People who know me in real life are probably sick of me saying, "I work for pennies." But it's the best quip I have to describe the fact that I make very little money. And it is a quip, not a complaint. I knew when I applied to work at my church that I would not be paid the equivalent of what I could make elsewhere for the same work. Everyone knows that. You take a church job like mine because you have a sincere passion for using your gifts to enable your church to better reach out to people who are hurting. You take it to give back to the people who have always been there to support you. You take it because you really can't stand that the church website is done in Microsoft Publisher.

(Side note: the job does have a lot of perks, like an overwhelming amount of grace and friends who come into your office to pray over you when you're having a rough morning and a ridiculous amount of homemade desserts brought in by people from the congregation.)

The other thing I've known from the beginning is that my time at this job would be limited. My mom has been able to work as the church bookkeeper for 15+ years because she is married to my dad, who has been bringing in the real bacon at his job for 30+ years. I don't have a Mr. Skirts, so if I'm going to get out of the house and start pursuing my goals as an independent adult, I need a job that pays in bacon, not bacon grease.

Pursuing the Bacon Job

I had tentatively set in my mind that I would start pursuing a Bacon Job in mid-2012, which is just around the corner. I'd also penciled in a move to San Francisco for the fun of it.¹

In order to make those dreams a reality, there are two really big hurdles I need to jump over.

Hurdle #1: Online Portfolio

After years of fighting it, I've decided that I'd like to pursue web design as a full-time career. If I could do that as a freelancer, awesome, but if I end up working in an office, that's cool, too. I actually think cubicles are adorable.

But I haven't had an online portfolio of my design work (which is mostly print publications now) in a really long time. This hasn't stopped hundreds of people from stopping me and asking me to build them a website or design business cards for them, which just goes to show the power of word-of-mouth testimonials.² Still, I eventually want to be able to have all or most of my work online — as proof that I can sometimes make pretty things, as evidence that I am obsessed with pretty ampersands, and as a means of getting constructive feedback from the design community.

I have a system in place to host and organize all of the content. I simply need to collect that content from all of my various computers, sift through it to find the crème de la crème, upload it, and write up accompanying descriptions for each project.

Deadline for collecting the content: January 10, 2012
Deadline for sifting through the content: January 20, 2012
Deadline for uploading the content: January 31, 2012
Deadline for writing up the accompanying descriptions: February 28, 2012
Deadline for launching online portfolio: February 29, 2012

Hurdle #2: Personal Finances

I am writing this blog post on a $2,000 MacBook Pro, one of the three computers in my possession.

I work for pennies.

. . .

If you haven't already guessed, my personal finances aren't in the best of shape. Things really got out of hand this month as student loans came back to haunt me. I can't realistically expect to knock out $80,000 in student loans before I move out of my parents' house, but I can make those repayments (and payments on a future home) a lot easier by eliminating credit card debt.

This is something a lot of my peers are dealing with right now. I'm so proud to know so many young people who are either in control of their finances or on a really solid path toward getting there. It's not easy with shiny new temptations being released every day, being talked about on Twitter, etc. I found myself looking at iPads and other tablets online before I even knew what I would do with one. What is wrong with me?

"Get out of debt" has been a resolution for too many years in a row, and I'm realizing it's something I can't do on my own. I'm joining forces with Shannyn of frugalbeautiful.com and several other amazing ladies who are committed to being Debt-Free Divas with her. I met Shannyn at the 20SB Summit in August 2011 because I was wearing a TARDIS sweatshirt. At the time, I thought it was entirely unfair that someone so stunningly beautiful could also be a Doctor Who fan and a beauty blogger who had her finances in order. Since then, nothing has changed. It's still entirely unfair.

I'm going to stick with using mint.com to set up my goals and my budgets, since they do a beautiful job of tracking that sort of thing. But first, I need to actually know what I'm going to be spending in 2012, and that's something that Mint can't tell me. I will need to sift through paperwork and emails to make sure I know the full amount due on all of my credit cards and student loans, along with minimum payments and interest rates. I'd like to look into either consolidating my loans or requesting lower payments from the individual lenders (at least until I can afford to pay more). I also need to round up receipts for annual and monthly membership fees and weed out the things I don't need to be paying for right now. (Sorry, Hulu+. It's not you. It's me.)

Deadline for collecting loan and credit card information: January 31, 2012
Deadline for minimizing student loan payments: March 10, 2012
Deadline for collecting recurring fee information: February 13, 2012
Deadline for cancelling unnecessary recurring fees: March 31, 2012
Deadline for getting out of debt entirely: ?
Deadline for setting a deadline for getting out of debt entirely: March 31, 2012

So to Wrap Up (with Bacon)

This is probably the longest thing I've posted to rachelskirts.com in years. But one of my favorite things about blogging, the thing that has kept me writing for a decade now, is that it's a tool for building communities. Shannyn is building a community for people who insist on being fabulous and debt-free. Hannah is building a community for people who want to Stop Being Crap. Pham sees potential communities that don't yet exist on YouTube, and he makes them happen. I don't know what my community is, but I know that I so deeply cherish the friendships I've made here. You've encouraged me to meet so many goals already, and I hope I can do the same for you.

If you've made it this far, I owe you a piece of bacon. If I still owe you a signed piece of bacon from the days of the Bacon Famous podcast, I guess I owe you two pieces of bacon now.

Deadline for giving bacon to everyone who reads this blog post: the day after I get my own TARDIS.

¹ And because I've seen every episode of Full House at least fifty times. ↑
² Or there is a time bubble surrounding my county and keeping it in the Dark Ages, before computers and Photoshop and the internet came into existence. My family is immune to the effects because my dad is a child of the computer gods. ↑

Credit for the photograph of the Golden Gate bridge belongs to Anthony Larson.
Credit for the photograph of the bacon heart belongs to Jim.

I spoonerize words all the time. All. The. Time. Good spoonerisms and bad. In my head. (I worderize spoons all the time. Tall. The Lime. Spoon Gooderisms band ad. Hin my ed.)

I was reading the above quote from Neven Mrgan's blog in the midst of a long week which turned into a long month which is still dragging on toward eternity. Ahem. The whole article got me thinking about a number of things, like the first time I heard the word "spoonerisms" and what a great-looking Tumblr page Neven has and how I should really get around to reading through his archives some day. (I went traipsing through the archives five minutes later.)

But the actual content, the story about how he has been intentionally spoonerizing words for years, has been stuck in my head all these long weeks. I just can't fathom someone who intentionally does what I try so hard not to do.

When I get really stressed or if I find myself surrounded by people who intimidate me or somehow make me nervous, I leak spoonerisms. They don't stay in my head for my own amusement. They spill out in awkward gushes in the middle of conversations, so my tongue tries to do a U-turn, and hi, is Rachel channeling demons? Maybe we should take our punch and cookies elsewhere.

It's one of the many things I had hoped to outgrow after childhood, but here I am at 26 and still unable to match syllables together in the right order. And even if I can get the words right, my brain starts jumbling up colloquialisms until I sound like a foreigner trying to repeat jokes I heard on informercials. For example, "ruffled her feathers" and "got her undies in a bunch" join forces to become "ruffle her undies" or "got her feathers in a bunch."

The worst part of it is that people just nod along with what I'm saying, the only hint that they caught my mistake being the glimmer of pity in the corner of their eye. Sometimes, it takes me days to realize what I've said, and I then get an instant replay of the pity and the glimmering and the silent nodding that I should have known was for me.

Anyway, I guess this is just one giant warning to the people who will meet me at VidCon and other shindigs in 2012. I'll try to wear a name tag, but you can also just wait 'til someone says, "Oh, you know what they say! 'A fly in the hand is worth two thousand words!'"

Sigh.

The only thing that ever unsettled my love affair with her blog (note: this did not affect my adoration for her) was a project she initiated, called Cringe. The project itself was brilliant (still is, really) and landed her a book deal and brought smiles to so many faces (including mine), but it also sometimes interrupted what I selfishly thought was the ideal memoir-to-diary-to-list ratio for blog posts.

I bring this up because I'm pretty sure that Mad Libs Monday (MLM) is becoming my Cringe but on a potentially obsessive level, and I have mixed feelings about that. My feelings toward MLM aren't mixed at all — I love this project and look forward to rollin' with it for as long as y'all will support it — but I am not all that thrilled with myself for being unable to talk about anything else on my blog, on Twitter, on Skype, with my family members, at the grocery store, etc.

Dude. Rachel. We get it. Mad Libs Monday is the best part of waking up for you these days. Cheers.

So I guess this is me asking y'all to help keep me accountable.

I'm going geocaching with my dad this afternoon (followed by the traditional dinner of Portillo's and Doctor Who), and I am reserving Tuesday night for a date with my Nook. But if I don't also post here by the end of the week about some other fun thing I'm doing or thinking about or planning for, please bop me over the head by way of email, Twitter, Skype, etc. Get sassy about it. I cry easily, but I'm also a feisty pirate. Bring on the tough love.

And hey, let me know if I can do the same for you about anything. Need a kick in the pants about something? I'm an experienced kicker! Let's work with each other to accomplish some goals, people. My goal this week is to prevent my obsessive personality from turning me into a single-faceted hermit. What's yours?

Episode 3: Register Here!

If you're interested in submitting a video or audio post for the next Mad Libs Monday episode, leave a comment below. Make sure to include your email address (visible only to me), so I can hunt you down with further instructions. The deadline for submitting clips is Saturday, but that's kind of the only rule of the game.

So sign up! And head over to YouTube to leave nice comments about the second video! Adjective! Noun! Body part!

UPDATE: Comments are now closed! If you are one of the ten delightful people who signed up below (or Bart! I'm mentally adding you to the list!), check your email on Tuesday evening for instructions and your assigned parts of speech.

I could dedicate a whole chapter of my autobiography to all the times I've been foiled by the "we look like a Starbucks and serve Starbucks products and pay our employees from the Starbucks funds, but we sure as heck won't accept your Starbucks gift card, coupon, or other money-saving token" routine.

I AM AN AMERICAN. GIVE ME MY FREE STUFF ALREADY.

Callie is seventeen years old today. Her brother Carmel died of liver and kidney failure in February 2009, and I still don't know how to write about that experience. Both cats have been a part of my life for so long, longer than most friends. I'm so grateful that Callie, who has been on thyroid medication for the better part of a decade, is still jolting me awake with angry headbutts and trailing litter all over my blankets and purring maniacally while cutting off circulation to my limbs.

I know some of you aren't cat people or pet people or people, but just for today, shut up and deal with the fact that I love my cat twenty times more than I will ever love you.

One of my friends recently made a remark about how much she dislikes autumn. I consider autumn to be my favorite season, so I replied by saying so. My friend perked up and said, "Really? Why?" Either I haven't actually thought this out in a long time or my need for a vacation is greater than I thought, but regardless, I couldn't really give a good answer. I love back-to-school shopping, I love my birthday (which I consider the start of fall), I love scarves and hats and blankets, etc. When I got to the end of a list not much longer than that one, my friend stepped back and frowned.

"I was hoping you'd give me a reason to like fall, but you really haven't."

I decided then and there that I would rush home and write up a hundred great things to love about autumn, but I have barely had time to read one hundred words.

So I'm outsourcing a little. If there are any autumn-lovers in the bunch, I'd love to hear your defense of what is clearly the best season. If you live in a place that doesn't actually have seasons, tell me how you cope without the cool breezes and warm colors of fall. If you don't like autumn, let's trade weather! I'll give you my February and March in return for your September and October.

P.S. The picture really has nothing to do with the post. The sunset was just really pretty this evening.

Second, I'm considering selling off my Flip camcorder and a two-year-old (maybe not even) Canon point-and-shoot, both of which are in good condition. (Why? Because hi, I'm broke and don't need five or six cameras.) The thing is that I don't ever sell stuff online, and some places *cough* eBay *cough* seem to require more effort than is worth my while to create a posting. Suggestions, anyone?

(Why can't selling stuff in real life be as easy as selling stuff in the Sims?)