Day One of the experiment

Hello, and welcome to my blog. My name is Mike and I have an idea. Right now, things aren't looking so good for the home team. I got laid off my job after Easter. I fill out applications daily, but as of today, May 13, 21010, I have not even received one phone call for an interview. I am currently receiving about one thousand dollars a month from unemployment, which is about a third of what I was making. My mortgage is the same as my unemployment benefits. Ha ha . Sometimes you just have to laugh, right? By the way, I prefer ha ha to today's texting use of "lol". Ha ha seems to me like you actually are laughing out loud. Are we cool with that? Good.

I read a lot of articles and blogs about people in my situation, and the usual unsympathetic and sometimes hateful comments others leave behind. Hey man, I'm not looking for your sympathy. My situation is what it is. In retrospect, I should have never bought this house. Not for the reasons most people say. I don't care that I owe more than my house is worth. I didn't buy this as an investment property, and I never had any intentions of selling it. Eventually, the market will stabilize, houses will appreciate in value, and the universe will balance out.
No, I screwed up by biting off more than I could chew and taking a loan on house that I couldn't afford. Just so we are clear Reader, I admit that I am to blame for this, and not the market, or the banks, or anything else that's BS.

Am I to blame for my job loss? No. I worked as a manager for a window cleaning company and the work just vanished. The owner of the company tried to keep me on, but it was not feasible moneywise.

It occurs to me that you need some background on me in order to understand my motives. I am, as of today, forty-two years old and a divorced father of an eleven year old son. My son is the center of my universe, and every day I get to spend time with him is a blessing. I get along with my ex wife very well, for I don't believe in fostering enemies. I also still get along with her mother as well.

I have two sisters close to my age, and two brothers several years younger than me. My brothers, and my mother, all live with me. It is a long complicated story that I am sure will eventually get told, but I don't feel like getting into it right now. I have one dog, a black Lab named Krypto. I also have a goldfish named Crunchy. There are cats in the house, but you will learn about them later.

I am a veteran of the US Navy. I loved my time in the military, and the opportunity to see the world it gave me. For you out there that want specifics, I was a Gunners Mate Guns and worked on the MK 45 Mod 1 Lwgm. I have had many jobs since the military, but almost all of them were in management or sales.

Now that you know a little bit about me, I will try to explain the purpose of my blog. As i sat at the kitchen table this morning, I realized I was stressed out. Very stressed out. It occurred to me that things were spiraling out of control, and the future looked very bleak. That is when the Greatest Thing Ever happened. I took Krypto outside to do her business as usual. The sun is shining and there is a nice breeze. I live in South Florida, So I have been worried about the oil spill in the Gulf migrating down here. Not today. The air is clear and smells great. By smells great, I mean smells GREAT! Fresh cut grass mixing with warm ocean air blowing in from the Atlantic. Ahhhh. Good stuff. It hits me... What a nice day! So what if I can't find a job? I am going to enjoy the day.

I have an exercise where no matter what bad situation I am in, I try to think of ways it could be worse. This allows me to appreciate the situation for what it is. Today my thought was that I least I still had a roof over my head. I still have some food in the pantry. Things could be worse.

So that's what I going to do everyday from now until I find a job. Focus on the good things, and manage the controllable in my life. I will stop sweating things out of my control because really, whats the point?

I didn't realize I've written this much so far, and now that I started, I don't want to stop. I will stop however. I need to leave something for tomorrow.

Today: enjoy the weather, give Krypto a bath, read a book. Things don't seem so bad after all.