Going over my six month goals

So... a month or so after a really serious hospital visit last spring, I set some 6-month goals and made my first vision board.  I was out of work and had no income whatsoever.  I set an income goal that would have been my second highest income for six months in my life.  I didn't even come close to that goal.

I set a goal to dump my old, refurbished, "Fred Flintstone" laptop, and get an up-to-date laptop.  That didn't happen either.  In fact, the hinge broke on my old laptop so it's out of commission for now. 

I set a goal to have 10,000 pageviews on my three blogs by now.  I have about 1700 total.

I set a goal to buy a good digital camera.  Nope.  That didn't happen either.

I set a goal to lost 47 pounds in six months.  Why such an odd amount?  Because I weighed 347 at the time, and I wanted to get under 300 pounds.  I lost ten pounds and kept it off.

Oddly, the only goal that I did come close to was, "Help the homeless in Forsyth County as much as I am able."  A couple months after setting that goal, my mom and I met a family teetering on the brink of homelessness while living in a single room.  We sold them a cooking appliance, and gave them some basic items like dishes, food, and a list of local agencies that might be able to help them.  Then we went to our Sunday School class, and were able to get the family some shelves to store stuff, more food, a coffee maker, and a few other needed items.  Their needs were far beyond what our class could offer, but we helped them stabilize their situation a bit. 

So... I basically failed at most of my goals.  I'm at the point where many people think, "goals are stupid, I'm not going to bother setting goals anymore."  But I come from the action sports world.  If you've ever watched a BMX freestyler or skateboarder, you probably noticed that they seem to fail time after time while trying to learn a new move.  I don't see failure as an end all, be all.  Failure is just part of the process.  My biggest lesson from these six month goals is that I set way too big of goals for the position I was starting in.  I've learned over the years that that is a way people will self-sabotage to keep from sticking to their goals.  If you set a huge goal that is just plain ridiculous, you start thinking, "What's the point?"  And you give up on it.

So I just set a new series of six-month goals and made a new vision board.  The goals are smaller, and even more important, they're broken down into even shorter term goals that I can use to chip away at the bigger goals.  So I don't see missing my goals as a failure, I see it as a learning process, and I've reset my expectations to a more reasonable level.  Most important, I've made some progress in my everyday situation.  We'll see how it goes this time.

How To Get To The Top Of The Mountain

As I've mentioned before, I'm basically starting all over in life.  I'm seriously overweight after years as a taxi driver, and I need to lose about half my body weight.  That's a big challenge.  I'm unemployed, and with my "eclectic" job history, I've realized that it will be real hard to find a good paying job here in conservative North Carolina.  So that means I have to start a business with literally no money.  That's also a big challenge.  I don't have a working computer of my own at the moment.  That's another big challenge in the information/connectivity age we're in now.  There's a list of other things that "normal" people have that I don't.  Perhaps most challenging, I have to keep my spirits up in this time of facing multiple big challenges.  Many people out there are dealing with one or more of these same issues.

There's an old story that's been popping into my head recently.  I'm not sure where I heard it first.  But the basic story is a young seeker asks a wise old man (or woman) how to get to the top of a certain mountain.  That mountain, of course, represents your big goal in life.  The wise old person says, "To get to the top of the mountain, make sure that every step you take is in the direction of the top of the mountain."  Simple yet profound advice.  But we rarely take it seriously.

If I want to lose a lot of weight, then I have to make sure every action I take leads towards that goal.  That means eating only things that are healthy and exercising daily.  That's hard.  It's a simple idea, but it's hard.  But that's the nature of life. To start a business, it's the same thing, weed out the things in life that aren't part of that goal, and focus on building the business.  In other aspects of life, the same formula applies.

Do I do this right now?  No.  But I know the idea is out there, and I've begun to focus myself in different aspects of my life.  It's hard to just quit "normal" life and start a completely new lifestyle immediately.  Some people, in certain situations can do that, but it never seems to work for me.  So I'm slowly trying to delete bad habits and build good habits.

So what is your big goal?  Do you even have a major goal?  Or a series of goals in different aspects of your life?  If so, does each of your daily activities lead you towards that goal?  Or away from it?  Most people spend a huge amount of their time doing things that don't specifically lead towards their goals.  Now I know that if you have kids, you have to spend a lot of time caring for them in many different ways.  Don't neglect your kids or spouse to accomplish your goals.  But how do you use the personal time you do have?  Are you making steps towards the top of that proverbial mountain?  Or are you going in circles around the mountain?  

Let's Talk About Death

Yeah, I know... this is a subject we all try to avoid thinking about.  Here's why I'm bringing it up now.  In the past two weeks, I've been to three funerals for people from my church.  On top of that, this past Sunday the church observed All Saints Sunday, where we lit candles in memory of those in the church who've died in the past year, and family members who've died in years passed.  So the subject has been on my mind.

What I want to ask you is this:  How will you be remembered?  Have you lived a life of mediocrity and failed to do many of the things you once dreamed of?  Have you made a positive difference in the lives of those around you?  What do you regret more:  the crazy things you did do?  Or the things you didn't do?  Will people tell great stories at your funeral?  Has your life touched only those in your community, or has it touched many people far beyond?  What will your family members say about you?  What will your friends say about you?  Have you achieved the things you set out to?  Did you squeak through life afraid at every turn?  Or did you take life by the horns and thoroughly live it?

None of us knows how much time we have left.  How are you going to live this moment, and the remaining moments you have left?  Are you satisfied with your life so far?  I know I'm not.  I've had a lot of crazy adventures, but there's a lot more I want to do in this life.  Take some time to mull this over and see of you need to make some changes.  What would it take for you to be on your deathbed and say, "I gave it my best shot?"

The Big Thing People Are Missing

My weird journey through life has led me to North Carolina, and most of the people I interact with on a day to day level have lived a much different life than I have.  They're good people, but most have worked normal jobs, often one job for decades.  Most of these people are older than me, and grew up in the Industrial Age that was still dominant in our society when I was a kid.  Many of the civic leaders here in this area, and many other small cities, towns, and rural areas are still lamenting the farm economy that has changed drastically in their lives, and the factories which have shut down in their communities.  This part of North Carolina I live in now was a major player in tobacco, textiles, furniture building, and what NASCAR racing.  Those industries, except NASCAR, have largely moved their factories overseas.  The leaders, both local and statewide, are working hard to bring back good paying factory jobs. 

And that's the point I'm getting at today.  We used to live in a nation where the huge middle class worked at factories in their area.  That was the end of the industrial age.  To paraphrase internet expert and entrepreneur Seth Godin, "People used to be able make above average pay for average work, those days are over."  But a huge number of people in this country, many in leadership roles, are clinging to the memories of the world they grew up in.  They're not adapting to the world we're in now.  Right now, we're in a long, weird transition phase between the Industrial Age and the Information Age.  Old business models and social constructions are imploding as technology opens up opportunities for other business models and social constructs.  On one hand, most of the people around here have smart phones.  But I don't know anyone else around here who publishes a blog.  I can't afford a smart phone right now, but I publish two blogs and am starting another one soon.  My
point here is that everyday people start using the technology that's helping to change our world so dramatically, but most use it only as a consumer.  These technologies are changing the very way we communicate, which is leading to an incredible amount of opportunities in business, social movements, and other aspects of society.  But most people are so used to the status quo, that they stick to their old way of working, but with quicker communication.  Meanwhile, the future is being built by people looking at the possibilities that technology makes possible, and figuring out new ways to do things. 

As an example, how do you watch TV and movies these days?  Do you go to the theater to see every new movie that interests you?  Do you set aside a couple hours on Monday night to watch Dancing With The Stars?  Or do you record shows on a DVR and watch them when you have the time?  When's the last time you went to the video store and rented a VHS movie to watch that night?  Or do your kids watch movies on tablets in the back seat of your car while you shuttle them to baseball and dance practice? 

I'll be honest, I was pretty much a Luddite from the mid-1990's until 2008.  I was a taxi driver for much of that time, and I hated the continual change of technology.  I didn't keep up with what was happening and I didn't learn new technology as it became available.  Then, the taxi industry collapsed in California, years before Uber came into the picture.  I wound up in a small town in North Carolina wondering what had happened.  I'm a writer at heart, and I looked for ways to make money with writing.  But the whole writing world had completely changed because of technology and the social changes that went along with that technology.  So I started a blog, mostly just to vent.  That began a long process of self education about how to work in this technological world we now live in.  I started writing again using the internet and other tools now available.  I still don't make a living with my writing, but I'm heading in that direction.  I built a following online, quite by accident at first, and began to build my own little (very little) publishing empire point down the road, I should be able to make a decent living on the  from the platform I'm now building.

My point is this: Are you still clinging to the notion of the Indutrial Age world you grew up in?  Are you still looking for a job where someone pays you a lot of money and gives you benefits for doing what they tell you all day?  Or are you adapting and learning about this new, rapidly changing world, and charting your own course into the future?  Very few of the old factory jobs will ever come back.  Today's world belongs to those people who are willing to take risks and try new things as the opportunities arise.  Are you prepared to work in the world that's evolving now?























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What Would You Do If You Won The Lottery

In the clip above, we see a guy pretending to be homeless, but instead of asking for money with his sign, he's trying to give people a dollar.  He obviously is doing this in a pretty upscale area, and the reactions might surprise you.  If I won the lottery, this is one of the many weird things I would actually do.  When I was homeless and panhandling, I actually did do this a couple of times.  Basically people would drive up and start talking to me as they waited for the stop light.  Both times, the guys said something about not having any money to give me, but wished me good luck.  Then they talked about the personal stuff that was dragging them down.  So I reached into my pocket, got a dollar, and said, "Here, I'll give you a dollar.  Good luck man."  The were surprised, but both took the dollar, laughed, and drove off.  I always wanted to stand at a panhandling spot all day long and just hand out dollar bills to the people who drove by.  I learned there's a point where panhandling can turn into performance art.  Plus, it's just fun to freak people out a little sometimes. 

So... if you won a big lottery prize, let's say a multi-million dollar prize, what would you do?  I actually developed a workshop about 25 years ago when my sister had a big decision to make about college.  Over the years I've honed that workshop, and recently I actually presented the idea to my pastor at church to see if I could give the workshop, for free, to anyone at church who was interested.  He said the idea had merit, but since it wasn't a faith based workshop, decided it wasn't the right fit for church.  I've been debating about giving the workshop in this area.  My workshop is much more detailed, but the underlying idea is: What would you do if you won the lottery?

Let's start with the basics.  Most people would pay off their outstanding bills.  Then they might pay off their house, or buy a nice house if they didn't own one.  Then they'd either pay off their car or buy a new one (or two).  Some people would give gifts to family members, and maybe good friends.  Others might put some money away for retirement or for the kids' college fund.  Let's say you've done all that, and still had several million dollars left over.  THEN what would you do?  Seriously, think about it for a minute.  What WOULD you do?  Travel?  If so, to where?  Would you get the whole family together for a big reunion?  Or would you keep your crazy family apart and visit them individually?  Would you collect something?  Cars?  Art?  Nick Cannon's old shoes?  If you don't know who Nick Cannon is, Google "Nick Cannon, shoes" and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Would you buy a vacation house?  Would you drink yourself into oblivion (and debt) like so many lottery winners and inheritance recipients do?  Once you had all the stuff you think you want, how would you spend your time?  Would you wander around and give $100 bills to the homeless?  Would you support one cause or another?  Would you feel obligated to give something back to the world?  I'm serious... think about this for a few minutes.  If you won a big lottery prize, paid off debts, bought a bunch of stuff, traveled a bunch, and donated to some worthy charity, what would you do to pass the time after that?

I bet something popped in your head.  It may have even surprised you.  Think about that for another minute.  Here's the kicker question.  Whatever you would do in that situation... why aren't you doing it right now?  Sure, maybe you can't do it to the same degree as you could being a multi-millionaire, but you can probably spend some portion of your time doing the things that a "millionaire you" would do.  Would you volunteer somewhere?  Would you find a job you really loved?  Would you start your own business, or maybe a non-profit organization?  Would you go back to school?

If you actually won the lottery, after all the initial spending, you would find a way, hopefully a productive way, to spend your time.  So what's keeping you from doing that right now?   

Mass Shootings and Mental Illness

Slightly Not Safe For Work, this clip contains some bleeped out cuss words. 

Of course, we all wish that we could make mass shootings, like the latest one in Roseburg, Oregon, stop happening.  One faction yells for gun control.  Yet, the horrible massacres are perpetrated by a tiny, tiny fraction of the gun owning community.  If these people didn't have access to guns, they would likely find another way to cause damage, injury, and deaths.  The Boston Marathon bombing was done with two pressure cooker bombs, but no one is trying to outlaw pressure cookers.  The next thing you hear after a mass shooting is that we need to do something about the mentally ill.  There are millions of people dealing with some form of mental illness in the U.S., but very, very few of them are perpetrators of mass shootings.  As several people have pointed out, mentally ill people are much more likely to be the victims of gun violence than the perpetrators of it.  I've been debating whether I should write about this issue, but then I found this clip and realized John Oliver did a brilliant job of talking about the issue already.  This video sums up the subject well, watch it if you're interested. 

The Amazing Stories of Feral Children

This You Tube clip briefly describes 10 different cases of children who somehow survived conditions unimaginable to most of us.  Most of these cases have some documentation, but there are those that question these stories as well.

Last night I was flipping channels and came across a show called Raised Wild.  That episode was about a boy named John in Uganda who fled his abusive father at age four, sometime after his mother died of a snake bite.  Just past the age of a toddler, John ran into the jungle seeking safety, which is the exact opposite of how most of us think of the jungle.  According to his story, monkeys called vervets came to his aid, handing him food and leaves containing water.  John was found by a man about three years later, and brought out of the jungle into society.  He somehow survived for three years, without humans, with the help of the monkey troupe.  He was slowly rehabilitated back into society by an amazing teacher named Daisy, who went to great lengths to show John affection, teach him human ways, and eventually teach him to speak.  In the show I saw, John is now 27, and living a fairly normal life. 

While this blog is mostly about unlocking your potential as a human being, these cases of feral children show a different side of that potential.  Most of these children, first and foremost, survived tremendous abuse at the hands of their family or caretakers.  As a result, they were taken in by a variety of animals, and given support that their human interactions lacked.  Most of these stories do not end as well as John's.  But the fact that these children survived at all is a testament to the human spirit, or perhaps, the animal spirit locked deep inside each human.  Some people we look up to because of their achievements, others for their dedication to a worthy cause.  But others, like these children, we can find hope in their ability to adapt and survive in incredible, and often terrible, circumstances.

A Storm of Storms

I got home from an appointment this afternoon and turned on the TV.  I immediately heard a news flash about the shooting at a community college in Oregon.  As I write this, President Obama is holding a news conference about this tragedy.  Across the country, thousands of people, maybe millions, are worrying about a shooting happening where they live.  A lot of people really live in fear of this type of shooting, although the chances of actually being in one are very low.  Just for the record, I grew up around guns, and firmly believe in gun ownership.  But we need to find some way to try and eliminate this type of tragedy.  Shooting deaths are a social storm we are all trying to figure out how to deal with or eliminate if possible.  But no one can predict where and when the next mass shooting will be.  This is a type of uncertainty that we have to live with today.

After watching the news flash about the shooting this afternoon, I turned on The Weather Channel.  They were reporting about Hurricane Joaquin, at the time a Category 3 hurricane hovering over the Bahamas.  When I first heard of this storm a few days ago, it was "tropical depression 11."  At that time, the meteorologists predicted it MIGHT turn into a tropical storm before heading northeast into the Atlantic and not causing any harm to the U.S..  Now, as I write this, Joaquin is a Category 4 hurricane, and will head in the general direction of my home in central North Carolina tomorrow.  It might veer east, farther into the Atlantic.  But three of the latest computer models have the storm heading right to this part of NC.  Even if Joaquin never makes landfall, we are supposed to have a minimum of three to six inches of rain here, a week when we've already had flooding in the metro area.  We could possibly have as much as 20 inches of rain, and we could possibly get hit head on by the storm.  Even with satellites and all of today's technology, no one can predict exactly where Hurricane Joaquin is going, and where it will make landfall on the East Coast.  This is another type of uncertainty we just have to live with today.

After watching those two channels this afternoon, I turned on CNBC, the main business channel.  The Dow Jones average was down over 200 points at one time today.  A dozen of the Dow stocks are in "bear market territory."  That means those stocks are down 20% or more from the highs of the past 12 months.  Nearly every day lately the stock market goes up or down more than 100 points.  The seasoned traders don't know what's going on.  Legendary investor Carl Icahn just made a video this week warning of hard financial times ahead.  He's a billionaire who spent his own money to produce a high quality video to warn people, both professional investors and average Americans, that we are in scary economic times.  We could be heading into another recession, or we could be in a time of restructuring where the markets are finding a new normal.  No one can predict exactly where the stock market, or other financial instruments, will be a few months or years from now.  This is yet another type of uncertainty we just have to live with today.

You see the theme I'm getting at?  We are in a period of great change in human society, and uncertainty is a big part of the equation.  It's a storm of storms.  Things are changing in all kinds of arenas.  Part of coping with this era of rapid change is dealing with a high level of uncertainty.  So... how are you at dealing with uncertainty?  What can you do?  How can you better prepare yourself to weather the myriad of societal storms happening right now? 

Let's stick to the storm analogy.  How do you prepare for a big storm?  You stock up on supplies you might need.  You think of the worst case scenario, and make a plan in case it happens.  Then you hunker down and deal with whatever life throws at you.  The best thing to remember about storms of any kind is that they are temporary.  Remember the old adage, "This too shall pass." 

Another thing about storms is that they create opportunities.  Downed trees provide work for wood cutters and utility workers.  Financial storms provide lots of opportunities to buy things at a discount.  A "storm" in a certain industry opens up many new opportunities for entrepreneurs.  It's no secret that many businesses are started during recessions and depressions or paradigm shifts in that industry.  The key here is learning to deal with uncertainty in a rational and thoughtful way, instead of freaking out like so many people do.  So... what opportunities do you see in the many storms we face today?

I Forgot Im a Blogger

Yeah, I know, I got to whining in that last post.  After I wrote that post, a few things came to mind.  First, the nature of my life right now, having no "real" job, gives me time to consume a lot more news and books than most people with busier lives can.  I went off in that post about how I don't have anyone to talk to who reads similar books or listens to all the You Tube speeches and talks that I do.  After writing that post, I realized, "Oh yeah... I'm a blogger,  part of my role is to find out stuff that other people haven't heard of, and let them know about it."  If you all read the same books I do, and consumed all the other info I do, then there wouldn't be much point in me blogging. 

Another point I ranted about ( a little) is that many people in North Carolina, especially civic leaders, are way behind the times, and are looking for Industrial Age answers to Information Age problems.  Again, most people don't consume the same info that I do, and part of my role is to find new info and share it.  At the same time, most people I know have smart phones, and I don't.  So I'm behind the times in that way.  So I'll try to stop whining and get back to trying to bring all of you a variety of information that will interest you, inform you, and hopefully help you to use a greater part of your potential as a human being.

Should You Watch The News

This post was inspired by a conversation with some church members last night while we were at a function to cook dinner for a children's charity.  I don't mean to call anyone out, the conversation just surprised me.  I go to a fairly small Methodist church that has an incredibly active membership.  They do a lot of good work on many fronts to help people in our region and in other parts of the world.  Last night, while standing around watching one of our members grill burgers at this event, several of us were talking about a variety of things.  The subject of watching the news came up.  I think what spurred it was talk about a horrible truck crash that happened last week in our area.  One of the people said he doesn't watch the news... at all... because, "there's nothing good on the news."  To my surprise, most of the people standing there agreed.  Most of them, it seems, don't watch the news.

Now I understand how people can be turned off by all the negativity on both local and national TV news.  I understand how the persistent negativity actually stresses some people out because they feel overwhelmed, and sometimes really fearful, about all the bad things happening in this world.  But we are in a period of time where the world is changing rapidly and dramatically on virtually every level.  If you want to be functional in today's world, you have to have some sense of what's going on.  One thing that really bugs me about North Carolina is that the local, regional, and state leaders seem to still be operating from a 20th century, industrial age, point of view.  They seem to make decisions based on the way things worked 40 or 50 years ago.  Because of this, they are spending millions of dollars to try and get a major auto manufacturing plant to locate somewhere in NC to put people a few thousand people back to work.  But they're not spending a similar amount of money to encourage 21st century entrepreneurship, which has an even greater chance of creating a large number of good jobs here.  Teacher pay in NC is 42nd in the nation, according to a ranking I heard the other day, so education is not a major priority here.  The energy lobbies here are fighting solar and wind farms.  The list of old ideas goes on and on.  To top it off, a recent news report said unemployment is starting to edge higher in the state, which seemed to baffle everyone.

Could this reluctance to embrace today's world and today's technology be happening in part because so many people here simply don't watch the news?  I, personally, watch several TV news programs each day, and am always reading books and listening to online speeches and talks about the future of business, technology, communication, and society in general.  Few, if any, of the people I talk to day to day, do the same.  They are simply not aware that there is a brain drain in this country, where the smartest people coming out of college are heading to the U.S.'s mega-cities.  No one I know here is aware of the growth of mega-regions around this country and the world, which are simultaneously killing off many former industrial small cities and towns, including the region where I now live.  In effect, most of the communities in this U.S. are being run by the intellectual "2nd and 3rd string," as the smartest people migrate to the best jobs in big cities.  No one I deal with daily is familiar with professor Richard Florida's concept of "the Creative Class," the documented theory that today's best tech people and entrepreneurs are clustering in areas of "Technology, Talent, and Tolerance," as Florida puts it.  It's no news flash that the American South is not the most tolerant place, as the recent rebel flag controversy points out.  But these days, tolerance of fringe groups of people is not just a cultural issue, it's an economic development issue with huge ramifications. 

I keep my mouth shut most of the time with the people I interact with day to day, because they just don't spend the time I do learning about future trends.  But these trends to affect all of our daily lives.  Maybe watching and clicking on, and reading, and listening to various news sources is one of the ways people everywhere can begin to improve their own regions.  How much do you pay attention to what's happening in the world today?  Does an avoidance of news affect your life in a negative way?  I'll let you ponder that idea today. 

How Things Have Changed In My Lifetime

Yesterday I went to a wedding.  I wasn't a friend of the bride or groom, I was called on to shoot video of the wedding.  They needed someone on short notice, and the bride's parents remembered I had mentioned doing video work in the past.  As a video guy, weddings always make me kind of nervous.  For the bride, it's one of the biggest events of her life, if not the biggest.  And I don't want to screw that up.  In this case, I was using someone else's camera and equipment, which I wasn't familiar with, which made things a bit harder.  But all in all, I think it went well.  I stood back and shot video as a young millenial couple began their life together.  Afterwards, that got me thinking about the first few weddings I shot video of back in the late 1980's, and the way the world has changed since then.  Since I've been blogging and learning about the way the world works in the internet/laptop/smart phone age, this is a constant theme for me. 

I first shot video of a wedding about two years before yesterday's bride was born.  At one of those early weddings, I borrowed a betacam from work.  It was a monstrous, 35 pound professional video camera that cost $50,000.  If you remember the big TV news cameras of the late 80's, that's the kind I'm talking about.  The consumer camera I used yesterday was about 1/3 the size of the battery of that big betacam.  The tiny video camera I used yesterday was HD quality, far better than the betacam.  In the 1980's, a good quality edit bay to edit that betacam video cost half a million dollars.  Now you can edit video with a $600 laptop.  A top of the line video editing computer might cost $5,000. 

In the late 1980's, the photographers at a wedding, both the hired pro and amateurs, used 35mm film, so they limited their photos to just those that were necessary to avoid developing costs.  Yesterday's pro photographers used digital cameras, allowing them a nearly unlimited amount of shots.  The first bulky car phones had just come out in the late 80's, and no one had one at the weddings I shot video of.  Yesterday, I watched the brides maids, grooms men, and nearly everyone else at the event taking photos and scrolling through their smart phones when nothing else was going on. 

On one level, the wedding yesterday was very similar to those where I shot video years ago.  There was a ceremony in a church, then a reception with toasts, dancing, cake cutting, the bouquet toss, and the garter toss.  On another level, it was much different.  People around the city, the country, maybe even around the world saw pics of the wedding as it happened.  I learned late in the ceremony that the bride and groom weren't going on a honeymoon, they were both going back to work and school the next day.  You rarely saw that happen in the 80's.  On one hand, yesterday's couple has access to all this amazing technology.  On another hand, they live in a time where it's much harder to make a really good living.  In the 80's, many people still worked a single job for long periods of time, if not their whole career.  In today's 21st century high tech world, I read recently that most people starting out today will work 4 to 6 careers in their lifetime.  Not 4 to 6 jobs, but different careers.  The retirement pensions from those lifetime jobs are largely gone.  People today have to figure out their retirement plan by themselves.  In addition, tens of thousands of jobs, if not actually millions, have been taken over by robots or transferred to lower wage countries.  The young couple I met yesterday are starting their life together in a tumultuous time of continual change in technology, work, and everyday life.  It may be decades before things really settle down to a calmer state. 

Job security is virtually a thing of the past, because even huge corporations now go bankrupt because they have trouble keeping pace with the changing times.  Hewlett Packard, a technology giant, recently announced they will be laying off about 25,000 people.  A Miller/Coors brewery an hour away from here is closing down, complaining that micro-brew beers are taking its market share.  Stories like these are on the news nearly every week.  What is life going to be like for that young couple married yesterday?  What's it going to be like for older people like me, who have to re-invent ourselves after an industry we were in collapsed?  These are things I wrestle with every day.  We are living in interesting times, and it looks like they'll be interesting and changing rapidly for a long time to come.

When A Man Or A Woman Really Is An Island

A quick Google search told me that it was John Donne who first wrote the line, "No man is an island."  Others have undoubtedly used that line over the centuries.  The meaning is fairly straight forward, none of us is a world unto ourselves.  Each of us is part of a larger whole.  We all understand that.

But I want to argue that point, for a moment.  There is a time when a man or woman really feels like an island.  There's a point where a person has an idea.  Maybe it's an idea for a book, maybe it's an idea for a business or something else.  Whatever it is, there is a point where everything we see around us was once a thought in somebody's head.  At that point, when you're the one with the idea, it often feels like you're all alone.  At that point, not a single person on Earth has been brought aboard the idea, and it seems every single person on the planet thinks it's a bad idea.  That's when a person can feel like an island.  When you first express this idea, nobody agrees.  There are two reasons for this.  1) It really is a bad idea and everyone can see that.  Or 2) it is a good idea, and no one else has the foresight to see just how good it can be.  A lot of ideas, both bad and good, are tossed aside at this point, because the person with the idea loses faith. 

This is the point I'm at in my life right now.  I have an idea of what I want to do to earn a living, and absolutely no one thinks it's a good idea... yet.  For quite a while now, I've been struggling with a variety of issues, medical and otherwise, and trying to find a way to earn a living in the small town of Kernersville, North Carolina.  I'll admit, I look terrible on paper.  My last ten years is a series of taxi driving jobs in both California and North Carolina, not one of which has the records to prove I actually worked for them.  In addition, there are big gaps in my employment.  On top of that, people tend to think that taxi drivers can only drive, and they tend to simply go on to the next resume' when I apply for a "normal" job.  For years now, I've been trying to dumb myself down just to get an entry level job... ANY job.  At that same time, I was blogging and self-educating myself about the internet and the world of "new media."  There are VERY few businesses around here who use new media channels very well.  Businesses have websites and Facebook pages, and maybe even a Twitter stream, but they don't use these channels to their full potential.  So with everything I've learned over the last several years, it became clear that my best chance of making a living would be to create my own job, not get one that already exists.  Of course, to everyone else, and I mean ABSOLUTELY everyone I know right now, it just looks like I'm lazy.

On a church trip the other day, one of the old guys I know brought up a new restaurant being built in town, it's called Dairy-O.  It's going to be something like a Dairy Queen or maybe even a Sonic.  It's being built on a major road right next to a Wendy's.  The man went on to say that Dairy-O will take a lot of business from that Wendy's, because it takes FOREVER to get waited on at that particular Wendy's.  He's right.  Everyone listening to the conversation agreed.  The man said he talked to the manager of that Wendy's about why it takes so long to get served, and the manager said that he can't find good employees.  When he hires a young person to work there, they simply don't want to work hard.  I chimed in at that point.  I told him that that particular Wendy's was the only place in town that actually called me for an interview.  The assistant manager who interviewed me seemed interested in hiring me, in part because I had three years of restaurant experience earlier in my life.  But she had reservations about my weight, which she hinted at.  She seemed to think that I wouldn't be able to stand for a whole shift.  When I called back a week later, as she told me to, she said they had hired someone else and didn't need me.  The Wendy's that says it "can't find good people," wouldn't hire me.  I was a really good employee at every restaurant I worked at.  Maybe, just maybe, the management of that particular Wendy's doesn't know good people when they see them.

In any case, after a long time of trying to dumb myself down to find an entry level job here, I've decided to do just the opposite.  I'm going to stretch myself and my particular talents by giving workshops to people who want to find their passion in life.  Yes, that sounds crazy.  But I've given these workshops 25 years ago for friends and family members, and they were helpful to everyone who went through the workshop.  So here I am, dusting off an old idea, and running with it.  And every single person I know thinks I'm crazy right now.  My mom just walked by and asked if I was blogging as I typed that last sentence.  When I said, "Yes," she replied, "it's nice you have nothing to do."  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  In today's world, blogging can be work.  This IS my job.  This is the 21st Century, most of the factories have closed down and moved to other countries.  As marketing expert has put it, "the time when people get paid above average wages for average work is over."  Many other jobs have been taken over by robots doing the work humans once did.  Creating and working with ideas and knowledge IS the work these days.  Giving thoughts and ideas away through blogging or Facebook or Twitter or You Tube IS part of the work in today's world.  It isn't work for everyone, but it is for a lot of people.  No one I know around here understands this.  But then, no one I know reads the books I read, listens to all the talks online that I listen to, or delves into the "new media channels" that are changing the way we communicate and how business gets done these days.  No one else sees the opportunities I see right now.  I'm an island at the moment.  But that's OK.  Unlike most people, I've been in this position before.

In the early 1980's, I started racing and then doing tricks on a little bike in Boise, Idaho.  Everyone I knew thought I was crazy.  Two years later I was working at the top BMX magazines in the country.  A year later I was working at a video company producing the first alternative sports TV shows.  A few years after that I was working on the stage crew of American Gladiators, one of the highest rated TV shows at that time.  The BMX thing worked out pretty well for me and for a lot of other people I know.  What I'm doing now might work out, too.

Thought for the day from Johnny Depp

Thought for the day.  I just saw this on Facebook.

"One day the people that didn't believe in you will tell everyone how they met you."  
-Johnny Depp

One Of The Most Amazing People You've Never Heard Of

I've met a lot of really amazing people in my life, people who excelled at riding bikes, riding skateboards, making TV shows, making music, and other talents.  I've also come across stories of people who just plain blow my mind.  Peace Pilgrim was one of those people.  On the surface, she seems like some crazy old lady.  But the more I learned about her, the more amazing she seemed.

Late in her life, in 1953, she decided to dedicate her life to teaching people about peace; peace among nations, peace among groups, peace among individuals, and inner peace.  Nothing too amazing there.  There are plenty of people who think peace is important.  What sets Peace Pilgrim apart from anyone else is how she went about teaching people about peace.  She dropped her given name, took on the name Peace Pilgrim, and decided to walk across the U.S. as a pilgrim, teaching people she met about peace wherever she went.  Here's where it gets amazing.  She had no support crew of any kind.  She had no backpack.  She HAD NO COAT.  She had only the clothes she wore, the pair of shoes she wore, and a tunic that said Peace Pilgrim on the front, and "walking 25,000 miles for peace" on the back.  She started her pilgrimage in 1953.  She walked until given shelter and fasted until given food.  Read that last sentence again.  Her journey was a complete leap of faith.  She slept wherever she wound up each night, though usually she was offered a place for the night.  If no one offered her food, she didn't eat.  Period.  She walked from 1953 until her death in 1982.  No supplies.  No support crew.  No coat.  She walked in all 50 states.  She walked well over 50,000 miles.  She would often walk fifty miles in a day, in her late years in life, frustrating people who tried to walk along with her for a day. 

People she met bought her clothes and shoes and let her borrow a typewriter to write, or stamps to mail letters.  She usually turned down offers of shoes and clothes, until those items were absolutely necessary.  Over the years, she gave many talks and interviews to a wide variety of groups, and a group developed, called Friends of Peace Pilgrim, to spread her message worldwide through pamphlets, videos, a book, and ultimately the documentary above.  She gained the respect of prominent people around the world for her work, despite doing absolutely no promotion of her own.  She even got detained by the FBI in the early years of her pilgrimage, because they thought she might be a Communist or something.

Nearly everyone in my new Facebook group knows people that have done amazing physical feats over the years.  But there are other people in the world, both now and in the past, that have achieved things on a whole different level.  Peace Pilgrim is one of those people.  If this blog post has piqued your interest, watch the documentary above or check out the Friends of Peace Pilgrim website.  I highly recommend that everyone reads  her pamphlet, Steps Toward Inner Peace.  It's available to read on the website, or you can order the pamphlets for free.  Friends of Peace Pilgrim does accept donations to cover the costs of providing books and pamphlets around the world for free. 

An Easy Way To Start Setting Goals

This simple technique goes back to when I was in high school.  The summer after my junior year, a friend helped me get a job at the Boise Fun Spot, a tiny amusement park located near downtown Boise, Idaho, in Julia Davis Park.  The Fun Spot had three kiddie rides, a kiddie roller coaster, a Tilt-O-Whirl, a Ferris Wheel, a miniature golf course, and a snack stand.  Basically, parents with small children would bring their kids there in the summer to let them ride some cheap rides and blow off steam.  A month into working there, for the incredible wage of $2.05 an hour, I was dubbed assistant manager.  That meant I ran the park on the manager's day off.  A month after that, my friend Doug, the manager, found a construction job, and another 17-year-old and me became co-managers.  The next summer, I was the sole manager.  Yes, I ran an amusement park, at age 17.  With that, of course, came responsibility.  The manager before me showed me his technique for dealing with the responsibility. 

Each morning, we'd get there a little bit early, get a Pepsi from the machine, and sit under the tree outside planning the day.  He folded up a piece of notebook paper, wrote Stuff To Do on the top, and listed the things that needed to get done that day, such as mowing a section of the big lawn, putting pine tar on the Ferris Wheel cable, or weeding the flower beds in the miniature golf course.  When I took over, I started making my own list, which soon became my "Stufftado" list.  In essence, it's a series of goals that need to be accomplished that day.  You know what's weird.  If you start using a list like this, it soon becomes fun to scratch things off the list.  The prior manager also told me to put at least one or two easy things on the list, like "going to the bathroom," or "getting a Pepsi and writing my stufftado list."  Why?  Because then you get to immediately check a couple of things off the list, and there's a small sense of accomplishment in doing that. 

When I started getting my act together a few months ago, after a couple years on medication that pretty much turned me into a zombie, I started making my Stufftado list each morning.  At first, I had only a few simple things on it, and a rarely checked them all off.  But it was a start.  Now I look forward to making my list each morning, and I've started making a Stufftado Big List for each week, with goals I need to accomplish in that week.  It's a natural progression, and it gets me psyched to get something done that day.
So... what's on your Stufftado list for today?

A couple of thoughts about goals

As a kid, I wondered what made rich and famous people different from the people I grew up with moving from town to town in Ohio.  Why were some people making lots of money as actors, for example, something they actually seemed to enjoy doing?  Meanwhile, the adults I knew worked jobs that most of them didn't like all that well.  What was the difference?

The main difference, I found out over time, was goals.  The people who set themselves apart from the crowd set bigger goals, and then worked to achieve those goals.  I also learned, over many years, that there's a fine art to setting goals.  Some people (like comedian/TV and radio host Steve Harvey) say you need to have HUGE dreams, and then break those dreams down into a whole bunch of small, manageable steps.  Then you make each step a goal.  "Inch by inch, everything's a cinch," is one of Harvey's mantras.

But in my decades as a BMX freestyler, I saw lots of riders set short term goals that they didn't even thing of as goals.  For people in the action sports world, a goal is more like, "Man, I want to learn this trick."  But most of them didn't set HUGE lifetime goals.  By setting short term goals, usually without even realizing they were setting goals, these people opened themselves up to new possibilities.  This brand of thinking carried over when some of these people started their own businesses.  They made things up as they went along, breaking new ground as they went.  Some of these people, like Spike Jonze and the Jackass crew, Travis Pastrana and the Nitro Circus crew, Steve Rocco with World Industries, and Pierre Andre Senizergues with Sole Technology created empires, sort of by accident. 

No matter which way you do it, setting and working towards goals moves you into a different realm then the average "working Joe" (or Jane).  So... do you regularly set goals for yourself?  Are you working towards some goal right now?   

How Fast Do You Drive Your Lamborghini

The clip above is a test of a Lamborghini Aventador, and the reviewer hits 200 mph on a two mile long runway.  Then the professional driver gets in and pushes it a bit higher.  So... how fast do you drive your Lamborghini?

Most of you are thinking... "Lamborghini?  What Lamborghini?"  I doubt anyone reading this actually owns a Lamborghini, or any other car that can go 200 miles per hour.  But what if you got the chance to drive the Lamborghini in the clip above?  How fast would you go?  My guess is that you'd want to get as close to 200 mph as you possibly could.  Right?  For those of you who are Nascar fans, the same goes if you got a chance to drive a race car.  You'd want to get as close to top speed as possible.  Right?

The reason I'm bringing this up harks back to something I heard as a kid.  In the early 1970's, when I was a little kid, my dad read a magazine article that said that humans only use two to three percent of our brains.  My dad told me this, and we wondered what would be possible if we could use our whole brains.  If you look on Wikipedia, there's a page devoted to the "ten percent brain myth."  According to this article, the idea that we only use ten percent of our brains (or a similar small percentage) goes back to the late 1800's.  The article goes on to say that we actually use all of our brains, but certain parts of the brain are more active during various activities.  The article also says that some people believe that if we could tap into a higher percentage of our brains' potential, that we'd be able to do amazing things, maybe even ESP.  The Wikipedia article then says that ESP (Extra Sensory Perception) has never been proven.  Actually the Wikipedia article is wrong on this count.  If you look into the work of Ingo Swann, and Joe McMoneagle (among others), you will find that some ESP abilities have been proven in clinical conditions.  Both Joe and Ingo were part of the U.S. government's remote viewing program that was in operation from about 1974 to 1994.  But this post isn't about ESP.  It's about realizing our own potential in our lives.

The truth is, no one really knows just what the human brain, or the human organism, is really capable of.  But there are examples all around us of people who have used a greater part of their potential than most of us do.  In the business world, we see lots of self-made millionaires and billionaires in a world where a huge percentage of the population lives in poverty.  We see talented people in music and all the arts that connect with us on many levels.  We also have a handful of people throughout history who have shown seemingly impossible abilities.  Ghandi and Martin Luther King, among others, led social movements that continue to affect and inspire people.  Mother Teresa and Peace Pilgrim, and most of the Catholic saints, lived humble lives that impacted and inspired people long after their deaths.  Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of the martial art of Aikido, was said to have done things that make him seem like a real-life Yoda.  Then we have the founders of the great religions, like Jesus of Nazareth, the Buddha, and Mohammed, all of whom influence millions, even billions of people, centuries after their deaths. 

All of these people lived as human beings on this Earth.  Were they born with super powers?  In the case of the religious founders, the answer was probably "yes."  But what about all the other people doing amazing things in this world.  Were they born super humans?  No.  Somehow they found ways to use a much higher percentage of their potential than the average person does.  If we only use two or three percent of our potential, then that's like driving a Lamborghini (or a Nascar car) at six to eight miles per hour, instead of 200 mph.  It we use ten percent of our potential, then that's like driving 20 mph instead of 200 mph.  Let's face it, most of us are driving our human vehicles in first gear with the clutch most of the way in.  Is that all you got?  Really?  So...my question still stands.  How fast do you WANT to drive your Lamborghini? 

Seat Belts

Today's thought is stolen from a BMX zine I read in the early 90's.  I can't remember what zine it was.  It might have been Backdoor zine out of western Canada, I'm not sure.  Now, I know some of you reading this have no idea what a zine is.  First, a zine is  small, self-published booklet, usually about a single topic.  Second, it's pronounced zeen, as in magazine.  I put the video above in to give you a better idea of what a zine is.  Zines were a whole self-publishing subculture from the 70's, 80's, and 90's, before websites and blogs came along.  It just occurred to me this morning that this month is my 30th anniversary of self-publishing.  That's pretty cool.  But it has nothing to do with today's subject.

In a BMX zine in the early 90's, there was a small article titled "Seat Belts."  The idea was about pot smokers.  If you've known any serious pot smokers in your life, you'll relate to this idea.  I haven't smoked since I was right out of high school, but I've had plenty of roommates who did over the years.  Back in those days, when someone bought weed, there were seeds in it.  So before they got to smoking, they had to spread the weed out, often on a record album (remember those?) and they picked the seeds out.  Why?  Because the seeds would explode if you tried to smoke them.  At least, I think that was the reason.  The writer of that zine article posed the theory that some of those marijuana seeds dropped into the creases in the couch, and they grew into invisible seat belts.  Once you started smoking, those invisible seat belts would hold you to the couch, and keep you from doing anything worthwhile in life.  Let's face it, watching 12 episodes of Saved By The Bell is not a productive way to spend your time, no matter how hot you though Tiffany Amber Thiesen was. 

Now, most of you reading this don't smoke pot (as far as I know), but some of you can relate to the gravity that your couch has.  After a long day, it's easy to sit on the couch, put on those invisible seat belts, and stay strapped to the couch for much of the evening.  Done any binge TV watching of your favorite show lately?  You know what I'm talking about.  I admit, I'm probably the biggest abuser of couch seat belts of any of us. 

Now, there's nothing wrong with a little R&R on the couch.  But spending too much time on the couch keeps you from doing things that are more productive.  In the 90's, for me and my friends, this meant watching TV instead of riding our bikes.  In today's world, it may mean sitting down with a beer or glass of wine and not  doing those little things that really mean a lot to you.  Whether it's not working overtime to pay for that trip you've always wanted to take.  Or maybe spending time on a hobby you really enjoy.  Or maybe, it's starting your own small business.  Whatever the case, once those invisible seat belts on the couch get fastened, you're out of commission for the evening.  So ask yourself, "Am I wearing those seat belts right now?  Or am I spending my time doing something more worthwhile?" 

Where do you start

Living here in Kernersville, North Carolina, most of the people I interact with are older than I am, and they lived their lives like most people in industrial age small towns.  They worked a single job for most of their lives, conserved their money, and spent weekends and vacations at the beach or the mountains.  The bulk of their lives were spent in the Carolinas.  There's nothing wrong with that.  But now they look at the TV news and are afraid of what they see happening in the world.  They're good people, but they're nearly a polar opposite of the people I've spent most of my adult life around. 


The weird little sport of BMX freestyle drew me to Southern California.  A large majority of the people I met were into one or more of the action sports.  Surfing, skateboarding, BMX freestyle, snowboarding, motocross, and similar sports lead one to a different lifestyle.  Each day, people in these sports go out and try to improve on their physical skills.  It's all about progression.  It's about getting off the couch and facing your fears.  Some of these people did crazy, death defying acts, but most did smaller, more technical feats on a day by day basis.  These people tend to look at the opportunities in the future, rather than the negative stuff going on.  Not coincidentally, many people I know moved beyond physical stunts, and into creating their own businesses.  Some have been widely successful.  Many are successful on a more modest level, but successful none-the-less.  These people tend to fail much more often than those here in North Carolina, but they also get back up and keep trying.  All of us in the action sports world have seen people come out of nowhere, sometimes straight from the streets, and create something amazing.  They tend not to count someone out because of a bad spell in that person's life.

Recently, I was part of a conversation where a woman here spoke about how the world is going downhill, and she was just overwhelmed by all the bad news on TV.  As a Christian woman she wanted to help in some way, but she had no idea where to start.  How many of you reading this can relate to that?  You feel you should be doing what you can to make the world a better place, but it just seems like there is too much to do.  Many years ago, I developed a workshop to help people figure out what's really important to them right now.  When you do that, it usually makes the next step you need to take apparent.  When you get clear on where you are, you realize where you need to head next.  I'll talk more about that workshop in future posts.     

If you're feeling overwhelmed, like the lady in that conversation, what can you do?  First, you can come to grips with the fact that you can't help everyone.  You can't feed all the hungry, house the homeless, shelter the battered wives, and heal all the kids with cancer and other serious diseases.  But you can pick one small thing you can do in the next few days to help someone in some way.  There are literally thousands of worthy causes you can devote a little time and effort to.  One person may take some homemade brownies to the local homeless people, another may bring gifts to children in the hospital, another may write a book about how they survived a really tough time in their life, another may volunteer with the Red Cross after a natural disaster.  Pick one small thing, do it well, and do it soon.  Once you get in contact with people who need some form of help, you'll begin to recognize other things that need to be done.  Do something simple, do it well, and then build on that foundation. 

But what if you don't feel called to do volunteer work?  What if you have a business idea?  Hey, lots of people need jobs.  The same applies to you.  Do something simple, do it well, and build on that foundation.  That's one of the biggest lessons I've learned from the action sports world.  I've watched entire industries develop out of nowhere, built by people who found one thing that needed to be done, and then followed that thread where it led them.  So... what do you find needs to be done in the world?

 

What you love is not necesarily who you are

Ashley Stahl says she loves political science and went straight from college to a promising career at the Pentagon.  Then she had a quarter-life crisis and realized that her passion didn't reflect who she was deep down.  Now she's a successful career coach.  This short talk by a young woman gave me a lot to think about.  Maybe it will do the same for you.

Sketchiness in the financial markets

The past week has been a really chaotic time in the financial markets.  Today is Thursday, August 27th, 2015, and the stock market as a whole has made huge gains today and yesterday.  Unfortunately, that came after huge losses on last Friday, Monday, and Tuesday.  Is this the long overdue correction to a bull market that's been rising fairly steadily since the bottom of the Great Recession in 2009?  Or is it signs of a new economic downturn?  The crazy part is that the "experts" on the financial news channel CNBC don't seem to know.  Some of the more technical indicators, like volatility, went to levels very rarely seen.  Most financial analysts seem to be hoping this is a market correction that will soon work itself out.  But the utter bewilderment of the majority of the professional investors and analysts definitely seems like cause for concern to me.  If the highly schooled, highly paid "experts" aren't sure where to put their money right now, what chance does the everyday 401k investor have?

I don't know what's going to happen.  The incredible growth in China's economy seems to be slowing down, at a time when most of the world is pretty slow already.  At the same time, many experts don't trust the economic numbers China puts out, so no one is really sure if the recent crash in the Chinese stock market is a correction, or a much bigger issue.  If China's economy continues to slow down in a major way, that will affect economies all over the world.  Some see China as an economic bubble that is beginning to burst.  Some see student loan debt in the U.S. as the next big bubble that will burst.  Many are worried about the Federal Reserve raising interest rates up from zero in September.  For over a decade now, interest rates have been historically low, which isn't good in the long run.

Whatever is happening to the global financial markets now is confusing the best minds in the financial world.  It does remind me of the 2008 crisis, where "experts" were saying early on that it's nothing to worry about and that sub-prime loans wouldn't have a big effect on the economy.  We know now that those people were wrong.  We also know that they told everyday investors to stay in the market and not sell stocks as stock prices continued to drop to historical lows.  We also know that a lot of people lost huge chunks of their retirement money during that crisis.  So what is the average investor to do right now?  No one seems to know.  Watch this space, it will probably get more interesting in the near future.  

Entrepreneurs

Quote of the day:

"All good entrepreneurs are the first to admit that they are 'unemployable.'"
-Mitch Joel in the book Six Pixels of Separation
Mitch is also the president of Twist Image digital agency, and the publisher of the well known Twist Image Blog about marketing.

Homeless guys start a T-shirt company

Have you ever flicked on the TV randomly and had a show come on that it just seemed you were meant to see.  That happened to me this morning.  In my last blog post I vented about my frustration with not being able to find a job, and other negativity I deal with on a daily basis.  That rant wasn't the best blog post, but sometimes you just need to blow off steam, and that's what I did in that post.  So today, I turned on the TV and it went automatically to channel 14, the Time Warner Cable news channel.  It's a channel I rarely watch, except for when there's bad weather heading this way.  They have weather updates every ten minutes, and for someone without a smart phone, like me, to check the weather, the TWC news channel works well.  Other than that, I rarely turn that channel on.  So today, as the picture came up, it was right at the start of a story about two formerly homeless guys in Raleigh that had an idea, and started a T-shirt company.

The idea started when they were both homeless, and were hanging out downtown, and a guy walked up with a shirt that had just one word on it, that word was "college."  That reminded one of these guys of the Animal House movie, I guess John Belushi had the same shirt.  So they struck up a conversation with the guy in the college shirt, and talked for 15 or 20 minutes.  Afterward, they talked about how a single word on a shirt led to a lengthy conversation... for homeless men and a "normal" guy.  They wondered what would happen if they actually made shirts with a single word on them.  Would these shirts work to start spontaneous conversations as well?  They threw the idea around for quite a while.  Finally, they decided to go for it.  Conversation Tees was born.  Now these two formerly homeless guys are entrepreneurs building their small business.  They have an apartment, they work regular jobs to pay the bills for now, and they build their business in the rest of their time.

The interview above was the only one I found of them on You Tube.  The audio is a little sketchy, and it's a basic, single camera view.  But they talk about the day to day struggles of being homeless, and how things just seemed to fall into place once they started working on their business idea.  They went from people avoiding the very sight of them when they were homeless to people stepping up to help them get their business going.  As someone who was homeless for quite a while and who is now trying to create my own job/small business, it just seemed like I was meant to hear about these guys today.  The video above is about 15 minutes, and they tell their story.  For more info, you can check out the Conversation Tees website here, and even order a shirt if you want to.  In addition, they give a part of their proceeds to groups that help the homeless.  It's a good deal all around, I'm glad I came across this story, maybe some of you will like it , too.

Dealing With Negativity

Last week I got to a point where I was seriously considering leaving where I live and going back to being homeless.  For most people, that idea is unthinkable.  I realize that.  But the situation I'm living in is so negative that I had to actually spend a couple of days weighing my options on which situation would give me the best chance of getting back on my feet at some point.  For three years I've been living in this situation, and not paying my way.  That really pisses me off because since I left my family's house at age 20, I'd always been able to take care of myself.  I never made a lot of money, but I was able to get by.  Then I quit taxi driving for both health and financial reasons, and became homeless.  There was no way to make a decent living once I got to that point. 

One of the little known facts about homelessness is that most people don't want homeless people to get back to a "normal" life.  There are hundreds of organizations that help homeless people.  But most of those help homeless people... stay homeless.  These programs help homeless people get through the day with food, hygiene products, or a bed in a really crowded room at a shelter.  But few of these programs help homeless people get back to paying their own way in life.  Even the programs that help homeless people find homes usually require the homeless person to get on Social Security disability and become dependent on the federal government for the rest of their lives.  Their are people who legitimately need to be on disability, but there are also thousands of people taking advantage of that system.  For the last three years, several people around me have been pushing me to get on disability, as if that's the only answer.  This is something I've been fighting against.

So why don't I just get a job?  The simple answer is that I haven't found anywhere that will hire me for a variety of reasons.  First of all, there aren't that many jobs out there.  Sure, the Great Recession has died down, but the job creation never fully came back.  Secondly, my current job history is taxi driving for several companies with big gaps in employment.  In today's online job hunting world, that seems to be what's holding me back.  A third reason is that I spent much of my life working in the BMX, skateboarding, and TV production industries, and those industries don't exist here to any decent degree.  So every time I fill out a bunch of applications, I simply don't hear back.  This is where the thinking stops for most people.  If you're not making money, "go get a job," they say.  For most of my life that wasn't a problem.  But now it is.  But there is another option that most people here don't think about.  It's possible to create a job. 

Having spent most of my adult life around highly entrepreneurial people in Southern California, this seems like the best option to me.  There are several ways to create your own job, but they ultimately come down to either doing freelance work or starting your own business.  Or even a combination of the two.  This is not easy, but it's what a huge number of people are doing in today's society.  We're not an industrial society with lots of good paying factory jobs in every small town anymore.  Those factory jobs have been replaced mostly by robots, and also by corporations taking those jobs overseas where people work much cheaper.  In this weird transition period between the Industrial Age and the Information Age, most people just keep trying to get a job...ANY JOB.  Meanwhile, there's a growing group of people who are creating their own jobs.  This is the category I fit into best psychologically.

But creating your own job first starts with a new idea.  I have to find a niche that isn't being filled, and think up a business (or freelance opportunity) to fill that niche.  That's not hard, there are hundreds of niche products and services that need to be filled in this part of North Carolina.  The problem with coming up with a new idea is just that, it's a NEW IDEA.  That means almost everyone around will think it's a BAD IDEA.  If it was really a good idea, someone would have done it now, right?  Then comes the next part.  Starting any new idea usually involves a lot of initial work that you don't get paid for.  During that process, a person like me has to wake up every morning and immediately get past the notion that everyone else thinks I'm wasting my time.  Another aspect of this is that there are two types of people around you at this point:  people who support you, and people who don't support you.  The people who don't support you not only don't believe in you, but they often go to extreme lengths to put you down, sabotage your idea, and otherwise work against you.  So... in that case, a person like me has to wake up and get past all my own negative thoughts, then I have to deal with everyone else's negative thoughts all day long as I work to manifest my idea.  That's tough.  It's just plain tough. 

So how does a person deal with negativity in a case like this?  I have to do everything I can to not let all the negativity drag me down.  I listen to music that gets me pumped.  I listen to inspiring lectures and Ted Talks on You Tube.  I visualize where I want this idea to go.  I resort to deep breathing when someone is beating me down psychologically, and then try to move on.  It's really fucking hard.  I try not to cuss too much in my blogs, but that's the only way to say it.  I've found one opportunity to do some work for a friend's company.  It's not very much money, and it's not consistent.  But it's something.  I have to try to use that small amount of money to get another idea going.  There's an idea I've been sitting on for about 25 years.  It never seemed like a good enough idea to really focus on.  But now it does.  It's hard to deal with negativity day after day and then try to start this idea I'm not even totally sure about.  But I guess that's what keeps life interesting.  I just need to keep picking myself up and chipping away at this idea, and the other projects it could lead to.  Onward!

How To Find And Do Work You Love

Remember that feeling you had as a little kid on Christmas Eve?  Well, if you're Jewish, you don't.  But most of you know what I'm talking about.  You were so excited about what was going to happen the next day, that you found it hard to go to sleep.  You may have had that feeling the night before a vacation, when you knew the next day would be a trip to your favorite amusement park.  Or maybe you had that feeling the night before a birthday.  Whatever the case, you woke up that next morning totally excited about what was going to happen that day.  Remember that feeling?  We all had it at some point in our childhood.  Now... do you feel that way when you get up to go to work in the morning?  Most of you are mumbling under your breath, "Of course not!"  Stop and think for a second, what would it take for you to get that excited about the next day as an adult?  As crazy as it sounds to most people, there are people who actually wake up in the morning that excited about the work they do.  What would have to happen tomorrow for you to get that excitement again.  That basic idea is what Scott Dinsmore speaks about in this Tedx Talk. 

This is one of my favorite Ted Talks, because it's about trying to figure out what work you really want to do in the world.  So... what would it take for you to get excited about tomorrow?  Scott created the Live Your Legend movement to help people find their passion in life.  Follow the link for more info and his free online tool kit.

How We View Other People

In my last post I brought up the subject of how people outside The South view The South.  I think I need to dig deeper into how we, as individuals and groups, view other groups of people.  To start out, let me say that I grew up moving from house to house on a regular basis.  As a kid, this sucked, because I was really shy to start with.  With my family's moving, I continually had to meet and find new friends.  Looking back now, this sense of not being grounded in one area gave me a different view of people.  On one hand, there were differences in culture as I moved from the Midwest to the Southwest to the Northwest and then to Northern and then Southern California.  Cultures were different in different places.  But people, were pretty much the same.  People went to school as kids, grew up, got jobs, and worked to support their families.  Despite the differences in language, food, religion, and recreational activities, I learned that people everywhere are largely similar. 

At the same time, we see political leaders and others continually dividing people into different groups.  As we grow up, we learn prejudices from our families and those around us concerning "other people."  I once wrote a poem about a guy who went out looking for the line between "us" and "them.  Everywhere he went, people told him about "them,"  but try as he might, he couldn't find the dividing line between "us" and "them."  Everywhere he went, it was just "us."  That's one of the many poems I lost when I came to North Carolina, so I can't share it now.  But you get the point, people grow up in a population that is "us".  All our lives, we are told things about other groups of people... "them."  But rarely to people ever dive into why those prejudices exist.  Most people just accept the prejudices they are taught without thinking much about them.  This is really unfortunate, and the cause for a lot of trouble in our society.

This is where travel plays a key role in development as an individual.  As a person travels around the country and around the world, they meet AND GET TO KNOW individuals from other cultures.  When a person begins to understand other people on a personal level, they see past the differences and into the similarities they share with those people.  The other people stop being "them," and become part of "us." 

The best example I can think of right now is the prejudices of people in California and The South as they view each other.  Most people here in The South are taught the Californians are a bunch of crazy fools, eating granola and full of ridiculous "liberal" ideas.  Likewise, people in California see The South as a bunch of people who hold deep prejudices based on both race and religion.  Both viewpoints are largely wrong. 
Here in North Carolina, for example, if you mention race, people think in black and white terms, literally.  They tend to forget about the Latinos here, the big Greek population in nearby Winston-Salem, the Indians (from India) the American Indians (or Native Americans as they're usually called now) and the other minorities that live here.  Hundreds of years of slavery brought Africans by force which evolved into today's African-American population.  The main issues of race here over the years are between the white European-American descendants, and the black African-American descendants.  All other smaller groups here are largely forgotten. 

Now when you mention race in Southern California, for example, it's a whole different story, because Californians are more aware of the large number of different groups that live there.  It's not just black and white, but it's various types of Asians, Indians (from India), Arabs, Persians (there's a difference between those two), a wide variety of Latinos (from Mexico, Central America, and South America) and other minority groups like Russians, and Hindus, and Sikhs and a whole bunch more.  Since Southern California is much more of a melting pot then The South, people are more aware of the wide variety of people besides the black community in their region.  Here's another fact that will blow your mind, there are a ton of rednecks in California.  Really.  Once you get out of the major urban areas, to the hundreds of smaller towns, you find a lot of rednecks.  Even in the large cities, there are always country bars around.  It's just one of the many groups living there.

Another thing people in The South don't realize is that the vast majority of Californians are not very weird.  California has certain places that attract weirdos from around the world, and that's a large part of why so many new ideas, both good and bad, tend to take form in California.  Those weird people toying with wild ideas is a large part of the reason that California is such an economic powerhouse in the 21st century.  We now live in an era where ideas are the most valuable commodity, and places that attract people with outlandish ideas are also some of the economic powerhouses of the current era.  At the same time, the former economic powerhouses of this country, the urban factory cities of yesteryear, are in serious decline for the most part.

Now, what about the way Californians view the Southern States.  First and foremost, The South is the Bible Belt.  The majority of people here are deeply religious.  A huge number of Californians go to church.  But there's also a huge number of people who have been turned off to traditional religions in California.  Many have been turned off by the either/or nature of fundamentalist religions.  Many have been turned off by what they see as hypocrisy in religions, which I touched on in my last post.  There have been child molestation cases tied to religious groups, and not just in the Catholic church.  Many cases in various other Christian churches have made the news over they years.  Mostly though, many intellectual people see the doctrines of mainstream religions as very close-minded to a wide variety of issues and groups of people.  In the Republican debate the night before last, several of the presidential candidates spoke on the subject of abortion, and on the rights they believe an unborn fetus has.  Yet, not one of those candidates has a serious plan on how to pull the millions of really poor children out of poverty.  The political machines that those Republican candidates are part of are actually reducing help for the poverty stricken in this country.  These guys fight for the rights of unborn children, but don't seem to care much about those children once they're born.  It's contradictions like this that have turned large amounts of people, especially in places like California, away from traditional religions.  So those Californians tend to see people in the South as old-fashioned and not really in touch with the changes happening in today's society.

Both groups, Californians and Southerners, tend to believe the media reports about the other group, without doing much research into the facts.  The same is true about the myriad of other groups out there when they look at people in other groups. These prejudices keep us divided.  Yet, when it comes down to it, most people want to work and earn a decent living.  They want to take care of their kids, and hope those children will have a better future.  Across all kinds of differences in race, religion, ethnic groups, nationality, sexual orientation and other factors, most people are looking for the same basic things in life.  Yet, we tend to forget that fact because of the prejudices we grew up in.  Hopefully this post will give those of you who read it a reason to pause and think about what you've been taught about other groups of people, and to realize that those people are much more similar to you than you think. 

Is Our Society Unjust

This topic stems from my Sunday school class last Sunday.  I usually avoid religious topics, because when I was homeless I got totally turned off to organized religion by the people who preached at me time after time.  On one occasion I was sleeping in a seat at a large bus stop when two bus drivers sat down nearby and started a loud conversation.  It was about 4:30 in the morning, and I'd been sleeping out in the open, wrapped in my sleeping bag, for three or four hours.  The bus drivers knew that.  They intentionally talked loudly to wake me up.  The first part I remember hearing was something like, "My life has become so much better since I took Jesus as my personal lord and savior."  They continued talking loudly about how great their lives were because they were born again Christians.  I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn't.  What really irked me was that these were two of the same bus drivers that would turn their bus's air conditioning on FULL BLAST, IN THE WINTER, while driving the late night routes where homeless people, like myself, would sleep on the bus.  Instead of drawing me toward their religious views, they completely pushed me away.  Because of many people like those two bus drivers, I didn't attend church for several years. 

But now I'm a member of a Methodist church, and participate in a number of church activities, like adult Sunday school.  That brings me to the topic we discussed last Sunday.  It centered around the question, "Is our society just?"  The overwhelming consensus from the born and bread North Carolinians was that our world is definitely not just.  The writer of our lesson asked if we thought that most wealthy people became wealthy by taking advantage of other people.  Most of the people in my class thought that was true, that wealthy people tend to be unscrupulous.  They also had little faith in our politicians in general.  One lady summed it up by saying that all the evil in society today was overwhelming, and she just didn't  know what to do about it.  People spoke about how things were when they were younger, people never worked on Sunday, stores were closed on Sunday, and people in general seemed much more religious.  One woman said she didn't know what to do about all the bad influences coming from other parts of the country.  This is an underlying belief I see a lot here in North Carolina, and the South in general.  After all, this is the Bible Belt.  People here often feel like they're being attacked by "liberal influences" of all kinds.  The deep seated belief is that people here are devout Christians, and the secular culture of the big cities is decaying our society. 

At that point, I had to speak up.  I said something like, "As you all know, I've spent most of my adult life in California, and I grew up in the North, so I have a much different point of view that probably won't be very popular here."  I went on to say that when you live in other parts of the country, outside the South, you tend to think of The South as the land where some of the worst tragedies in U.S. history happened.  As we all know, the Southern economy was built on slavery.  Not just were people enslaved, but they were literally ripped from villages on another continent, and shipped to the U.S. in chains.  Here they were separated from their family members, and sold to the highest bidder.  That highest bidder was most likely a devout Christian.  The African slaves worked on land that was taken from American Indians, which was the biggest genocide in human history.  That genocide, which continues today in some ways, was led by highly religious people. Then came the Civil War, the deadliest war ever to U.S. citizens.  As we all know, The South seceded from the Union.   Ultimately the North won, the nation became one again, and the slaves were freed, but most lived in poverty for generations.  During those generations, black people were terrorized and sometimes lynched often by people who thought of themselves as devout Christians.  It took nearly 100 years for those descendants of freed slaves to get the right to vote.  The racism born of slavery is much less vivid than it was years ago, but it's still there, especially in the older people of the South, both black and white.  The younger generations are much less racist today than their parents and grandparents were.  I didn't go into all of that in class, but I got the point across that much of the country sees the South as a land of hypocrisy, where people are devoutly Christian, but hundreds of years of atrocities have happened here that didn't happen in other parts of the country.  Or if they did happen, it wasn't to the same degree. 

Now, after saying my piece, I expected to be verbally annihilated by members of the class.  What happened surprised me, and took us right to the core of our lesson for the day.  Several members of the class spoke about how they remember there being white only restaurants or restrooms during their childhood, and they accepted that because it was considered "normal" here at that time.  Other class members spoke of having black people who worked around their houses doing odd jobs, but when it came time to eat lunch, the white family would go inside and eat at the dining room table, while the black workers ate at a picnic table outside.  That, also was considered normal here when my class members were children.  As it worked out, we had a really good discussion about the bad things that happen in society that we, as individuals, do not speak or act against.  That was the whole point of Sunday's lesson. 

One lady summed up most people's feelings at the end of class by saying that there was so much terrible stuff going on in the world, that she just didn't know where to start to try and change things.  In addition, she felt helpless against the huge amount of tragedy and injustice in the world.  At that point, class was over, so we left it there. 

But that showed me just how different my viewpoint of the world is compared to most of the people around me here.  Not only have I spent time living in several different parts of the country, but I got into BMX freestyle (bike trick riding) which led to me living and working with people who were world class athletes, minor celebrities, and entrepreneurs.  In know several people who are wealthy, and most of them are really decent human beings, not the robber baron types the Sunday school lesson spoke of.  They also know how to make stuff happen, which is also is something that's not as common here in this area.  As an early participant in several of the action sports, I've seen people I know not only create entire new sports, but create entire new industries around those sports.  I mean, to all of us that met Mat Hoffman (look him up on You Tube) in the 1980's, it's hard to say anything is impossible.  We've seen Mat and many others do the impossible year after year, in athletic pursuits, in healing and overcoming injuries, and in business.  When you're hanging around people like that, almost anything seems possible if you're willing to work at it hard enough.

So... what DO you do if you see a world that seems over run with tragedy, unfairness, and injustice.  First of all, you try and figure out what bugs you the most.  Poverty? Homelessness? Childhood cancer?  Unhealthy living?  Political issues?  There are thousands of issues out there that need attention.  If you want to make a difference in one of them, pick the one that is most important to you. I read a book once, I think it was one of Dan Millman's books, where the author said something like, "resign as general manager of the world, you can't do everything yourself."  Then find something small that you can do to help the problem.  You could make a few sandwiches and hand them out to homeless people.  If you play guitar and sing, for example, you could put on a one person show for children and their families in the local hospital.  You can give blood.  You can volunteer at the Red Cross or thousands of other places that need volunteers.  You could visit the shut-ins in your area.  That's something that several of the people in my Sunday school class do.  Find a little niche where you can help, and do what you can on a small level.  Then, when you start to get a better grasp of what those people need, find like minded people who may be interested in helping you.  The internet and social media these days make that process much easier.  Then take the next obvious step.  Do something a little bigger or a little more involved if it's needed.  Or commit to doing something helpful on a regular basis if you can.  Keep taking the next obvious steps, one by one.  You never know where that journey might take you. 

A Satisfied Man

This Tedx Talk by Stephen Kellogg just popped up when I clicked on You Tube today.  Stephen is a singer/songwriter speaking on what seems like an odd topic for him, job satisfaction.  As he references in his talk, he's doing what he loves, but he still deals with the same issues that we all deal with in our jobs.  Or our search for the "right" job.  It's a real simple sounding talk, but really powerful at the same time.  He reduces the idea of loving your work down to a few simple rules, and they make a lot of sense.  Even the really big cliche of thinking that "the grass is always greener somewhere else," he explains the truth behind it.

My real struggle my entire life has been to find and actually do the work I feel is important in the world.  I've had dream jobs, and I've had really boring jobs and really hard physical jobs.  The weird thing is that there were parts I liked about every job, and parts I didn't like.  From working at a magazine and on the crew of a hit TV show to panhandling for food money on an off ramp, I've found both joy and sorrow in every situation.  Stephen's talk really puts all this in perspective.  If you don't love your work, take 18 minutes and listen to what Stephen Kellogg has to say.  This is one of those talks that I think everyone can relate to in some way.  He ends with a song which provides the title of this blog post.  I won't totally give it away.  But it comes down to this: are you a satisfied person at the end of each day?  If not, what would it take to be one?   

A New Opportunity

It's been a couple of weeks since I made my vision board.  There's nothing exceptional about it, I just printed off pictures that give a visual reference to several of my goals.  But there's something magical that happens when a person takes the time to make a vision board.  Suddenly those goals are there to see every day.  In my case, an opportunity to make some money came out of nowhere.  An old friend found me on Facebook, we played a little phone tag, then talked on the phone for a couple of hours, catching up on the last 15 years.  He started a small company recently, and the opportunity arose for me to help promote his company in this area. 

To most people, this seems totally random, or at best, a weird coincidence.  In my years I've come to believe that coincidence is rarely coincidental.  I've seen similar things happen before.  It's called synchronicity to those who believe in such things.  I focused my attention on where I wanted to go in life, and an opportunity I didn't expect popped out of thin air.  It's not a full time job, it's not a huge amount of money, but it's a good start and I have no idea what it might lead to in the future.  More than anything, I'm psyched on this new opportunity because it's right up my alley of interests and experience.  My big problem in North Carolina was that all my life experience didn't count for anything here.  The industries I've worked in don't really exist here.  Everyone has been pressuring me to give up my past and get some kind of low wage, entry level job.  That frustrated the heck out of me.  Then, suddenly, an opportunity in an industry I've worked in came out of nowhere.  I'm stoked.

In totally unrelated news, I've now lost ten pounds since I started walking.  I' haven't even been walking much since we had a big heatwave, but I lost another five pounds somehow.  Things are progressing, slow and steady, and that's what I'm working towards.