I’m a sucker

I’s my birthday, and I feel I’ve little to celebrate…Yup. I’m 28 today. But I feel like I have little to celebrate today. It was a whacky weekend (and week) full of discouraging discoveries. First and foremost in terms of shock value, I’ve learned that I’m NOT going to be getting my new 12″ PowerBook anytime soon. Why? I’ve been a victim of internet fraud. Yeah, I rolled the dice on a deal that seemed too good to be true and it WAS. I realized this on Friday night, exactly one month after I sent payment for the laptop. I was SICK SICK SICK. Kim was very understanding the following morning, in that remarkably forgiving way she responds to my screw-ups. That eased me. But after previous situations where I’ve lost a piece of equipment (though not to fraud but to UPS incompetence) and wasn’t aggressive enough about my recovery, I decided to grab the bull by the horns and quickly built a rather thick file on the whole situation. I received a call from the police about my situation, and they weren’t surprised go figure. In fact, they’ve been trying to capture this guy for a while, but he’s caught wind and closed accounts and laid low for a spell. So, perhaps my situation will be instrumental in capturing this guy, thus preventing this guy from ripping off anybody else. The investigator was very friendly, and confident about nabbing him. Though he made no promises of recovering my money. We’ll see. I’ve decided to take this as a wake up call about the slop in my life. I’ve felt like I’ve been getting what I deserve in some ways. Not that I’ve frauded anybody! No, I mean, I’ve been trying to take short cuts to success, or being lazy with the business. Just lack of discipline and ethics. Not towards my clients, but just sort of cheating myself with not being careful with purchases and bookkeeping, and budgeting and planning. That sort of thing. And if I can get my butt in gear in these ways and be motivated to go find the necessary business to cover my losses, then everybody wins.Well, I best get to what I just described. I have a lot of work to do.