One of my resolutions for this year was to make a major marketing push to bring my blog out of it Grade C status and into the ever enviable elite circle of… Grade B bloggers.

Personally, I give my blog a B+.

The simple truth here can’t be avoided though. Just as you would in any other business, if you want to make a living and make money, you have to be willing to invest in it. Up to this point I’ve invested a significant amount of my time and effort to build this blog to where it is today, enjoying a dedicated and massive following of over five readers (four if you discount me) and being linked to by thousands of scammers and spam sites from all over the world. Yesiree, the work to establish my presence online has been nothing short of magical.

But while I’ve invested time and energy, I haven’t invested any money (other than hosting costs) into the project, and I think the time has finally come for me put down some serious coinage to really get things going here. I now have an advertising manager to help run my marketing campaign, and beginning next week I will invest over $800-$1000 upfront to help finally get some respectable traffic going for this blog, and also set aside a budget of at least $250 a month to maintain the campaign. Oh Mommy…

Ah well, that’s one advantage to being single at least. Otherwise that $1000 would have gone to buying pearls for the missus or milk for the baby. Instead I get to spend it all on meeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I admit it is a lot to invest (for a blog at least), but I need to try, and if it doesn’t work out I can at least say I did pretty much all I could to bring in the traffic I needed to either supplement my income, or replace it altogether. Otherwise I’ll always wonder how far I could have gotten if I had just been a little bit more risky and daring.

After all, fortune favors the brave. Or is it the reckless?

Tags: advertising, blog, blogger, campaign, marketing, marketing campaign, money, readers, resolutions
Categories: Blog Fog
 
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I’ve been going on a spending spree ever since paying off the last of my debt earlier this month, but don’t worry, most of it has been for necessities such as work shoes, which literally had gaping holes in them and were over 2 years old  (you could see my toe-sies!)  And believe me, you don’t even wanna know what state my underwear were  in.     Thankfully though, I am no longer a tighty whitey dude.

I also threw down for some chick magnetizing sunglasses and FINALLY settled on a brand new watch as well, getting ever so closer to checking off all the items on my wishlist and becoming … *clears throat* …  the ULTIMATE Blogging Badass. 

I do all this, of course, with the full knowledge that the current economy quite plainly sucks flaming donkey balls (while the democrats in Congress continue to serve up a fresh batch of them by the day.)  I realize a lot of people are hurting out there, so when I go on about buying some nice, shiny new toys (and manly looking boxer-briefs) while people are out there suffering from all sorts of financial distress, I do feel bad about it…. for a minute or two.

The reason I don’t feel TOO bad about it is because I remember the days when the economy was boom stomping and people were going half mad buying up tech stocks or purchasing ridiculously sized homes they couldn’t afford, while I could only watch with wonder and dismay, unemployed and eventually even homeless.

Yep, there was a time when I was actually homeless, evicted by a demon possessed relative who literally poisoned my beloved cat.  I guess this Nazi loving moochbag couldn’t find a Jew to gas, so he went for my cat instead.  Fun times!

I remember that all happened in 2000 too, during what was supposed to be the year of jubilee.  All the churches in my area just kept going on and on about the year of jubilee, and how it was going to be a time of unparalleled blessings and prosperity and bountiful harvests and God only knows what else, none of which incidentally enough, I ever experienced.  Instead, it was just one traumatic loss after another.  Loss of inheritances.  Loss of homes.  Loss of security.  Loss of family.  I think if you were to collectively take everything that had been lost by either me or my family, it would literally amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars.  The magnitude of what we had lost or stolen from us amazes me even today.  All during a time of economic prosperity and growth too.

In a way, I see these modest splurges as a way to regain some of what I had lost after ten years of plague and darkness.   To find myself in a secure job, debt free, with money to invest and a blog that brings me a decent second income during a time of economic distress and imminent calamity has to be the ultimate height of irony.  This is the LORD’s doing, and it is marvelous before our eyes.

I find myself in a transitional phase now, with one shackle after another slowly falling off until one day I am going to find myself completely independent, and completely free.   Knowing that day is not too far off now, I wonder to myself, What will I do with this newfound freedom?  What will I do with the talents (Matthew 25:14-30) that I’ve been given?

I certainly can’t hoard it to myself, nor do I want to.   A free man can set others free, and I want to take what is mine, and give it to those in need.  I know what it’s like to lose everything.  I know what it’s like to suffer.  But I also know that a man’s life consists not in the abundance of the things he possesses.  We have been told by our society that a man is nothing if he doesn’t have a house or land, and we are now paying the price for that fallacy.  Truth be told, of all the things that had been stolen from me, including a home, I never really wanted any of it anyway, nor did it bother me all that much to lose it.  It was the concept that someone had taken something from me through the most despicable and evil means (and had gotten away with it) that bothered me, and more than bothered me, it enraged me.  It wasn’t justice.  Why did God reward evil with good?  It’s something I still struggle with even today, even as I watch the tide gradually turn in my favor.

As angry as I am about the past, I never want to do to others what had been done to me.  It’s my desire to alleviate the burdens of the innocent, not add to them.  But in what capacity I could realize these desires, I don’t know.  That chapter has yet to be played out.

I do know I want to save the world, one innocent person at a time.  And I hope one day I can do so… while wearing comfortable boxer-briefs and looking cool in my chick magnetizing shades. 

Tags: blessings, church, darkness, economy, financial, freedom, homeless, independent, justice, money, plague, rage, security, spending spree, wishlist, year of jubilee
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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An update to the job situation at work:  I am apparently so far low on the totem pole of importance that you’d have to dig 10 feet under just to get to me.

So there were all these openings resulting from union concessions and people retiring that I basically had the pick of whatever assignment I wanted, right? But since the notice went out and gave absolutely no information on these openings whatsoever, I stopped by Personnel and spoke with the manager.

“Yeah, hi, I was hoping I could find out more about these job openings, since there was no info given about them in the email?”

“What are you interested in?”

“Depends, I’m pretty flexible right now, so I could work in any assignment depending on the type of work involved. I’m working a night tour currently, so if there’s any night shifts available I might be interested in that too, that way I don’t lose any night pay just by transferring.”

“Actually we do have a few night positions available. Let me take your info down and once we get more info together I’ll let you know what positions might be a good fit. Since you’ve been here a few years you should have seniority over most of the other people also looking to be transferred, so you’ll be in pretty good shape to get whatever new position you decide to opt for.”

He took down my info, made sure my name was put on the list and said another notice would go out in the next few days that would outline all the new positions and what they entailed.

The next day it occurred to me that I should let him know about my college degree in computers, in case there was an opening in our Information Systems division. So I sent the personnel manager another email to let him know about my background in computers. Shortly afterwards I received this response:

Thank you for your email. Your request was given careful consideration, but all the positions have now been filled at this time. We will be hiring new staff in the fall and it is anticipated that another round of transfers will take place then.

Um, what? Over 20 positions were all filled already, in the space of a day? Really? And how long did you take me into consideration, the ten seconds it took for me to walk out your door before you took my info and threw it in the trash? Numbnut.

Around the same time I happened to learn my agency was chasing people who had retired off the job and bringing them back to work part time jobs, when those jobs should have been going to people like me full-time. It was a way to make an end run around the union concessions that had been made, which stipulated that a certain part of the workforce would retire early in exchange for having their positions filled by civilians who could work for less money. So now they get their full pensions as well as a part time salary, while the rest of us with weaker and weenier unions get hosed.

Nice. I had a feeling this was coming too, but I never thought the guy was going to blatantly lie to my face like that. If somebody ever BEGGED to have sugar poured into his gas tank, it’d be this snot monkey.

Ah well, there are at least some good news to come out of all this, and it’s that Mr. No-Personality will be carving out office space for himself instead of taking my desk, and that it would also be a few more weeks before he finally gets assigned here. My guess is that he is putting it off as long as he can in the hopes that something else comes up, but if not, he’ll just hole up in a corner somewhere and play Everquest all day. The best kind of supervisor I could ask for really: one who hides and stays out of my way.

As for the screw-over, I could fight this, but it’s pretty hard to top what I have now. The night pay accounts for $400 of my monthly salary, but my hours still fall mostly during the day, so it never feels like I’m doing a graveyard shift. Not many people can say that either. The job is easy and the workload has been getting lighter, the hours are good, the benefits are excellent, it’s just the office politics and my coworkers’ inability to engage in… intellectually stimulating conversations that tends to gum things up for me. I can understand now why there are those who never want to work in an office and would rather be out in the field working alone than deal with all the politics and BS within. And then of course there’s the fact that there is absolutely no career or promotional path for this job whatsoever.

But… for now it suits me. I would hope though that it won’t be my lot in life to drift through this job without ever making a real difference:

Tags: coworkers, dilbert, email, job, money, office politics, personnel manager, supervisor, transfer, union, unions, workforce
Categories: In The Coal Mine
 
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In the due course of history, a man is empowered with the capacity for life and liberty when he is financially beholden to neither men nor entities. These truths are self evident in their own right, that without freedom from debts and liabilities men are deprived in the profoundest of ways from pursuing that which would ensure their happiness and well being. It is hereto realized and understood the egregious deception by which principalities have sought to strip us of the very power that has been so rightly bestowed to us by our Divine Creator.

Acknowledging then the oppressive currents of those who have entrusted themselves to the cause of evil, I hereby declare my free and total financial independence, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence to utilize these newfound freedoms for the noble cause of truth, justice, and charity.

In other words, I paid off my school loan.

That concludes the triple play of payments I’ve been making to get myself completely out of debt, starting with my credit card (which went as high as $8,000), then my car loan, and finally my college loan, which had been a boil on my boom booms for 11 years.

It couldn’t have come at a better time either. The VERY day I made my last payment on my school loan, my job started a 6 month period where I have to work two days a month without getting paid, a concession my union made because they’re a bunch of spineless baboon heads that are only good to take my money so they can organize picnics I never get invited to.

But anyway, regardless of that temporary cut back, the world is my oyster now, and that my friend is truly a miracle. Not too long ago I was $20,000 or more in debt, and now it’s all but gone. This is the LORD’s doing, and it is marvelous before our eyes. From here on out, I can just keep on saving until I build myself a decent nest egg and use that to go back to school for a masters, buy a new car, and/or put a down payment for a nice house in another state (some place very, very far away from New York). I’m not sure exactly what I’ll do by then, but one thing I do know is that I will NEVER, EVER (with the possible exception of a mortgage), go into debt again. The feeling of owing money to whomever was to me the worst feeling in the world, and I thank God for this tremendous gift of financial freedom, given to me on the 4th of July, of all days. From now on I will be the head, and not the tail, and I will lend to many nations, but I will not borrow thereof.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go collapse into bed for some well deserved rest, then get ready for muchos BBQ food, fireworks and good times.

Happy Independence Day!

Tags: car loan, college loan, credit card, debt, debts, financial, financial freedom, gift, God, independence, independence day, job, liberty, lord, money, world is my oyster
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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I paid off my car loan!      

2 down, 1 to go!  I paid off my credit card last July, so all the remains now is my college loan, which at my current pace should be paid off this 4th of July, of all days. 

I learned a few things today too.  For one, withdrawing a few hundred bucks from an ATM machine is not quite as easy as you might think.  My tax return was finally deposited into my account yesterday, but the account that held my car loan was with a different bank, so I needed to deposit part of my tax return into that account so I could pay off my loan in its entirety.  I figured no problem though, I’ll just hit up the ATM for a few hundred and be on my way.

First I went to the local gas station where their ATM doesn’t give me lame surcharges.  I cheerily walked in, took out my card and…

“Out of Service.  Please come back another time.”

Of course…

So I went to a 7-11 and used the ATM there.

“Withdrawal request exceeds allotted funds.  Please try again.”

For the love of… ok, I’m sure by now you’re thinking why I didn’t just go to my bank directly and make the withdrawal there.  The bank was 20 miles away, and a trip there and back would lose me an hour at least.  By the time I got to the other bank holding my car loan it’d be closed, and I REALLY wanted to get this over with now.

So I took the maximum amount of cash the ATM could dish out, which was $400, then drove to another ATM.  This time I could only withdraw $100.  I withdrew that amount, then swiped my card again to make another withdrawal.

“We’re sorry, you have exceeded the daily limit of withdrawals that can be made.  Please try again tomorrow.”

Huh? 

I tried it again.

“We’re sorry, you have exceeded the daily limit of withdrawals that can be made.  Please try again tomorrow.”

I just stood there, trying to figure out what to do next.  I was still a $100 short, and I needed to find some other way to get it.  Ooooh I know, I’ll use my credit card!  I could pay the difference when I got home too.  Easy peachy!  So I swiped my credit card.

“Please enter your pin number.”

Pin number?  Oh crap.  I had forgotten what it was.  Let’s see, I think it was 1-2-3-4.

“Incorrect PIN number.  Please try again.”

@#$%^!!!

Ok, ok, let me think here, how else can I get cash without using the ATM… … …

Cashbacks!!

I quickly ran into another 7-11 and bought myself coffee.  Swiped my card at the register and waited for the cashback screen to show up:

“Cashback amount?”

I inputted $100, then waited, confident and enjoying my coffee.

“You may only withdraw a maximum of $10.”

Dude… why?

“Is everything alright, sir?”

“Could I like, get some money from your register?”

The cashier stood there wide-eyed.

“No no no, I mean the cashback here only goes up to, you know… uh,  I didn’t mean…, I’ll just take my coffee now.”  I quickly walked out.

Alright, what now…  I vaguely remembered being able to get more than $40 cashback from the supermarket, so I figured my best bet would be there.  I drove a few miles to a nice big honking supermarket and went inside.

Only one thing was going to make all this aggravation worth it.  Bagels!  I bought myself a few whole wheats and some cappy ham, then quickly went to the self check-out.  Swiped the card again, said a little prayer and inputted $100.

“Card Approved.”

YES!  Finally!  The machine started dispensing my $100… in 5 dollar bills, and of course, it had to be one of those nuclear powered cash dispensers where gobs of 5 dollar bills went flying out like a winning slot machine.  I frantically picked up the cash, counted it to make sure I had it all, then hauled heinie out of there.

At long last, after what had to be 5 or 6 stops (I lost count) of putting together the cash I needed, I stopped by my bank and proudly slapped down the money.

“I’d like to pay off my car loan please.”  I smiled broadly.

They gave me a receipt and that was it.  I got into my beautiful ride and took a deep breath.

“Finally, you’re all mine.”  I turned the ignition and sighed happily.

*click*

Ha, just kidding, it started up fine. 

I have to tell you though, during the drive home it seemed like the whole world was literally aiming at my car, almost as if they all knew it had just been paid off too.  Oy.

But finally, FINALLY, this headache was now over with, and with all that behind me my college loan was the only thing left that stood between me and becoming completely debt free.

I can’t wait! 

Tags: atm machine, bank, car loan, cash, cashback, college loan, credit card, debt, financial, independence, money, supermarket, tax return
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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I have finally arrived at the magic number of 500 posts!  

It’s hard to believe that I managed to stick it out even when there were so many times I was tempted to hang it up and stop blogging for good.  But writing is in my blood evidently, and blogging has always been a good outlet for me to express myself in a linguistic sense.  With 2009 also on the horizon and a new plan possibly in the works to really get some traffic going, who knows, I might finally be able to realize my dream of actually making some serious money off this blog.

Yet what if that were to really happen though?  What if… I were able to honestly blog for a living?  Should I give up my job for good and blog full time, and do what I’ve always been pining to do, which was to travel across America and write about my experiences?

Doing so would mean giving up a dull job that otherwise offers a lot of benefits, from being able to work only 33 hours, 4 days a week, to enjoying excellent medical and dental plans, including additional perks like longevity pay, education stipends, ample vacation/sick time, being vested in a retirement and additional medical plan, not to mention the fact that it is laid back enough that I can surf the Internet for most of the day while still getting my work done.  Heck, I don’t even have a supervisor either (at least not for a long while, since I scared them all away.)      And since it’s a government job, it offers the kind of job security that could easily survive the recession as well (as long as crime doesn’t go out of business.)

There’s also the fact that if I succeed in monetizing my blog, I would effectively have two incomes as long as I keep my current job.  In a few years I could buy a condo or even a home in another state without even taking out a mortgage.  Such a possibility had never even occurred to me until I considered what I’d be able to do if I pretended my second income didn’t exist at all, and just let it pile up in my savings account for a few years.  I could afford a home for my parents.  A real home.  I could fund their accounts so they’d no longer have to work full time and can enjoy some kind of semi-retirement lifestyle.  I could really help people, good people who are just going through a hard time and could use a little financial charity.  I’d be able to provide for a family too if I had one.

And the only sacrifice I had to make was to simply put up with my ultra-boring, soul sucking job, and God help me, the stupidest bloody coworkers that could have ever graced creation.  And of course, continue living in the worst, most disgusting leftist-riddled state in the entire union. 

You know, as much security as  my job would offer me now, there’s something to be said for being completely self-sufficient and self-employed, with an online income that doesn’t require you to be tied down to any one location.  It offers the kind of freedom most people can only dream of, and for it to even be a distinct possibility for me is a miracle unto itself.  Maybe I can somehow find a way to live the best of both worlds though.    Ultimately, it all hangs on what happens in the next year or so.

In the meantime, here’s to another 500 posts, and promises of a better future that sees this blog not only enrichening my life, but the lives of many others as well. 

Tags: blog, blogging, coworker, dream, family, financial, freedom, income, job, job security, life, living, monetizing, money, online, parents, travel, work
Categories: Blog Fog, In The Coal Mine
 
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