Sometimes we need tools to help focus: New Year 2009
I bought this journal yesterday to help motivate myself to focus my creativity. I’ve been busy writing for a million other projects and feel I haven’t given enough energy to the personal book I’ve wanted to write since I first started pondering one in 2006.
Call it a New Years resolution if you’d like but I think it’s simply coincidence that it’s come into my possession a few days before 2009 begins.
My only goal with this journal is to realize a focus for a book. I have a million stories and experiences swimming in my head and online. They need to be molded. I’m simply overwhelmed by the prospect but I believe that, with care, I can tell my stories in a way that can be beneficial. I think I’ll take it slowly and hope that by the end of 2009, I’ll have it all figured out.
A $50 Italian leather bound journal seemed like a good place to start.
I thought my first entry was appropriately hilarious and practical:
I bought this today in exchange for a Christmas gift I ended up not giving to someone. My intention is to write in this book (nearly) every day of 2009 until I can come up with a decent focus for a book.
see: Thesis
Sometimes I may feel the need to simply write about the weather or what I ate or how much time it took me to drive from one point to the next during my day.
What a great start.
Cheers to all your goals for 2009!
Popularity: 6% [?]
Merry Christmas! (and showing off my new “toy”)
It’s been a great holiday season with plenty of great food, family, and gifts!! Santa brought me some books, clothes, food, and my favorite screen capture program Snagit!
I combined the famous NORAD Santa tracker from last night (watching the kids watch the Santa tracker was WAY amusing, btw) with my super geeky yet super cool Snagit program:
I tried to explain the Snagit program last night (and why I’m so excited to get it) but I don’t think I fully relayed its brilliance (It’s hard to make “screen capture” sound interesting). It’s just one of those things you gotta see to understand.
Ok ok. So, I’m a geek.
Merry Christmas!
Popularity: 10% [?]
Customer Service Punching Bag
I’m pretty lucky to have had the opportunity to fall right back into work this holiday season after being out of the country for six months. I emailed my old boss a week before my flight and a week after I landed, I was working again in a cubical. While it isn’t the job I was working before, it’s in the same company and still familiar. I can’t really complain especially these days when good friends of mine have struggled to find work or have been laid off for months.
Regardless of my gratitude, I admit that working a customer service job during the holiday season is mentally grueling. It’s my first time working this particular position and I guess I needed to make a quick post to release my head.
Most of the time, difficult people simply run off of me. I remind myself of a letter I wrote earlier in the year about the pain of working for a retail company. I remind myself that I’ve been through bigger and more important things than to allow other people’s stress for “thing-a-ma-bobs” and “whatcha-ma-hoozits” bother me.
But there’s always that one person who really gets under my skin.
Popularity: 22% [?]
Becoming a writer and web publisher
Now that we’re on the topic of goals, I wanted to start writing out some of my personal goals here. My Aunt S is totally right when she said that it’s important to have long term and short term goals. Goals are sort of like investments, I think. We have to diversify our investments just like we need to diversify our goals. This is the wisest way to come out on top in the end because there’s no guarantee that every goal (or investment) will bring a return.
As my life shifts, I have noticed my focus and desires have shifted along with it. I’m not different than most people in that I simply want to be happy, comfortable, fulfilled, blah blah blah. In my early 20’s I was more worried about finding myself rather than finding a great paying job or starting a family or buying a house or whatever. Now that I’m in my late 20’s, I feel like my head has calmed itself to the point of needing to focus on these “next level” goals that I think will take my life happily into my 30’s.
I have a ton of short term goals like studying Hebrew three times a week or writing back emails within a week of receiving them….
…but are you ready for my biggest goal?
Popularity: 28% [?]
Why in-flight magazines are better than self help books
I’m almost thirty years old and yes I am anticipating a “mid-life crisis” (I think “one-third life crisis” is more accurate - knock on wood that I live until 90- but you understand what I mean). It’s best to embrace the inevitable, I believe.
I don’t think my 30th birthday will be as dramatic as most people’s transitions into thirty-something life mostly because the last few years of my life are what I imagine a mid-life crisis feels like. I think I’ve gotten most of the drama out of the way already. The catalyst was Iraq, of course. I knew that my life would never be the same the second I got on that bus in 2005 to begin my long journey to and back from Iraq. When I returned, it was a roller coaster to say the least. I felt awakened but lost at the same time. Today things feel MUCH clearer about my goals. All of this soul searching is going to save me a lot of headaches and sleepless nights when I turn thirty.
I had “a moment” on my layover flight from Tel Aviv to London in October that I now realize solidifies everything that was eating away at me these last few years. I’m thinking about it now in retrospect since at the time it didn’t dawn on me as anything but just a normal part of a flight. But isn’t that how these things usually happen? Randomly and only realized in retrospect?
Popularity: 30% [?]
Mommo on 
Skitz M. Jones on 
Acai Berry on 
Ms. Babble on 