Blogapalooz-Hour 2015: The Late Edition

11:38pm - Greetings friends!  Welcome to my addition to Blogapalooz-Hour 2015.  For you tried and true ChicagoNow readers, you're undoubtedly familiar with Blogapalooz-hour.  For the new and uninitiated, allow me to shed some light.Blogapalooz-hour is a challenge in which a topic is emailed to the blogger at 9pm. I then have 1 hour to construct a posting, which is then posted at exactly at 10pm.  But, as the title denotes, this is the late edition!In all honesty, I have Jiu Jitsu training on Wednesday evenings from 8pm-9pm, usually followed by extra training and bulls**ting.  So I wasn't able to meet the deadline, and for that I do apologize.Mea Culpa!That basically means my bad in Latin.And so, on to the actual topic at hand, which is:<blockquote><b>“You made a million choices in 2015. Write about one of them.”</b></blockquote>Wow...that's a tough one actually.  On one hand, I know that I made a multitude of choices in 2015.  On the other, I have trouble remembering last week, let alone the multitude of choices I made in 2015.So, I'll go ahead and talk about my choice to take on a second job.  Which was a relatively recent decision.  Within the last 2 months.  However, it has been a very positive change.  But like any other change that comes in life, it hasn't been without some drawbacks and issues which need to be dealt with.So, my second job is working as a barista, which has been a much more pleasant experience than I expected.  I've always avoided working in any aspect of food service like the plague.  However, this has been pretty cool. I work with some really good people, and it's a relatively pleasant environment.  A huge bonus has been the influx of income that I'm receiving.  It's been a wonderful supplement, and I can honestly say that I have some money in my savings account for the first time in over a year.  That's a big thing for me.  2015 kind of sucked in a lot of ways.  I'm not one to complain, and I take things in stride, but according to the government's definition, I spent a large portion of 2015 homeless. Not that I had to sleep on the streets, or in my car for that matter, but I spent a good amount of time bouncing from couch to couch, and even at this point still don't have a permanent residence of my own.  That isn't something that I say easily, but it is a fact of life, and I firmly believe that the downsides of life are those moments which make us stronger.  as my Jiu Jitsu professors often say, "there are blessings in the beatings".But I think that over the next few months, my second job will allow me to find a place of my own...probably in a shady part of town, but my own nonetheless. That'll be a big improvement.  When I left CPS a year or so ago, I took a huge pay cut and that left me in a bad way...and needless to say, I'm still recovering.Of course there are downsides: Waking up at 2:30am, to leave home by 3am, to get to work at 4am, and then working a 4 hour shift.  Or working on a Saturday morning from 4:30am-1pm.  But I'm adjusting.  Fortunately, my military experience left me with a lot of experience of high output days on little sleep.  I'm embracing the grind as best I can.  I know that better things will come, and for that, I can't do anything but be helpful.Now, since I'm officially 2 hours late in posting this blog, I'm not going to worry about spending an hour before posting.  It is now 12:08am, so it took me approximately 30 minutes to get this out of my brain onto the screen.  Not bad at all.I hope you all have a wonderful and safe New Years Eve, and I will see you all on the other side.Tschus!