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Well well well, it almost sneaked by me, the quarterly report, my way of evaluating my path to happiness and keeping myself on track. I hate to run my life as a business, because I hate businesses so much, but it's a convenient metaphor, so I'll stick with it. Regular Rieb readers already know that every quarter, just like any other publicly held company, therieb must report on progress toward his goals as laid out in the Annual Report published right after the new year.. In keeping with current U.S. corporate practice of late, financial details are murky at best. Here we go...

The biggest change in the last three months, of course, is that we have committed to leaving Latvia in summer 09 to travel and live abroad until summer '10. That shakes up the goals considerably. Our reasoning is this: first, the economy in Latvia is so bad right now that the possibility of finding better jobs here is remote, second, the economy is bad enough elsewhere as to make finding reasonable employment a concern, and third, in a down economy travel may be cheaper. Call it the “world's screwed up, let's travel!” plan. Of course this isn't just vacation. We need to end this trip with a pretty good idea of where we want to go and what we want to do there afterwards, if only for the next couple of years. So, without further ado, let's take a look at the goals we set in January, how they are changing, and “how I'm doin'.”s

Practical Considerations:

1.(The return of) stop losing shit! For real this time. Is it really that difficult to be careful? I hate to make excuses, but I've often wondered if my propensity to lose things has something to do with how I walk. I most often lose things when I'm tired, and walking around or being in pain from walking around makes me tired quicker than most people. Ordinary tasks become more difficult to manage in the places where I'm most prone to lose things like getting on an off the bus or tram, at the airport, at the checkout in the supermarket, etc. Now there's nothing I can do to avoid these places, but I need to train myself to be extra vigilant when I find myself in these situations, and to check myself when I just put things somewhere „for a moment“ because I'm feeling nervous or hurried.

First Quarter Comment: So far, so good, no significant losses in the first quarter. Almost left my hat behind at the university, but I went back for it. Good catch!

2.End my dependency on my university job for my Latvian residency permit. This is crucial to staying in this country. The university can only offer me a one year contract at best, and that means going to see the jokers at the immigration office once a year, which I'm not willing to do. This is going to mean researching different work opportunities and improving my Latvian, see below.

First Quarter Comment: There is a super-secret plan in the works to make this happen. It will be complex, time consuming, and expensive. It will also cost me a significant amount of freedom, but it will be worth it. Of course since we are now planning to leave Latvia, it's not so urgent.

3.Achieve level B1 in Latvian by the end of the year. Christ, it's hard to see a path to the B1 heights from here, the A1 basement, but it has to happen. B1 is the level necessary to get a permanent residency permit in Latvia, and there's a test, so that means a solid B1. It all comes down to discipline. Doing homework, going to class, and forcing B to talk with me.

First Quarter comment: This goal is on life support. I was unable to find a Latvian class at the university that didn't conflict with my English teaching schedule. I am a bit upset that the faculty didn't do more to accommodate me, seeing as they pay me so little and the free language course was my one real job benefit. Efforts at conversation exchange with Baiba's friends have been fruitless. I am passively learning a bit, but I can't hold a conversation yet.

4.Renew the Residency Permit for 2009-10. If we decide to stay in the country, of course.

First quarter comment: I have been offered a full year contract, and now we are about to leave. I signed the contract, but it can be deferred for a year. Now the question is whether or not to go through the lengthy and headache-inducing process of getting the residency permit. The advantage would be that when we return from the United States, we could stay in Latvia indefinitely without having to worry about immigration issues. The downside is that if I renew the residency permit and don't work for the university, I'll have a real problem getting the subsequent residency permit, or I'll have to go to them and get the residency permit annulled, which will be a pain in the ass.

5.Fix the Residency Permit/health insurance snafu. As it stands, I have to pay for health insurance annually, but the certificate of insurance shows a date that doesn't cover the last date of the next residency permit. I fixed this problem in December by canceling the insurance policy and remaking it to cover the last date of the new residency permit, but I can't do that every six months

First quarter comment: No progress on this yet, may not be an issue if I don't get the residency permit renewed.

6.Do some traveling Whether or not we decide to make a big trip to the States this summer or move out of Latvia, we need to at least do some wandering around Europe in order to see where we'd like to move.

First Quarter comment: Oh boy, when it comes to spending money, I'm an achiever! U.S. trip is booked, and we are 99% committed to traveling further afterwards, possibly returning to Latvia for August and September, possibly launching from the U.S. Now a huge goal is to figure out where, and find out how to keep these plans within some kind of budget.

Financial Considerations:

1.I still need to figure out some reasonable investments. It's all well and good to pat myself on the back for staying put and not losing money in 2008, but that doesn't change the fact that if I continue to do nothing with my money, my ideal lifestyle will come to an end sometime in my early 50's. Then what? The current economic climate provides some very interesting opportunities, particularly in real estate. I need to have the courage to follow them.

First Quarter comment: I've put out some very tentative feelers for finding another rental property in the U.S. Prices are low, but the economy makes me worried about making enough in rent. The economic situation in Latvia is dire enough at present to preclude investing here.

2.I still need to find better health insurance, and not just for me. Baiba will need to be covered if we move anywhere. The university might have an option for me if we stay in Latvia, although I'd probably keep the Interglobal policy for traveling purposes.

First Quarter comment: This is an eternally frustrating problem. For the moment, it looks like IMG is still the best option. I have still no idea if it will actually pay a claim. We are still dealing with the problem: no real job, no real insurance.

3.This may seem like more of a personal goal than a financial goal, but I need to communicate a consistent and effective message about money to Baiba. That means no more temper tantrums about my losing the weekly food money, or diatribes about how expensive Latvia is. These issues are well known and my behavior only serves to heighten worry and increase panic. Knock it off!

First quarter comment: I've been improving. Other than brief fits of apoplexy over the grocery bill, I haven't thrown any fits. Still, there's more to be done. Baiba now has a job so she feels like she's contributing to our financial situation, which is important. I need to keep making changes. Consider the facts, we are about to embark on so traveling that will cost a lot of money. I will ruin the trip if I'm worrying about burning cash every day.

4.Continue to drive costs down in Riga without turning into Bill circa 2004. Let's face it, inflation sucks, but counting every penny is no way to live. We need to go out when we want, see exhibitions and friends when we want, and if we burn through my working capital that way by June then we need to leave the country. Staying and living on bread and water is simply not an option.

First quarter comment: I think we've squeezed this tomato dry. We're not going out much, not buying unnecessary items, and being good with the shopping. It feels like we're not doing enough because prices continue to rise, but we've done everything we can. Now we just have to hang on for two months.

Personal Goals:

1.Wow, this section is certainly a lot less cluttered now that all of these writing projects that I wasn't working on are gone! What should take their place? I don't want to be the kind of person that is satisfied doing absolutely nothing, and I really can't afford that anyway. If I'm not a writer, what am I? This year needs to be dedicated to finding a direction to pursue and to head off in pursuit.

First quarter comment: Well, I don't know if this is really going to solve the problem, but we certainly have the “head off in pursuit” part. Since we are committed to traveling, now the onus is on us to build the sustainable lifestyle. We more or less have it in Riga, but it involves both of us having bad jobs. That's sustainable in a financial way, but not in a quality of life way.

2.Build the Latvian friends network. The older I get, the greater a separation there is between the person I am and the ideal type of the person I want to be. I want to be social, gregarious, interested and interesting, hobnobbing with politicians, artists, writers and critics, but in the real world I'm the guy who more often stays home and plays with the microphone settings in Ubuntu. Take last night as an example. B dragged me to a party, and I did have a good time, but I was the one who wanted to go home early and I didn't really make an effort to have meaningful conversations with anyone. What I need to understand is that my life alone isn't interesting enough. All of my visions of happiness involve lots of other people, so I need to turn myself into the type of person who wants to go out and meet them.

First quarter comment: I'm still leeching from Baiba's group of friends. I've passed up some opportunities to befriend my students, but honestly, it makes me feel a little weird. My students are my clients, they pay me for my time and becoming their friend would blur the line between a professional relationship and a personal one. Let's face it, I'm an English language prostitute. I get paid to spend time with people who need my services. If I were to become their friend, they could ask the question: “Well, friend, why are you charging me for this?”

3.One blog entry a week: While I'm no longer a writer, there is no reason why I can't find something to say once every seven days to the poor people who have nothing better to do than read my blog.

First quarter comment: Volume is up, but regular entries are still a problem. I'd like to have an entry ready on Monday morning to greet my loyal followers when they get into work, and another on Friday to send them off for the weekend. I'm starting to write about a week forward, maybe that will help.

Big Projects:

1.Here's a big project that actually really needs to get done! B and I have to decide what the next 3-5 years are going to be like. Will we stay in Latvia or move elsewhere in Europe? What will we do for work? Most importantly, we need to make decisions about how we want to live in the future and find a path between there and here.

First quarter comment: Well, we certainly have made a commitment to travel, now we need to find some answers. This is a great example of a goal changing in the middle of the year. When I wrote this goal I was thinking about it theoretically, now there is a real urgency. We are investing in traveling, we need to use that time to figure out what comes next.

2.I remain committed to some sort of collective living arrangement to aggressively drive down the cost of living while allowing the members of the collective to live more or less the lives they want. I have the feeling that the current economic crisis may make this type of thinking somewhat more popular. I'd still like to get the usual suspects together to explore this option, but I'm unclear on where or when.

First quarter comment: Looks like the best chance of this happening is with Dave in Buenos Aries. Too bad it's so far away and I know exactly nothing about it. Still, Dave seems at least provisionally interested, so we'll keep talking about it.

So there's a look at the year so far. We've already changed a lot in terms of our goals. We've also broken a lot of rules concerning spending, or at least we are about to. How to evaluate the year? One important factor that's emerging is making a clean break from Latvia without burning any bridges. I want to leave without creating future immigration hassles, and I would also like to stay in the good graces of the university, should I need to teach here again. Then, of course there's the issue of correctly planning our traveling so we can try to figure out a plan for the next few years. So far we've been good on the spending, shaky on the planning. That's got to change

Quarterly grade: C-