49 inch bunnyhop in 2016

New schooler riders with the most basic of BMX tricks.  A bunnyhop for height.  49" takes some serious hops.  Prop, dude.  

Rabbit hole #1

What Would You Do With A Billion Dollars

Last Wednesday might as well have been National Big Dreams Day.  As I'm sure you all know, the Powerball lottery jackpot rose to a record 1.5 BILLION dollars.  That meant that a single winner, after federal taxes, would take home over $900 MILLION.  It seemed everyone was talking about it, people were lining up to buy tickets all over the country, even though the odds of winning were something like 1 in 292 million.  That's about the same odds of being hit by a meteor while having sex with Angelina Jolie.  Or Channing Tatum for you ladies.  Pretty unlikely.

Still, many of us were daydreaming of that insane amount of money all day long, deciding how to spend it.  I never play the lottery, but I threw my change into a Coinstar and used it to buy a single ticket.  I mean, SOMEONE has to win, right?  Like so many others, I wondered just what I would do with that kind of money.  My first thought was to pay off bills for myself and my mom.  But that's a drop in the bucket of $900 million.  Then I wanted to buy a nice house.  The strange thing is, I realized I don't really want a McMansion.  Just a nice house, back in Huntington Beach, California.  OK.  that leaves more than $899 million left.  I'd build an INSANE bike and skate park, and work to get my fat butt in shape so I could ride and skate again.  $897 MILLION left.  Dang.  That's a lot of money.

I'd like to travel some.  But I don't really have the urge to sail around the world or anything.  I'd visit some old friends in Europe and roadtrip all over the U.S. and Canada.  897 3/4 MILLION left.  Holy crap!

Sure, I'd invest some.  But the stock market is a really lousy place to put money right now.  Real estate isn't the greatest right now.  Maybe it's better in California.  Even if I dumped $10 million into good rental properties, that would leave $887.75 million.  Now what?

The only real answer I could come up with was to do as much good as I could with the money. As someone who was homeless for years, that would be my primary focus.  Yes, there are plenty of losers out there, but NO ONE really deserves to live on the streets.  It's a horrible thing. 

As I went down the list of things I'd try to spend $900 million on, I realized something.  If I actually DID win that huge prize, everyone would say I got lucky and got bailed out of my financial situation by the lottery.  I could never say that I EARNED my way back to success after being homeless.  Suddenly, I didn't want to win.  Seriously.  It was a big eye opener for me. 

I have a confession to make.  I DID win the Powerball Lottery last Wednesday.  Really.  I won $4.  I doubled my money.  What did I do with my winnings?  I went to McDonald's, bought a Diet Coke and a caramel sundae, and wrote down what I really want to do with my life for the next few years.  The next day I started a Go Fund Me campaign to raise the money to start doing it.  I realized I don't need the lottery to follow my dreams.  I  can say I won the Powerball on the biggest day ever. More importantly, I can still EARN my way to success in this world.  I like the way that turned out.

A New Year A New Business

First of all, I'm sorry it's been so long since the last post.  My computer literally broke back in November, and getting enough time on another computer to be able to blog has been a challenge.  My laptop didn't crash, the hinge physically broke.  Then came the holidays, which is a time of year I always dread.  I'm really glad they're over.  Way too much drama on any holiday in my house.  It is kind of funny, though, that this year I got a candy cane for Christmas.  Seriously.  A single candy cane.  It's so ridiculous, it's funny.  OK, my sister and her kids came over two days later, and I got a gift card from them.  But on Christmas day itself, I got a single candy cane. 

So... I'm guessing this year will be better.  As I've mentioned before, it's become apparent that I'm not going to be able to find a good paying job here in North Carolina.  With the last 12 years of my work history being filled with taxi driving and gaps in employment, I'm pretty much out of consideration for most any job paying a living wage.  That's OK, though.  Years working as a taxi driver turned me into more of a business man than an employee.  So, starting with literally no money, my artwork seemed to be the place to start.  So I stepped it up a little, I've sold a few drawings, and I'm getting good feedback on the other drawings I've put on Facebook.  All in all, that's good.

But here's my reality.  I'm a middle aged man who's been living with my mom since my dad died 3 1/2 years ago.  Lame.  We argue a lot.  Lame.  I've had some crazy health issues that have kept me from making money during that time, among other things.  Really lame.  So now I'm doing better on the health front, I'm motivated like I haven't been in a loooong time, and I'm doing something I really enjoy.  That overcomes much of the lameness in my everyday life.

But still, I'm starting a small business.  That has certain demands.  First, I need ideas and motivation.  Got that.  I also need SOME money.  Yes, there are lots of ways to creatively get around many expenses, but some money is needed for basic supplies.  I've got that covered for the moment.  But then some more money is needed for the everyday needs of the business.  If I sell a drawing to someone out of state, I need to be able to ship it.  I need to get my laptop refurbished.  I need gas money to get around town to do the various things that need to be done.  Here's where it gets frustrating.  Most people start a business by either using savings, or borrowing money from someone.  There are many, many ways to do this.  The basic idea is:  an entrepreneur uses saved/borrowed money to get the business off the ground, to get sales happening, and then they re-invest much of the money back in the business in its infancy.  I don't have that luxury.  I need this little business to start paying my bills immediately.  And that's difficult since I'm starting on a shoestring.  Shoestring, hell, I'm starting on a thread of a shoestring. 

Another issue is that, as an artist, I need to make a name for myself to be able to sell some of my work.  The same thing goes for my writing.  The cool thing these days is that the internet, mobile technology, and all of our connectivity today gives me hundreds, if not thousands, of ways to do that for very little money.  The down side of that is that I have to stand out from the millions of other people in the world doing their own creative thing.  Even with Facebook, blogs, Twitter, Instagram, the internet, and all the other things available, it still takes good old fashioned hard work to build a following, and ultimately, a business.  The downside of that is that this type of work doesn't look like work to a lot of other people.  While I may spend my time publishing a blog, and writing something other people actually read, to someone who spends their time online trolling Facebook, it looks like I'm just goofing around.  You may have noticed, but the high paying factory jobs are mostly gone, and the people making good money today earn it with intelligence and creativity.  Physical labor dosn't pay these days.  Mental labor does.

So these are the things that are frustrating me as I head into this new year of 2016.  I take heart in one of the great sayings of Mark Twain:  "The person with a new idea is considered a crank... until the idea works."  Happy New Year everyone, and keep plugging away at whatever it is that makes your life worthwhile. 





But still

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?























point is that peo

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?