A New Plan

I'm still working on writing out everything that happened since last summer. I remember how frustrated I was with my career search, but at the time I had a lot going for me. Things are somewhat different now though. I do have a job (long story). I work hard and don't make much money. I don't hate it, but I'm happy knowing that I won't be there long term.

I'm planning on moving back to Ft Wayne as soon as I can. There's a lot to do before I can do that. I have to have extra money for this move, and since I only make enough to pay for food, rent and electricity, I need to start making some extra cash to put back for moving. I'm excited though. I like the house I live in, but I don't like the people in the part of KY that I live in.

I won't miss my job either. I really got a raw deal this time. In retrospect, it's my fault. I should have known.

Displaced

It's weird how fast things change in life. For better or worse, life changes so fast it's hard to keep up. I am now living right outside Paducah Kentucky. I have a job, it's okay. I recently read through all my old posts and realized that I've changed a lot since I last posted a short time ago. I sounded really vindictive in some of them. I think that I've figured out my problem. Actually, I've found the root of all my problems. It happened a few weeks ago. But I don't want to get ahead of myself. I have a pretty good story that explains how I went from living in Ft Wayne, IN and being near my kids to being seven hours away from them. I'll explain in my next few posts and finish by explianing how I've become happier than ever despite all that's happened.

Working from Home

In terms of a career, I did recently earn some extra spending money from doing some web design as well as some writing. That's good, but I need to do better. If I could gain more clients, I could do this full time from home and never have to search for a traditional career. I think I'll concentrate on this and see what happens.

Goals

going well. still don't know what i'm doing yet though.

GTA IV

Unless you were incarcerated last week or maybe under a rock, you know that Grand Theft Auto IV was released on April 29th. I was third in line monday night at walmart waiting for it. I haven't slept much since purchasing this game. It has set a new standard for the current generation of consoles. I can't stop playing it.

The Secret

In addition to reading A New Earth, I also recently read The Secret. I’m still on the fence regarding whether or not it really works. I read the many criticisms and reviews of the book. I haven’t tried the methods out yet to see if they really work. But I plan on conducting an experiment to test the validity of the author’s claims. I’m going to start small, like the author suggests. Or maybe I should start big, to sufficiently test the claims of the book. For the last 19 years, I have wanted a motorcycle. On several occasions, I was extremely close to getting one but something always went wrong. I think that would be a sufficient test. It’s never been a better time to own one. I will start concentrating on a Honda Nighthawk. It has 250 cc engine and gets phenomenal gas mileage. And only costs about $3,700 brand new.

The reason I’m not so quick to dismiss the claims made by the book is that I have actually experienced this phenomenon recently. I was blogging about Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits book and it occurred to me that my copy is so worn out from being read so many times that all the pages have separated and are falling out. I thought about buying a new copy but even after all this time, it’s still expensive. A few days later, I went with L to a library book sale and found a mint condition copy for 50 cents. Coincidence? Good luck? I don’t think so. There’s more to it than that.

Finding Myself

I’m still contemplating A New Earth. I know this book is legit because so far I can find nothing in it that seems too good to be true like so many other books in similar genres. I’m getting better at the awareness part and even the inner peace aspect. What I’m stuck on now is the part about finding my outer purpose. I know my inner purpose is to find inner peace. I’m getting there. The outer purpose presents some problems. Eckhart Tolle would say that one should just be still, exist, and wait for an indication of the outer purpose. I’m becoming impatient. It’s not that I don’t believe, it’s that I feel like life is passing me by while I wait. But here’s the weird thing: at the same time I’m having feelings of patience and calmness that I’ve never had before when thinking about my purpose in life. I remember getting anxiety just thinking about looking for jobs on careerbuilder or monster. Every time I got on there, the only jobs posted were the kind I could only tolerate. Not the kind I could enjoy doing. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t settle for anything less that Taste Tester for a beer company, I just don’t want to settle for some shitty job that I know I’ll hate. I know what it’s like to hate going to work every day. To hate getting up in the morning. To dread each new day. I don’t want to go through that again.

One realization that I made the other day is that the most financially successful people get there by doing what they love – not doing it purely for money. When we set out to get rich, we almost never succeed. I know I haven’t. I’ve tried all kinds of schemes to get wealthy. Many of those schemes started when I read the Rich Dad Poor Dad series. I read the first book and was so impressed that I bought all the others. The books really get you motivated about working for yourself and being independent. The problem, however, is that it’s all they do. Hardly any of the information is useful and unless you need motivation to work for your self, they’re a total waste of time. I bought other books, too. One was called something like How to Buy Real Estate With No Money Down. This was an even bigger waste of time.

I don’t worry quite as much about income anymore because I have the hope that I’ll find my calling soon. Being rich doesn’t matter so much now. What does matter is that I earn an income from doing what I love. Being happy is more important than being rich. The issue now is that I have to figure out how to do that. Or… do I sit back and wait for an opportunity to arise? To properly identify an opportunity, I need to know what I enjoy and , more importantly, what I’m good at.

Still Going

Things are going great. I decided to try the South Beach Diet along with daily exercise in order to get down to my ideal weight. It's not so bad really. I get to eat fried eggs and turkey bacon for breakfast. By combining exercise with diet, I can get in shape fast. I know there is no easy fix, but harder work can move things along at a faster pace.

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Lately, I have also become extremely fascinated with web design. I have done a few web pages in the past using HTML, but never really got past the basics. But recently, I have developed an obsession with web design. I even went to the library and checked out every book they had on HTML, JavaScript, Graphic Design, and XHTML. I have designed at least 45 web pages for fun and I'm considering doing them as a source of additional income.

Massive Progress

It's been a few days since my last post. I've been working so hard on my projects that I've actually found myself ahead of schedule. I read a book last week called "A New Earth". It was great. It had a profound impact on my life. I have experienced more progress toward my goals in the last few days than in the last year and a half. I can attribute it to the awareness that the author discusses. The space between thoughts. It works. It puts everything into perspective and the rest seems to fall in to place. Today was the first day I really noticed it. It was uncanny how well things go when I was truly aware of what was going on.

Thinking about that book, I realized that I have been holding myself back for a long time. My negativity clouded thinking that could’ve been productive. I guess it’s like a computer’s processor; if you allow some programs to constantly run, that can interfere with other programs you are trying to run. If I concentrate on bad things that have happened in the past and replay them over and over in my head, I’m unable to think productively. Not just that, but I never accepted the present moment. I never appreciated the present moment. To just sit back, exist, and be happy is the secret to inner peace.

At first, I had a hard time grasping the concept of the ego being separate from my real identity. I understand now but still have trouble with it. Does that mean that all emotions experienced by the ego are, in a sense, not really real? I wonder if inner peace originates from that detachment. The reason this book is so popular is because it’s so different from other “self help” books. Instead of telling you what you need to do with your life, Tolle simply points out things that exist, but go unnoticed. Primarily, the inner awareness that we all have, but ignore because we spend too much time “thinking”. We, as humans, never accept the present moment. We are too busy thinking about the past or the future. We either dwell on past incidents, or we live in the future. I was probably the best example of this dysfunctional thinking. I was either depressed about how my life had gone in the past, or I was lost in thought about the future. In the future, I’d have money and I could finally be happy. In the future, I’d be fit and then I could be happy. I ignored the wonderful aspects of my present situation. I never thought about “right now”. Nor did I ever allow my thinking to become quiet and still. Tolle says that there is a space between thoughts in which that quiet awareness (your true consciousness) exists. I think Stephen Covey was on to this in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, when he stated that “there is a gap between stimulus and response”.

Small Changes

I had yet another productive day. I have been getting all kinds of things accomplished. I was so far behind on my Visual Basic projects that I thought I’d never catch up, but I am catching up fast. It’s great. I have learned to balance my schedule. This leaves me with a lot more personal time. Right now I thought I’d work on my blog bfore going in to class.

I love this new computer. It has helped me save time and get more done because now I can get work done anywhere I go. My overall mood has been much better lately and I think I can attribute it to a sense of accomplishment. Not that I’ve done anything major, it just feels good to feel like I’m moving forward again. I haven’t felt like that in a very long time.

I am still working on defining a path for my life. The truth is that I thought I’d have it figured out by now. In the past 10 years, I’ve gone through so many phases. Each time I thought I had my life path all figured out. I could’ve been somewhere by now. That is one of the key factors that caused my depression to get so bad last year. I think that the problem was that I have always been surrounded by negative people (my family). Every time I thought I had a good idea, it was shot down. After so many times, I started to expect things never to work out. Now I am realizing that I can do whatever I want. Just because people tell me I will fail doesn’t mean that I will. And even if I do, at least I’m trying to accomplish something.

What I’ve come up with so far is a list of what I want out of life. It’s not a lot. First of all I want my own home. I am sick of living in apartments. I want to live far away from neighbors. Not right next to them. I also want a new car. A small, cheap, gas efficient vehicle to drive so I won’t have to pay so much for gas anymore.

Most of all, I want to do something for a living that I love. There are people out there that love what they do. They are excited to get up in the morning and go to work. Some of them own their own businesses, some work from home, and some have regular jobs that are dream jobs to them.

I live in an area where dream jobs are scarce if there even are any. Most jobs in Indiana are manufacturing jobs. People go to work, do the same repetitive thing over and over and over, and go home. That’s not for me. Here’s the problem, if I move away to find a wonderful job, I leave my kids behind. If I stay, there’s no work. So the only option is self employment. I have the resources, but I’m having trouble figuring out exactly what it is I want to do. I will continue exploring and maybe I’ll come up with something soon.

The Plan

I've been getting so much done recently. My time management has been wonderful. I can attribute much of this improvement to my new computer and the rest to my Franklin Covey Planner. I discovered that if I work on bits and pieces of whatever it is that needs doing, it all adds up fast and I get so much more accomplished than I once did. Right now, I am waiting outside my grandma's apartment for my wife. I picked up a wifi connection and decided to blog for a few while I wait.

I have been so busy with college projects, that I've not had a chance to explore home business information lately. I don't feel as hopeless as I once did. I am excited about the future because I know good things are on their way. I don't mind all the college projects because I am gaining new skills every time I work on them. My favorite projects are HTML and Java.

I've accomplished so much today that I'm already excited for tomorrow so I can see if I can get more done.

Saints Row 2 and GTA IV

Not much at all to blog about today. I've been working on projects all weekend. I just checked the THQ website and we're looking at Aug 26 as a release date for Saints Row 2. I was hoping it would be a little bit sooner, but GTA IV comes out in about 3 weeks so that's good. I can't wait for that one either.

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I decided to purchase both games for the Xbox 360. I don't feel like buying a PS3 just yet. I don't have room for it right now. Plus I've read that they're both pretty much the same as far as graphics quality goes.

Another Day II

I got my new laptop computer yesterday. It's very nice. I only buy Dell because they never seem to have any problems whatsoever. This one is the smallest laptop I've owned so far. Yesterday I started the tedious task of installing my programs. The MS Office installation went well, but Visual Studio had some problems. I was informed that I needed additional updates to make it compatible with Vista. After finding the updates and getting them installed, I was good to go. By the way, this font color is hexadecimal #CC00CC. My daughter told me to use it.

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In other news, I have decided to write a book about working from home. I will conduct multiple interviews with those who have successfully started their own home businesses and pinpoint the strategies that work as well as those that don't. I know that many people are unhappy and feel trapped working for unscrupulous employers. I know how it feels to long for the independence of being self employed. I have read over 30 books that claim to provide all the knowledge required for working from home, but none really do. Most of them are just the same old ideas. I want my book to actually accomplish something. I want to help others free themselves from the oppression of their employers.

Time Management

Nothing much going now. Just projects for my programming class. They seem to never end. My goal for this week is to catch up. I don’t know how I got so far behind in that class. I’m doing fine in my web design course. I’m still trying to pull together a daily routine that will fit. I want to maximize my efficiency and get the most out of every day. I think I am wasting time somehow but I haven’t figured out where, how, or when. Yesterday, I started using my FranklinCovey planner again. I used it during some of the most overwhelming semesters of college and it helped me make it through just fine. I stopped ordering the paper refills for my planner when I purchased my PDA. But the PDA didn't work out as well. I used it for the last year and a half. My problem with PDA's is that you have to navigate through so many menus to get from one thing to another and that takes too much time. I do love the ability to proofread documents and send emails on the go, so I'm keeping the PDA for those purposes. I'll just use the planner for everything else.

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I feel so tired most of the time. I know I am getting enough sleep. Maybe it’s because I have taken a few days off from working out. Energy Drinks are great, but after an hour, I feel more drained than before. Lately I've also been spending a lot of time trying to catch up in other aspects of my life so that soon I will be able to conduct some more exploration of what it takes to successfully work from home. I have spent numerous hours searching through the scams and hopefully will soon figure out the secret to doing it. As soon as I do, I will write a book that details step by step exactly how it's done. I think it's so unfair what many people have to go through regarding their jobs. Some jobs are wonderful. Others are not.

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I thought that when I graduated from college I would be able to find a pretty decent job. I knew it would be somewhat entry level, but I was excited. I spent months sending out resumes and tried to stay hopeful, upbeat, and positive. But the only job offer I recieved and accepted turned out to be the most horrible job I've ever had. I don't want to go through that again. I have an abundance of skills and a wonderful education. The main problem is the economically depressed area that I live in. I am surrounded by factory and food service careers and that's not at all what I'm interested in. I want to work with computers or write for a living. I would seriously prefer to work from home.

Storm Approaching

Mackinaw Bridge

I have over 200 photos I've taken of the bridge. I just can't get enough. It's so photogenic!

Lighthouse

I took this photo at the park by the fort. My wife and I had our Chihuahua puppy with us and people were also taking pictures of her.

Island Lighthouse

I took this pic on my way to Mackinaw Island.

More Sunsets

Cold Fall Day

I took this on one of those cold fall days that Mackinaw City is notorious for. You can almost feel chilly just looking at it.

Photos

I am preparing for the arrival of my new laptop next week. I was going through content on my hard drive and found some really great pics I took up in mackinaw over the last couple years.

Cramming for exams

I don't think I've ever had an exam that I didn't end up cramming for. To me it's fun. It's not that I put it off, it's that I believe that the closer the timeframe between studying and being tested, the better the retention rate of information. I got to my classroom two hours early and no one was there. The room serves as an additional computer lab when class isn't in session so it's a rare occasion finding it empty. I've been attending college for years and this has never happened. This means I don't have to stand in line for the printer. I'd have to say this makes my day.

Mackinaw City, Michigan

I can honestly say now that the benefits of being a professional writer far outweigh the costs. One being that I could live anywhere and still have the same income. If I could live anywhere I would have to pick Mackinaw City, MI. My parents have a summer place up there on the lake. I spend the majority of my summers there but would love to live there permanently. The sunsets are awesome. It’s an extremely positive environment. I know I could’ve already found a way to move up there but I want to wait until my kids are a little bit older. My wife wants to move up there even more than I do. So do my parents. It’s a wonderful place. Whenever we go up, I don’t want to come home. Life is too short to only experience a place like that every so often, so I’m going to move up there as soon as I can.

Another Day

Today is the first day in a long time that I don’t have to go anywhere. My wife and I went to the grocery yesterday and my kids are at space camp in Alabama. I’m just sitting back and enjoying the day. I did go for a short walk earlier, but it was extremely cold compared to yesterday’s weather. At first I thought it was raining, but I soon realized that it was more of a mix of rain and snow. I played Saints Row on my Xbox 360 all morning. That is my all time favorite game. I was always a fan of the Grand Theft Auto series. I have every one of them and was annoyed when THQ announced that they were releasing a game that was so similar to GTA San Andreas. Then I purchased an Xbox 360 Pro Package and bought Saints Row for less than $30. I absolutely love it. The sequel, Saints Row 2, comes out this year but I don’t know when. Hopefully sooner than later.

Speaking of upcoming releases, Grand Theft Auto IV comes out April 29th. That’s going to be a great game. It’s being said that this game will set a new benchmark for open world gaming. I haven’t decided yet whether I’m buying for the Xbox 360 or the PS3. The Playstation 3 has the ability to support better graphics than the 360 but Rockstar claims that the game will not be scaled down for the Xbox 360 console. Currently, Rockstar is developing downloadable content for GTA IV for Xbox Live. I’ll wait until closer to the release date to decide which console I will purchase it for.

I’ve also been researching various work at home opportunities. I never realized just how tedious it is to search for legitimate opportunities among the scams. Finding a real opportunity is well worth the hassle. So far, the best things I’ve found for myself, based on my education and experience, involve freelance writing. I wouldn’t recommend any of the “earn $10,000 a month selling our products” packages that have saturated the online world. Many people are making money selling products online, but the difference is that they have set up their own suppliers and pick their own products. I think that one of the most important factors that has to be considered when searching for a work-at-home opportunity is the initial cost of the opportunity. That is what gives freelance writing such an advantage over many other methods of generating profit. There is virtually no initial cost.

If I could figure out the process of setting up my own freelance writing business, it would be great because I love to write. I actually wrote a book once. It was about 412 pages of short stories but I deleted it from my computer because I couldn’t deal with the idea of someone else reading it and criticizing me. I do love to write both fiction and nonfiction. I did plenty of nonfiction writing in college while completing my professional writing minor. During my last semester of college for my undergraduate degree, I took an English class called Creativity and Community. We actually had to keep a blog for the semester and write in it regularly. I’ve had other blogs going on and off for years, but it was difficult to write in that one without censoring it because I knew my classmates were reading it. It’s not that I’m so insecure that I care that much about what others think, it’s that most of my classmates were high school teachers and were over critical of others. But in the end, censoring my writing backfired and I received a “C” instead of a “B” for that class.

Today

Today, I was planning on taking a nice long ride on my mountain bike. I woke up and it was cold and rainy. I know I still could’ve gone, but a warm bed seemed more appealing. So instead of that, I focused on weight training. I forgot how fun weights are. You work out really hard and then sit back, relax, and drink protein shakes while your muscles rebuild. Repeat three times a week for a while and they get a lot bigger. Anyway, now that I have managed to get my life on a healthy path, I am going to start focusing on finding a way to work from home. I know many others do it. I will continue to search for legitimate opportunities so that I can post them here. Hopefully I can help others avoid getting scammed by some of the unscrupulous sites out there.

I mentioned some of the reasons I want to work from home in an earlier post. There are actually an abundance of reasons I want to work for myself. It bothers me that many employers treat their employees so horribly. Too many companies think that they own their employees. Actually, when you get a job you are agreeing to sell your labor at a pre-determined fee. The company you work for purchases your labor on a regular basis. I understand that every employer must initiate their own policies. If they didn’t, the result would be utter chaos and nothing would get accomplished. I guess it would be safe to say that I just prefer to work on my own.

Getting Fit

I’m not trying any of the latest crash diets, supplements, or any other techniques. All I’m doing is cutting my calories and saying no to junk food, fast food, and candy. I am going to have a problem giving up soda though. I love Mountain Dew the most. And I think that diet anything tastes like crap. But that’s just my opinion. I've been drinking just one can of soda a day and I'm still losing weight. I’m trying to get in all of the food groups every day because I know it will enable me to have more energy.

I walked 2 miles today at a brisk pace just to help get into a routine. I walked on the sweetser switch trail, which is west of marion. It’s nicer than most trails around here. It may only be 3.5 miles long, but it’s tranquil compared to most. I’m gonna start biking tomorrow. I think I’ve figured out a good route to take that utilizes not only the switch trail, but also some low traffic country roads. I'll post a map of it. I think it’s finally warm enough (at least tolerable enough) to start biking. My overall goal is to lose at least 50 lbs before June 1st. I know it sounds like an unreasonable goal, but I believe that we can push ourselves to accomplish just about anything if we put our minds to it.

The First Step

As I mentioned in my last post, I was hesitant to post to my blog because I was afraid it would be the most boring blog out there. I’ve read many blogs and it never ceases to amaze me just how interesting people really are. In fact, I’ve yet to read a blog that wasn’t interesting. Anyway, I realized that my blog can be interesting too without fabricating the truth.

I want my blog to be worth reading and to accomplish something in one way or another. The main topic of this blog will be my attempt at success. Success, in my opinion, is finding happiness in all aspects of life. For example, at the moment I am unemployed. I want nothing more than to work from home either for my self or for a company that allows me this privilege. The main reason I want this is because I am a grad student and I also have shared custody of my children. Shared custody, in my case, means that I have them about half the time but I usually don’t know when I will have them next. Some weeks I have them on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays and other weeks I have them other days.

Anyway, I feel like I just woke up and my life is not where I thought it would be at this point. I know that there are others out there who feel the same way but don’t know how to do anything about it. I am hoping that if I achieve my goals and document my journey by posting to this blog on a regular basis, maybe someday it will help someone else.

A New Beginning

As I mentioned before, I was hesitant to post to this blog because I felt that I had nothing interesting to write about. However, I recently realized that I actually do have some pretty cool things going on in my life right now. My life is really an ongoing story and I am the writer. If my life was a book, then my blog would be the primary method to tell my story to those who don't know me.

It's Been A While

When I made my first post to this blog, I intended to write on a regular basis. Several times after my first post, I tried posting new ones but deleted them because I thought they were too boring. But I recently realized that I just because I don’t have anything brilliant to write about, it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t write. Anyway, a lot has happened since my last post.

I had a lot of time on my hands due to being unemployed. I wanted so desperately to find a way to work from home. For as long as I can remember, I always wanted to work from home. Not only that, but I wanted to do something for a living that I could be passionate about. I wanted to have a purpose. The problem was that I couldn't come up with a way to make money. So I started applying for various jobs that I thought could be tolerable to work at until I could either find something better or get a home business going.

I finally found something. It was a "manager in training" job at a local video store chain. I applied online and received a call about two hours later. It was the district manager. The first thing he asked me was if I was willing to relocate. I said I would consider it and we set a time for a preliminary interview. During the interview I was asked again about relocation and I said I would relocate after my three month training period. The location that they expected me to move to was only 45 minutes away from where I was living so I was just going to say that I moved but never really move. I would've just driven 45 minutes to get there every day.

I came back in the next day to take a written test and after passing it, I had an interview with the regional manager. He made it very clear to me during the interview that college is worthless and a complete waste of time. I left the interview feeling deeply offended and decided I would not take the job when called back. A few days went by and I realized how much I needed the money so when I was called back with the offer, I accepted it. On my first day, I was informed that I would not be getting a break during my 12 hour shift. I was also told that the only time I could use the restroom would be if no customers were in the store. I was ready to quit on the first day but I reminded myself that I needed the money and maybe it would be okay if I gave it a chance. The store was run by the manager, who also would be training me. The manager's boss was the district manager, who was in charge of three stores and spent the day going from store to store. They both seemed nice at first, but after working there for a week, I was able to see their real personalities. They were truly negative people. I hated it. I decided to start looking for something better but quickly realized that my schedule didn't allow much extra time to look for other opportunities. L started applying for jobs for me while I was at work and after a couple of weeks, I finally found something. Proresources in Marion, IN was looking for someone with accounting knowledge for an entry level accounting position. I recieved a call and went in for an interview. I was told I was perfect for the job and would be called the following week for a start date. I quit my horrible job and waited for the call. It never came. That's when I decided to go back to college for a degree in Computer Science. I love it. I love computers. I also love writing. Especially nonfiction and reference.

I later found out that the reason that relocating is pushed so hard is so they can pretty much own you. I read some other blogs describing other horrible experiences people had with this place. Most people who have worked there have had pretty much the same experience. Which explains why the turnover is so high. I struggled with the decision of listing the name of the company and decided not to.

I have always been told how therapeutic it is to just write about problems and worries and stress. It feels good. I've had blogs before but I'm sticking with this one as my primary blog.