a better wife to my husband. I'm sure he wouldn't want me writing about him on this blog, but let's say just hypothetically that some husband was very stressed out for work-related reasons, and he was maybe a little bit grouchy, I mean, you know, not that much but occasionally. And let's say that guy's wife's automatic response was to take the grouchiness personally. Maybe the wife could instead be nicer and more understanding, to cultivate a more positive attitude at home.

I do have my usual boring goals about exercise and weight loss. My exercise goal is to log 20 workouts of any kind. My weight-loss goal is super lame, but here goes. So, every week I go to my Weight Watchers weigh-in on Monday, and on Monday it is so easy to be disciplined. It's like every crap food item I see is laced with poison. I can usually keep the momentum up through Tuesday and most of Wednesday, but on Wednesday night I tend to lose it. I suspect part of my problem is that we're out on Wednesday evenings at soccer, and I try to save some of my WW points for after soccer so I don't starve to death before the next morning, but then it's a really slippery slope and I start eating approximately 8,000 food items. And then once I fail on Wednesday, I never reign it back in again until Sunday. So, my goal is to at least keep it under control until Thursday, and then at some point in the future if I'm successful at that, I will try for Friday.

Also in October I want to drink more tea. I know that's a totally random goal, but I do find that it helps to drink tea when I'm sitting around jonesing for something to eat, but I'm not actually hungry. Additionally, as part of my frugality goal I'm trying to cut back on the use of the heater (at least until absolutely necessary), and tea will warm me up. Plus it's extra frugal because I don't need to buy any tea; like most households, we have about 50 boxes of tea sitting in the cupboard.

Oh, and I have to finish the murder mystery script, for real this time. Auditions are in a couple of weeks, and the rehearsals start mid-November, so I've set a deadline of October 31 to finish the script.

Plus I have my usual professional goal, i.e. finding a new job, which I hope pans out this month, but which I recognize is unpredictable.