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Let’s chronicle…..

Its the first few days of February and much has happened mentally. And much has stalled physically. So what have I been up to????? Hmmmmm good question…

The Cons:  By today my contractor was supposed to have finished the apartment at the 4plex. My amount of cash on hand is still almost null and is still tighter than Trump’s willingness to disclose his taxes. Btw, speaking of taxes my taxes are due and somehow I need to miraculously come up with almost $4000.00 that I don’t yet have. My emotional state of mind….. fluctuating. I am still letting that damn caveman mind get the best of me. I have been getting out of bed late and going to bed to early. My overall well being…. at best, still alive. But I feel that I have not pushed anything. I have not been to the gym. I haven’t been steady in my nightly wins writing. I haven’t been steady in my journal writing. I haven’t focused enough on trying to get another property. I haven’t worked on music. I haven’t been steady in my gratitude journal. There are just many things that I haven’t.

You know, It’s that feeling that I have not made gains. I haven’t made the progress that I would like. Maybe I’m not yet “expecting” to have progress. (Gonna have to give that some thought) I do know that “Progress” is a word that must be a way of life for me, especially if I am going to make a rags to riches story happen. And at the moment of this writing, I tend to think that my goal at the moment is to be that worker ant. Just keep pushing to move things until I can see change happening.

Pros: So WTF have I been doing?  Well, When Monday rolled around and my contractor didn’t return my texts, I decided to stall mentally. Luckily I didn’t go to bed that day, otherwise I would have really been fubar. Even though I almost went to bed, I told myself that all I gotta do is to make it over the hump and keep moving until noon. Luckily I was right. And even though I stalled for too long. Maybe intermittently for part of the day, Maybe for intermittently the whole day. But I eventually decided to try and get something done. The most major pressing issues are that I have properties that are not up and running.  So I went looking for some day labor. There is a particular guy in the neighborhood that I sometimes contract to do laborious work for me. I don’t use him often because he is difficult to find and kind of an enigma. You wouldn’t notice him in a crowd of people and he is probably not even on the radar. Unfortunately he is a very deep product of his surroundings. He has a great heart but just never got taught internal self worth. Instead he lives in the surroundings that are presented to him rather than going after surroundings that are worthy of who he is as a person.

Anywho, I went looking for my enigma worker. And by the grace of God’s help, I found him. I needed him to do some demo work for me, there is a property that I want to get up and running by March. This particular property is a duplex, and one side of the duplex is almost rentable. My contractor said that it would take about 15 solid days to get it rent ready. But in order to get those kind of results there is demo that needs to be done first. And my enigma is the hands of demolition while my contractor is the hands of precision. As for this particular duplex I am going to scale back in my eye for expensive detail. Like I said earlier, money is extremely tight and the majority of this property needs extreme rebab on one side of the duplex and what I would call “normal rehab” on the exterior and landscaping. My thought is to get the inside of the unit that is halfway done to look nice, not great , but nice and get it rented with the exterior staying in its current condition and then slowly upgrade the outside. It won’t pull much in rent by doing it this way, but this property is already paid off and needs to bring something in to help my current debt. Even a simple $500.00 a month would be helpful to rehabbing the outside of the 4plex.

So I got my enigma started on the demo. And also made some personal time to start prepping the outside of my house for spring. Oddly enough, something that I thought I would never care for or like is gardening. But somehow my mom got me to see the importance of gardening. Guess parents can do things like that. And now a days, gardening is a way for me to see the cycle of life, the beauty in the simplest things of life and how it grows, and even the joy of what I call micro farming, or urban farming as they probably call it. Knowing where my food comes from has actually become important to me. I can’t always know where it’s farmed or what it’s fed, but when whenever possible, I like to know what I am using to fuel my body.

As for the outside of my house, there isn’t much land or sun spots that I can use for gardening, (my dog has already made her sun bathing areas – Funny thing for me…. Never thought I would have a dog that likes to sun bathe. Just the funniest thing she is), but back to gardening and my little yard, there is still plenty to do, build, paint, etc in order to get the garden underway. So I spent whatever time I could on outside work. Besides the last few days have been comparably pretty nice. The warmth of the sun with small accents of a passing cool crisp breeze actually feels pretty good. At least until the sun decides to set, then its time to close shop and look for warmer spaces.

That’s actually when I decided to spend time working on my taxes. Not sure if I mentioned it, but I am behind in filing my taxes. My CPA has called me many many times asking for my taxes but I just haven’t finished prepping receipts and all that work yet. I don’t know what it is about paperwork and doing my taxes, but it just pains me to have to do so much damn paperwork. It’s like it’s my kryptonite. But I tried to buckle down on it this week. And thankfully I at least got my mileage count finished. and I have about half of my business bank account reconciled with my receipts. Definitely a plus when I can finally see a crack of light at the end of the rainbow. You know, now as I write in this post, I can see that these last several days was at least somewhat productive. Still not a stunner week, or a week to really make me be overly excited like I would like to be, but I at least kept pushing forward. I even got my enigma to do some work on my car. My car has been needing some light work done and I finally got it installed today.

And about an hour before the writing of this post, while driving to work, my contractor texted me and said that he will be ready to work tomorrow at the apartments.  So I am hopeful that I will get that damn apartment rented by the end of the year. 🙂 Actually, I expect by March, but I still gotta get my electrician to finish things up at the apartment. He needs about an hours worth of work, but to get him there after he has already done a full days worth of work is like trying to get Trump to not text for a week. Nearly impossible. But I am hopeful that somehow this apartment will come together. Once this apartment is rented it will pay 90% of the mortgage and leave me with only a small electric bill for the common areas and a water bill. I am quite hopeful that my smallest apartment (efficiency) will cover those 2 costs, ( I will need to look at past water bills)  but I am hopeful, leaving me the other 2 units as profit to use on the exterior of the 4plex and once the landscaping/exterior is completed I can then move those profits over to the other properties. That will be a big plus in compounding speed to get things up and running.

So yea… Today, the stock market dropped, I have many things still not completed, I lost work time on the 4plex, my caveman mind is still getting the best of me, but I still didn’t stop. I paused, but I didn’t stop.

Max.