Hello Blog-reader, hope you're doing well.

     Despite all the little annoyances that come with keeping the crazy kinda schedule I keep, there are times when it very clearly pays off...sometimes quite literally. Sure I have limited social time and even less time to just relax at home like I used to be able to do 4 out of the 7 days each week, and yes I constantly seem to be at one job or another or trying to cram information pertaining to various areas of law into my brain night after night. True I work 18 hours a week that I dont get paid for and spend 10 hours a week that I do pay for. Of course there are times that I wonder if this is really worth the trouble to do all this at once...

     But of course, dear friends, it is tax season. Time to gather all those confusing sheets of paper and either spend a couple hours (and a few aspirin) trying to do your own taxes or bundle them up and drop them in the lap of an accountant. As I have no clue what 80% of the information on my tax forms are, I belong in that second category and that is where I have been tonight. Lovely little woman named Sharon at Cason Financial Services in New Albany, IN. Took her all my forms (4 W-2's as I forgot I had a couple part-time jobs last year as well as a couple forms pertaining to college tuition) and sat and talked with her and my old roommate Justin for 20 or 30 minutes. After she punched everything in, she very casually informs me that I will be receiving a tax refund of $2254...Wait what??

     I got like $600 last year on my refund. I never DREAMED that I would get anything like this back. Every year since I started having to have my taxes done, I've figured if I can manage to break even and not owe anyone anything, I'm perfectly content with that. I dont know the money is coming so its not like I'm gonna miss it. But 22 hundred dollars?? This is even more exciting for me because I was planning on spending the next several months working 2 jobs to pay off some credit cards so I could enjoy my money when I start my career and maybe look at moving into a nicer apartment. This has given me a huge headstart. I'll be able to pay off 3 credit cards just out of my refund, before I even have a second job (or at least one where I get paid).

    All in all life is good. I haven't paid much attention to what is going on out in the world today because I have been otherwise engaged (crazy day at the office, followed by class, then my tax appointment). But the way I see it, this is my blog so large portions of it are going to be talking about what's going on with me, not the rest of the world lol. Maybe I'll try to do a news-related post between now and my video post Sunday night...

Ok finally got my first video entry uploaded. Had to route it through Youtube cause Blogger was having some issues with video clips. Hopefully this works, if not, someone let me know.

So this is my new experiment

So as many of you know, my schedule lately has been a little insane. From the looks of things, this isn't going to be changing in the immediate future, so I've decided to start a blog to make it easier for people to keep up with me. Now that I read that, it sounds a little pretentious, but that's not how it is meant to come across. This is just a way for my friends and family that I don't see as often as I would like to keep in touch with me, a way for me to interact with friends beyond the simple Facebook status here and there, and something that I am doing for myself as a little side project to give me a break from work and school. It also will be a way to motivate myself to keep up with current events better, as I"ll be posting on them in here too.

So here is how this will work. I'll post on here periodically during the week about what's going on, thoughts for the day, current events and whatnot. Then on Sundays I'll have a video blog entry where I'll have some of the same things but in addition, any upcoming events, special announcements, and a question for the week. I have the settings on here so that anyone can post comments on any entry I do without having to make a profile themselves so the more feedback the better! Also, if you have an info you wanna share, any groups, causes or events you wanna let people know about, or anything else you want me to share on here, shoot me a message here or on Facebook and I"ll incorporate it into a text entry and/or my video entries.

Looking forward to seeing how this will work out!