Need to do:
- 2017 Taxes: Not as easy as it sounds as all of our business expenses have been collected in a shoe box for the last 12 months. During my tenure I barely had time to keep up with the Bernerhof's books, much less my own. So my first order of real business is to get our 2017 books and taxes done. We paid substantial estimated taxes throughout the year and I hope those payments were sufficient enough that we will owe very little come April 15th. This will be a tedious task but I am not dreading it. It will be relaxing to settle into this project and get it done. I expect it to take between 40 and 80 hours.
- 2017 Year-end Bernerhof books: This project relies on Lisseth. She will be doing most of the work while I supervise and coach from afar. We made significant progress on Monday. I hope to have this wrapped up by the end of January. This project will probably take an additional 40 hours.
Want to do:
- Feel good again. I abused my body last year by eating and drinking too much crap and not exercising nearly enough. I didn't get enough sleep and I probably didn't drink enough water. To put it bluntly, I am embarrassed by the weight I have gained. I understand why I found it impossible in the situation I was in to maintain healthy patterns, but that doesn't make this any easier for me to bear, today.
- I physically feel like crap, mostly my joints and my feet hurt, pretty much all the time. I have a chronic pain in my right shoulder blade that is acting up. I am getting good solid sleep for 8 hours a night, so I am not tired, but I feel weak, much weaker than I want to feel. I know that 95%, if not 100%, of the pain that I feel is attributable to poor diet and being overweight. I know this because when I eat well and I am not overweight I feel good. I need to improve my diet and lose weight, because it's stupid to feel like crap when I can feel good if I just work at it a little bit.
- Improve my diet. Our first plan was to go on the Whole 30 starting January 3rd, but I have found myself rebelling against this very restrictive diet plan. Instead, I have decided to eliminate sugar, wheat and alcohol because I believe those are the main culprits in my diet that are causing systemic inflammation; leading to pain in my joints and are causing this feeling of overall lethargy and weakness. I also believe that all three substances are addictive and lead me to overeat. My short term goal is to go one week without consuming these three substances and chronical how I feel each day. I hope that I will notice a quick improvement in how I feel and by writing about it, I will solidify my commitment to avoid these foods. As of this moment, it has been 24 hours and the cravings are intense. My feet and my joints still hurt a lot. That's going to be the real measure for progress, how does my body feel today? Today, on a scale of 0 - 10, with 0 being so awful I wish I could just lay in bed all day and 10 being so great that you would have to hold me down in a chair to keep me still, I'll give it a 3. That's pretty bad. I'm up, I'm going to get stuff done, I will exercise, but I am having to force myself to do it.
- Exercise. I am not working for a living right now, and our plan is for me not to work until we have our inn. Therefore I have plenty of time to exercise. I worked out for an hour on Saturday and again on Monday. I also went for a 2 mile walk on Monday. I was incredibly sore yesterday from my workouts. Today I feel a little better. The first thing we did when I got home was set my home gym back up. It is a very comfortable set-up for weight lifting. The weather in KC is not so bad for outdoor activity in the winter. It gets too cold and too wet on some days, but most weeks I should be able to get outside for a walk/jog at least a few days a week. My plan is to exercise in some fashion for a minimum of an hour a day, everyday. That exercise can be weight lifting, walking, jogging, riding my bike, hiking, whatever. It needs to be strenuous. It needs to happen every day. I want to lift weights at least three days a week because I want to get strong again.
- For now, those are the changes I will focus on. If I improve my diet and exercise regularly, I am confident that I will start feeling better very soon.
- Find an inn. The search has started. I am working with a group out of New England that specializes in helping people find inns and then offers consulting services through the first year of ownership. I have not, as of today, been wowed by their services, but I was not a great client for the first month or so because I was still working at the Bernerhof and did not have time to respond to the information they were sending me. It is taking them a little time to adjust to the fact that this is now one of my top priorities and I now expect to get quicker responses to my inquiries and more effort from them, but I am starting to see some improvement. We are looking in the Four Corners region (southwest Colorado, northwest New Mexico, northeast Arizona, southeast Utah) because of its geographic proximity to grandchildren and its natural beauty. Our preliminary focus is on southwest Colorado (Durango, Telluride, etc.) and the Flagstaff, Arizona areas for no reason in particular other than that I am drawn to those areas. We have a check list of things we want: big enough so we can afford a small staff, nice owners' quarters, a decent kitchen, a little land, in a tourist area, and natural beauty top the list; but we also know that we need to remain flexible and keep our eyes and minds open to all possibilities. My goal is to buy an inn with sufficient cash-flow to have the mortgage paid off in 15 years. I want to own the place outright before I am too old to work hard for a living.
- Prepare the house for sale. Once we find the inn, we will have to sell the house. I want the house to be ready to sell at that point. I need to paint the entire interior of the house (it's been 8 years since I painted), put a bunch of shit away, have a huge garage sale, etc. This will come after I get our taxes done. I also need to get out in the yard and work on creating some curb appeal. I can't spend a lot of money doing any of this, because we are already probably one of the more expensive and well maintained houses on the block with the new siding and windows we installed a couple of years ago. Mostly, my intent with the work I am going to do is to not have little things detract from the value or appeal of the house, rather than doing work to increase value or appeal.
- Plan trips to see family. I spent a year isolated in New England running somebody else's inn. I miss my family. I plan on taking several road trips this year to see properties and plan to incorporate visits with family along the way.
That's it for now. It's 10:00AM. I am going to get out of my PJs and into my workout clothes and get today's exercise in before I get distracted and lose motivation.
If you do happen to read this, don't hesitate to comment or send me an email bertabetta@hotmail.com. You can also text or find me on Facebook. It is motivating to know somebody is reading. It'll keep me honest and keep me posting. Thanks!!
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