Conquering Hero

What all do you do online? Well of course most of us reading this are bloggers. And that takes more time than some people understand. And of course we have to check in on Twitter and Facebook. Now my email would fill up if I did not check in a few times a day. Oh, I have to have down time too. So I play a few different games online. I look up maps, phone numbers and information online. I use SwagBucks so I can get paid for my searches. (College Girl loves the Starbucks gift cards I earn that way.) I can check my bank account, write my brother, log in the number of miles I walk a day. (You wonder how I have time to do that?) There are other blogs to read, NetFliks to order and bills to keep track of.  I am not quite sure how my life ran before the internet.

Actually there are days I want to run away from the computer.  Days I do not feel like blogging.  Days I am tired of checking in and being checked out.  It seems that we can get so involved online that we forget offline life.  And I can not even imagine the lives of those that also do all of this on their cell phones too!  I know that it not just my life but all of those around me that suffer and wish to Conquer CyberOverload.  That is the book that was sent to me by Joanne Cantor, Ph.D.  She sees that this is becoming an addiction, a disease of the brain.  It eats up our time, our memory and increases stress.  We become less creative and I know I get very irritable when I am suffering from way too much online work to do.   I loved some of the tips and have started using them.

• Be the master of your interruptions.  Simple, just turn off our gadgets so we are not bothered by them when we are busy with our life.  IE. Dinner time with the family.  

• Manage that email monsoon.  Oh that I did do!  Blocked spam, unsubscribed from mailing list, and filtered emails into folders.  I love the spam button on the top of my mail list.  If it is spam I click it.  Soon a lot of that was off my inbox and in my trash!

• Know when to take a break.  Yeah there are times we have to back away from the computer.  And get up and enjoy the beauty and day around us.  And  do you agree that our eyes start swimming around when we have had way too much time online.

Investing Our Income Tax

Well we received out income tax check today. Yeah, really!
You see this is not normal for us.
Our income taxes always go to Dear Hubby's ex's for child support.
But last year I found out I could apply for 1/2 of the refund as an injured spouse.
So now we actually can get a lil back.
This year we received the complete refund!
So exciting....I am not sure what to do with all of it.

My mom suggest saving it for the future. Maybe I should use an online brokerage firm and do a lil Online Trading. What do you think? With an Online Broker I could maybe make a lil more money. You never know. I could use it to invest into a lil Stock Trading. Of course it would have to be a very inexpensive stock. I am not sure the check would purchase much.

Of course I am tempted to do the right thing. Make a copy of the check so the ex's will know it is the full amount. And then follow the letter of the law and keep half for me and send each of them half of the remainder. I mean that is what we are supposed to do with the refund. Heck, I am sure that they will not mind each getting a quarter in the mail and me keeping the remaining fifty cents. As the refund check this year was all of one dollar.

Laughing my head off!