Charting a New Course

For the past several months I've been planning to get rid of my car and work from home. I now realize that that would be a mistake. For a long time now I've been working 3 days a week at APROM in Mississauga and I intend to continue doing that, and keep driving to work. Taking public transit to Mississauga is not ideal, plus you have to pay a double fare.

I need to get out of the house and be around people. So it's best if I continue working at APROM 3 days a week. My past 3 weekends have been depression-free (including this one, touch wood). Also, I haven't called in depressed once in the past 2 weeks. I attribute my lack of depression on weekends to my TileGamer project, giving me a reason not to go back to bed on Saturday afternoons. I am now immersed in the Python-coding phase of its development, which will take several months, if not years. If I quit my Sound Times job, then I will have 3 full days a week to work on TileGamer (Saturday being a day of rest). I don't intend to quit that job right away, but I might do that in the future, if TileGamer development goes well.

Financially I'm in good shape. I can survive working only 3 days a week, if I work at least 5 hours per day (right now I only work 3 hours per day at best). I must use part of the interest from my mutual funds to live on, roughly half of the interest. Worst comes to worst I'll have to use up all or almost all the interest on my mutual funds to get by. I'm going to start keeping track of my income/expenses, using a 15-column spreadsheet (one column for each week in a quarter year, one sheet per quarter). At the end of every day, if I've spent/earned any money that day, I must record the amounts in my date book (yesterday I skipped lunch and blew $7.90 on cookie dough ice cream). Every Monday evening (or Tuesday morning) I must record the amounts in the previous week in my spreadsheet. Each row in the spreadsheet is a different category: work income, investment income, condo fees, property tax, food, gas, etc.

I'm going to eat breakfast soon, and then work on TileGamer. Later I will read the Globe and Mail, and buy groceries (I'm out of orange juice, and I'm low on milk and need more frozen dinners). Life's good when you have your health (having affluent parents while growing up doesn't hurt, either). Next Tuesday I might visit my former workplace at Fred Victor Centre. There was a fire there recently, so they're undergoing a major disruption. Robin, my former colleague there, sent me a long email telling me about the fire. Maybe at some point I will ask her out. The main woman in my life, Constance, requires 50 dollars per month. She is in her early sixties, is from Nigeria, has schizophrenia, uses crack, is homeless, and lives in shelters. I'm going to drop by the shelter a week from now to give her the 50 dollars. Correction: Constance just called and wants the money this morning at 11 a.m. It's good to feel needed, I guess. Oops, she just called again and asked me if I wash cars in Mississauga, and if I would come now, and I told her no, not until 11 a.m. Maybe I'm a complete idiot to give her money, but I feel she needs me. I'm going to visit my brother today, who bought a laptop recently. Weather's been nice lately. Well, that wraps up another blog post. Later.