"Be a lifelong student. The more you learn, the more you earn and the more self-confidence you will have." – Brian Tracy

By my own thoughts I can become the man I choose. Nothing can stand in my way. I can choose to be, have, or do anything. This is what I was meant to be. A new life, a new opportunity for change.

I have not because I want not. I am not because I did not. I am who I am as a result of the decisions I made in response to the choices presented to me. I cannot choose every obstacle that enters my path, but I can choose my action(s) in response to the challenges presented to me.

“I think, therefore I am.”

Self-discipline is the key to self-control which can become self-mastery, and thus – resurrection.

“Cogito ergo sum.”

As a family we decided to put together a newsletter to send to all of our family and friends. Unfortunately we don’t have addresses or email for many of you, so we’ve decided to post the newsletter online. If you haven’t received a newsletter in the mail, please email us so we may update your contact information in our records.

View / download in PDF format.

The BRUINGTON Family
Annual Newsletter
2009

Dear Family and Friends,

This has been a challenging, rewarding, unexpected, and life-changing year for our family. Among many, many other things we have moved three times and held four jobs (collectively), attended school (elementary and college), and had a wedding!

many, many other things we have moved three times and held four jobs (collectively), attended school

(elementary and college), and had a wedding!This has been a challenging, rewarding, unexpected, and life-changing year for our family. Among many, many other things we have moved three times and held four jobs (collectively), attended school (elementary and college), and had a wedding!

Sarah Helene (Crawford) Bruington and Stephen Boyd Bruington
were married on November 28, 2009 in Rocky Mount, Virginia.

Earlier this year, Jennifer finished second grade with high marks and began a fun, relaxing summer. In August, Jennifer started third grade at Rocky Mount Elementary where she is part of an Accelerated Reader program. She loves her friends, teachers, and cafeteria lunches. Jennifer is doing well in every subject, and showing steady improvement in math. It’s hard to believe she will be nine in July; she is already quite a lady.

This has been a uproarious year for Sarah. Towards the end of the summer, Sarah hitched a trailer to her car, packed them both to overflowing, and began the two thousand mile journey from Utah to Virginia. She has experienced a whirlwind of changes, but handled each of them beautifully. In January, Sarah was a single woman, living in Utah, and working for T-Mobile. As of December, Sarah is a wife, step-mother, living in Virginia and working as a stay-at-home mom.

Stephen has also been privy to life’s curve-balls this year. He spent the first half of the year living in Utah, and moved back to Virginia in June. Stephen started the year as a student at Virginia Western Community College, but had to withdraw from classes and wait for a better time to finish his degree. He has worked for three different companies this year, including McDonald’s. Stephen is currently working for UnitedHealthcare, and is licensed to sell health insurance in all fifty states.

Mendy, the family dog is a thirteen year old black lab. She is full of spirit, but struggles with upper respiratory problems. Mendy has given the family a few scares this year, but she is alive and healthy.

We wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and hope you are able to spend this holiday season with your friends, family and loved ones.

It is important to us to be a part of your life, but we may not have your contact information. Please send an email to

thebruingtons at gmail.com.

If you have not already done so, visit our wedding and engagement photo galleries online at stephenbruington.com/wedding, and stephenbruington.com/engagement.

With love,

Stephen, Sarah, Jennifer and Mendy

View / download in PDF format.

(I apologize for the implied explitives in the title of this post, they were, however, necessary.)

Admittedly, a better title might have been “Simplify, Simplify, Simplify”, but either way – my point is it’s time for me to rein in some things in my life and “trim off the fat”. I’m all over the place, so much so that a friend on Twitter made a comment about my far-reaching social networking appearance (not influence), and asked how I manage to maintain it all. The truth is, I don’t maintain much of anything, anymore, or ever have. I need to close a few accounts, delete a ton of email addresses and K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid).

At one point in time I had the grand idea of creating an email address, for every account, everywhere on the internet (the unnecessary commas have been added for an intentional…momentary, but rather obnoxiously…long…pause). I chose to use the prefix “i83.” to begin each address, for example: i83.facebook@gmail.com. This email, of course would be used as my login/contact email address for…you guessed it – Facebook! I also had, among others, i83.itunes, i83.redbox, etc. (You don’t even want to know how many there actually are…nearly 2 dozen.)

I admit, I’m a little OCD and I’m having a hard time coming to grips with actually deleting, and discontinuing the use of these email addresses. It feels “clean”, and it made sense to me when I did it, albeit I can’t remember why, but I’d like to think it was a reasonable idea. It is, however difficult to remember whether or not I’m using a custom address, or stephen@bruington.com, which is my personal, ‘everything else’ email address.

In order to simplify I feel it’s necessary to cut down on the number of accounts I have, but do not (for many reasons) maintain. I have written about, and even tried this before: http://blog.stephenbruington.com/tag/migration, but this time will be different, right? ;)

Here’s the thing, I have accounts at places I know nothing about. Yep, little old me has probably already been to your website and established a username/password, etc. I’ve been on, logged into and/or used these, and many more: blip.fm, last.fm, facebook.com, twitter.com, bebo.com, orkut,com, linkedin.com, friendfeed.com, posterous.com (Haha! Thanks for hosting my blog.), wordpress.com, tumblr.com, livejournal.com, typepad.com, typingweb.com, plaxo.com, rememberthemilk.com, stikkit.com (which, by the way was the BEST ever note, memo, sticky message website…ever), gmail.com, hotmail.com, yahoo.com, flickr.com, photoshop.com, gmx.com, meebo.com, AIM, Skype, ICQ, myspace.com, and many, many others. Wow!

Do I really need all that stuff? No, I don’t. I know I don’t, but I think I have a problem…an addiction. I would like to keep the following:

Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, tumblr, posterous, flickr, Skype, Photoshop.com, and maybe a few others. I could write a book about all these sites and why I’ve used them, but I don’t think anyone would read it. In fact, if you’ve made it this far you’re either my wife (thank you Sweetheart), or crazy!

C.Y.A. – yes, the ‘A’ stands for what you think it stands for. I don’t have a real good reason for using it as part of my title other than the fact that the internet is filled with identity-stealing goons and…quite frankly, I’m exposed. I need to CYA and get rid of a lot of these sites with my information. If you’ve made it *this far, please do not SPAM my email inbox. I realize I posted my email address to the world, but I don’t believe anyone will use it to contact me anyway, so what the heck.

That’s it. I need to consolidate and do away with a lot of useless accounts, and unused (by ME) websites. Thanks for reading, I’ll let you know, at a later date what I decide to do, and how the cleanup is going, and/or turns out.