Renegotiating the lease

Quite often when people gain a new perspective on life you hear them use the phrase "I got a new lease on life". Myself, I'm not really looking for a new lease, but I'm trying to renegotiate the terms of the current one.

When I started this blog a little over a year ago, I was going through an economic shift in my life. I was recently laid off from a great job at the Federal Reserve Bank, I realized the dream of opening my own photography studio and quickly realized the nightmare of not being able to make it financially stable. I  was then preparing to start a new career as a long haul truck driver. After learning that my personality was not very accommodating to living in the cab of a truck, that career soon followed the rest of my doomed choices. By that time, I was starting to deal with a wide range of emotions. I was scared, worried, sad, angry and several other things all meshed into one unpleasant emotion that I'll just call Funk.

By the end of May of 2011, I was lucky to land a job at Wells Fargo through a staffing agency. As of this post, I'm still working at Wells Fargo as a temp. Being a temp adds to the stress level being as it is very quick and easy to let you go should they no longer want your services. having seen several of my temp co-workers use the exit for the last time, I just figured that my time to follow them was close at hand. As it stands now, it appears that I will be picked up by Wells Fargo and get to stay as a regular, full time employee. Although, I am still waiting for that to be set in stone.

During that time, I have completely depleted my life savings and I'm currently earning 70% of what I was making at the Fed. Yet through it all, we've never missed or even been late on a single financial obligation. In fact, we were even faced with replacing a car during this time and have found a way to make that work.

By now, I'm sure you're asking..."what does all this have to do with renegotiating the lease"? The answer is this; I've grown tired of all the stress and worry. I've come to the point in my life where I will accept that I cannot control everything and sometimes you have to go with the flow. I will still put great effort into trying to improve my career but I will also accept that I cannot have a guarantied outcome. For now, the ill fated career pursuit is no longer taking the top spot on my "To Do" list.

The terms that I will be demanding in my new lease, life just has to be fun!!! I realized that in the last year I have developed 8 unique recipes and I love experimenting in the kitchen.

Making blackberry rolls

I also love riding my motorcycle and road trips

My wife and I with my Step Mom in the back

Taking scenic photo's

Columbia River Gorge at Sunrise

There are also several other things that I could put on this list. But, you get the point, life needs to have more fun.

My new focus in a single sentence....Smile more and make others smile.

Peace and Cheers!!!
-Red-