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.

What Are You Dying To Do

This clip is a Tedx Talk in San Jose by comedian Steve Mazan.  I'd never heard of him before  I listened to this talk.  He got really bad news from a doctor and took lots of bad advice from friends before he got back to the dream that was really important to him.  His talk comes down to this:  What are you dying to do?

A couple days ago I made a vision board.  I wrote about that in the last post.  It's not very exciting.  Most everything on it could be done by a person with a decent job in a couple of weeks.  But I'm starting without a job, so I know it will take some time to get going.  I took that into account.  But what I missed on my vision board is exactly what Steve Mazan's Tedx Talk above speaks about.  What am I dying to do?  What are you dying to do that you've put aside over the years?  If a doctor told you that you only had a finite time to live, what would you want to accomplish before you died?  Did you think of something?  Well... why aren't you doing that now? 

On the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 2007, I took a long drive out into the desert of Southern California to think about my life.  I was a taxi driver, a homeless taxi driver, living in my cab.  I had three bouts of cellulitis, a severe bacterial infection in my legs, in 2007.  During the last ER visit, the doctor told me in October 2007 that if I kept driving a taxi I would die... in a matter of weeks, possibly months.  I weighed about 365 pounds at the time, up from 210 pounds a few short years before.  I worked seven days a week, 14 to 16 hours most days.  I got almost no exercise.  I knew I had to quit driving a taxi for health reasons.  At the same time, the business had changed and I could no longer make enough to pay the rent on my taxi each week.  It's a long story, but technology totally changed the taxi industry, even before Uber came along.  Driving around the desert that day, I realized I had to quit.  So I drove back to the taxi yard in Santa Ana and dropped my cab.  I walked onto the streets with about $15 in my pocket.  The few things I owned were in a closet sized storage unit.  My feet were cracked and bleeding with severe athlete's foot.  I hobbled out onto the streets of Orange County, California, expecting to die on the streets within a few weeks. 

I spent half my money on a book that first night.  It was Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey.  It was a great read, and I was glad I bought it.  I began sleeping on buses and at bus stops and in the bushes.  I panhandled for food money and bus fare to survive each day.  After a few days I began "flying a sign" as we call in in the homeless world.  I stood on off ramps with a cardboard sign that said "Homeless and Hungry."  After a couple weeks, I was still alive.  I realized I needed a project to keep me busy while I was dying on the streets.  I'd been toying with the idea of stand up comedy, and had been writing material for several months.  I even went to a couple open mic nights at a bar that had a comedy stage.  But I never got up on stage and tried it. 

Sitting in a Carl's Jr. restaurant, sipping on a Diet Coke that day, I decided that I would make a comedy video about homelessness.  I had produced several BMX videos and worked on the crew of TV shows, so the project seemed like a natural fit for me.  I grabbed a notebook and began writing comedy ideas and planning out the video.  I wrote an hour's worth of material.  I panhandled enough money to get my video camera out of the pawn shop.  I wrote out panhandling type signs for intros to each section of the video.  I planned to do each section in one take each, in order, in different locations around Orange County.  I paced back and forth at bus stops late at night to keep warm, practicing my comedy bits as I walked.  In six weeks, I had produced a super cheap, but moderately funny video.  I pawned my camera again, had a good meal, and spent a night in a motel  to celebrate.  There's nothing like a nice, hot bath when you've been sleeping outside.  I did this all while literally living on the streets as a bum.  I was pretty proud that I accomplished my goal of making a comedy video.  I put the Hi 8 master tape in my storage unit with the rest of my stuff. 

At that point, I'd been homeless for about eight weeks.  Something occurred to me.  I realized that I might not die.  I might live.  If I lived, then I had to get back to a "normal" life at some point.  I lived in the streets for nine more months.  I started talking to my family again, who all lived in North Carolina.  Ultimately, they flew me to North Carolina so I could start my life over.  In the move, I wound up losing all my BMX video footage, hundreds of poems I'd written, and my homeless comedy tape.  Not a single person ever saw it.  But the goal of making a comedy video saved my life.  So while I'm not facing the same situation as Steve Mazan in the clip above, I have been at a point where I thought my life was truly over.  I found my dream at that time, and pursued that dream.  Now, several years later, I'm back at that decision point.  What am I dying to do?  What are you dying to do?  We're all going to die some day.  We better figure it out and get to it.

I Made A Vision Board

In this clip above, entertainer Steve Harvey is interviewed by Oprah on the subject of vision boards, goals, and success.

In the three months since my hospitalization, I've started working on getting my life going again.  I'm on new medicine that allows me to actually function again.  But I'm starting over at a really low point.  I'm unemployed.  I'm severely overweight.  My resume' at this point only includes taxi driving, which pretty much excludes me from any "normal" job.  My teeth are in really bad shape after years of being homeless and not having dental insurance.

I've read dozens of self-help books and listened to hundreds of books on tape over the years.  I had to sit down and ask myself, "What do I know from all I've learned?"  The answer was that I needed to start dreaming big dreams again, and I needed to set goals for myself to focus on.  When I started looking online for You Tube talks about goals, I saw some clips about Vision Boards.  The idea is simple.  You dream about where you want to go in life and what, specifically, you want to accomplish.  Then you take a piece of poster board and some magazines and go through and find photos and words and sayings that describe what your goals look like.  Then you tape or glue all these things onto the poster board and hang your vision board where you will see it every day.  Then you look at it, and visualize your goals.  Then you focus your efforts and start working towards your goals.  When you fail at something, like Steve and Oprah say in the clip above, you learn the lesson in that failure and you get back up, dust yourself off, and start working towards your goals again.

I couldn't even afford a piece of poster board to get started, and I couldn't afford magazines.  So I took a couple large pieces of sketch paper, and I pulled black and white photos off the internet to describe my goals.  Nothing is really exciting.  I have a financial goal that seems impossible right now.  I have a health goal that seems hard, but possible.  I have a few other material goals, and one goal to help others.

Nothing exceptional has happened yet.  But since I put my vision board on the wall next to my computer, I'm constantly reminded of them.  I've realized I need to extend those goals farther in the future and find a grand dream that's really worth working towards.  So I've been thinking about that.

If you're interested in making your own vision board, there are several clips on You Tube that describe how to make a vision board.  There are also clips from people who have used vision boards and have achieved some of their goals.  If you don't already have a sense of direction in life, I recommend making a vision board to get started.