My last post way back in July mentioned that I was going to be moving and that move finally happened in late September. It’s amazing how long it can take to find a house and then you’ve essentially got another month’s worth of waiting while all of the other paperwork is taken care of. But we finally did move in September and the ensuing months have been kind of crazy with getting settled in and then leading into the holidays after that.

Life is getting back to normal though and that’s where today’s post finds me. I generally come up with some kind of theme for my life for every new year. Sometimes I post that theme publicly and sometimes not. Most times I don’t know what that theme means until something happens through the course of the year that makes it plain to see. 2012 is a little different though. I knew what my theme for the year was going to be back in November some time.

Unlike previous years, it’s not some vague nebulous concept that could be fulfilled in any number of ways. No, this year’s theme is direct and challenging to myself. This year’s theme is The Year of Accomplishment. What that means to me is finishing up writing projects that have been hanging around for awhile. It means recording a new music album for the first time in over five years.

I debated for awhile whether or not to publicly share this year’s theme for myself because it’s very goal oriented and relies on my working very hard to achieve those goals. But in the end I decided that not sharing it would make it easier on myself to not follow through. Of course, random life events or God’s intervention might completely derail these plans but I’ve found that most often in life if I don’t accomplish something it’s because I didn’t really put the effort into it that it needed.

As 2012 unfolds I hope to be able to share many completed creative projects with you. There’s at least one that I will be sharing on here in the next couple weeks. I was working hard to start the year off right by finishing up a writing project and that’s part of why this post didn’t happen sooner. Stay tuned.

A lot of my articles recently have dealt with these kind of ideas but I think it is worth reiterating. You need to know what your goals are in life and you need to ask yourself if you can really bear the thought of looking back twenty years from now and realizing that you’ve accomplished none of them. Wasted time is such a huge thing in our society and it’s crushing to the would-be entrepreneur. Another death blow to your progress towards your goals can be trying to pursue something that you really know nothing about. Having a great business idea is one thing, having the knowledge, time, and will power to take the idea from a dream to a reality can be quite another. Investing time and money into areas that you have no business being in won’t help you achieve anything. Pursue knowledge before you invest.

A couple months ago my family and I were taking a trip out of state for a couple days. The day we were supposed to leave I looked up the directions on the internet and hit the print button. The printer proceeded to make a series of loud bangs and was shaking violently. An orange error light came on but gave no indication of the problem. I pulled the paper out, put it back in, checked the cartridges, and couldn’t find anything wrong. Print. Wrrrr, bang, bang , bang, shake, orange error light. Again, I looked over the whole printer and still couldn’t find anything wrong. I repeated this whole process a couple more times and finally saw what the problem was. Inside the printer, all the way over to the right side was a pink plastic Easter egg that was sitting right in the path of the cartridge carriage. Oh, the joys of having a toddler. I removed the offending egg and the printer started working just fine.

Many times in life, we are our own worst enemy and hold ourselves back from accomplishing anything. But sometimes what’s holding us back is a pink Easter egg in our printer.

Over the past decade video games have seen a huge transition away from games that require a certain level of strategic planning and mental involvement towards a style of game play that boils down to mindless repetition. Those kind of games have always been present in the industry but it’s really only been in the last ten years that they have become the biggest sellers. Some good examples are Guitar Hero and Rock Band. The value of video games for stimulating the mind was dubious before, but now it’s even worse. I often waste too much time playing a game called Combat Arms. It’s an online first person shooter that features various modes of play including capture the flag and elimination mode. When I play it, I only play Capture the Flag. It’s fun to try and strategize how best to overcome the other team. But Elimination mode is by far the most popular. The only goal in an elimination game is to kill more players than are killed on your team. There is no strategy it’s just mindless shooting and it’s what most people choose to play.

In the television industry the past decade has seen the rise of reality television. The networks realized that they don’t need to pay writers or actors they can just bring in some random people off the street and have them play a game and people will watch it. There is no attempt at quality programming with these shows and yet it is wildly popular.

Thirty years ago video games didn’t exist and seventy years ago television was just in it’s infancy. People used their free time differently in those days. Sure it wasn’t all reading books and learning but when kids played, they actually did something physically and often times mentally stimulating. If you wanted to play a game, it was a family and/or social thing, not a solitary tapping of buttons or keys on a computer or video game system. I believe that the recent rise in dumb entertainment is a direct result of a generation of video games and a few generations of television watching. People are less physically and mentally active. I’m not trying to blame the entertainment industry for this problem any more than someone who eats at McDonald’s everyday should blame them for their obesity. I believe in personal responsibility and people are responsible for how they choose to use their time.

A couple weeks ago one of our horses ran through a fence late at night. I didn’t have time to fix and so I decided to take care of it after work the next day. When I got home from work that day it was already dark and it was snowing. I had been looking forward to a relaxing evening of watching TV and playing video games. But that wasn’t going to happen. Instead I was out in a dark field with snow falling around me and I was piecing together an electric fence that had broken in multiple locations. About an hour into the work I realized something. I felt alive. I was cold and tired but I felt alive. I was actually doing something. It wasn’t what I would have chosen to do that evening but it was something real and tangible, not just another night of letting my brain turn into useless mush.

As I continued to piece the fence back together I started to feel the electric shocks through my gloves and realized that I had forgotten to unplug the fence. But the shocks were minor and I assumed that the gloves were protecting me a bit. The shocks however continued to grow in intensity as the fence became more intact and as I was tying off a wire at a fence post my wrist came in contact with the metal post just as the wire did and I got a huge shock. It felt like someone had punched me in the wrist and like my thumb was on fire. I then decided to unplug the fence. Feeling alive is one thing, lighting up like a Christmas tree is quite another.

There are millions of people willingly participating in The Dumbening. You can be a part of that tide or you can fight it. Be active, feel alive and do something with your life.

I’ve marveled at this for some time that some people just don’t seem to have any drive to succeed and are perfectly happy with that. There are some people who need to be doing, be creating, be striving for something better in order to be happy. And there are those who are happy simply being alive. Neither is right or wrong and people are all wired differently. I believe that society needs a good mix of both in order to function well.

But those of us who are driven to do something more are not immune to life’s brainless pleasures either . The danger comes when these things takeover too much of our lives. The kid who neglects practicing his guitar to play Guitar Hero might become an expert at Guitar Hero. One thing is for certain though: He still has no idea how to play the guitar, he’s just really good at a digital version of whack-a-mole.

The challenge for those who are driven to succeed is to remember to slow down and enjoy life while not getting carried away into mental laziness. And the challenge for people who do not have this drive is to be willing to stretch for it once in a while and see what is beyond just being alive. I realize that I’m making very broad generalizations about the entire population.

During these last few weeks while I’ve been only marginally connected to the internet I haven’t been able to post new articles regularly up until this past week and that was beyond my control. But what was within my control was how I used my time while not posting new articles on here. Sure I wrote some new ones which haven’t been published yet but I certainly could have written more both for this website and in my creative writing. Those of us who live in the United States of America have been granted a pretty easy life by those who have gone before us. We can be as productive or lazy as we like and either way some portion of our society will accept us as we are. If you don’t want to work, that’s okay someone else will work and pay taxes so you don’t have to. If you don’t want to exercise, that’s okay when you are too overweight to function as a normal human being anymore, a disability check will be waiting for you. If you want to drop out of school, that’s okay there are plenty of jobs that don’t require an education. If you don’t want to fight in the military and protect our country, that’s okay too, someone else will be there on the front lines.

In America we have the freedom and liberty to be as selfless or as selfish as we choose. But if you are a person who dreams of doing something important with your life or of accomplishing something great then keep this in mind: Nothing great was ever accomplished while watching TV night after night. Nothing great was ever accomplished by sleeping in. Nothing great was ever accomplished by partying. Nothing great was ever accomplished while playing video games. Nothing great was ever accomplished by spending endless hours on website forums.

If you don’t already, then it is time to start thinking of the path your life is on. Look behind you and you can see the twisting, bumpy path of your life. Full of potholes and thickets. Look in front of you and there is no path. The path you are on only extends as far as you have traveled so far. You are where you are in your life because of the culmination of all of the decisions you have made up until this point. As I said, there is no path in front of you however. If you are unhappy about the path your life has taken up until this point then take heart, for the direction your life takes from here is still completely up to you. Your way is not set so you can start off in a new direction full of hope and promise. You alone are responsible for the direction your life takes.

Look behind you again. Are you happy with what you see? Could you have done more to be a better person or to pursue your dreams in a more effectual way? Perfection is not possible, none of us is capable of it. Self-loathing over failed attempts in your past will not help you. I don’t believe that we are ever supposed to be more than we can be but if we are honest with ourselves then we should strive to be more than we have been. If we can manage to do that then perhaps we can one day look back on the path of our lives and see those bends and bumps and thickets and know that the mistakes of our youth have given us wisdom for the future but have not cast us into a mold that we must stay in the rest of our lives.

As our lives move at a faster and faster pace it’s easy to lose site of the simple wonders of the world around us. If we are idle for any amount of time it is often because we are watching television or enjoying some other form of entertainment. There is nothing wrong with those things of course but there is something to be said for shutting all of that down for awhile and quieting your mind. Be still. Be quiet. Listen to and observe your world. Be silent for awhile and listen to what others have to say It’s hard to learn anything from others when you won’t quiet yourself down long enough to listen to the wisdom they might possess.

So what does this have to do with you? Well I’ve found that an Activity Calendar can be a useful tool in your personal life as well. However, if you are thinking that you can schedule your personal life to the point of assigning specific tasks to specific days, you are completely wrong. Life happens and your schedule will be blown up before it even starts. Jimmy needs to go to soccer practice, Susie needs to go to dance class, Jimmy hurt himself at soccer practice and is now in the emergency room, and it’s now 9:00 a night and you just realized that you never did pick up Susie from dance class. The day went by with none of your scheduled tasks getting completed. Find someone or something to blame, then try again tomorrow. By the way it turns out Jimmy was just faking it because he really doesn’t like soccer he only plays because you make him. Way to go.

I’ve found that a much more effective approach to the idea of Activity Calendars is to plan activities, chores, tasks, or whatever you want to call them during the few days leading up to a new week. I don’t plan specific times for anything and I don’t even try to pick specific days. The tasks get done when I have time during that week. When it happens during that week is irrelevant. Some of those things are on the list every week and some of them are once and done projects. I work the list around my life so that my life doesn’t get in the way of a too-structured list. After a few weeks of this kind of approach to my personal life I find that I get in a rhythm and suddenly the things that I never seemed to have time for before are easily handled in manageable chunks.

If it seems like your personal life is a bit out of control then see if using an Activity Calendar can help bring back a certain level of control without trying to control every aspect of every day.

I’ve gone through phases like this in the past. Most lengthy of which was after our son was born. I mean what kind of father would I be if I didn’t take time away from my creative pursuits to spend time with my family? The flip side of that would be to ask what kind of father would I be if I didn’t do something to try and improve our quality of life?

So here at the beginning of August I am trying to turn over a new leaf yet again. I’m going to do my best to get back in some sort of groove and get things accomplished. I think it’s appropriate here to borrow a couple lines from one of my as of yet unreleased songs, “Hopes and dreams don’t mean a thing, if your decisions keep them from happening.” When it comes to deciding how to use your time, make sure you choose well.

Well eventually the band fell apart and I struck out on my own. I liked the idea of being solo so that I could do things as I wanted to but I had this nagging fear about whether or not my voice was up to the challenge of carrying a show by myself. About a year after the band split up I had my first solo gig. I had spent most of that year working on writing and recording songs. The date was drawing close and I was more than a little worried. During the months leading up to the show I had been to see the doctor about my problem. They tested me for all sorts of allergies which yielded nothing and then finally sent me to a specialist. The specialist noticed a slight weakness in one of my vocal cords which was causing the other cord to have to work extra hard. So after years of wondering what my problem was, I finally had an answer. Now I just needed to know how to solve it. They sent me to speech therapist who worked with me on using my voice properly to cause less strain.

Finally the date of the show arrived. It was at a venue that my band had played at a couple years previous and I liked playing there so I was excited. I had 14 songs on my setlist. Certainly not a marathon for normal singers but I wasn’t a normal singer. It was about double the amount of songs I had ever done in a show. The opening act was a female pop/folk singer that was pretty good and she played for about 30 minutes and then it was my turn.

I hadn’t played a show in over a year and I had never played a show by myself. I was nervous and it showed. I made several mistakes and rushed a lot of the songs. Overall it was one of the worst performances I had ever done. A close second would be the last show that my band played. But you know what? My voice held. I sang every song and afterwards my throat felt fine and the next day it still felt fine.

I may have made a lot of mistakes, been completely nervous, and didn’t even sell one cd but I was able to sing the entire show. Before going into the show I felt like if after all my rehearsing and the speech therapy if I still couldn’t perform, then I was probably gonna have to give up on the idea of ever being a solo artist. But I did it! You don’t always get the chance to measure success by having everything work out perfectly. Sometimes you need to consider something a success even if only one aspect of it comes together as it’s meant to. I had one critical question heading into that night: Can I actually do this? The answer was clear, that yes I can. Mistakes and nervousness can be corrected by more practice and experience. For me the measure of success was my voice and it came through superbly.

In the business world whether you are self-employed or fighting your way through the rat race., you never know what bridges you might need again in the future. People that you can’t stand today, might be your best client a couple years from now… or they might be your boss. Or perhaps just a coworker and that working relationship will be a lot smoother without a volatile history between you and the other person.

I would never suggest that you allow yourself to be walked all over for the sake of preserving a failed relationship. On the contrary, you need to stand up for yourself but do so in the proper time and place. A series of offenses may be a sign of a good time to bail out of a relationship but before you set that bridge on fire maybe you should try a different approach. Sometimes it’s better to just go around the bridge or use a different bridge rather than burning the offending one.

For example many people find themselves in relationships whether it be friends, coworkers or family members where you feel the need to share with the other person things that are going on in your life. That person then uses that information in a way that hurts you. You’re upset, can’t understand why they would do such a thing, and a month later you repeat the entire cycle because you are family and families don’t treat each other that way…wrong. This kind of thing is seen most often in a parent-child relationship that is dysfunctional, especially when the child has been an adult for some time. You could go at the offender guns blazing tell em how it is in an attempt to finally make them understand what a jerk they are or you could simply stop the cycle yourself. Don’t share the kind of information with them that they consistently use against you. I’m not saying lie to people, I’m simply saying don’t volunteer information that isn’t necessary. A lot of times when I’ve seen this situation play out it is often with volunteered information that was never even asked for. Simply stop talking or at least discipline yourself enough to stop and think before you share whatever it is you think you need to share with the frequent offender.

The fact is that even if you think you want someone out of your life and you don’t care how badly you burn that bridge, you truly don’t know what tomorrow holds. You don’t know what your situation might be and who you may need to rely on for help. So unless it is a matter of your personal well being being threatened or that of others, then it’s usually best to leave the bridge intact. You don’t need to worry about crossing it right now, but if you don’t burn it to the ground at least you know you’ll have the opportunity to use it in the future should the need arise.