PROJECT: Briles 200 - Property Management

Hey, Kids! Did you miss me???...

Well, I missed YOOOOUUU!!!

Sorry I've been gone for so long! You're probably thinking to yourselves, "What the hell, Briles! You promised us a long-running, continuous blog and a healthy Briles... In two months alls we've got is one lousy request to friend some dude named, Drew, on Facebook! What gives, Bub?!..." (Okay, you probably didn't think the word, "Bub", but I just caught Wolverine The Movie On Demand recently and have decided for added badass factor that the word "Bub" should be used anytime you're asking someone a question in a threatening manner. So now I'm forcing it upon you. You okay with that, Bub??...)

So for the past two months I've actually been in a heated legal battle with one Jillian Michaels. Yeah, the one from The Biggest Loser.... AND from NBC's new show LOSING IT with JILLIAN MICHAELS. The TV show that stole my blog title!! I've been flying back and forth to L.A. to fight the cease and desist order they put on my blog until I change the title. Luckily, I defended myself in court and won! Obviously, SHE stole MY blog title!! I mean, there's no possible way one of my reality TV friends DIDN'T put a bug in Jillian's ear about my brilliant title. I had no hard proof, but I won anyway. I'm very convincing... I'm putting money on my buddy, Schrader as the turncoat. He probably gave it to her for $50... the same exact amount he still owes me for that hotel room in Santa Barbara for Malkoff's wedding....

Juuuust kidding!! None of that happened. YET!! Well.. Schrader does really owe me 50 bucks. I really just had a CRAZY two months. It's amazing how little it takes for me to lose my focus....

The Bruins and Celtics got way further in the playoffs than I expected, which had me out and about, drinking and eating more than expected... I randomly befriended a visiting Dutchman after a matinee viewing of MacGruber (extremely funny movie, fyi), which got me out and about, drinking and eating more than I expected... I attended three 30th birthdays celebrations and two charity bar crawls (Yeeesssss, I said 'charity bar crawls'....), which got me out and about, drinking and eating more than I expected... And the nation's supposed slight economic rebound refused to find its way to the hotel I was working in causing the 'IT' in 'Briles is Losing It' to become defined as my hours and, thus, my cash supply... which gave me all the free time to head out and about with the little money I had, drinking and eating more than I expected...

Anyone picking up a theme here?

All my out and about-ness really killed "Briles Is Losing It!"'s, and sadly PROJECT: Briles 200's momentum! Did I have a blast the past month? I did! Do I have a lot of crazy stories I could share with you now? I do! Am I going to tell you any of them? Probably not. Why won't I share these stories on the blog? Aside from all my carousing, there was a larger force at work that became the true detractor of my pen's momentum. While this blog is nothing but good, clean fun, I didn't really want to be posting anything more until I was done with a job hunt... Juuuuust in case. I wish I could have told you sooner, Kids, but I had to keep to myself for a while... stay away from the public domain for a bit, ya know. The good news is that I'm here now, putting up this post... you know what that means, right?? Briles got a new jobby job! What kind of job? Well, I'm glad you asked...

Per usual, my new job has nothing to do with any of my past jobs. If you charted my entire career path, it would confuse you more than a Twin Peaks dream sequence. Luckily for me, my new venture happens to come at a time when I needed to make a clever connection between my health and something else in life to write about. As you could have guessed from this post's title, I'm heading into the exciting world of property management for a national apartment company.

I'm not going to get into the details of the who's, what's, and where's exactly, but I can tell you that I will be dealing with a couple of the rich and famous again in a client service type role, a la my L.A. days. Even more interestingly, I have to help run an entire apartment community!! My primary responsibility is going to be working with the numbers; calculating credits and debits, keeping budgets and scheduled hours in check, and keeping a lot of information extremely organized... Kiiiinda sorta like what I'm trying to do with my own health... I'm trying to watch what I'm eating, how much I'm eating, how much I'm exercising, etc. Essentially, I'm managing two properties now... my bod and my apartment community.

It is a major challenge learning all the new accounting, organization, and standards that are required for the job, mostly because I also have to assist any resident who brings an issue my way, which happens extremely frequently throughout the day and which distracts from learning and tasks at hand.

This job comes at the perfect time, as I need to rededicate myself to PROJECT:Briles 200. I was doing great there for the first month and half. I had lost about 10 lbs over that first month and a half, but then all these distractions came my way, including the new job, which pulled my attention in a thousand other directions. I started loosening my discipline on everything I had wrote about in the blog previously. I only missed two work outs with my Cutting Edge Fitness Sensei Ann Marie (which I did have legitimate new job reasons for), but I kind of threw everything else out the window because I had to prepare for and go on a few interviews, I had to focus on the new job, I had to go on about eight bar crawls... the distractions kept coming and I kept letting them be distractions. I maintained the 10lbs that I had lost, but there was no further progress.

While I have a solid base of understanding as to what's going to help me get healthier, I'm still learning, just like with the job. Distractions, in the form of life events or residents, are going to continue to come at me from every which way. I have to learn how to better deal with those distractions at the same time as keeping my focus and discipline aimed at my true goals. I think this new job is going to help out with PROJECT: Briles 200. Because of the need to strengthen my focus and discipline in managing the community, I'm hoping that strength will drift over to my personal life. I need it to. I AM managing two properties now.... Right, Bub?