The Catman
Last summer, we saw this amazing man perform in Key West. He someone managed to train cats to fly through hoops.
Photo: The Catman and his Flying Cats
Bird Sanctuary
Photo: Bird Sanctuary Key Largo
Getting ready for my yearly Florida adventure and was looking over some pictures from last year when I came across this photo taken at the Bird Sanctuary in Key Largo, FL. I might have to revisit this place again this year.
Hanging Out with Entrepreneurs
A week ago, I spent a fun evening with a bunch of entrepreneurs in Milwaukee. Chris Gillebeau* was in town promoting his recent book “The $100 Startup” and seeing that I’ve been a fan of Chris’ work for awhile now, I decided to head to Milwaukee to see him. Over the years I’ve purchased a couple of his guides (Art + Money and The Empire Building Kit), his previous book (Art of Non-Conformity) and have learned quite a bit from him over the years. If nothing else, his work has provided me with the motivation to continue working for myself while generating new ideas along the way.
I think it’s important for those of us who work for ourselves to continue learning and associating with like-minded individuals. When I first started out on my own, I found myself sitting at my computer all day long, rarely venturing out and interacting with others. Even though I am somewhat of an introvert, it didn’t take long before I began craving human interaction. Without regular contact with others, I found myself becoming stale and stagnant – and the ideas that had previously come so freely slowed to a trickle. Thus, I then made it a point to get out and socialize with like-minded folks whenever possible.
Hearing Chris speak the other night and talking with all of the interesting people there reinforced this for me. I arrived home that evening energized, motivated and full of new ideas that I am looking forward to implementing in my own business. While many of us consider ourselves writers first and formost, we are also business people and like it or not, some of us have to make an effort to market our work. Gathering with other business folks may give you new ideas and new perspectives in helping you get the word out about your own business or your own work.
So if you are feeling stuck, in a rut or feel that your writing business lacks momentum, try putting yourself out there with other writers and/or entrepreneurs – perhaps attend a local Meetup or join a group of entrepreneurs and/or writers. You might be pleasantly surprised.
*I am not an affiliate nor do I receive any financial kickbacks from any of Chris’s products. I just like his work and feel that it is worthwhile.*
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Neil Gaiman’s Commencement Address – Advice for Creatives
I’ve been a fan of the author Neil Gaiman for many years now and have enjoyed such books asAmerican Gods, Anansi Boys, Coraline and Stardust as well as the Sandman comic collection. So I was more than delighted when I stumbled across his 2012 commencement address to the University of the Arts Class in Philadelphia.
The talk was inspiring, motivating and a worthwhile view for anyone in the creative fields, especially novelists. Below are some of my favorite points of his talk.
LACK OF CAREER PLAN
Neil states that a career implies some sort of career plan and that is something he never had. I could relate to this on so many levels. Each time I tried to plan out my future career-wise, I would inevitably fail (mainly due to losing interest) and instead, I simply ended up doing what my heart directed me to do. I tried computer programming, teaching at a University, finance – “proper jobs” in other words, only to end up following my own dream at the end of it . So I kind of ended up doing what Neil did: creating a list of things I want to do and scratching them off when done. This kind of leads into his next point:
IT’S BEST TO HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE DOING
When you have no idea what you’re doing, then you don’t know that what you want to do is “impossible”; thus, you cannot be limited. If you don’t know that your idea is impossible, then it’s easier to accomplish because you don’t know it’s impossible. In the rapidly changing businees world of today – especially in publishing – there are many of us who have no idea what we’re doing. While that can be scary, it is also freeing.
DO WHAT YOU NEED TO DO
In his talk, Neil said that if you have an idea of what you want to do, you need to go ahead and do it! But be prepared: you may have to do things in order to reach your goal. For example, in order to learn to be a writer, Neil spent time being a journalist. One cannot simply decide to be a doctor or dentist without obtaining proper training (you’d get arrested and/or sued). Thus, if one wants to be writer, one needs to put in the time writing and learning about the craft. I personally am always reading some book about writing or taking creative writing workshops when available. One never can be “finished” with learning.
DEALING WITH THE PROBLEMS OF FAILURE
This is advice that I’ve heard several times – Learn to be thick-skinned. That is a lot easier said than done, especially when your work is the brunt of a scathing review. But we do have to realize that not all of our projects will succeed; hell, some of them won’t even make it out the front door. I remember one author saying, “Keep putting stuff out into the world. The more you put out, the more likely one of them will be a success…and the more your put out, the better your work will become.”
DEALING WITH THE PROBLEMS OF SUCCESS
I had a good chuckle when Neil talked about “The Impostor Syndrome” – the idea that others will figure out that we nothing but a fake and not really qualified to be a writer, an artist, or whatever. Once we start becoming successful, many of us feel as though we are getting away with something and that sooner or later, people will figure us out. I remember feeling this way for years when I was a French teacher at a university – I feared that someday, someone would come up to me as say, “What are you doing here? You’re not qualified to teach French. Why you cannot speak French at all!”
He also said that when we get to the point where you feel that you are exposing too much of yourself to the world, that things are getting too personal, too raw, that is is the moment where you are starting to get it right.
MAKING MISTAKES
Get out into the world and make mistakes. While addressing the class of 2012, Neil said to them, “I hope you make mistakes. Making mistakes means you’re out there doing something.”
DON’T DO IT ONLY FOR THE MONEY
Don’t do it only for the money because you will end up getting bored with your project and losing your enthusiasm for it. Neil said that anytime he did something only for money, it rarely ended up being a success. Instead, do work you are proud of – and the success (and money hopefully) will follow. I have found this to be true in my life on more than one occasion.
FINDING YOUR OWN VOICE
Neil stressed the importance of finding your own voice. While copying the technique of others is okay in the beginning (many of us copy the style of others without realizing it – it’s how we learn initially), eventually, we need to find our own voice and make the kind of art of which only we are capable – or as Neil put it “Write as only YOU can.”
BEST ADVICE
The best piece of advice that Neil ever received was from Stephen King who said, “Enjoy your success.” I think that this is helpful advice for many of us. Instead of worrying about the next deadline, the next project, what the reviews will be like, etc., we need to relax a bit, let go, have fun and enjoy the ride. Revel in your successes!
THE NEW WORLD ORDER
Neil closed by talking about how the nature of distribution is changing and how the distributions channels for creative people are in flux. As he put it, the gatekeepers are leaving their gates and now we can be as creative as we need to be to get our work seen. Today, there are new rules but nobody as of yet, is quite sure what those rules are. So we make our own rules. This can seem frightening and intimating – but also intensely liberating, as Neil states. That’s what I’m finding, is the most fun of all!
You can view Neil Gaiman’s Commencement Address in its entirety HERE
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Evaluating Our Tools
I’ve been a Mac guy pretty much for the past 12 years (please – no ‘Mac vs. PC’ rants: I’ve heard them all) and had been working with a 2008 Macbook Pro. Over the past few weeks/months, I’d noticed that the machine had really begun slowing down, especially since upgrading to Lion, the latest version of the Macintosh operating system. It was taking forever to carry out routine tasks and I was beginning to get frustrated. I performed all of the required computer maintenance, ran various cleanup scripts but the darn thing still chugged along like a locomotive with three broken wheels. I looked into adding additional memory but sadly discovered that 4 gig was as high as I could go.
Now in addition to being a fiction writer, I also write technical manuals so I tend to need quite a bit of computing power. Finally, I decided to break down and get a new computer. But instead of buying directly from Apple’s main online store or one of their retail stores, I thought I’d give their Refurb Store a try. I checked back daily for awhile until a listing finally caught my eye. It was a speedy New iMac that was greatly discounted — almost four hundred dollars less than the list price (the price found on the Apple Store). After hemming and hawing (and fearing the inevitable buyer’s remorse), I finally pulled out my credit card and bought the darn thing.
But I wasn’t finished yet. The machine shipped with only 4 gig of ram (the same amount as my old Macbook Pro). I I headed over to Crucial’s Web Site and purchased 16 gig of ram (it was quite a deal!). A couple of days later, my computer and ram arrived and since I have been one happy camper. I couldn’t help but wonder why I had endured so much frustration for so long? I knew for awhile that it was time to upgrade some of my aging equipment as it was taking me longer and longer to get my work done. I am now considerably more productive with less anxiety.
The moral here is that we need to evaluate our tools from time to me to make sure that they are still working for us. Take a look at what’s out there and see whether it can make your workload a little lighter, a little easier and a little less frustrating. Sometimes, upgrading to the latest version can make all the difference in the world. I know it did for me.
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Looking Ahead
December vacation all wrapped up. So now it’s time to get back to work. I have to admit that it’s been a tad difficult getting back into the swing of things. I did spend some time reflecting on the past year and have decided to work on goals for the upcoming year, Chris Guillebeau style (I think he calls it his annual review).
At first, I felt that I did not accomplish that much in the past year. But once I started thinking about all that I did, I realized that I wrote 15 books last year. OK, so they weren’t great novels but rather computer courseware manuals for Office 2010 (I’m a technical writer in my other life). While it may not seem like a huge amount for work, each manual runs between 250 – 300 pages. So it is safe to say that I did, in fact, have a productive year. I also did finish my fiction novel – working on the edits now.
Looking forward to another good year. I have a lot on my plate for 2012 – which I’ll talk about a little at a time as the months progress.
The Freedom Account: An Indispensable Financial Tool
This is an old post from my original blog. The reason I am reposting it that my Freedom Account is one of the most essential things in my life. I can’t tell you how many times having this has saved my ass.
You’re moving along just fine. Your mortgage gets paid, your car payment is sent out on time, you’re slowly getting those credit card bills down and you find that you even have a few extra bucks to spend on yourself at the end of the month. You’re feeling pretty good these days – you believe that you’re finally making some headway. Pat yourself on the back – you deserve it.
Then whamo! The car breaks down and you find yourself facing an $1200 repair bill. Oh – and Auto Insurance is due too.
Whoops! Out with the credit card. So much for making headway.
Now imagine that your car breaks down and you are able to simply sit down and write out an $1200 check for the repairs – along with another $650 for Automobile Insurance.
“Yeah, right,” you say. “I don’t have that kind of money just lying around. I have enough for my monthly expenses, and that’s it!”
You can just sit down and write out those checks. And believe it or not, it’s not as difficult as you may think. In Mary Hunt’s book, The Cheapskate Monthly Money Makeover and more recently, Debt-Proof Living, she introduces the concept of the Freedom Account, the most indispensable money management tool I have come across. It has made a world of difference in my own personal life.
What the Freedom Account does is gives you control over irregular or unforeseen expenses. You know the auto insurance is due every six months. So do you stick money away for it? Most likely not. It will get paid somehow. How? What about if the car breaks down. After all, do you think it’s going to go on forever without any repairs? And what about vacation? And what about clothes? And what if the washer breaks down? And what about those insurance deductibles? You get the idea.
Hunt points out that the key to financial success is exerting control over your money and one of the ways you can do this is by regularly setting aside money in advance to cover your irregular or unexpected expenses. Now keep in mind that this is not a budget but rather a money management tool.
The author outlines 5 steps in setting up your Freedom Account:
Step 1: Determine your Irregular Expenses
Make a list of all expenses that do not occur on a monthly basis. These would include such things at auto maintenance (yes, you do have to perform maintenance on your vehicle), auto insurance, property taxes, household repairs, clothing, vacation, etc. Then establish a yearly dollar amount for each category and divide by the number of times you get paid during the year.
Let’s say that you get paid monthly. So the yearly dollar amount in each of your Freedom categories would be divided by 12. Here are a couple of examples from my Freedom Account:
Auto Insurance $460 a year/divided by 12 = $38.33 a month
Auto Maintenance $900 a year/divided by 12 – $75 a month
Health Club Membership – $360 a year/divided by 12 = $30 a month
Insurance Deductible – $500 a year/divided by 12 = $41.67 a month
And so on….
Add up the monthly (or weekly/biweekly if that’s how you get paid) total. This amount it the contribution you will make each payday to your Freedom Account.
Don’t worry about the dollar amounts above. Remember – these are sample figures. You will establish your own amounts based upon your personal situation.
Step 2: Open two checking accounts
The author recommends that you open two checking accounts, one for your regular expenses and one for your Freedom Account. This way, you will be depositing enough money each payday into your Freedom Account to cover the expenses that you established above, while the rest of your paycheck goes for your regular monthly expenditures. You will then write checks for your irregular expenses as they come up from your Freedom Account.
As I am a true believer in keeping things simple, I see maintaining two checking accounts as an unnecessary burden. I personally keep all of my Freedom Account funds in one savings account. My credit union provides online access so when a Freedom expense comes up, I transfer the money from my savings account to my checking account and write a check to cover the expense. Plus I earn a little interest on the money – 3% is better than nothing. Rather than a passbook savings account, you may want to consider a Money Market account that allows you to easily transfer money to and from your checking account. Typically, Money Market rates a considerably higher than passbook savings accounts.
Step 3: Request an automatic deposit authorization
If you feel that there’s even a possibility that you won’t be disciplined enough to transfer your payday total of Freedom expenses to your Freedom Account every month, then setting automatic deposit with your bank is a necessity. You can request an “Automatic Transfer Form” from your bank to automatically transfer the funds from your main checking account to your Freedom Account. Just establish the date and the rest is done for you. Many people find this method the easiest way to save – if you don’t see it, you don’t miss it. However, the author recommends that you give yourself a five day cushion. For example, if your payday falls on the 1st and the 15th of each month, then you’ll want to set your transfer dates for the 5th and the 20th, in case your payday falls on a holiday or weekend.
Step 4: Get a loose-leaf notebook and label it “Freedom Account”
This is the point where you keep track of all your individual Freedom categories. The author recommends that you keep a notebook, designating a page for each Freedom category. Thus, you would have a separate page for Auto Insurance, a separate page for Auto Maintenance, a separate page Vacation, and so on. On the top of each page, you would enter the name of the category and the amount to be deposited each paycheck. Then you would prepare 5 columns: Date, Description, Amount In, Amount Out, and Balance.
I personally track my Freedom data in an Excel spreadsheet. I find that it’s much easier to maintain my balances electronically and the likelihood of making any mathematical errors is greatly reduced. I keep each category in a separate Excel worksheet and maintain a “Freedom Index” sheet which lets me quickly see my category totals. This way, I don’t need to look at every single worksheet to figure out how much money I have in each category. In my next post, I will provide detailed instructions on how to set up a Freedom Account in Excel for those of you who prefer (or would like to learn how) to keep your records electronically.
Step 5: Get in the habit
In order for the Freedom Account to work for you, you must be diligent in your record keeping. So each and every payday, immediately deduct your monthly (or weekly/biweekly) Freedom amount from your regular checking. This is especially true if you are using Automatic Transfer. If you forget, you’ll be in real trouble when your checks start bouncing all over the county. Then, go into your loose-leaf binder or spreadsheet, add the individual deposits into each category and calculate your balance. In my example above, I would enter $30 on my Auto Insurance sheet, $75 on my Auto Maintenance sheet, $13.75 on my Health Club Membership sheet, $41.67 on my Insurance Deductible sheet, and so on.
A few additional points to ponder….
Don’t even think of borrowing from your Freedom account – it is a money management tool not a lending institution. In order for this to work for you, withdrawals must be limited only for what they were intended. I also personally place any unexpected income, such as tax refunds, gifts of money and any writing or consulting income directly into my Freedom Account. Earned overtime income is also a good candidate for your Freedom Account. It’s amazing how fast it adds up that way.
Want to stay out of debt? Then don’t buy anything until you have to cash to pay for it. How do you get the cash? Start a new Freedom category! As I bake and cook in bulk and am somewhat limited in storage space, I decided to purchase a freezer. So I started a “Freezer” category in my Freedom Account and am presently sticking away $30 a month. In another two months, I’ll have enough to make my purchase. In the past, I would have ran out, purchased the freezer and simply put the balance on my credit card. One of the beneficial side effects of setting up Freedom categories for any major purchase (something that you would normally charge) is soon you actually begin to notice your credit card bills declining and before you know it, credit card debt will be a thing of the past. I haven’t had a carryover credit card balance in nearly 2 years, thanks to the Freedom Account.
I recall brining in my truck in for repairs – the air conditioning was broken and I needed a new exhaust system. The total came to nearly $1,200 (that’s not too bad considering this is the first time I put any money into it since I bought it 8 years ago). But I didn’t panic. I simply transferred the money from my Freedom Account to my checking account and wrote a check for the entire amount. And this was just after I came back from a week’s vacation – which I also paid for in full from my Freedom Account.
Start small if that’s what it takes – just start! Soon your debt load will be going down and your freedom from worry will be going up. The Freedom Account is truly a life altering tool – I know because it changed mine.
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