Bill Cosby’s keynote speech in Carnegie Mellon University. I found it interesting because there have been plenty of times in my life when I doubted myself–as we all have. At times I’ve given into that doubt. At time’s I’ve overcome it. The biggest lesson I’ve learned throughout it all? If you’re going through Hell, DON’T STOP!

Right in the middle he starts talking about the first time he got his big break, how the demons inside his head–those voices we all hear that tell us we can’t do something, the voices of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt–took over him during his biggest opportunity and what it took to overcome them. Towards the end he hands us this nugget: “Don’t talk yourself into not being you. At any time. You don’t have an excuse that works. When you say ‘But I was nervous!’ That’s not you! That’s not how you got here! Yeah, you can be nervous. It’s good for you. It tunes you. But people want to see you… When you’re good, then you bring YOU out.”

I was in a fortress. The walls and floor were all made of polished stone. I walked down a spiral stairway. I came to a window on my left. I looked out at the clear blue sky and the emerald fields below. Far below. Leaning against the window sill, I sighed. Here I was alone. Here I am alone, and it’s where I go to find peace.

Recently, I discovered something else.

We all see life as something: a dance, a game, a race, a journey. It’s what we see when we paint that picture that truly reveals how we see life, if we know what to look for.

• If it’s a dance, what kind of room is it? How many other dancers are there? What kind of clothing are you waring? What kind of dancing is it? Dancing in pairs, groups, or individually? What kind of music? What kinds of lights?
• If it’s a game, what kind of game is it? Are you playing in the game, or observing it? What sport is it? What position are you playing? Is it a team or individual sport? Indoors or out? Is there a score, and if so who’s winning? Is it easy and fun, or a struggle?
• If it’s a race, does it mean that you’re either a first or a loser? Is it an individual or relay race? Are there hurdles? Are you striding along confidently, or are you pushing and pressing relentlessly? Do you enjoy it, or is it stressful and simply not fun? How many other racers are there?
• If it’s a journey, are you walking, driving, flying, sailing, or something else? Who do you travel with? What’s the weather like? Is there a destination, and if so is it somewhere you’re looking forward to being? What are you wearing, what’s the time period, and what does each tell you about how you see or want out of life?

Obviously, we can go on: is all the world a stage? Are you fighting the good fight? Are you down in the trenches? Is it a blast? A party?

We all have a metaphor for life, even if it’s just “life is life.” How do you describe life, what pictures come up? That metaphor says more about life than most people give it credit for, and consciously or not, it is this metaphor which shapes how we live our lives, or at least certain aspects of our lives, if we have more than one. The strange part is that often times we’re not the ones that come up with these metaphors. As kids, we hear adults describe their lives, and maybe they do it because they see life a certain way, or maybe because it’s what local custom tells them to say. But eventually we pick up the metaphor and apply it to ourselves.

Think about that for a second: where did your metaphors come from? Did you make them up, or were they unintentionally (or intentionally) suggested to you?

As a kid, I often heard people answer “How are you?” with “Allí, luchando.” Out there, fighting. When I moved to the  US, I started seeing more about things being described as journeys, most without destinations; I took that outlook to heart, liked it better. But that wasn’t the end of it. Eventually I filled in the details. Once, life was like riding int he back of a hay truck. Eventually I got off the truck and onto my own to feet.

I suppose this can also raise the issue of the power of not only the words used, but culture and language. What words do you use to describe you metaphor, and what would happen if some of those words were slightly altered, how would that change the picture? To what extent does your culture shape your words? To what extend does your language shape your culture? Where does your life experience fall into all of this? And how does the language you think in shape the basic construct of your metaphors? If you think in multiple languages, what happens when you translate your metaphor, when you flesh it out in that language instead of your default? And what if you have more than one metaphor? (Depending on how much you like this particular like of questions you could either describe it as having opened up a can of worms, or letting the cat out of the bag, but then I’d be wondering how you feel about either worms or cats.)

Today, as I walked down the staircase, someone walked past me. “A bunch of us are meeting on the roof,” he said. “Why are you going down?”

Looking at him, I wondered about that. I thought of asking why everyone was meeting up there, or if we could move the gathering downstairs. As I did, I looked out the window, at the clear blue sky and the emerald fields far below, took a breath, and smiled.

“Now is the time to design the next ten years of your life–not once they’re over.
– Anthony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within

Driving to my parent’s house last night, I was listening to the Gnarles Barkley song “Crazy”. Over and over again. That’s because it was the first time I’d ever caught this passage:

My heroes have the heart
to live the life I want to live.
And all I remember
is thinking
“I want to be like them.”

Thing is, I’d been giving a lot of thought to exactly that: my heroes, the lives they live, and what it takes to be like them. At the same time, I’ve been thinking about my future, where I am, and where I’m going, starting with goals for the next year.

It didn’t take long for me to start writing down these thoughts. What I came up with was not a list of what makes these people successful, what makes them my heroes, but a list of things I’ve found keep me from succeeding to the highest possible level. Unfortunately, succeeding only 90% is sort of like jumping across a gorge only 90%. Anything short of all the way keeps us from where we hope to end up.

At the top of that list was productivity, which can be broken down into the following: useful information gathering, action, and growth. If I’m to become more productive, here’s where I begin.

Last night at Border’s Books, I found myself spending more time than usual in the Self Help section. For the past week I’ve been eying some of the books in my library, particularly those by Anthony Robins. I listened to some of his stuff earlier in the day, so my being there was a directed coincidence.

When I got back home, I looked through the stack of writing magazines I picked up a few days before. I thought about the last year, my goals then, what I’d written and, most importantly, read. Someone once told me that if you were to read just one book in your field every month for a year, by the end of that year you would become an expert in that profession. In his book, On Writing, Stephen King talks about keeping a novel with him at all times, and how he reads over 50 per year. Thinking back through 2008, I realized this is one of the areas where I’ve faltered. Badly.

Taking this to heart, I resolve to read considerably more. Offline. Don’t get me wrong, I still plan to do a lot of reading online. But the fact remains that on most subjects, blogs haven’t yet come close to replacing the depth with which a book covers a topic. (The only area I’ve really seen this be any different is SEO, and that only because SEO is such a dynamic, web-specific field that print media doesn’t have much hope of catching up.) As of now, topics of interest are fiction writing, technical writing, business, and self improvement;

(In case you’re wondering, I’ve already started on Awaken the Giant Within. I had been reading Nancy Kress’ Nano Comes to Clifford Falls: And Other Stories, which is inline with my desire to focus on short fiction, a genre I believe will make a very strong comeback over the next few years.)

As for my reading online, I realize more and more every day how much I loathe sitting for long periods of time when I could instead be walking. (I already sit for 8 hours at my job, I don’t need to do it for any part of the other 8+ I spend awake.) While I’ll be reading more books, there’s a lot I can still gain from reading online. That’s why I’ve decided to get an iPhone, or at least a phone plan which also allows for unlimited internet plus a better phone than I have now. Obviously, an iPhone is preferred, but any phone with a good screen where I can comfortably resize the text will do, since I plan to do most of my blog reading while either on an elliptical glider or walking around the neigborhood. Oh, and FYI, I’m still using Google Reader and couldn’t be happier.

In addition to reading, I also need to review the tools I use. At my job, the tools are fairly simple: RoboHelp, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Outlook, SnagIt, and Adobe Acrobat are the standard. Over the years I’ve found these to be the best for what I do (though I’ve yet to try FrameMaker), and just about everything else is extra. As far as blogging goes, while I love the new Wordpress 2.7 administrator interface, running multiple blogs means logging into multiple sites and keeping track of multiple article lists, schedules, etc. It’s far easier to use a tool like MarsEdit (which costs US$29.95) or even Flock (which is free) in order to post to multiple sites from a single interface. The fact that the Internet is not always accessible also makes it somewhat of a necessity. Currently, I’m evaluating some of these tools to see which meet my needs. (MarsEdit seems to be winning. Ecto, which costs US$17.95, also looks like an option.)

But what about the tools I use at other times? When I write (as opposed to blog), how do I leverage my time? For not-necessarily-online writing projects, should I use WriteRoom, Ulysses, Scrivener? Or is it better–though seemingly less productive–to instead use my typewriter for first drafts? (It is considerably more fun than my Mac, love it as I do. And since it forces one to think before hitting the page as opposed to thinking on the page, it might actually make for faster creation of a finished product.)

Of course, lest we not forget, paper and pencil still can’t be beat.

Strangely, part of this drive to narrow down my tool set has brought with it a desire to redesign this site in a way that would make it simpler, better suited for a reader, since the bulk of what I do here involves words. (I realize some people are thrown off by the lack of pictures. Maybe the next theme will include some.) Wordpress.com has a wonderful theme called Journal v3 which I can’t seem to find anywhere else. Maybe instead I’ll just do a little rewriting of the current theme (based on Derek Punsalan’s Grid Focus). The point is that while I’m working to be more productive, I’d also like to help you, which is why you should sign up for the RSS feed, if you haven’t already.

On a similar note, I’ve discovered that my accounting needs are not currently being adequately met by current organizational methods, so an exploration of tools like Mint and Quicken Online is underway. The possibility of hiring a bookkeeper also comes to mind, particularly if The Wife and I decide to start another business (mostly, though not exclusively, online endeavors).

Alright, so you can see where this is all leading. I resolve to become a more productive person in 2009, to not waste time, and to use the best tools available to me towards that end. And I’m not waiting until January 1 to start. Right now I’m on vacation from the job; during this time, in addition to some hiking, biking, and driving we’re planning on, I intend to get this process started and resolve to finish what I responsibly can before returning to work. For the record, I’ve already cleared my email clutter, opted out of a bunch of newsletters I didn’t need to be receiving, unsubscribed from a bunch of blogs I know I won’t be reading, organized and de-cluttered much of my iTunes library, and organized my computer clutter both at the home and work computers. Not bad for two days, though I’m sure I’ll learn a lot more when I read The Power of Less by Leo Babauta.

By the way, you’re probably wondering why I opened up with the quote from Anthony Robbins. I don’t know about you, but I spend a lot of time imagining what life would be like had I done one thing or another different in my past. This is tantamount to planning the life that has already passed. I know, I should spend the time planning the life that’s ahead of me, but sometimes I get caught playing a bit too much “What If”. I’m not talking about ignoring the lessons that need to be learned, but there’s a difference between reviewing a memory and sitting there, nurturing it, and growing it into what I wish had happened. Maybe this is normal and maybe not. In either case, it’s something I resolve not to allow myself to do from hereon out. I seriously doubt my heroes are people who allow that to happen to them. Instead, they use that time to be productive and think about the future, being more sure of it than the past.

Most people overestimate what can be accomplished in one year. Paradoxically, they underestimate what can be accomplished in ten. While this might sound a lot like Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns, it’s actually an axiom in personal development.

I still haven’t finalized my plans for the year, and all of this is subject to change, pending any future ideas, but while I understand that 2008 was a year of overcoming challenges, 2009 will be a year of succeeding where I had previously failed. This year I’ll lay the groundwork for the next ten years of my life.

I told a friend I would call him after I got home last night from Tampa. It was about 10pm, and while I got home alright (a bit tired from the 4 hour drive), I didn’t. Guess I just…

When does someone stop being accountable? At what point when you say “I’ll do something” which you don’t do you stop being accountable? We’ve all forgotten about or been prevented from doing things we promised we’d do — the dishes, throwing out the trash, calling at a certain time, meeting someone somewhere — but at what point does a person go from being accountable to being someone who can’t really be counted on?

I’d love to say that the demarcation point is either one big item (not going to a big party you promised you would), or a lot of small items (always saying that you’ll call, but being sporadic about when you would), but is it really that easy?

Here’s a guess: the level of tolerance is denoted by the relationship between the people involved and the subject at hand. If you’re meeting a stranger for business and you forget about the meeting, calling afterward to tell them you forgot is the equivalent of telling them that you’re either disorganized or they’re not important enough for you to put in a calendar. To do the same with a friend may mean you either don’t value the relationship, value them, or that the meeting isn’t really all that important anyway. While never in any of these cases is it generally acceptable to say “there were more important things going on at the time,” irrespective of how true this may be, how do the situations change if the person calls afterward to apologize?

In the business meeting with the stranger, I presume that will generally kill the business relationship. In the meeting with the friend, I presume that will sour the relationship, the level of which will be dependent upon the occasion or the number of times it’s happened before. How far an apology will go in either of these cases will depend on the position you and the other person find yourselves in and what you expect of the other within a given social framework.

• How a young business person looks missing a meeting with a prospective client will often depend on the client’s prior business experience: if the client has been in the business world for 20 years, then missing the meeting will be deemed unacceptable due to the lack of professionalism. if both are college students, then a certain level of slack will usually be given by the client.
• How a friend looks missing a meeting with a person will depend on the relationship between the two (and what each is willing to accept from the other) and the nature of the meeting (face to face, or phone?). If it is accepted that your friend tends to be absent-minded, then missing a call to say “hello” probably won’t be seen as such a big deal. If the matter at hand is of grave importance, then you’ll probably begin to question how important that person is in your life.

In both of these cases, I often wonder whether accepting that a person forgot is a matter of understanding, or is the unacceptability of breaking a promise (whether mentioned or implied) a matter of self respect? At what point do you simply not accept an apology? And does society ever demand than an apology come in a particular format? (For example, if a friend misses your play, or a concert you invited them to, or your wedding — something for which money was expended — is calls apologizing that they forgot enough? What about an email? A handwritten letter? A check for the costs? Or is forgiveness simply not an option after a certain point?)

By the way, here’s a little revelation: I tend to be a fairly forgiving person, and an apology will usually be enough for me to give a person a second and even third chance in any of the aforementioned scenarios. Yes, even business with a total stranger, though first impressions are usually lasting. Part of it is because I do tend to be a bit on the forgetful side, so I treat others how I’d want to and to a certain extent expect to be treated. The other part is because I’m not particularly judgmental.

I got up this morning at about 4 AM, realized I had forgotten to call when I got home and emailed that person an apology.

I’ll be calling the artists I was working in with the workshop to inform them I’m back from Tampa. Funny enough, I was told by one I’d get a call during the week, but never did. Never really thought much of it or minded it much. It’s just the way things have worked out. That’s probably fairly telling of how the relationship has been defined.

Luckily, I don’t think either of these will be friendship- or deal-killers.

Think about the questions mentioned here and posit your reaction in these and other scenarios. I’d like to know what you consider acceptable and what’s not in regards to accountability.

• At what point do you draw the proverbial line? And what happens when the line is crossed?
• Are you the type of person that passes judgment without allowing the violator to recompense, or will you accept apologies when someone forgets?
• How do you expect to be treated when you forget?

I am not what I was in my youth. At merely 28 years, I’m already beginning to feel some of the signs of aging: pains in certain joints, increased healing time, diminished multitasking capabilities. I’m sure most would say that at 28 I’m still “just a kid”, and they’d probably be right, though if you really want to get down to it, “middle age” starts during the early 30’s, biologically speaking. Hardly a “kid”. But unlike most people, I pay overt attention to these signs. I always have. I don’t know why, though I’ve started to see how it affects the way I see things.

So while my resolutions before revolved around writing and advancing these skills, I find more and more that my health–spiritual, mental, and of course physical–has taken prominence. Without addressing these items first, I find I cannot continue in my current path. In fact, I am convinced that my not having yet resolved these issues–particularly the physical one, since it is through that gate that I must walk to address the other two–is in large part at the core of my worrying about the future.

I came to this realization as a result of someone very wise, who I have come to respect very highly, and hold very dear, reminding me that “the unexamined life is not one worth living.” While I thought I knew this, it wasn’t until he pointed out that I hadn’t been examining my life that the message really hit home. I, who value wisdom so much, had become lost without myself.

In the show Babylon 5 there’s a series of episodes during the fourth season in which Dr. Stephen Franklin (Richard Biggs) resigns his post as Chief Medical Officer and goes on a “walkabout”. In Australian aboriginal cultures, a “walkabout” is a ritual in which a young man goes on a solitary journey through the wilderness in an attempt to learn more about his own character and strength. In the show, Franklin explains it this way:

“If you’re not careful, you can lose yourself in the world. When you’re too busy with things and not busy with yourself. You spend your days and nights living someone else’s agendas, fighting someone else’s battles, and you’re doing the work you’re supposed to be doing, but every day there’s less and less of you in it all. ‘Til one day, you come to a fork in the road and because you’re distracted, you’re not thinking, you lose yourself. You go right and the rest of you, the really important part of you goes left and you don’t even know you’ve done it until you realize, you finally realize that you don’t have any idea who you are when you’re not doing all those things.

“The theory is, if you’re separated from yourself, you start walking and you keep walking ntil you meet yourself. Then you sit down and you have a long talk. Talk about everything that you’ve learned, everything you’ve felt, and you talk until you’ve run out of words. Now that’s vital. Because the real important things can’t be said. Then if you’re lucky, you look up, and there’s just you and you can go home.”

Of course, in the epsodeShadow Dancing, the walkabout has a pretty bloody end when Franklin finally meets himself after being stabbed during a drug mugging, and left to die. “You said you had to keep walking until you met yourself,” says the second Franklin. “Well, here I am. So, if we’re gonna talk, let’s talk. Only, I don’t think you have enough time.” Here’s a bit from the synopsis:

He asks Franklin what he has to live for, and what he could possibly want, since he threw it all away the first time. Franklin insists he wants to do it all over again, and begins to regain his determination. He begins to move, and pull himself up the ladder that leads out of his prison. With his healthy self taunting him all the way, and despite his wounded condition, Franklin is eventually able to get out.

Franklin, on a gurney, is taken back to Medlab as the remants of the fleet and the numerous casualties are returned to the station. [Herein he sees the selfishness of his situation, injured trying to find himself while the Universe collapsed around him.]

[When Franklin gets better, he] tells Sheridan that he [was using drugs] to do more [work], when what he needed was to do better, and he knows that he ran away when he quit to avoid being fired. He explains that he has, for his entire life, looked at himself in terms of what he wasn’t, but never what he was, and that he missed a lot of important things because of it. He knows he can’t go back and undo his past mistakes, but can appreciate what he has now, and he can define himself by what he is and not what he isn’t. Sheridan asks what that is. “I’m alive,” Franklin tells him. “Everything else is negotiable.”

I guess I went on my own walkabout when I quit a number of the things I was doing. I felt I had lost myself, lost my drive, lost my direction, and instead spent my life chasing what others said I should be doing. I tried to do more, when I should have been doing better; I focused on what I wasn’t instead of what I was. Yet, during this time I’ve become more selfish, more secluded, more worried, and generally more miserable, none of which came to light until I finally started examining my own life. Right race, wrong direction. I wouldn’t have known unless I started examining my life.

For the past few days, I’ve been doing a lot of walking, thinking, and praying. For the first time in my life, I feel that my prayers are actually worth something, that they’re not simply a litany of requests I make from the Almighty to fit around my own schedule, but that they are a conversation in which He controls the mic. (Is this the “walking meditation” I hear so much about?)

During the walks, I’ve reviewed my life, from the time of my first memories. I’ve thought about people I knew, things I thought and did, and beliefs I held. When I was a kid, I worried about my parents dying. I still remember a dream I had when I was five in which my mom died in a car crash on a mountain. Then I feared the depletion of the Ozone layer, and had dreams about people dying of cancer. (One of my dreams played out like a movie. I still remember the announcer’s voice as he announced “El Fin del Mundo” (“The End of the World”). After that it was my being the last person on Earth (Stupid The Quiet Earth movie), then it was World War 3 and Nostradamus, then it was aliens, then… the end of the World. After that, during my teen years, I took a fascination with death: it was real, it was raw, it was… cool. Before that I had tried to be a Fundamentalist Christian (Southern Baptist), so no matter what happened I was saved, right? Mind you, this didn’t sit right with me, but I denied myself for the sake of my faith, as if I knew that that meant. Then I became dark and gothy (though never emo. That’s just too self indulged, though I still like the music). After that, I started looking into other faiths and religions, to find… meaning? Significance? Peace? Whatever it was, I just wanted to make sense of things. And I didn’t want to be alone. This was a big one: I’m was never a real loner, no matter how much I pretended to be, or how bad I’ve been at keeping relationships going. (I hereby apologize to everyone who I’ve failed to stay in touch with.)

Over the past few months, I’ve also been studying Christian Mysticism. While I’m far from an expert in it, I have through it come to a very interesting realization: faith is not about logic. Too much time have I spent attempting to logicize my faith, to believe only those things which could be explained via the scientific method. Yet, the logical part of the brain is only one part of it, one way of thinking. Thinking upon the mystical in order to achieve a state of simply “being” is another. The two work together. Coming to this realization has freed me to once again believe, truly and honestly, in the existence of a “God”, even though I don’t know what that God is (personal or not? in the universe, outside of it? in us or outside? all of these?) except to know that He is like a mirror: everyone looking in sees something different.

During one of my recent prayer times a thought came to me (though I attribute it to a message from God due to the way it hit me, the power with which it resonated in my mind). The message was a simple one:

“Why do you spend so much time thinking about death when you have so much life right now to live?”

I guess until then I had never really thought about it that way. I realized that the majority of my life had in some way revolved around the issue of death, and my capability to handle it. I tried believing in God, not believing in God, believing in a soul and not. Perhaps it was the Christian upbringing (and the refutation thereof), in which attainment of Heaven is so fervently emphasized (as is the reality of Hell). Perhaps it’s because I wish to understand, and my mind can’t cope with believing that this life is it, a thought which while I have tried to believe, I can’t bring myself to.

After that point, I started to see exactly ho much time I’ve spent worrying about death and the afterlife. So much that I completely missed what was right in front of me. In Paradise Lost, Milton observed that the human mind is a wonderful thing, that it could make a hell out of heaven and a heaven out of hell. It can also, it seems, make a death out of life and life out of death.

I started keeping a journal which allows me to really write what I’m thinking about, what thoughts and revelations have come to me during this time. (In other words, stuff I can’t always talk about here.) I haven’t liked a lot of what I’ve seen, what I’ve written, and have started to rectify the situations, though they will take time.

Of course, the subject of death is still important, though I see it’s not as important as the subject of how you live your life.

And yet, I’m still on walkabout, examining my life in order to make it one worth living.

“I learned that I was right and everyone else was wrong when I was nine. Buck Rogers arrived on the scene that year, and it was instant love. I collected the daily strips, and was madness maddened by them. Friends criticized. Friends made fun. I tore up the Buck Rogers strips. For a month I walked through my fourth-grade classes, stunned and empty. One day I burst into tears, wondering what devastation had happened to me. The answer was: Buck Rogers. He was gone, and life simply wasn’t worth living. The next thought was: Those are not my friends, the ones who got me to tear the strips apart and so tear my own life down the middle; they are my enemies.

“I went back to collecting Buck Rogers. My life has been happy ever since. For that was the beginning of my writing science fiction. Since then, I never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.”

– Quote by Ray Bradbury, from Zen in the Art of Writing

Dreams are a funny thing. Listen to them, and you’ll inevitably encounter ridicule. Listen to the wisdom of the masses, and yes, you become normal, part of the pattern, part of the tapestry that makes up the background of history. But you also become boring and forgotten. Ah, but to ignore the detractors and listen to your own dreams. That is where the artistry in the tapestry comes in, for it is those things which jump out of the pattern, the seemingly improbable, yet inevitable black swans which make the tapestry come alive. Remember: The failures in life are remembered for their failures. The successes are remembered for their successes. And the rest, the majority of people in the middle? Why, they’re simply forgotten.

This was the headline I woke up to on the morning of my 28th birthday. Didn’t help any that the next story was about how “Today in 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald was shot.”

Happy birthday to me. Talk about a frightful omen, but I intend to make it to 29, thanks.

Last night I found myself thinking about life, about my road to 28, after the local news ran a story about happiness, saying that most of us have been decreasingly happy since the 1950’s. Of course, by that standard, my life started out bad and it’s gone from that to miserable ever since.

I disagree.

Then again, according to the test, which asked question such as “If you would live life over again, would it be considerably different?”, I was unhappy with my life. Honestly, how do you answer a question like this without defining whether you knew what you know today, or whether you were to be the person you are today instead of the person you were then? If the answer to any of these were “Yes”, then by golly, my entire life would be considerably different. But were I to simply relive my life, with no knowledge of the future, with no knowledge of what had happened before — and who’s to say I haven’t and simply don’t know it? — then I probably would end up doing the same thing I did. After all, how would I know to do any different?

Come to think about it, that’s a good way to think about life: how do you know that this isn’t your do-over? How do you know you haven’t already lived, already died, and been given a second chance to live life?

Presume for a second that this is the case, that this is your second time around, and that sometime in the “past” you lived exactly the same life you’ve lived until today. Given the choices that you’ve made up to this point in your life, and the reasons for those choices, where do you see yourself going? What choices do you see yourself making? Is this were you want to go? I know that we can’t know the future, but if you’re reading this, you probably have enough brains in your head that you can probably spot patterns in your life after, well, a lifetime of observation. Based on these these questions, based on your observations, where do you see your life going?

If you want to comment on this and tell me that your life is going exactly where you want to go, then that’s awesome. I’ll believe you. But if you’re honestly not sure, and if you decide to lie to me about it, that’s fine: lie to me all you want to, but for the love of life, don’t lie to yourself.

Here’s a little challenge: presume that this is indeed your do-over. Presume that up to this point in your life, you’ve made the same decisions you made the first time around. Knowing that, how would you like your life to be different from the first time around, starting now? Take out a sheet of paper and start writing your answers down, and let yourself get totally crazy. What to make a billion dollars? Want to woo that girl you met in college, but didn’t have the guts to ask out? Want to join the circus? Want to become a dancer, or a football coach, or a dog breeder, or a politician?

If you’re like me, you’re probably thinking that what you’d really, really, really like to do you can’t, probably because those things you’d like to do — become a famous athlete or backpack around Europe — you’re too old for, or have too many responsibilities weighing you down. For example, if you’re 38 and have never played sports in your life, you’re probably not going to become a star linebacker for the St. Louis Rams, no matter how bad they are this year. The Miami Dolphins maybe, but not the Rams. Likewise, if you have kids and are living from paycheck to paycheck, leaving your family to backpack around India probably isn’t something you should be doing just yet. But write all this stuff down anyway. Here’s why:

Suppose there’s something you really, really want to do, but which right now sounds totally crazy and irresponsible (like backpacking around India). Write it down anyway. After you write it down, ask yourself whether it looks as crazy on paper as it sounded in your head. The fact is that it probably won’t, that there are already people who have done what you’ve just written down. In other words, what you thought was crazy might not be as crazy as you thought it was.

Once you’ve written it down, play a little mental game with yourself, and pretend that think is your number one goal in life. What would you need to do, starting today, to make it happen? Again, allow yourself to get crazy: if the goal is to backpack around India then write down “Buy a plane ticket to India.” If you have a family, but want to backpack around, write down what you’d have to take care of before you went. Take some time for this, and let your imagination run wild. After all, you’re only writing it down, right?

After you’ve gone through all those, take a look at them and ask yourself if they look as crazy as they did when you started writing them. Probably not, right? Realize that you’ve written your plan to take any course of action with your life you might desire. Why not take the plunge with one of those? And if you’re thinking “Well, that just wouldn’t be responsible,” then you didn’t think about it hard enough. Rethink your strategy for that item and make it meet your standards of responsibility. Remember: whatever you are now took years of decisions based on your natural mode of operation. Whatever you want to do, whatever you want to become will take a number of decisions based on the mode of operation required by that destination.

Here’s a small, somewhat-sensical parable: suppose your life is a road you’re walking on. Every time you have to make a decision — to go to school, to take a job, to get married, to move to another country — that’s a fork in the road. What direction you take is determined by the paths you took before and where you wanted to go. You took the turns that you expected would give you the best possible outcome (even if it wasn’t all that good, the proverbial “lesser of two evils”). But for a long time, you’ve been eying the road that runs parallel to yours. For one reason or another, you can’t — or believe you can’t — just run across to that other road. Maybe there’s a big river between you and it and you don’t know how to swim. Maybe there’s a big fence, or maybe you’re just afraid to leave your road for a road you don’t really know because not too many people have gone down that road (the proverbial “road less traveled”). The point is that once you spot that road, once you decide you want it bad enough, you’ll do what you have to so that you can get to it. Most of the time you’ll be able to do it responsibly, by taking turns in your road which will lead you to that other road. Sometimes you’ll have to do it seemingly irresponsibly: swimming across that river, running across that grass, or jumping over that fence. Extreme though they might be, if that’s the life you believe you want, then why let fear stop you?

Suppose you want to be a famous football player, but you’re 38 (and don’t want to play for the Dolphins). What then? How about becoming a coach?

Want to go back to school to get a degree? Start by signing up for one course, even if it inconveniences you in the short run!

Feel like backpacking across India? Ask yourself this question: What would I have to do to make this happen? And interview people who’ve done what you want to do.

Remember: all of this is easier said than done, but better written than not, and the first step to any worthwhile goal is to not only decide to do it, but to write it down and plan your work (then work your plan).

So back to my life: am I unhappy with it? No, although I’m unhappy with a lot of my previous decisions: I never wanted to be as fat as I was, and I wanted to make a lot more money by this time, and I wanted to travel more. While I can’t go back and change the past, I can make a new future, starting today. My health goal for this year is very simple: to lose 100 pounds (I’m currently at around 280) and increase my overall health, and I’m already working hard towards it. Additionally, my wife and I are increasing our savings and investments and working to protect what we have in order to meet our financial goals. And we’ve started to take time to do a bit of travel, starting with our trip Puerto Rico a few weeks ago, and continuing with our cross-country trip next summer. I’m also working on my fiction writing — one of my goals is to become a well known writer — and so I might actually be going back to college for a few extra courses. (Believe it or not, I took a grand total of two writing-related courses during college: Freshman English 1 and Freshman English 2.)

And here I am, 28 years old, and thinking about the future. Where will this future take me? Wherever I want, really, at least insofar as things are within my control.

Mike’s question:

Have you ever spoken to anyone who suffers from panic attacks who has symptoms that are occurring daily? I mean either everyday, at night or in the morning, I feel this “body buzzing” or palpitations, and at several points throughout the day one or another types of symptoms hit me: A little dizzy, not breathing right and so-on. The only difference is that sometimes its worse than other times, and it makes it difficult to figure out what the triggers are.

First of all let’s talk about the symptoms themselves:

The body buzzing you’re talking about is called paresthesia, and it’s caused by your blood’s sudden drop in oxygen. People get panic attacks because, for one reason or another, the body suddenly produces an extremely large amount of adrenalin. (It’s as if the adrenal gland is suddenly stuck on “ON”.) This causes your body to think it’s going into exercise mode. Because nothing is happening physically yet (you’re not running around or trying to kill a bear or something), your mind kicks in the “fight or flight” response. (This is why when people have panic attacks they want to just get away from where they are.) When fight or flight kicks in, your body goes into intense physical activity mode, and because you likely haven’t been doing intense physical activities, some parts go out of whack, like increased carbon dioxide production by your body, which gets dumped into the blood and depletes the cells of oxygen, which then causes you to get that tingly sensation.

The palpitations are very similar. Palpitations are actually caused (usually, in this case) by your heart thinking it’s not beating right. Think about it this way: your heart’s pumping all the time. Inside, it’s like your heart has a battery which tells it when to pump. Your heart also has a backup battery, which kick starts the heart if the first battery, for some reason, stops pumping (like carrying an extra battery in your car, in case the first one fails). Once in a while, that second battery kicks up, like a twitch, even though the first battery’s doing fine. This causes there to be a sudden overlapping in signals, which causes the heart to go from and even (and silent) “thump… thump… thump” to an uneven “thuthump,thump, thuflomp… thump… thump… thump”. This uneven beating can last for a little while, but shouldn’t last more than a few beats. (If it does, or if it happens a lot during the day, see a cardiologist.) Thing is, most people can’t feel that irregular beating. Some people are really sensitive to stuff like this and can feel it. I’m one of those, and frankly, it scares the crap out of me when I do.

As for the other symptoms, again, they’re caused by the different effects adrenalin has on your system. Check out this Wikipedia page on panic attacks and follow the links for information. I, as a hypochondriac, have found that learning about what’s going on is rather comforting, since I know when to say “this is serious” and when to say “this is normal”. Knowing these distinctions has been one of the keys to my overcoming panic attacks, especially in the beginning.

Now, the question remains as to how we stop the adrenalin from being dumped into our system in the first place. There are two possible reasons for this happening. In the first, we have an actual physical problem with the adrenal gland. Only a doctor can tell you whether this is truly the case. In the second (which is over 20-times more common) there’s no physical problem, there’s just stress in the system. Usually this stress is caused by a specific set of triggers which, unless identified, will keep going off. The downside is that this is a pain in the ass, since it’s scary as all heck. The upside is that this is just your body trying to defend itself: it’s doing what it’s supposed to do in protecting you from all harm, real or perceived. Problem is, it’s doing it at the wrong times.

The question in hand is how to find the triggers, especially if the attacks are happening all the time.

Here’s the deal: from my experiences the triggers could only be really spotted during the big attacks, the ones where you feel like you just HAVE to run away somewhere safe. The small attacks had me thinking I was claustrophobic, since all of my attacks happened in enclosed areas and I always wanted to run outside. The big attacks provided the clue here, since they only happened when a certain precondition was met. (In my case I felt under pressure because I felt someone or something was watching or judging me.)

What I found more interesting is that at first I couldn’t identify where the attacks came from because I nothing new seemed to be happening to me. Indeed, it was as if they simply showed up one day, since I had always felt (and feared) that feeling of being watched (but hadn’t identified it as such).

To identify where this was coming from I made a list of what was going on during each attack: what I was thinking, what was going on around me, the sounds, the smells — everything. From there, I drew up a couple of possible conclusions. Of course, the actual answer wasn’t yet among these, but that didn’t matter.

First, I thought that maybe it was my relationship with The Wife that was the problem. I was hesitant to tell her this for very obvious reasons. Instead I looked at other things — unhappiness with the job, possible bodily stress from having recently lost a bunch of weight — but this was the most pressing thing. Specifically, it was involving the idea of kids, since at that time she and I had been discussing kids and the finances required to take care of one (or more), and two of the big attacks came while we were at Toys R Us (KIDS!) and when people in my office were talking about running a marathon for autistic kids (KIDS!). Also, at the time, we were having a few problems in communication, specifically dealing with our differences in modes of expression (I can talk about that later if you so desire).

For the record, the small attacks were most often triggered by me being afraid of an attack (loopback). However, often they would strike up as soon as The Wife and I got together. That wasn’t a good sign at ALL. If SHE was the cause of my attacks then… well, I’m sure you can imagine the possibilities I refuse to delve into.

Eventually I manned up and talked to her about this. While it felt good to get it out in the open, it didn’t resolve the problems. Sure, the attacks stopped for about a week, then *WHAM* another round of attacks hit.

On the bright side, it wasn’t The Wife causing my attacks. (FYI: Confrontation here helps. If you think your attacks can be attributed to a person, or rather, something about that person, then confront them with it. Be totally honest and tell them “You creep me out!” No, just kidding. Don’t tell them that. Tell them, however, that you’re trying to work through this, and you’ve narrowed down the possible reasons to something this person’s doing, so you need to let them know so they can either change that (if they can) or so you can figure out how to cope with it.)

On the down side, I still had the attacks. This is when I started wondering whether this was biological. I went to a cardiologist, got a heart monitor they stuck on me for a month, and went about it that way. The results? I was sensitive to heart palpitations, which just means I’m more in tune with my body than most people. However, this was not abnormal in any way, shape or form, and most people went through that every day. It has no adverse effects, other than being annoying and scary to those of us who can feel them.

My biggest clue came when I had an attack in my car. I was driving from the library back to work (it was my lunch hour), and while I only had 5 minutes before I had to be back, I still had to fill up the car with gas and grab lunch. I was listening to a recording of George Orwell’s “1984″ (which is ALL about being watched by “Big Brother”) when it struck me. Now, up until then I had NEVER had an attack in the car. In fact, I actually looked to the car for refuge, since I feel freer when I’m driving.

I lowered the windows, went into a neighborhood road, and turned up the music. About 10 minutes later the attack subsided. (By the way, there are 2 types of attack: the big ones, which only last about 20 minutes, and the small ones, which can drag on for hours.) Was it my job or office that was the problem?

I had experienced problems at jobs before — especially during my last job, where I WAS constantly watched by the owner, who sat behind me and would yell regularly at me — but this one had been great about that. I had my own office (still do), I could work from home (still do), and I had a fairly flexible schedule (come in a little late from lunch? Make up at the end of the day, no problem). Also, while there are stressful periods in my job, this was not one of them. In fact, I was utterly relaxed.

I thought back to the idea of kids. Why kids? Money. Kids made me think about money. Jobs made me think about money. One of the attacks came in a toy store, when The Wife and I were thinking about money. So money had to be it, right?

After thinking through that, I realized that wasn’t the case. We weren’t having money problems at that time. In fact, we were saving more than ever. (Well, actually we’re saving/investing a lot more now, almost 20% of our incomes. Within a year, it’ll be 30%!) But yet, this seemed to be the tying factor.

That night, I watched Spiderman, an it hit me: with great power, comes great responsibility.

A kid means a lot of responsibility. A job is a lot of responsibility. Handling money properly is a responsibility. So was I afraid of responsibility? No, I figured that this wasn’t it, but having responsibility means you’re responsible — or accountable — to someone or something. In the case of money and kids, it’s the future: what does the future hold? The future is looking at your actions now in order to shape itself. The future, I felt, was watching me, and it wasn’t happy with what I was doing (I had at that time abandoned a long-worked at financial plan which wasn’t working out as I’d expected, but in which a lot of hope had been vested). At my job, I felt I was slacking off because I wasn’t being barked at all day long, and I felt I was being watched then, like the calm before the storm. And of course, both of these dealt with money, which is what I have to subside on now, which of course means I’m being watched by my creditors (bills). The Wife is a responsibility, and I was therefore feeling that my actions were being judged by her, as well.

I was being watched.

Once I realized this, once I put this all together, it started to make sense. I had always been a workaholic. In fact, I can’t be happy UNLESS I’m working and under some pressure (something my psychologist has been working to break me out of, for obvious reasons). This, conversely, had an effect on my stress levels, which fired up my adrenal gland, which released adrenalin and triggered the attacks. If I felt I wasn’t doing work, then I felt as if I was slacking off and my fears of failure and disappointing those who were watching me (the future, my bills, my boss, life…) would fire up an attack.

I talked about all this with a lot of people: my wife, my parents, some friends who had themselves experienced attacks, and by that time my psychologist. That last one was most important because he showed me how that tied in to everything that was going on in my life at the time, including how I handled my relationships, how I viewed myself, and how I coped with stress. He talked to me about something called over-excitabilities and positive disintegration, developed by his teacher Kazimierz Dabrowski. In short, where most people receive one amount of stimulation they’ll return one back. I was returning four-fold back.

At this point, he taught me how to meditate and calm my mind. I’m still working on this, but my recent delving into writing and reading for fun (as well as profit) has helped this immensely. No longer do I feel like I owe something to other people in excess of what I truly owe then, and no longer do I feel at the mercy of my environment, but realize fully instead that I control it.

To delve further into this, he gave me an IQ test, as well as a number of other personality tests. Almost as predicted, the tests showed that I’m prone to over-excitabilities. This was the reason my stresses got to the level they did, causing panic attacks.

I won’t guarantee that this is what’s happening to you — those of us who have attacks do so for very different reasons — but my methodology is what I want you to understand. It was that very deliberate noting and studying of observable evidence which led me to the right conclusion. It took me about 2 months to get all the evidence I needed, but once I did, once I put everything together and found the answer.

It is my sincere hope that this helps. If you read this and find this helpful, please drop me a line telling me so, and if applicable, how you may have had to modify it in order for it to work for you.

Iacocca: An Autobiography

For the record, if you’re too young to know who Iacocca is, check out his Wikipedia page, then go and get his biography. In short, he’s one of the most respected business leaders in American history.

The first item is a video from Fortune by way of CNN.com in which he analyzes the current situation in Detroit, especially the bonuses for company CEOs, which are now in the hundreds of millions. (Don’t forget that Iacocca took a $1 a year salary while in Chrysler and based his salary on the performance of the company.) You can find the video here: Lee Iacocca Fortune Interview (About 4 minutes long).

The second item comes by way of his new book, Where Have All the Leaders Gone?, in which he goes for the jugular against corrupt politicians and the lack of good leadership today from business leaders and politicians. Here’s an excerpt:

A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen to people outside of the “Yes, sir” crowd in his inner circle. He has to read voraciously, because the world is a big, complicated place … If a leader never steps outside his comfort zone to hear different ideas, he grows stale. If he doesn’t put his beliefs to the test, how does he know he’s right? The inability to listen is a form of arrogance. It means either you think you already know it all, or you just don’t care.

A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, be willing to try something different. You know, think outside the box … Leadership is all about managing change—whether you’re leading a company or leading a country. Things change, and you get creative. You adapt.

A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means knowing the difference between right and wrong and having the guts to do the right thing. Abraham Lincoln once said, “If you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

A leader must have COURAGE. I’m talking about balls. (That even goes for female leaders.) Swagger isn’t courage. Tough talk isn’t courage … Courage in the twenty-first century doesn’t mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk.

You can read the complete excerpt at the Borders website. Obviously, there’s a LOT more — and it’s ALL great. Make sure you read it. If you don’t plan to buy the book, at least save that page to your hard drive and read it, over and over again.

A note to anyone going to read the rest of the excerpt: it’s political. Highly so. If you’re a fan of the Bush administration or are easily offended by criticism of the president or his administration, do yourself a favor and ignore the link. In fact, here’s a taste, though you should feel free to skip it if you’re easily offended read it anyway:

Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can’t even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, “Stay the course.”

Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I’ll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!

You might think I’m getting senile, that I’ve gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don’t need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we’re fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That’s not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I’ve had enough. How about you?

I’ll go a step further. You can’t call yourself a patriot if you’re not outraged. This is a fight I’m ready and willing to have.

My friends tell me to calm down. They say, “Lee, you’re eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the young people.” I’d love to—as soon as I can pry them away from their iPods for five seconds and get them to pay attention. I’m going to speak up because it’s my patriotic duty. I think people will listen to me. They say I have a reputation as a straight shooter. So I’ll tell you how I see it, and it’s not pretty, but at least it’s real. I’m hoping to strike a nerve in those young folks who say they don’t vote because they don’t trust politicians to represent their interests. Hey, America, wake up. These guys work for us.

Before you decide that the link isn’t (or is) for you, remember one thing: it’s not a Republican/Democrat thing. In fact, to once again quote Iacocca, “don’t tell me it’s all the fault of right-wing Republicans or liberal Democrats. That’s an intellectually lazy argument, and it’s part of the reason we’re in this stew. We’re not just a nation of factions. We’re a people. We share common principles and ideals. And we rise and fall together.”

Enjoy the reading.

1. Involve your kids in everything you do, as best you can.
2. When working as part of a team, make sure to learn everyone’s name and a little bit about them. A little recognition will do wonders for morale.
3. Unity does not mean absolute obedience, it means absolute togetherness.
4. Any business works like dating a pretty girl: you find her, clean yourself up, then ask her out — not once, but until she says “Yes”. [Edit: This is how I tricked The Wife into marrying me.]
5. Any business you want to succeed in you have to become a professional at. Treat it exactly like you would a professional career. Remember: 3 and 4 digits is hobby income; 5 and 6 digits is professional income. Become a pro.
6. Think about this: when you’re spending time, are you wasting it or investing it?
7. Disassociation from the wrong people is just as important as association with the right people.
8. A few hundred “hellos” will help build every business. Networking is key.
9. Respect comes from the pursuit of success.
10. Trust is at best a very fragile commodity. It takes long to build, and once it is broken it is hard to re-attain it.
11. It is not about how many people respect you, it is about how many people you respect.
12. When working with people, do you do what you do for money or friendship? The first is useful, yes, but without the second you’ll never have pull with people.
13. Friendship is the only catalyst for stick-ability and growth. If your business has turned into a revolving door, check the friendship factor.
14. Ask yourself: “Is my heart open enough”? (Are you empathetic with people, no matter where they have come from? Are you non-judgmental enough that people will trust you?)
15. Always be open and honest. You need something? Tell people the truth as to why you need it. (This requires that you’re honest to yourself.)
16. While you should build friendships, you cannot let people you lead get too close. If they know all your flaws you’ll never be able to teach them anything.
17. Married folks: Are you writing down and working towards your goals as a couple?
18. It is important to know what your needs are, what’s important to you, as well as what your spouse’s needs are, and what’s important to your spouse.
19. What good is it to get your business goals accomplished if you lose your wife in the process?
20. Men: Make a decision every day to stay in love with your wife. It is important for you to know your wife like you knew her when you first started dating. This now, like then, is a choice. Don’t take anyone — especially her — for granted.
21. Pornography will take down even the greatest of men. It is an addiction more nefarious than even drugs or alcohol, since it can usually be better hidden and — thanks to the Internet — a lot more accessible.
22. Learn to have balance in your marriage. Stay fit for each other; work out together. Go to counseling if you have to in order to make sure your relationship works.
23. Couples: Work with each other’s strengths. Complement each other’s weaknesses. Learn what your spouse needs and wants. Don’t love your spouse because you need them, need your spouse because you love them.
24. This is especially for guys, but ladies listen, too: watch where your eyes go. As man thinks in his heart, so is he. Adultery is not a sin of the flesh, it is a sin of the mind.
25. Keep balance. Do what you need to in order to stay sane, and meet your own needs. You may have to be off balance once in a while, say for 90 days while you’re working hard towards a specific goal, but get back in balance as soon as you can. What good does it do a man to gain the whole world, but lose his soul in the process?
26. Don’t use your spouse as an excuse not to follow your dreams. Work things out as you see fit to get them done.
27. Economic freedom does something to the human spirit that can’t be done with anything else.
28. You have to change your thinking before you change your lifestyle (or reality). You have to guard your attitude, because attitude determines altitude.
29. When you talk bad about people, that reveals your character.
30. When you stop fighting for what you want, what you don’t want will take over the territory.
31. When you do not have a goal and no plan of action, then you have no faith in your dream.
32. What your degrees are or how many you have — it doesn’t matter. WHat matters is whether you have a dream. Your job as a human being is to awaken the dreams of people you come in contact with.
33. Aren’t you tired of putting things in the back-burner, just to watch them burn? Why do you do what you do? Why don’t you do what you don’t do?
34. There is no difference between the man who knows how to read and won’t, and the man who doesn’t know how to read. Knowledge and ability are all about the application thereof.
35. It’s easy to handle things when everything is good and positive. But what counts is how you act when you receive negative.
36. All people are creators. Every time they open their mouth they’re creating their own realities. As are you.
37. To create a new reality, first change your beliefs and your actions.
38. At the end of the day, always ask yourself “How did I move closer to the future I envision and want for myself today?”
39. Work shouldn’t feel like work: it should be an “I get to do this” instead of an “I have to do this.” This is one of the signs you’re doing or not doing what you’re supposed to be doing.
40. A story on focus from the Mahabharata: A teacher told his archery students “There is a deer over there. I want you to shoot it in the eye. The first student steps up and the teacher asks him “What do you see?” The student answered, “I see a deer with a forest behind it and –” The teacher stopped him. “Don’t shoot. You won’t hit it.” The second student came up and the teacher asked him “What do you see?” The student answered, “I see a deer, I see its head and I see an eye.” The teacher said, “Don’t shoot. You won’t hit it.” The third student came up and the teacher asked him, “What do you see?” The student answered, “I see an eye.” The teacher asked “Nothing else?” “No,” answered the student. “I see an eye.” This is the type of focus that it takes to do anything of worth.
41. Unity is not the absence of an opinion, it is the absence of rebellion.
42. If you’re not having fun working your business, sit down with someone you trust as a coach or mentor who is growing, and talk to them about whatever is going on.
43. Have the courage, as a leader, to look at yourself if someone you trust and respect tells you that you should, in order to grow.

How to Get Rich

Be a General

• If you are careful when finding employees, management becomes a lot easier.
• Keep the big picture [your ultimate goal] in mind while attending to the daily details. This can seem like a balancing act, but it is absolutely necessary for success in running a company.

Stay Focused

• I work as had today as I did when I was a young developer…

Maintain Your Momentum

• No matter how accomplished you are, no matter how well yo think you know your business, you have to remain vigilant about the details of your field. You can’t get by on experience or smarts.
• No matter what you’re managing, don’t assume you can glide by. Momentum is something you have to work to maintain.

Get an Assistant

• [An assistant allows you to leverage your time in the best possible way. A good assistant will allow you to get to the important things faster, while keeping the non-important things from cluttering your radar.]

Remember: The Buck Starts Here

• Set the standard. Don’t expect your employees to work harder than you do.
• Winners see problems as just another way to prove themselves. Problems are never truly hardships to them, and if you haven’t got any problems, then you must not have a business to run.
• Regard your company as a living, breathing organism, because that’s what it is. Those figures you see on your spreadsheets will reflect the health of that organism. Watch out for bad cells while allowing good cells to flourish.
• Having a passion for what you do is crucial. If you can’t get excited about what you’re doing, how can you expect anyone else to? If your employees can see and feel your energy, it is bound to affect them.

Don’t Equivocate

• [Call things as they are. If something is good, say so. If something stinks, say so.]

Ask Yourself Two Questions

• Is there anyone else who can do this better than I? … If your competition is better than you are, you need to offer some quality they lack.
• What am I pretending not to see? … Before the dream lists you into the clouds, make sure you’ve looked hard at the facts on the ground.

Bullshit Will Only Get You So Far

• I never try to dissuade people from quitting. If they don’t want to be here, I don’t want them to be here, either.

Every New Hire is a Gamble

• Do you work wholeheartedly or halfheartedly? Are you just going through the motions and hoping no one will notice? The only person you ever fool is yourself. You can’t fool others, even though you might think you can.

Ideas Are Welcome, but Make Sure You Have the Right One

• I like people who don’t give up, but merely being a pest is detrimental to everyone. Once again, fine-tune your discernment. Know when to ease up. Keep your antennae up for another idea and a more appropriate opportunity. Sometimes we hesitate with good reason.

Focus on the Talent Instead of the Title

• Very often, your resources are greater than you might think. I don’t like it when people underestimate me, and I try not to underestimate anyone else.
• [T]ry to see beyond a person’s title. you can find talent in unlikely places.

Manage the Person, Not the Job

• Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

Keep Your Door Open

• Learning begets learning. I’d rather be stimulated than passive. You can’t wear a blindfold in business. A regular part of your day should be devoted to expanding your horizons.
• Learn something new, whether you think you’re interested in it or not. That’s the opposite of having a closed mind — or a closed door.

Think Big and Live Large

• The possibilities are always there. If you’re thinking too small, you might miss them.
• [W]hat’s the difference between losing $100,000 or hundreds of millions of dollars? Either way, you’ve lost, so you might as well have really gone for it.
• If you’re going to think, think big. If you’re going to live, live large.

PART II: YOUR PERSONAL APPRENTICESHIP (CAREER ADVICE FROM THE DONALD)

Take Control of the Job Interview

• [If you know you can do a job, don't be afraid to ask for the chance to do it, even at minimum wage, for a trial period. Action is worth a lot more than words, and your actions will prove to them you're the person they're after.]

Ask For Your Raise At the Right Time

• The best way to ask for a raise is to wait for the right time. It also indicates to your boss that you have a certain amount of discernment and appreciation for what he might be going through.

Be Tenacious

• At times, just about every executive will appear impatient, but to build something that endures, you have to take the long view.

Play Golf

• Being an entrepreneur, even within a large company, is a solitary game.
• [T]urn your passion into profit. The results of that passion will reward you in more ways than you ever could have expected. Passion is enthusiasm on a big scale. It is all-encompassing and consuming. People with passion never give up because they’ll never have a reason to give up, no matter what their circumstances may be. It’s an intangible momentum that can make you indomitable.

Brand Yourself and Toot Your Own Horn

• If you’re devoting your life to creating a body of work, and you believe in what you do, and what you do is excellent, you’d better damn well tell people you think so. Subtlety and modesty are appropriate for nuns and therapists, but if you’re in business, you’d better learn to speak up and announce your significant accomplishments to the world — nobody else will. [Gnorb's Note: From personal experience, this applies only when you are building something from the ground up. When you're part of a system, edifying the system will usually result in the system edifying you in turn, since people with just as much credibility (and more) as you will be the ones tooting your horn. Inform the system of your accomplishments and the system will inform the world of them. Leverage whatever tools you have in the process of self promotion.]

Go with Your Gut

Being an entrepreneur is not a group effort. You have to trust yourself. You may have superb academic credentials, but without instincts you’ll have a hard time getting to — and staying at — the top.

Be Optimistic, but Always Be Prepared for the Worst

• The ups and downs are inevitable, so simply try to be prepared for them.
• [Get a couple of stone tablets and carve this into them. Into the first, carve "Problems are Always Solvable." Into the second, carve "Problems are Unavoidable".]

Look Closely Before Changing Careers

• Anyone with more than a little curiosity and ambition will at some point be tempted to try a different challenge on new terrain. Take the risk, but before you do, do everything you can to learn what you’re getting yourself into, and be as sure as you can that you’ve got the right mindset for the job.

Avoid the Handshake Whenever Possible

• It’s a medical fact that [shaking hands] is how germs are spread. I wish we could follow the Japanese custom of bowing instead.

Pay Attention to the Details

• If you don’t know every aspect of what you’re doing, down to the paper clips, you’re setting yourself up for some unwelcome surprises.

Connect with Your Audience (The Art of Public Speaking, Parts I & II)

1. Think about your audience first. The rest will fall into place. Granted, having useful information will help, too.
2. Involve your audience. They will appreciate being included.
3. When you’re speaking, it helps to be prepared…if you read every day, you will already be prepared.
4. Be a good storyteller…Storytelling is a skill, so work on it. It’s helpful to listen to comedians. The good ones can teach you the art of great timing.
5. Think about the common denominator.
6. When you are on the podium, you are the entertainer.
7. Study Regis Philbin.
8. Be able to poke fun at yourself.
9. Learn to think on your feet. Memorable public speaking involves a good deal of spontaneity. [If you're not good at it, learn. Knowing your topic inside and out also helps. A lot.]
10. Listen in your daily life.
11. Have a good time…Before you speak, remind yourself that it doesn’t matter all that much. Don’t feel that the weight of the world is on you. Most people in the room don’t care how well or poorly you do. It’s just not that important. It’s merely a speech — not an earthquake or war. You’ll have a better time and be a better speaker if you keep it all in perspective.

Change Your Attitude

• If you have the right attitude, you can get where you’re going, fast.
• Having a high frequency will attune you to a wavelength that exudes confidence and clear-sighted enthusiasm. I’m a firm believer that this is half the battle of any enterprise.
• [M]y productivity was increased by a large percentage simply by learning to let go of negativity in all forms as quickly as I could. My commitment to excellence is thorough — so thorough that it negates the wavelength of negativity immediately.
• Negativity is also a form of fear, and fear can be paralyzing.
• Very often, negative thinking stems from low self-esteem. You have to work on this yourself.
• [S]ee knocks as opportunities and as insight into whoever is doing the knocking.
• [F]aith over fear. Faith can overcome the paralysis that fear brings with it.
• People who persist have courage, because often it’s a lot easier to give up.
• Maybe you’ve gotten to the point where you think you can’t get through another day. That’s shortsighted of you. You’re missing the big picture. You’re on the runway, but your fuel supply is the problem. You won’t get off the ground without it. Fed yourself some positive thoughts and you can take off at any time.
• Get going. Move forward. Aim high. Plan for takeoff. Don’t just sit on the runway and hope someone will come along and push the airplane. It simply won’t happen. Change your attitude and gain some altitude.

Start Visualizing Positively

• Keep a book of inspiring quotes nearby, so you can change a negative wavelength the moment it descends on you. Here are a few of my personal favorites:
  • Know everything you can about what you’re doing. — Fred Trump
  • I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you can to see happen. — Frank Lloyd Wright
  • A leader has the right to be beaten, but never the right to be surprised. — Napoleon
  • He who looks outside his own heart dreams, he who looks inside his own heart awakens. — Carl Jung
  • Imagination is more important than knowledge. — Einstein
  • Continuous effort, not strength or intelligence, is the key to unlocking our potential. — Winston Churchill

Read Carl Jung

• As a safety factor, I very often see other people as a revolver that could be pointed at me. They are the gun. I, however, am the trigger. So I speak and tread carefully. It’s an effective visual aid to avoid conflicts, and I was unwittingly among people who were actually psychos underneath their dignified personas. We never know what will trigger another person’s killer instinct. It can be something that happened when they were five years old. So avoid being the trigger, and the revolver will not be a threat.
• You have to know yourself as well as know other people to be an effective leader…reading the work of Carl Jung [is] a step in the right direction.
• Reading Carl Jung will give you insights into yourself and the ways in which you and other people operate.

Have an Ego

• Having a well-developed ego, contrary to popular opinion, is a positive attribute. It is the center of our consciousness and serves to give us a sense of purpose…”Show me someone with no ego and I’ll show you a big loser.”

Keep Critics in Perspective

• There is constructive criticism, and then there are is destructive criticism. Here’s how to assess both types:
  1. First of all, consider the source. Should this person’s opinion even matter to you?
  2. If it does matter to you, take a few minutes to consider whether anything helpful can result for the criticism. Others can often see things that we have overlooked. Use their keen eyes to your advantage.
  3. Critics serve their purpose. Sometimes they serve a larger purpose, and sometimes they serve their own purpose.
  4. Everyone has an opinion. In most cases, it’s not worth the paper it’s written on.
  5. If the opinion is worth the paper it’s written on, and it’s written on a paper people are buying and reading, then realize that if people didn’t find you interesting enough for public consumption, they wouldn’t be taking the time to criticize you. Think of their criticism as a compliment, proof of your significance.

Homework Is Required and There Will Be a Test

• People who think achieving success is a linear A-to-Z process, a straight shot to the top, simply aren’t in touch with reality. There are very few bona fide overnight success stories. It just doesn’t work that way.
• Every industry and profession has its bottom line for what is required to succeed. If you can’t stand to practice every day, being a musician is out of the question. If you hate to exercise, being an athlete is not for you. In business — every business — the bottom line is understanding the process. If you don’t understand the process, you’ll never reap the rewards of the process. You’ll never last long enough to achieve your ‘overnight’ success.
• We can learn from our mistakes, but it’s better to learn from our successes. When I hear people say, “Well, it was an interesting experience,” I can usually safely assume they are deferring to something that didn’t work out the way they’d planned. I don’t find my goof-ups to be amusing or interesting.
• We all know what it’s like to pretend to study. There are some courses in school that just don’t hold our attention. If you are choosing a career, keep that in mind. What most holds your attention? [What do you like about your business or profession? What do you not? How can you turn this into an advantage?]

Again, these were just a few of the nuggets I got from Trump’s book How to Get Rich. There was a ton more information in there, so if I were you I’d pick a copy up and start reading it. Even if you’re not in business, and even if you don’t like Trump, you know he knows his stuff, and his stuff is a lot more than just real estate and casinos.

Yet, being goal oriented isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say that while being goal oriented is good in the short run, in the long run it is most certainly detrimental to anyone who goes by that mindset exclusively.

Let’s put this to the test: have you ever met people who at a young age achieved something big in their lives, only to live the rest of their lives in the shadows of that accomplishment? These people are always spinning their wheels trying to somehow recapture that former glory: they talk about their past successes and do everything they can to get back to that point in their lives. Yet, their quest is ultimately futile, because they are so focused on the goal that they forget (or ignore) how it was they attained the goal in the first place.

Now, compare that person to the most successful people you know, in any field. I’ll be willing to bet this website and all the content in it that these people focus more on improving than anything else, at least in the area where they are most successful. While interested in attaining goals — not a one of them will tell you goals are not important — they attain those goals by employing a process of continual growth and improvement, and that the goals eventualities.

While being goal oriented is good to an extent — everyone reading this should have goals and be working some sort of plan to attain them — most people fall into the first group, those who focus primarily on being goal oriented and as such end up missing the elephant in the room: the process. Goal oriented people are people who strive and fight and move for the sake of attaining a goal. Likewise, process oriented people are folks who strive and fight and move because they’re looking to improve. Both of these people will achieve their goals, but unlike process oriented people, goal oriented people run the risk of getting to a goal and then sitting there, happily resting on their laurels. These folks can sometimes go the rest of their lives without realizing that while they may be achieving the goals they’re setting, they aren’t growing: by not focusing on the process, the goals they’re setting are a result of immediate necessity, and aren’t building anything up. These goals aren’t pushing them or making them grow.

So, what’s so important about goals? Simply put, without a goal there is no process. To impress upon you the importance of that statement, I’ll say it again: Without a goal, there is no process. Once a goal is set, however, once you know where you’re going, you have to pay close attention to how you’re getting there. Look at your goals regularly to make sure you’re on the right path, but pay close attention to improving your process while you get there.

Unlike those who are goal oriented, process oriented people will work towards their goal in such a way that in the process of attaining their goals, they stretch themselves and learn. These people will learn from their mistakes and will work not just to achieve a goal, but to ensure that when they achieve that goal they are better than they were before they started for that goal.

For goal oriented people growth is sometimes incidental: they grow only because their goal requires them to. Process oriented people, on the other hand, attain goals because their process will take them in that direction anyway. For them, growth is not incidental, it is necessary, and goals are eventual. Because of this difference, the goal oriented person will not necessarily be able to look past the goal to the next goal until they get there. The process oriented person will instead already be thinking about future goals, since everything they do is focused to the process of improving: goals just give them a direction in which to move. To the goal oriented person, goals are end points. To the process oriented person, they’re simply mile markers.

Now, why did I start thinking about this? This past weekend, I was examining the way I go about my goals in some of what I do. I realized that whenever I did something I loved — be it music, writing, or whatever else — I always focused on the process of improving, and that as such opportunities came without necessarily having been sought which allowed me to grow more. On the other hand, whenever I did something I didn’t love, but that I felt I had to do, I became very goal oriented, and would approach it with the same attitude I go about cleaning my house with: let’s get this over with. In the first I always met with success, even in the face of more than just a few drawbacks. In the second, I almost always met with eventual failure, since no matter how quickly I achieved my goal it would not lead me to greater goals, and instead left me on a perpetual treadmill with lots of running and no place to go.

So, the question is now with you. Look at your own life. Are there areas in which you are process oriented versus goal oriented (and vice versa)? In what areas could you make the shift from goal oriented to process oriented? How would this help you out? Remember: it’s never too late to start improving.

Ever hear the phrase “success is a journey, not a destination”? That’s because success is in the process. The greatest measure of personal success is not what one gets from it, but rather what one becomes through it.

I’ve been reevaluating much of what it is I do, why I do it and why those reasons are there in the first place. I’m discovering more and more that over the past few years I’ve reached a bit of a dead-end when it comes to personal growth. In the pursuit of such things as what I should want, I’ve forgotten a lot of the stuff I’ve always truly wanted. The problem is I’ve done the first so long that the second was almost forgotten, with the only thing reminding me if its existence being that little voice inside saying illogical things like “I’d rather be doing X.”

Most of the time people drown out that little voice by justifying what they’re doing using reason to drown out heart, numbing their brain with television and tying their time up with things like softball leagues and Dungeons and Dragons. On rare occasions they drown out the voice by doing something which, while totally worthwhile, isn’t what they should be doing.

Lately I’ve been thinking about my gifts and talents, how to best use them, and how to best capitalize from them. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how to best unify the things I enjoy with the things I’m naturally good at, while in the process deciding which things I’ll need to cut out of my life. During this time, I’ve (re)discovered some of the areas I have my greatest gifts. For the most part, these are in the areas of artistic expression (story and music writing, drawing, etc) and performance (teaching, writing for presentation, playing music, etc). I’m also good at inspiring and motivating people, but only about those things for which I have a true passion. This is one of the reasons, I believe, why I was successful in the world of Linux during the relatively short time I was in it: I believed (and still believe) in the promise and philosophy of open source and the free-flow of ideas, and I wanted others to believe just like I believed.

With this in mind, I’ve also had to face a fundamental contradiction in the way I lead life, one which I’ve seen there for a while, but have ignored it thinking that admitting it would make me weak. I’m firm in the belief that we are put here — whether by God or the Universe — for a purpose, and that it is up to each of us to find the courage to not only find that purpose, but pursue it to fruition. Strangely enough, I’ve found that sometimes getting to that purpose involves going in what seems to be the wrong way for a while, perhaps to learn a lesson or sixty. On rare occasions we get to the purpose too early, before we’ve learned our lessons. Then we focus so much on the wait that the purpose passes us by with almost no notice: the early arrival becomes a distraction, and eventually a detraction. As strange as this all might sound, if you’ve ever questioned “why am I doing what I do” you’ve probably run across this set of sentiments.

Recently, the question of where to take my writing has been weighing heavily. I’ve come to realize that in order for me to do what I, through my own history and natural tendencies, have been designed to do I have to take steps in what at first seems like a very frightening direction. As mentioned, I’m fairly talented when it comes to expressing myself, performing, teaching and motivating others. I’m also good at spotting long term trends and patterns (when I listen to my instincts properly), and dissecting information in unconventional ways. I tend to be very bad at doing things which I do only for logical reasons (instead of doing them because I want to): I quickly become bored, distracted, and eventually end up feeling disenfranchised and angry, usually at myself for not being as good as others in those tasks.

Given this (and a few other things I won’t mention now) I have decided to begin studying writing much more seriously than before, in many more areas than before. While I am familiar with journalistic writing, instructional writing, non-fiction story telling, and blogging (which tends to combine the aforementioned styles), I find myself deficient in other very important areas, such as fictional story telling and script writing. In addition, I need to study areas related to writing, such as character development, world building, SEO, better networking, and even advertising. These, as you can probably tell, indicate where I would like to see my career go, but they beg a question which has been swirling about in my brain ever since I first asked it: do I love writing enough to be a professional?

Robert Kiyosaki put it best: Amateurs are amateurs because they don’t love something enough to be a professional. All too often we hear from people that amateurs do things for the love of doing them while professionals do things not for the love, but for money. Yet, I can’t help but wonder about the amateur writer who writes only when the inspiration strikes, while the professional writer who writes regardless of whether inspiration has come to him or not. A better example is the amateur basketball player who plays in a local league and spends his time watching games, while the professional is out there practicing day after day, whether he feels like it or not, and doesn’t just watch games, but studies the players. Regardless of whether he’s now getting paid, the point is the professional worked for a very long time without pay to get to where he’s at, and who works for it whether he feels like it or not. Who loves it more?

For the record, I’m a technical writer. I’ve done other types of writing, but for now that’s what I’m doing professionally, as in whether-I-feel-like-it-or-not. Like anything, it has its good days and its bad days, though mostly good. Would I do it without getting paid? I have. If I had a million dollars in the bank would I still do it? Maybe. When I have a million dollars I’ll let you know.

So what’s the point of this? For the most part it’s just so I can get some thoughts down on paper, if you’ll pardon the turn of phrase. However, if you can give me any suggestions or your own stories, all the better. Just so long as it causes both of us to think.

I’m in the process now of evaluating a number of things about my life. If, in fact, Socrates was right when he stated that “a life left unexamined is a life not worth living,” then I suppose now is one of those times I’m making sure this life has been as continues to be worth living. The following BSG scene hit on a few important points for me:

Adama: It’s a hard thing to say, but it’s seems like don’t know my son any more. Same goes with the crew, the ship… I feel pretty much alone. Except maybe for you.

Boomer: *slight laugh* I wish I could come back a year and tell the other Admiral Adama about this conversation.

Adama: A year’s a long time.

Boomer: Can I ask you something… very personal?

Adama: [Silently looks at Boomer]

Boomer: Do you feel guilty about leaving the people behind on New Caprica?

Adama: [After a pause] I don’t do guilt.

Boomer: You know, a year ago, when you put me in this cell, I was at a crossroads. I sat in here for weeks just consumed with rage at all the things that had happened to me. And at some point I realized it was just guilt. I was angry at some of the choices I’d made.

Betraying my people, losing the baby…

So, I had a choice: I could either move forward or stay in the past. But the only way to move forward was to forgive myself.

I don’t think we can survive– I don’t think the fleet, Galactica, or the people on New Caprica can survive unless the man at the top finds a way to forgive himself.

Adama: [Thinking. Looks at Boomer. Pours himself and Boomer some tea. Or coffee.]

When the student is ready…

Last night, before watching the episodes, I asked The Wife to tell me what she thought my biggest weakness was. She said I tended to be too hard on myself.

While I’d never really thought about that, I immediately agreed. I, like many people, have a natural tendency — one I’ve been fighting — towards replaying the worst moments of our lives over and over, as if looking at a picture book with all of the worst pictures we’ve taken. We beat ourselves up and then expect to miraculously be able to uplift others and be positive, constructive people. While we may look for constructive criticism from others, often times we’re harder than anyone on ourselves. What’s worse is that we then try to justify it by judging ourselves by our intentions while others have no other choice but to judge us by our actions.

The fact that she me doing that wasn’t what really got to me. It was that she wasn’t the first to ever point this out. It was the fact that I already knew I did that… and I was doing it again.

… the teacher shows up.

As a side note, here’s a little (insignificant) spoiler for those of you who haven seen season 3: Major Lee Adama, the son of the Admiral who some of us hate due only to his outrageously good looks, becomes a fatty — gut, double chin… the works. At one point Admiral Adama calls him out on it, telling him, after Lee’s been whining that his pilots are working too hard, to “Get your fat ass out of here.” As a fatty, this moment kind of hurts. As a fatty who’s slimming down to non-fatty, this moment is… priceless.

What I find interesting in this scene, aside from its obvious comedic value, is how the Admiral calls out his son out for being too weak on himself, mentally and physically. Contrast that with the quote at the beginning of this post and you see where some of my internal struggles lie.

In high school there was this teacher who almost no one liked, not staff nor students: Poly “Demon” Demma. Depending on who you talked to she was either the most self-righteous, annoying, and power-tripping teacher to ever walk the halls, or (in rare cases) the most just and fair teacher you could ask for. Like most, I was of the former opinion, even though I started by being of the later.

I’m sure you can guess some about her attitude and how people felt about her based on the nickname alone, but the urban legends which roamed the school regarding Demma revealed exactly how deeply the dislike (I would almost say “hatred”) ran with the students:

• She walked with a limp. Two reasons were given for this. One legend had it that a student had once pushed her down the stairs and broke her hip. The other said that a student had once thrown a desk at her, breaking her leg and hip.
• She once had a bird die in school. Demma loved her parakeets. So much so she once brought them to school. Legend had it that a student killed one of her birds, dressed it up in a tiny suit, taped its wing to its crotch, and stuffed it in her purse.

Both of these, of course, were wishful thinking on the part of the students, most of whom gleefully passed on the legends to any incoming freshmen and sophomores, especially if they were unfortunate enough to be in one of Demma’s classes. However, these were still only legends: while she indeed got hip replacement surgery, it wasn’t because of a student, it was because of arthritis. As for the bird, she had once brought her pet parakeets to school, where a student opened the cage and one flew away.

To her credit, she was a good English teacher. Very good. The problem was that in order to be as good as she was, Demma felt it necessary to be demeaning to anyone who didn’t believe as she believed, did exactly as she asked. (“Commanded” may be a better description of her edicts or requests, whatever they were.) She was sort of the Richard Dawkins of teaching: it wasn’t good enough to feel you were right, you had to be a jerk to anyone who disagreed with you. (This is an unfair characterization of Dawkins, but it should get the point across.) She was also very much into the crony system: you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Of course, her idea of you scratching her back (as repulsive a thought as that was and still is) was to always do all your homework and do it right. Do things right, and you would stay on her graces, even be showered with random extra points for no apparent reason that counted towards your final grade. Fall from her graces, however, and you were on her shiat-list permanently.

As you can probably guess, not many people could stay on her graces.

My problems with Demma started when we started with our reading assignments. One of her requirements was that we should be reading an approved novel every day. Since no fantasy or science fiction books were allowed, I asked her for an opinion. She recommended Tom Clancy’s books, and I got to reading. Surprisingly to me at the time, I loved them: The Hunt for Red October, Clear and Present Danger, The Sum of All Fears, Without Remorse… all of these were novels I raced through, at the pace of more than 100 pages a night, 50 on a bad night. At one point, Demma also bought a Tom Clancy book for me to borrow and read.

This was all well and good, until one week I started coming in with having read at most only 50 pages per night. “You’re slipping,” I remember her saying. All I knew how to do was apologize, since I didn’t think she would really care that I had been ramping up my violin and double bass practice to three and four hours a night. By the end of that week I had gone from being one of her golden boys to the bottom of the totem pole. I stopped receiving the extra points she would randomly toss around to those she thought deserved the extra points (regardless of their grades in the class), was insulted regularly, and those led to ever lowering grades. While at the first quarter I had received an A in the class, with a 99% overall grade percentage, by the time the third quarter came about my grade had dropped to a D. I eventually finished the class with a C.

To a certain extent, I understand now why she did what she did: she had seen what my level of excellence was and when she saw me slipping to a lower level — 50 pages a night instead of 100 — she began to give me a hard time in order to get me back on track. Unfortunately, she never really explained this, and instead of trying to help me or even find out why my production had dropped, she told me that I was lazy and should work as hard as Chan, the Vietnamese girl who sat next to me. Apparently, the fact that I was now performing with two orchestras and a band in the middle of the high season for music — Christmas time — was of no concern. Her class was of utmost importance.

This incident revealed to me why people thought so badly about her. Of course, this wasn’t the only incident to reveal so, just the first.

I took English with Mrs. Demma during my sophomore year in high school. This was the same year the University of Florida played Florida State University at the Sugar Bowl. Demma had been invited to the game, and while she didn’t know who to root for — before she went, she couldn’t have cared less about football — she still went. (Not liking football is no reason to turn down a free trip to the French Quarter in New Orleans, right?)

The Monday after she returned from her trip, we walked in to find the words “Sugar is Sweet” written in large letters across the whiteboard. At the beginning of class, she explained what the words meant by asking a simple question: “Did anyone see the FSU game this weekend? Do we have any Gators fans in here?” She asked that last question with pampas spite usually reserved for Democrats. (Politics and the classroom mixed quite often that year in English.) All of us knew right there and then who she ended up rooting for. As it turned out, some UF fans sitting near her were a bit drunk and unruly. This led her to presume that all UF students were drunk and unruly, so out of her need for a sense of moral superiority, she instantly became an FSU fan. Lucky for her, FSU won the game.

Personally, I can’t say I even remember the game. I was never really a fan of either school’s football team (although I pretended to be became one when courting The Wife, a UF alumni), so I didn’t bother watching it. Nevertheless, I made the unfortunate mistake of wearing my sherbet orange Tampa Bay Buccaneers jacket and a pair of blue jeans that day. Orange and blue, as you may know, are the school colors of the University of Florida. A kid sitting next to me had also worn orange and blue, but his came in the form of a UF Gators Football t-shirt. After her little victory speech in front of a class of mostly confused (and thoroughly annoyed) students, Demma moved to stand in front of both me and the other kid.

“Oh,” she said, “what do we have here? A couple of Gator fans? How does it feel to have lost so badly?”

She turned to the first kid, waiting for an answer. “Eh, it’s a game. It was close.”

“Close?!” she said in total surprise. “My dear, you obviously didn’t watch the game. Three times the Seminoles made it towards the end zone. Three.” She put up three fingers. “Sure they didn’t score, but they didn’t need to. They proved that had they needed the points, they could have gotten them.” (Years later, I’m still wrestling with that logic. If you’re near the end zone and don’t score, it’s because you can’t, not because you simply let the other team have it easy.)

“Eh, whatever. I still like my team,” he replied.

She turned to me. “And what about you? What did you think, hmm?”

“Frankly, I didn’t really care,” I told her. “This is a Bucs jacket, see?” I pointed to the large picture of Buccaneer Bruce on the jacket, and the words “TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS” emblazoned on the arms. I continued, “I’m also a [University of Miami] Hurricanes fan. I like neither the Gators nor the Noles.”

“Of course, Miami. Another losing team,” she replied. (The Hurricanes lost the National Championship that year to Nebraska.) “Still, orange and blue… those are Gator colors, you know,” she said as she walked away.

“Yep, I know,” I replied. “Doesn’t change the facts.”

She continued, “I guess I wouldn’t want to associate myself with them either.”

Right then I thought about becoming a Gators fan, purely out of spite. (Remember that in the American South, football is not a sport: it’s a religion.) I couldn’t, but I did start hating FSU even more. That’s just as good, right? Funny thing that even to this day, no matter who FSU is playing, I’m almost always rooting for the other team. (Unless they’re playing the ‘Canes, when instead I wish for a meteor to strike the field and obliterate both teams. Nuke them from space: it’s the only way to be sure they both lose.)

“By the way,” she said from her desk, “have any of you ever had gator meat? It tastes just like chicken.”

For the next week, Demma kept on with the game, eventually changing her official mailing address to include the words “Florida State”, instead of the postal code “FL”. From that point on, in her class, wearing a University of Florida shirt was reason for insult, unless you were one of the few on her graces by that time.

Later on in the year I came to school a few minutes late, so I had to get a late pass from the office. My being late to my first class, Orchestra, wasn’t exactly an uncommon occurrence, so I wasn’t new to the process. Still, the fact that you’re reading this should tell you who was manning the tardy desk that day.

By this time, I had started to work with my violin teacher on training for my auditions to various music schools. I only had two years to prepare, so time was short. This morning, however, my passion for music came under fire as the Demon side of Demma came out.

“You play the violin?” she asked in her usual snide manner.

“Yeah, I’ve been playing for five years. I’m the concert master of the orchestra.” I grabbed my hall pass and started walking away.

“You know, unless you work on your English you’ll never get anywhere in life. Don’t count on doing anything with music unless you’re a Mozart or Beethoven.”

Of all the pampas, self righteous, demeaning things to say! I tried to hold it in, but I lost it. “You’re right,” I yelled, “I won’t be as good as them. I’ll be better.” I stormed out of that room determined to prove her wrong.

In later years, ironically, it would be my music which would lead me to my career as writer. On the one hand, the fact that I have become a fairly successful writer at a relatively young age proves that I was able to do something in spite of Demon Demma’s damning grades, which makes me want to tell her “Suck it, Demma!” On the other hand, the fact that she was right about my dependency on English in order for me to succeed career-wise makes me wonder whether I should be thanking her. (That last one, though, feels a bit like thanking Saddam Hussein for teaching us how bad dictatorships are.)

I guess the lesson here is that no matter how good you are at what you do and no matter how right you may be, unless you work on your people skills, people will hate you, especially if you’re a jerk. Still, if I ever see her again I might actually thank her, since I’ve used a lot of what she taught in my carreer, or at least at the beginning of it. Then again, I might just push her down the stairs. Heck, I may do both, so long as no one’s watching.