Great season! Sorry to see 15′s end. We have a few weeks off before 7′s season practice begins. Many, many thanks to my hubby for letting me play! Most appreciated! And Cora now wants to play kids’ rugby (touch) this summer – looking forward to it!

Your odds of winning are long.  Ridiculously long.  2 hole in ones in a single golf game long.  You’re more likely to be crushed to death by a vending machine or dying by being a lefty who uses right-hand products, according to the Daily Beast.  But boy, wouldn’t it be nice to live like a mega millionaire?

Um, no.  Not thinking so.  Maybe a mini millionaire.  Someone who has enough money in the bank to not worry about whether they’re covering the bills, not feeling like they’re stuck in their job, able to dream a bit and feel like they could make those dreams (travel, motorcycle, adventures, …) come true.

Mini-millionaire is easy, and a lot less dependent on 1 in 176 million odds.  Live below your means.  If you make 100K, live on 85-90K or less.  If you make 60K, live on 45-50K, or less.  Act like you’re still making the money you started your career with – no cost of living increases, no raises or promotions.  What’s that do for you?  It does a few things.  One, you’re not stuck in what I’ve heard termed as ‘golden handcuffs’.  Golden handcuffs are jobs that you have to keep because they’re the only ones that will give you the kind of salary you need to live on.  You’ll keep going to a place that you don’t like, doesn’t inspire you, or otherwise give you any reason to keep going to work other than that particular paycheck number.  It’s a gilded cage.  It’s a demotivating cage.  You’re not going to do your best work if the reason you’re still there is only pocketbook motivated.  For one thing, there’s always the distraction of looking for the cage upgrade.  Ones’ monetary ‘needs’ have a funny habit of growing, unless specifically kept in check, so soon enough that cage starts feeling just a bit snug.

Second, it gives you a ‘go-to-he**’ fund.  It gives you money in the bank which you can use as a cushion to find a different job at any point.  A guy I knew at a job a few years ago didn’t particularly like his job, but was paid at the top of the market.  He ended up laid off, as top of the line salaries make you top of the line targets.  The top of the line salary part wasn’t a bad thing, but his need to get a job very quickly gave him a large salary-sized problem.  Contrast that with having the freedom to say: I don’t like this job.  I don’t like working for you.  I’m not going to do it anymore.  It’s a wonderful and yes, powerful feeling, to know that you’re working for someone because you want to, not because you specifically need to.  Now, there’s a difference between need to work generally, meaning at some point you need to get another job, versus never wanting to work again.  Somewhat theoretical for me – having a hard time imagining myself not working at all at some point in the future, even if that work is part-time or volunteering or …  My point is, since entering the workforce out of college, it’s been a goal of mine to never work somewhere just because they’re willing to pay me, even if they pay me well.   And a ‘go to he**’ fund is a great tool to help that happen.

Lastly, and on the much more personally rewarding side, one of the things that millionaires often do is give lots of money away to causes they find inspiring.  Warren Buffett has Girls, Inc, Bill Gates has the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie had Carnegie Hall, Carnegie Mellon, etc, etc…  They write checks to help make things happen.  When you live below your means, giving away money no longer is making a choice between helping yourself and helping someone else.  There’s a lot more latitude there to give more freely.  It hasn’t really cost you anything.  Now, one can make the argument that it costs you the things that you’re otherwise not doing in your lifestyle with that excess (my term) money.  Still, though, it costs you something you’re not doing, not something you are – very different dynamic.

Reading the paper this morning, someone in Maryland won one of the Mega Million lottery tickets. It’s not me, I’m certain, as I didn’t buy a ticket.  Whoever won has a lot more means this morning than they did last night.  It should be a bit easier to live within it.  That said, there’re many lottery winners who don’t live within their means and go bankrupt, even at the tune of income of the level of millionaires.  Contrast that with folks who build their habit of living within their means and become ‘The Millionaire Next Door’.  Or, better, the guy who lives like a millionaire because he’s not beholden to his job and gets to give away his money to the causes that he finds near and dear.  Bank account balance may or may not make him a millionaire, but he sure feels like one.

Amusing anecdote: was asked if I had played before.  Yep, played at UMBC.  Oh, did you know so-and-so?  Probably not, graduated a long time ago.  Well, maybe you’d know her anyway, she’s 26?  Uh huh, not so much.  I’ll count that as them not being able to judge how old I am (ten+ years older than their “old” player from UMBC).  And/or, more rationally realize we were playing mostly in the dark.

Much fun had by the old rugger!  Can’t wait for the next practice, and then my first game!

Now, low side: turns out we may need adults to help travel with the college group to Florida for their retreat trip in May.  The college students can’t drive the rental van, and of course, we want to make sure their travels are safe.  I love this group of people, am happy to work with / alongside them.  But a week at the beach, with a mass of college students (ours + possibly hundreds more), with a 19 hour van ride?  Personally hellacious.   This week is a missionary weekend at our church – folks describing opportunities for ministry amongst hardships in the field.  This trip to Florida, and I know how ridiculous this sounds, would be my personal hardship stint. I know that sounds ridiculous: a beach trip in America as hardship?  For a 35+ year old person who sunburns easily, has all sorts of mental hangups with being in a swimsuit, and then to spend a week in that environment where I’d stick out like a sore thumb, PLUS 19 hours in a van each way??!   Talk about needing to step forth in faith that God would use my discomfort and fish out of water challenges to his glory.

Very interested to see what God will do with both of these areas over the next few months…

Now..  are you one of those folks who contributes to an open-source project?  Hmmm – very different angle.

Now…  are you one of those folks who figures out how to run an open-source project, bringing together the disparate interests of that presumed hoard of volunteers into one uber well-running machine?

Wow.  I used to think that the hardest job in the world to do well would be to set up a high performing team at a fast food restaurant.   Staff turn-over, low pay, and the like.  I’m beginning to reconsider: the most interesting leadership and management challenges seem to be in the open-source space, particularly for projects that have a significant user base and vested interests from many parties interested in driving direction.  Lots of smart people, lots of competing interests, lots of feeling of a need to get somewhere in particular, lots of directions in particular.

Neat things to think about…

The Treasure Chest

Statistic I’m keeping track of of late: PopTart meals.  How many “meals” did I eat by grabbing PopTarts out of the kitchen at work, because I haven’t managed to break away to go get something else, and I didn’t think enough ahead to bring in a healthier lunch.  Last week’s PopTart count was three, I think: some were lunch, some were dinner.  Aiming to get that metric down a bit.  I don’t actually even enjoy PopTarts.

You may have gathered that life has been busy, particularly the work part of life.  This weekend had me home with the kids as Jason was out of town.  An odd shift in thinking / scheduling.  Though I’m still now up at 11:45 on a Tuesday night for no real reason – just mostly habit.  Grrrr.  Need better habits.

But all of those are just ideas on paper. They’re informed ideas, to be sure, based on reading up in various areas to make sure I’m not painting us into any corners. But they’re not working code. Need more working code. I think the challenge is to just, well, start! It’s so easy to scribble ideas, to build up that portfolio of useful things to work upon and pick from. But eventually, I’ve gotta kick my tail into gear with action, and focus in on a particular area to get some specific bit of success.

Tomorrow’s goal for the evening: download jQuery Mobile 1.0, build one screen for my auction app, and commit that screen to Git. That’s it – nothing more noble. But it gets a dev environment and two bits of visible outcome (screen + code in repository). It’s something, and something to build upon.

If it weren’t 1:00 in the morning, that would be the set for today. But time to stop procrastinating sleep…