I made a promise to myself 25 days ago that I was going to write 365 daily entries at least in this blog, regardless of what the future held for me. Obviously I didn’t expect to find a job as quickly as I did (considering I was ready to go back to my old job if nothing fell through), and I especially didn’t consider this new job to be as overwhelming and busy and fun as it has been, but what good’s my word if I can’t even keep it with myself?

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: I’m tired. I worked a late shift today. Normally my hours are 8-4, but today I changed them to 12-8. The last tech guy comes in every Thursday or so around 6, so I wanted to meet up with him and get paid to do it. I was being optimistic with my schedule, I guess. We didn’t stop until after 9:30. I didn’t get home until 10. I usually spend the 9-10 hour thinking and writing about this entry. I will admit, though, that the last few days have taken less time than that because I’ve been regurgitating them out so I can get them over and done with and get to sleep as quickly as possible. That’s what I wanted to do tonight. I didn’t want to write this; I wanted to go straight to sleep. But my duty to myself is too strong to let me make life that easy. I have to see this through because I have to see this through.

I have not improved enough in 25 days to quit writing this blog. This blog is supposed to document my journey into becoming someone better than I was 26+ days ago. That’s the simple mission statement. I know if I have one more drink I would lose control. She is still on my mind — hell, I had a sad dream about her last night — so I know if I drink I will try to make contact with her in some way. I can’t. I have to move on. It’s good that it’s been 26+ days since I last communicated with her, but that’s still not enough time. I’m actually very lucky to have found a job that has kept me so busy; I have nothing and no one else to really think about. But I don’t have the strength yet to tell myself I’m better. I don’t know if I’ll ever be better. There’s a “super” Mario version in my head that I want to be so much, but I’ll never become him. I don’t even know if I’ll ever get close to becoming him. But it’s better to be closer to this Mario than the evil Mario I almost succumbed to.

I know I should be proud that I’ve written 25 straight entries, but I’m not. The quality lately isn’t where I would’ve liked them to be. But I have a job, you might say. It’s understandable if I miss just one day. No, it’s not. Not for me. I have to be perfect, and part of that mentality is seeing this through. I know. It’s hell. But it’s my hell, and I’m used to it.

I also like it.

A few weeks ago, my life was slow and predictable. Today, I’m as busy as I’ve ever been. In late August, I bought my 2004 Dodge Durango. She’s a beauty, and she runs great. Except, a few weeks ago, the check engine light came on. After some research, I found out it had something to do with the coolant system. I took her to a local shop, they checked her out, and told me I needed to replace the thermostat. Not only that, they told me I needed to flush my radiator because apparently the thermostat leaked parts into it or something. All told, it was gonna cost me over $400. My dealer told me to wait and not pay for anything yet; he was going to check in with the company handling my four year warranty. After not hearing from him in weeks, I paid him a visit yesterday. He told me he was going to personally fix my car today, and he would pay for half of the repairs. I dropped off my car in the morning, drove his loaner minivan to work, drove the minivan back after work, and stopped by his office. He found nothing wrong with the radiator, but he flushed it anyways. He replaced the thermostat, and all seems well. Oh, he also still had my title in his files. He finally delivered that to City Hall, so I finally registered my car. I chose this awesome centennial edition license plate. It’ll match my USC School of Cinematic Arts Alumni frame, once I buy it.

This week, all the teachers are supposed to be posting their mid term grades, so it’s busy. It’s also Homecoming Week, so everyone’s scrambling to do everything around there. Since the school uses Infinite Campus, there’s going to be many questions and cries for help, which I received a lot of today. The school did not have a regular tech guy for about a year, so the superintendent (my boss) took the reigns and did as much as he could. But he messed up a lot of things. Since learning so much about Infinite Campus the last few days, I’ve been going through how the system has been set up at this school. Teachers had way more rights than they should have had. For example, all teachers had the right to delete students from the system. They also had access to student’s grades and transcripts that weren’t even in their classes. The superintendent gave them this access because he had no idea what he was doing. Some teachers weren’t even assigned to classes, so they’ve been writing everything down by hand, too afraid to ask him for help. Once I came on, though, a flood of questions came in. Some were easy: some teachers are new here (like me), and they didn’t know how to do simple things. I taught them. For others, though, I had to dig deeper into the system and see what the hell was going on. Stuff that should have already been in there wasn’t, so I had to recreate it. Everything seems like a mess, and I can totally foresee myself spending the rest of the year fine-tuning this system. It’ll be worth it in the end, I think.

Finally, I worked out today. I decided to do the 30 day Insanity: the Asylum workout once more. I spent last December doing it, and I’ve never felt or looked better in my life. I’m hoping to get back to that so by November, I could do the hybrid workout. I know what to expect this time around, so I shouldn’t run into any problems. I did notice today, though, how much stronger I felt and performed. My energy was high, my intensity was surprising, and my bounce was springy. There’s this workout where I use the agility ladder to do in and out abs. In the plank position and over the ladder, I jump into the first square with both feet and immediately shoot my feet back and get into the plank position again. We progress from the first to the second to the third box throughout the workout, and when I got to the third box, I noticed how much stronger I felt doing it. My explosiveness was greater, and it really surprised me. Even though I haven’t been working out the past week, I’ve been making shakes with my whey protein powder, bananas, strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries. I think that has made me stronger. It’s an amazing feeling. Also, in the past few weeks, I’ve lost four pounds. Progress.

I don’t have time anymore to think. I miss it, but I like being busy. It’s tough to figure out not only what I want, but also how to set priorities. What’s more important to me? I need to figure that out.

Honestly, I’m tired.

I didn’t work out again, but I kind of let that burden go today. I’ve mentioned before that I was going to do the Insanity/Insanity: the Asylum hybrid workout on the first of October, but I didn’t foresee a few things when I made that declaration. One thing that’s making my fatigue worse after work is that I don’t eat lunch. I haven’t had a chance to come up with a good lunch for me to eat while I’m at work, and I don’t want to eat the lunches school cafeteria provides, for obvious reasons. And, to be frank, for the most part, I’ve been too busy to even think about feeding myself. That’s a good thing, I think.

I’ve never had a job that’s given me so much freedom to do what I want, however I want. I’m the only tech guy at this school, so I’m in charge of everything tech related. That’s both exhilarating and stressful. Even if this is not expected of me, I want to know everything about everything they have and use. They use this service online called Infinite Campus, and I spent most of today (by that I mean a good six to seven hours) learning a lot about it to the point where I have a firm grasp on it. I e-mailed the entire staff and told them so, asking them to contact me if they needed any help. Immediately I received e-mails from a few teachers and staff asking me to do things I had no idea how to do yesterday. But now I do, and it was fun.

One of the bigger projects I’ve been thrust into has been to update all the iPads and iPod touches to iOS 8, configuring all the devices with the required apps and permissions. I’ve never done this, but I quickly learned how to do it. It’s not that difficult. Unfortunately, to do this, we need to use a Mac. I’m an Apple person, so this is awesome, except, remember those vandals? Yeah, they destroyed one of the two MacBook Air’s the school owned. With just one laptop, we tried to use the MacBook (which hasn’t been used in over a year) and install all the updates, to get it ready for when we need to deploy iOS 8 to the iOS devices. I tried to do that but I didn’t have the password for the login. I gave it to one of the teachers, who had a list of usernames and passwords, and apparently, the last tech guy changed these passwords, so no one could get into the laptops. So I was called in. I tried a few passwords, but none of them worked. So while a few teachers were trying to come up with solutions on their own, I rebooted the Mac, logged on to the recovery partition, opened terminal, reset the password to the account, changed the password to the one on the sheet, logged back into the startup drive, logged in with the new password, and dramatically showed the teachers the desktop. It was awesome.

Where am I going with this? I’m not sure. Those were just the highlights from my day. Pretty boring, no? C’est la vie.

I feel like this might be a hard entry for me to write, so I’m just going to go right out and write it. I’m not performing the way I’d like to be. By that I mean, I’m not living up to my made-up standards for living. Ever since the fire, I’ve lost a handle to my life. When I started this blog, I was not a happy person. I had a goal in mind, and that was to be happy, per se. To do that, I had to focus on my habits and routines, and the first thing I knew I needed to do was start working out again. Fitness is life’s easiest form of therapy. I had the adrenaline pumping, and I began to rewrite my novel a week after I started my blog and a week into working out again. And now? Now I’m on day 22, starting my fourth week doing this, and I stopped working out. I even stopped eating very well (I had Subway today… more on that later). What’s happening? Today gave me a clear indication of what might be happening, and how I could remedy it for the future.

It was easier for me to focus fully on myself when I had nothing going on for myself. I started this blog when I had no job, no fire, and no responsibilities. I had a short-term endgame, and I reached it in a few weeks. But then I had the fire, and like I said, it disrupted my life. During the fire, I found out I got my job, so one day I’m out fighting a fire, the very next day I’m starting my new job. I’ve had no time for myself. I just had a two day weekend — my first real weekend in years — and I went shopping the first day, practically buying a whole new wardrobe for and because of my job. Yesterday I slept in, read, watched TV, and relaxed. And today I went right back to work.

Work today was tough. I feel this pressure I’ve personally put on myself to learn the structure of the school, to learn about all the tech they have and become a master in them, and to become acquainted with all the teachers, their schedules, and the whole culture in place here. I want to learn all this quickly so I can perform well quickly, and that’s burning me out. After work, all I wanted to do was buy some beer and relax. But I didn’t. Instead, I bought a Subway Club from Subway. It was good, and it satisfied me, but a hint of guilt nagged at me while I ate it. I could’ve cooked for myself. Hell, I even defrosted some steak for me to cook. But I was tired. I didn’t want to do anything. So I gave in. I didn’t work out. I didn’t do some of the tasks on my todo list. I didn’t take advantage of the time given to me, and because of that, I feel like a failure.

Geeks like to talk about their workflows. How they do certain tasks quickly by using a certain setup of apps and techniques to do what they want without any friction. Frictionless workflows are the longest lasting because they’re easy to implement and maintain. Why would I want to write the same things over and over and over again when I could use a program like TextExpander and write the same things with fewer characters and save a lot more time? I’m in need of a frictionless workflow for my life. There’s things I want to do everyday without fail, and I want to ensure I do them regardless of what happens throughout my day. I still want to work out even though I had a tough day at work. How can I do that? I’m still writing every morning, but I want to spend more time on it and not feel so rushed. How can I do that? There’s so much stuff I want to learn and master, but I don’t seem to have enough time or energy to devote myself to learning what I want. How can I do that?

I need to design a way for me to live the life I want as frictionless as possible, where the things I need to get done are automatic, and every day I improve from the day before. How can I do that? I don’t know, and that’s the beauty of the journey, right? To figure that out.

When I first started to seriously delve into improving myself and my life back in 2009, the first book I read that seriously helped me was Getting Things Done by David Allen. David Allen created an entire system that just made sense to me. The whole system consists of just five steps: Collect, Process, Organize, Review, and Do. The collection phase is where you dump everything that’s on your mind down, wiping it of any nagging little things that have been bothering you. These items are next processed in the second stage. If it takes less than two minutes, do it right then and there. Delegate those tasks you can’t do to other people. The rest of the tasks you will organize into lists. How you do this is up to you. Once everything’s organized, you review your lists. You may have put something into one of your lists six months ago, but without reviewing them, you completely forgot you had that item in there. Finally, you do everything that’s on your lists. Obviously, what’s the point of a todo list if you’re not getting anything done? That’s the GTD system in a nutshell. If you’re curious to learn more, I highly recommend picking up a copy of the book.

The weekly review is something David Allen talks about in depth in the book. Every week, you sit down with your todo list and review it. You process all your inboxes, you dump your head into your lists, you process, you organize, you do. This ensures you trust the system and that it becomes a part of your day-to-day life. For the most part, it has been for mine. I try to do mine every Sunday, but life does get in the way, and I don’t always get the chance to do it. But I just completed my first Weekly Review on the new OmniFocus app for the iPad, and holy shit, the process was so frictionless and fun that I’m definitely reviewing using my iPad from now on. There were items in there I completed days and weeks ago, and I either forgot to cross them off or forgot they were even in there. Most importantly, the weekly review reminds me of what I consider to be priorities in my life.

I briefly talked about the three pillars of what I consider to be a complete human being in day 12: mind, body, and spirit. That is how I have my todo list organized, and that’s how I try to live my days. Now, to be frank, in the past week I haven’t worked out, I didn’t eat healthy on a consistent basis, I haven’t finished reading a book in weeks, and I’ve neglected to meditate on a regular basis. I have written 300+ words every morning for the past fourteen days, I have updated my blog and examined myself as deeply as I can, and I did start a new job that has excited me for my future that no other job ever has. I’ve talked about perfection and how I could be too hard on myself sometimes. A consistent weekly review reminds me to focus on the essentials, to help me hone back into the three pillars, and to help me get back on the path if it seems like I’ve strayed.

I feel like I’ve strayed, and now I need to get back on track.

I went shopping today. I bought a whole new wardrobe for my new job. Dress pants, dress shirts, dress socks, the works. I also bought Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, and Captain America shirts because I’m a nerd, and I wanted to add some fun to my rather bland wardrobe. I want to buy a new pair of shoes, too, but I didn’t today because I wanted to look online for those. There’s a certain style I like, and I want to see what’s out there. I also finally bought myself a good car charger for my new iPhone, so I don’t have to worry about my battery when I’m driving. Eventually I’ll buy more stuff for my car, but at the moment, it’s not a priority. All in all, I think I’m going to look pretty good at work and casual Friday’s will be fun with my new tee’s.

I’m not a big shopper. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a minimalist by heart. I don’t dislike the idea of shopping, especially when there’s stuff I actually need; I dislike the idea of adding unnecessary items to my life. Stuff I don’t need or want makes me feel constricted. I’ve certainly relaxed my views on my minimalist philosophy over the past few years, and there’s definitely things I want, but at the end of the day, I use most everything I own. That is my definition of minimalism. I learned this from the Minimalists: pack everything you own in boxes, and over the next thirty days, unpack those things you actually use. Whatever is still boxed up, pack it in your car and donate it. You don’t need any of it.

I went a year and a half without a car. For the most part, I turned out okay. There were times during winter when I walked to work in sub-zero temperatures, but I didn’t die. A car would’ve been nice, though. I bought my second car last month, and my life has definitely been nicer because of it. It also made my new job possible. I don’t need a car charger. I could always pack an extra charger to charge my phone wherever there’s a power outlet, or better yet, I could always bring my MacBook and charge it from there if I was ever out. But a car charger has made charging my phone a nicer experience, and it’s for sure going to be used a lot. I bought my MacBook Air to replace my very old Dell desktop computer; I bought my iPhone because I needed a phone; I don’t have a TV because I don’t need a TV, even though I may buy one soon because it’ll make watching TV from my laptop a little nicer; and I just recently started hanging posters and pictures on my wall because living with empty white walls was getting to me. I mention my tech because they’re expensive. My iPad was my last real unnecessary purchase, but for what I use it for, it’s made my life nicer.

Instead of buying cheap things and replacing them very often, I try to buy things that’ll last me a long time, so I can win out financially in the long run. I could buy a $100 knife that’ll last me a lifetime or buy a $10 knife that I’ll have to replace once every year or two. Which brings me back to the new pair of shoes I want to buy. My $220 firefighting boots are the only footwear I’ve ever purchased over $110. They’ve been through three years of stepping on hot ash and hiking for miles on Montana’s steep mountains, and they’re still in great shape. I want to recreate that with my next pair of nice, dress shoes. Of course I have to budget for this, but I try to budget for everything. And yes, I do use an application for that: YNAB.

I believe a nice life is about priorities and filling it with only the essentials, whatever those may be for you. Simplify as much as you can, and what that may be will become clear.

My second day of school was way better than my first. Nothing felt overwhelming, yet it seems like I got more done. A big reason for that is that I brought my laptop and iPad to work and used those tools to help me organize my life. How cool is it that I can use my own laptop and iPad at work and no one bats an eye? That’s going to take me some time to get used to. Not only that, but on Monday I’ll be able to bring in my new iPhone 6. Everybody better watch out because I’ll be some sort of productivity ninja.

Here’s what I did: I used my MacBook Air to establish a remote connection to the computer in the server room. I blew away one of the teachers by doing this. This means I don’t have to be tied down to a clunky old windows desktop and instead can move around freely with my MacBook and check in on the status of the server wherever and whenever I’d like. The next thing I did was organize my OmniFocus application. I created a work folder with a few projects underneath them. I have just two, a troubleshooting teacher’s questions and issues one and a miscellaneous one. I’m sure I’ll add more later. I then emailed the staff, introducing myself, giving them some of my contact info, and most importantly, giving them my special OmniFocus email address. They can email any and all requests there and it’ll go straight into my OmniFocus inbox. With this program, I can focus on what needs to be done around the school and not feel so overwhelmed. To top that off, I created people contexts. I only have a few right now — those that have talked to me already with their issues — but eventually I’m going to add everyone. So I have two views of organization. I have a project view, where I can see all the tasks that have yet to be done for the whole school. Then I have the contexts view, where I can break it down to individual teachers. So if I’m near Mr. X’s room, I can pull up my OmniFocus context perspective, see if he has any items, and if he does, check in on him and see if I can help him. It’s efficient, powerful, and so much fun. I then transferred all of yesterday’s notes and todo’s from my paper notebook into my trusted system, removing one more area of friction in my head. On Monday I’m going to bring my portable Doxie One scanner so I can scan any papers that may enter my life. That’s what I have my iPad and my Dropbox Pro account for, to help me go completely paperless. Finally, for the last few hours at work, I signed up for a Lynda.com subscription and watched some videos. The first seven days are free, but I’m already sure I’m going to be a member for a few months. They have so many courses that I know will help me learn and better understand the tech this school has. I’m going to be busy for a while.

That was a long paragraph. I wanted to illustrate the fact that to some people, being this nerdy is hilarious or they think I should get a life and go outside more often or something condescending like that. To those people, all I have to say is go fuck yourselves. This is who I am, and this is what I love to do. I want to organize my life, get everything out of my head and into a trusted system that technology is so good at helping me with. I can then focus on the work, on getting shit done, providing me time and energy to do what I’m passionate about. Every morning for the past twelve days, I’ve been writing the second draft of my novel. I finished the first chapter a few days ago, and I’m in the middle of my second. What’s helping me the most is technology. I’m using Scrivener to organize and write my novel, MindNode Pro to brainstorm it on my iPad (and my iPhone and Mac if I feel like it), OmniOutliner Pro on my iPad and Mac to help me structure the story, and Byword in combination with Dropbox to write down any notes or ideas I have on my iPhone and have it sync up to my MacBook. To top it off, I’m using OmniFocus to organize my todo’s for this project to ensure I get this beast done. Every morning at 5 AM the program tells me to get my ass up and write. And I do.

My entries are getting longer. We’re getting two entries in one here, people. All to tell everyone reading this to not be afraid of who we are. Embrace your personality, your likes and dislikes, and live the type of life that you control and that no one else dictates for you. That, I think, is true freedom, and it’s something I’m striving for every day. I’m not there yet, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be, but as long as I try, I’m happy. And I’m happy.

My first day on the job was overwhelming. I arrived to work half an hour early because I totally miscalculated the time I thought it would’ve taken me to get there. I thought I’d be at least fifteen minutes early, not a full half hour. I waited in my car and saw all the high school kids drive into the parking lot and park. I immediately felt old. And this is a kindergarten through 12th grade school. It’s strange seeing five year old kids and grown teenagers on the same campus at the same time. The campus is broken up into three distinct buildings: elementary school, middle school, and high school. The class of 2015 is like fifteen people. It’s incredibly small. I was given a tour by the superintendent of the school (and my boss), and he introduced me to many of the teachers there. Some were super relieved to finally have a tech guy, so they immediately bombarded me with issues and questions involving all the tech they have. The tech this school has is impressive. They have a desktop computer and laptop for pretty much every student, as well as an iPad and iPod touch. They have smart boards in most classrooms. Look it up, I didn’t know what they were either. I learned the layout, met most of the teachers, and wrote down a long todo lists of things to get to eventually. All very overwhelming.

I’m scared. I feel like I may not do as good a job as I thought I might. There’s a lot to learn, a lot to do, and a lot I don’t even know I have to worry about yet. The staff there told me that I shouldn’t be nervous. I’ll learn everything in due time. That’s a big thing many people repeated: they’re not expecting me to learn all this quickly. They’re giving me a three month probationary period for a reason. I don’t have to learn all this now, and that is comforting. But damn. I want to be perfect. I want to know all this already. But apparently the school signed the last tech guy to a contract, and he wasn’t very good, so all he did was play video games in his office and the school could do nothing about it. Or something like that. I at least won’t be anything like that at all.

After work, I went to my brother-in-law’s house because he wanted to celebrate my newly employed status. I treated him, my sister, and my two nieces to food at the Outwest Grill restaurant in St. Ignatius. I had the Montana Jack burger, a cheeseburger with jalapeño ranch sauce and sweet potato fries as the side. I washed it down with strawberry lemonade. It was delicious, but I felt fat afterwards. When I started this blog, I wanted to live as perfect a life as I could. That meant exercising, writing, reading, eating well, not drinking, not pining over some stupid girl, working, making money, improving myself in every way — in short, to be perfect. I didn’t want to eat out and eat unhealthily. But there’s no such thing as perfection. The more I try to think there is, the crazier and unhappy I get. Today I didn’t eat well. Tomorrow I will. One day isn’t going to kill me.

But I don’t want to lose focus and let this be the start of the end for me. I don’t want to feel the weight of that stone feel heavier where I can’t hold on anymore and watch it roll down the hill for me to push up again later. I don’t want that.

I’m no longer fighting the Pistol Creek fire. I demobilized a few hours ago, effectively ending my 2014 fire season. I fought seven fires this season, my most ever. I could’ve fought more since it looks like Seepay — Seepay! — caught fire again today. We’ve fought the Seepay fire three times already this summer, and she just won’t die. There were reports of 100 foot flame lengths coming from this fire today and that’s exciting. I won’t be there to fight it, but I hope my crew does.

More of the same today, except the heat felt unbearable. We performed better today, I think, too. All of our rookies finally knew what they were doing, so a few of us veterans trusted them to work well and with minimal supervision. We still had to teach them some things that seem very basic to us, but to a rookie, it’s not. It’s like learning how to walk. We just do it, but when you try to explain it to someone who’s never walked before, we’re kind of at a loss. They’ll be fine. I’ll be honest: since I knew today was going to be my last day, I slowed down a bit. I took pleasure in commanding others in what to do. I love teaching, but I like telling people what to do more. I’m going to be a squad boss next year, so I should be getting used to this. I can’t wait.

On our way to dinner, my new boss called me and told me the board had approved me, pending a background check, so I’m all good to come in tomorrow. He just said to come in, meet up with him, and we’ll take it from there. Out of curiosity, I asked him if there was a dress code. Business casual, he said, but Friday’s are casual, except you have to wear purple. Purple is the school’s colors. I don’t have anything business casual, or purple for that matter. So after I turned in all my gear at the Division of Fire, I rushed toward Walmart, bought the first nicest pair of black slacks I found, and a grey, collared, button-up long-sleeve shirt. I tried them both on and thought I looked sexy. In fact, I liked the long mirror they had in the dressing room, so I bought one for myself. I leaned it against my wall in my bathroom and took my clothes off to shower. Before I stepped in, though, I had to admire the view for a bit.

I’m damn sexy, ladies. Just thought I’d let you know.

The Pistol Creek fire is on the Mission Mountains outside of Arlee on an elevation of about 4,500 feet. I found this little seashell up there buried underneath inches of hot duff and roots. This little guy is so unbelievable old that imagining how truly old it is boggles my mind. The whole world used to be underwater, and I think we sometimes lose sight of that and our place in the universe. Anyways…

We went back up to the northern flank of the fire. Actually, we started from the bottom and moved a chain from the line and gridded up. A chain is 66 feet. Usually our squads are split up into three groups of six, but since we were a little shorthanded this time around, we split up into just two squads of about eight. If we were just six people, then we would spread apart ten feet from the person to our left. Six people times ten feet is 66 feet. Gridding just means taking care of the area in front of us and destroying any hot spots we find. We found a ton very early on, so we quickly abandoned this plan. We were pretty much seeking and destroying for the rest of the day. Later in the afternoon, a short rain shower hit us, providing us a brief respite from the heat. It also helped us uncover dozens more hot spots that we missed by heating the rain drops into steam and smoke. There’s a lot more work to do before we fully fight this fire, but unfortunately, I won’t be around for the end. Tomorrow will be my last day on the Pistol Creek fire.

I start my new job on Thursday. I’m nervous and excited and relieved and a range of other emotions. I’ve never had a full-time job that provided me with benefits, but I will on Thursday. I’ve never had a full-time job that has paid me an hourly wage as high as I’ll be paid on my new job, but I will on Thursday. For the first three months, I’ll be on a probationary period, and if I perform well — which I plan to do — then my hourly wage will increase. I’ll be making just as much as I do firefighting but with more consistent hours and with benefits. I can finally attack my student loans with more vigilance than I have been. I can finally invest my money without it hurting my day-to-day finances. I’m a minimalist at heart, and this new job can help me finally not worry about money for a while. Once I find a wife and have kids, then I’ll have to seriously reconsider my life. But that won’t be for a while.

I wonder how much land costs around here. I’ve always wanted to build a house…