Can You Become a New Version of You?

I did something today that was out of character yet made me feel more myself than I have in a long time.

My goal for 2010, which I'm starting on a bit early, is to get my considerable credit card debt paid off. I'm hopeful that by this time next year, I'll be selling my apartment and bidding farewell to temp drudgery in favor of a more rewarding career in another sector (that is, if I haven't already made the transition). The current front runner in the realm of possibilities is teaching English as a foreign language in southeast Asia. While those teaching jobs pay handsomely considering the cost of living in, say, Vietnam, it would be highly preferable to be cleared of outstanding consumer debt before taking one.

It's all well and good to say I want to pay off my credit card debt, but it's a hilarious goal when you consider that I ran up the debt when I was making about $100,000 a year more than I do right now. I've learned a lot about living within my means since my financial circumstances plummeted, but I haven't figured out a way to slash my budget down below the bone so I can live beneath my means. Ergo, I need to make more money. So, through pushiness, I rehired myself part-time on the last document review project I worked on. This means I have one full-time job and one part-time job, and my plan is to use all the money from the part-time job to rid myself of the scourge of credit card debt. I have no idea if this will actually work, since I can't anticipate how long the part-time temping job will last and therefore can't estimate cash inflow from it, but it should at least help me to make a dent.

Being pushy, which I had to be to re-insert myself into my previous project, is not how I normally operate. Yet one of the main things that has bothered me about losing my job this year is the feeling of helplessness it engendered. It's all well and good for my mom to blame the loss on the economy (not to mention accurate), but it's a horrible feeling just to be stuck waiting it out. Finding myself a way to achieve a financial goal makes me feel like I'm taking charge of my own life again. Feeling back in control of my life makes me feel more like myself, and feeling like I wasn't myself was really the other big thing bothering me for about the past year.

So, it remains to be seen how this gambit will play out, but at least I have the feeling that forward progress is being made.