My two articles concerned using Flickr as a personal marketing tool:

• How to Use Flickr to Find Pictures For Your Ads
• How to Deliver Tagged Flickr Photos to Your Desktop With the Google Photos Gadget

I am also serving as frugality expert on Dear Brain, TBYB!’s advice column. If you have a burning question about incorporating frugality into your life, ask it there!

Post from: Frugal in the Fruitlands

Guest posts at Take Back Your Brain!

The reason I don’t save more is simply there’s no more room in my budget. Housing takes up a huge chunk of our budget, and everything left over must account for electricity, oil, maintenance and gas for two cars, phones, internet, TV, and a small slice for entertainment. I feel like we continue to cut where we can, but we’re living pretty narrowly as is.

Maybe I just need to be making more money.

Several months ago Millionaire Mommy Next Door (please note the new address) did a series of “abundant life” visualizations where she imagined how she would acquire that extra money and how she would spend it.

So I’m doing what MMND did: I’m inviting extra money into my life. Today, the amount I’m imagining is $10,000 a year extra, or a gross income for myself of $55,000.

The Power of Creative Visualization

Wikipedia defines “Creative Visualization” as “seeking to affect the outer world via changing one’s thoughts.” Lest this seems like nonsense to many of you, let me assure you I’m a hardcore empiricist myself. I have been personally involved in visualization experiments where there was a significant main effect of visualization on final performance.

But don’t take my word for it – one of the best-known studies of creative visualization involved Russian athletes (as mentioned in the Wikipedia article above). Over four conditions, those athletes who spent 25% of their training time doing creative visualization outperformed all other groups, including the 100% physical training group.

On a similar note, I’m reading T. Harv Eker’s Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. Eker makes the point that millionaires think differently than us lower class schlubs about money. This changes how we act around money, which affects how much of it comes into our life.

Why Only $10,000?

“If visualization is so great,” you might say, “why limit yourself to $10,000 extra? Why not visualize yourself as a millionaire?” After all, Mr. Eker says that the non-wealthy tend to think in terms of “thousands rather than millions.”

There’s a simple reason: it’s a big step to visualize yourself as a millionaire if you’re just managing to pay the bills and stash aside a little each month. Just ask those people who have become instant millionaires via the lottery: within a few years, most are back to their previous standard of living, no wealthier and no happier. (This Google Answers thread links to some relevant studies). If one doesn’t know what to do with a million dollars, there’s no use inviting it into your life.

$10,000 extra dollars… that, I know what to do with.

Brainstorm Ways to Bring More Money Into Your Life

Here’s my list:

• My company is being acquired by a larger company, which may mean higher pay and better benefits. Being more proactive rather than reactive at work may go far in this situation, though it’s hard to quantify how far.
• If all else fails on the J-O-B front, there’s always changing jobs to software/web development. That’s about the entry level pay for such a job, if not more.
• Hang my shingle out for the various “side hustles” (that’s a popular word in the blogosphere right now) I can perform. Some of these include:
  • Web design. I will need to finally put together my web portfolio to get this going!
  • Tutoring. I can tutor French and statistics. An ad on Craigslist and sign in my library would be cost-free ways to advertise.
  • Teaching. I can submit a proposal to teach non-credit courses in web design and/or blogging at my local community college.
  • Housesitting/petsitting. I think after housesitting for the head of the Objectivist Society and getting locked in his bathroom in the middle of the night in my pajamas, I can handle anything.
  • I can work harder to monetize this blog, or I can work on other topics I would feel more comfortable monetizing. I’ve considered, for example, starting a costuming blog, and using my expertise there to sell fabric through affiliate sites. Something like Kyle’s Learn Spanish On Your Own might be valuable as well, using French, the other language I speak.
  • I can sell stuff I don’t need or want anymore (Kung Fu DVDs, I’m looking at you)

Obviously I don’t want to do all these at once – the hunter that hunts two animals catches only one, to use a PETA-unfriendly metaphor. The idea is that the path to $10,000 is wide open.

Now, What Would You Do With This Money?

This visualization is not complete without a vision of how the extra money will be spent.

An income of $55,000/year would boil down to $2,115 every two weeks (I’m using my current pay schedule for simplicity’s sake). Adding this income won’t move me up a tax bracket, so I’ll be paying the same tax rate.

We’re in the 25% bracket, but according to my paycheck, I only withhold 22% in tax (Matt must make the rest up on his withholding). 22% of $2,115 is $465, so my “take home pay” will be $1,652 – approximately $307 more than my current take-home pay.

Now, if I add some of that extra money to my 401k I’ll be changing my taxable income, but let’s simplify this and assume all that extra money comes after tax.

• I’ll contribute $130 extra ($225 total) to my emergency fund until I have at least six months of mortgage expenses saved up.
• I’ll contribute $140 extra ($196 total) to my retirement fund
• I’ll contribute $37 to my “fun” fund, to be saved for things like my yearly vacation with my mom.

A Simple Visualization

In addition to the techniques above, I’m imagining myself counting out a pile of 10 $100 bills – $1,000. Then I’m imagining 10 piles just like that.

How about you: what amount of money are you comfortable inviting into your life? How would you get it? What would you do with it?

Post from: Frugal in the Fruitlands

Visualizing $10,000 Extra In Your Life

My goal for next month is to reduce my Internet exposure. I’ve realized that as I increase my blog/social network “face time,” my ability to concentrate on any one idea is decreased. There’s a good reason for this – I am surrounded by inspiring blogs and innovative people, who are always throwing new ideas my way; new ideas I inevitably feel I need to act on. This constantly distracts me, making it hard for me to focus on any one important goal.

Of course, “reduce my Internet exposure,” isn’t very SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, or timely), so here is the more concrete detail

For thirty days, I will:
Use PageAddict to limit the amount of time I browse “play” sites (i.e. LiveJournal, Gmail, Google Reader) to 45 minutes per day, per computer (work and home).

I originally had a much stricter goal here (30 mins per day per computer, plus a detailed outline of do’s and don’ts), but I realized the simpler it is, the more attainable it is. My Internet dependency (addiction?) is deep, and I’ve got to start small.

In preparation for this, I’ve been using PageAddict to classify certain pages as “play,” so that when the time comes I can’t cheat by finding different distractions. Obviously, this system is not perfect, but I am hoping it will at least be a helping hand to keep me in line.

Working on Frugal in the Fruitlands, or on the LARP I’m writing, is acceptable, though I will strive to do more offline.

You can do your part as a reader of this blog by reminding me of my goal. Anybody who emails, IMs, or otherwise communicates a reminder to me (i.e. “it’s 6 o’clock… are you reading blogs?”), will get a personal mention on my blog at the end of October, with a link to some of your best content.

Post from: Frugal in the Fruitlands

It’s 6 o’clock… are you reading blogs?

Determine what your life purpose is, and spend money according to that.

But what happens when you can’t figure out what your life purpose is?

This is the place I’m in. This is why these programs always stump me.

I should probably qualify that as an atheist I don’t believe in a cosmically-ordained life purpose. But I do believe that we gain a lot of direction and meaning from establishing a life purpose based on our personal values and identity. And if I knew what those were, I’d be going there right now.

I feel like I’ve been playing with identity since I was first aware of what it was. Growing up, when identity was as simple as “what do you want to be when you grow up?” I never had a standard answer to give. One day I wanted to be a veterinarian; the next a paleontologist; the next a truck driver – whatever interested me at the time. There was also a sense that I was always acting; trying on different roles to see which suited me.

The problem is, I haven’t made any progress since then. I still don’t know “what I want to be when I grow up,” and the answer changes tremendously based on outside forces. I’m envious of those people who, for example, “have always known” they wanted to be a particular profession.

When I’m asked to answer alternate life design questions like “What would you do if you had all the money in the world?” or “What would you do if you had only a year to live?” I just don’t know. The purpose of these questions is to get at what’s really important to you, but I can’t even begin to prioritize. I have a lot of interests, but do I have a lot of passions?

Sometimes I think the only thing I’m passionate about is doing something that will put my name out there, where people can see it – fame, if you will. But what do I want to be famous for? Since I’ve stuck my thumbs in so many pies without really committing to anything, there’s nothing I’m at which I’m skilled enough to answer even that question.

Writing is one thing I keep coming back to, but I’m not sure it’s the answer. I’m not sure something I so often loathe doing can be considered that. I just seem to have a modicum of talent at it, and it is able to invoke a flow state – not always, but sometimes.

Actually, my life tends to be woefully short on flow states, which is part of the reason this question is so hard to answer.

While I would have loved to made this a series on “how to figure out your life purpose,” this is just not a question I can answer. It’s a question that troubles me daily.

What are your thoughts on this matter?

Post from: Frugal in the Fruitlands

Identity: The Problem Money Can’t Solve

This topic stymied both of us as a blog post, but it did make a fruitful discussion to share with my readers! Before sharing it, I would encourage you to check out his ebook “Understand How to Operate Your Brain Perfectly” – you can get it for free by subscribing to his newsletter, and it’s mentioned at several points in here.

All emphasis is mine, to bring out the juiciest bits :)

Lise: When I originally asked you to write a guest post, I gave you the topic “multiple streams of income on limited energy.” This topic had been sitting on my “things to write” list forever, and it seemed like something you could speak to. But the problem I was having – and, I suspect, which you were having, is what having “limited energy” means. It’s a situation I find myself in often, but I’m not sure I’ve taken the time to better define it.

Does it mean depression (at times in my life, it has)? Does it mean actual, physical energy, as in, I have to sleep a lot (this is also true of me). But I think most often what I actually mean is a lack of motivation, i.e. I can’t bring myself to work on something I ostensibly like.

I’m curious, then, what your first impression of the term “limited energy” is? Do you associate it with any particular activity in your life? Do you associate it with a lack of motivation?

Nick: The term ‘limited energy’ is indeed very personal to you, but from the preamble that you’ve given me, I would conclude that it probably refers to mental and practical resistance to doing things. We all of us have good intentions and desires to do better for ourselves. We can imagine a better future and we can see potential means by which to create the benefits that we want. However, undertaking any new and complex venture is very difficult on a practical level. We end having to solve a great long series of problems, most of which we have not encountered before and some of which require the development of new skills, or getting outside of our individual comfort zones. We end up facing a lot of practical problems and most people end up defeated by those problems and give up, because that is the easier option.

Having to solve all of those problems creates the emotional pains of frustration and annoyance and giving up creates the emotional pain of humiliation and inadequacy. We thus begin to associate pain to carrying out efforts to improve ourselves and our circumstances. After a period of time, we might have forgotten the pain of our previous attempts and so have another go, but if we fail again, which is likely because of all the problems that we have to solve, then we generate more associations of pain. After a while, even to think of bettering ourselves is painful. We now have a great store of mental resistance to overcome if we want to better ourselves.

However, we generally find ourselves discontented with our current circumstances, which continue to generate pain and which gave a motive for attempting to better ourselves before, so we keep imagining a better future and develop a yearning for better results and less pain right now. Your limited energy probably refers to the state of recognizing that you ought to engage in new ventures that create better long term benefits, but that you know it will prove difficult and frustrating, if possible at all. You might just about generate enough willpower to kick start yourself into undertaking a new project, but you know that the willpower won’t last. Unfortunately, you don’t know how to get out of a situation that produces pain now and yet requires a solution that will probably generate additional pain until it works, which, from previous experience, is a dubious possibility. You end up feeling that it is better to make no changes, because that is assuredly the least painful option. You are demotivated and in danger of despairing at the seeming impenetrability and impossibility of it it all. Faced with such a scenario, you will naturally feel lethargic and low in physical energy.

That’s a situation that I faced all too often in the past and I couldn’t find any decent explanations or permanent answers to my underlying problem. To succeed in breaking out of such a situation, I needed to understand what caused my mental resistance, and how to remove it. Following that, I needed to understand what caused my practical resistance, and how to remove it. Anything that you want to do in life, but cannot yet do, is a problem and so, on a fundamental level, a sincere dedication to developing the skill and art of problem solving (making things possible) is the one key skill that you can depend upon to deliver any result in life that you want and that is possible.

Lise: You say “I needed to understand what caused my mental resistance, and how to remove it.” That’s something you talk to about in your ebook, which I’ve found very useful. You would say – correct me if I’m wrong – that that mental resistance, or pain, is caused by the disconnect between your current situation and the ideal situation. You feel pain whenever you feel something is impossible in the moment – not completely impossible, but just not possible now.

Nick: More specifically, you feel some form of emotional pain when you desire something but cannot fulfill it at the moment of desiring it (or very close to that moment). That’s slightly different to how you phrased things above. You don’t feel that something is impossible, it’s actually a practical reality that it is impossible to have that result at that moment.

Lise: The best way to success, you conclude, is to just always be pushing yourself just a tiny bit beyond your current comfort level. Since I met you on the ZenHabits forums, I imagine you’ve used monthly challenges as a tool towards that goal. In my case, I could, for example, set a monthly goal to spend 30 minutes working on a certain source of extra income – like I did in June, when I challenged myself to work on my blog daily. (Which was fairly successful at increasing traffic to my blog, but less successful at making money!)

Nick: I don’t think of it in terms of pushing myself, as that infers that I have to drive myself to overcome resistance. I have a different emphasis. It’s not about overcoming barriers, it’s more about dismantling them, or working around them, or by developing my stride so that I can step over them easily. My approach is to think and act very, very pragmatically. If I have a problem to deal with that is created by a desire, then I work out a method to solve it. Key to that solution is ensuring that it is doable by me, i.e. I have to have the capability and the resources to carry it out. If I don’t, then I won’t succeed – that’s just practical good sense. At times, I recognize that I have to expand my capabilities and that’s an additional problem to solve along the way. I carry out research on existing possibilities and determine whether I am willing to do what it takes to get that capability and then commit to developing it. If I’m not committed to that, then I see if I can, and will, hire or buy that capability, or else see if another way around the problem exists. Sometimes, I do give up on things if it seems beyond me at this time. Again that’s practical good sense, because if I can’t make it possible for me to get done, then effectively it’s impossible for me to do. With that limitation in place, any further effort will be wasted.

The great thing that I have found about this approach is that it detaches me from feeling personally inadequate. It’s so easy to feel inadequate, inept and useless when you continually attempt to overcome resistance and do the personally impossible. By taking a highly pragmatic approach to problem solving, I either make things possible to do (which makes me adequate), or else I accept the limitation and give up (which means that I don’t labor on ventures that I was foolish to start and I don’t have my lack of ability thrown into my face continually to mock any delusions that I have about myself).

Lise: What are some other methods that have worked for you to get past that initial resistance and make forward progress on a large task?

Nick: I rarely use monthly challenges, unless I want to establish a new habit for which I have a lot of resistance (I did a recent blog post on this). Sometimes conditioning is needed to install a new habit as I encounter resistance. Ultimately though, that resistance will remain unless I make the habit both desirable to do and easy to do. That requires some rational analysis and preparation up front. Normally, when we encounter a problem that generates negative emotions, we tend to focus on what we lack and this keeps us locked down and unable to get resourceful. I find that it is vital to focus on the solution and the positive benefits of taking actions that lead to better results.

In terms of making forward progress on a large task, it is important to do thorough analysis of the problem that you are trying to solve. Many people end up focused upon relieving the symptoms of their problems and not upon the underlying root cause. If you don’t know the root cause and come up with a solution to eliminate it, or else manage it highly effectively, then most of your efforts will not work. You might suppress the symptoms but the root cause will manifest itself with other symptoms somewhere else in your life.

Once you identify the proper cause of the problem and specify it clearly, then solutions become apparent more easily. By spending a lot of time coming up with an effective and personally possible solution, you automatically remove a lot of resistance. If you find yourself encountering a lot of resistance when carrying out a large task, then it is because you have not spent sufficient time focusing on how to make it easy, i.e. possible, for you to carry out. Identifying personal barriers to progress and continually breaking them down, so that you personally can move beyond them, is key to making forward progress without resistance.

Lise: Another point you make in your ebook is that in an ideal situation, “you don’t need motivation or psyching up because you work in harmony with yourself.” Sometimes it’s hard for me for tell the difference between resistance because (a) a task just isn’t that interesting to me, and (b) resistance because a task will be hard to begin or the final goal is far from my starting point. Do you have any thoughts on telling the difference between the two?

Nick: Saying that something isn’t interesting can become an excuse not to face up to the real problem, which might be that you lack the capability to get it done, or you fear some of the consequences of getting it done. If you had that capability, then there would be no problem; just an event to go through. My basic standpoint is that if I’m not actively engaged on taking steps to solve my problems, or else taking a healthy break (that I allow myself as a reward for doing good things), or else doing the chores that support further activity on solving my problems, then I am off purpose and I’m procrastinating. That occurs because of resistance somewhere. I would say that (a) and (b) are closely related, i.e. something difficult or momentarily impossible to do has come up. Telling the difference between the two is of less importance than recognizing that both indicate resistance and a need to identify the underlying cause and to come up with doable ways to move forward.

Lise: In my case, my goal is to establish additional streams of income so I can eventually quit my job. One of the ways I’ve considered doing that is by tutoring statistics. But, to be honest, I’m not 100% in my comfort zone tutoring statistics. I’m not a math or statistics major; I’ve only taken a few classes, and most of what I can speak to is how to use stats in psychology or market research. Plus, I’m dyscalculic! Is this just one area where I should cut my losses?

Nick: From what you describe, you will encounter a lot of problems to solve and hence resistance, so it will be a struggle for you. If you are not willing to do whatever it takes to make the venture work, then it won’t work. If you want to create multiple streams of income, then you need to study and know marketing, selling and establishing a business. These are the underlying processes that allow the creation of income. A common idea for ways to make money is to look at personal interests and strengths and then attempt to charge people for what you can do. That’s not a very effective business model. Instead of hoping that a market, or customer, will meet your needs, you need to do the reverse. Find out what serious problems other people have and then create solutions for them. Do this in such a way that paying for your help relieves their pain and, even better, leaves them with more money in their pocket. Also, don’t split your focus on many activities as that generates a great wave of problems to solve and it’s difficult to build momentum with anyone of them. You have a blog about thriftiness and saving money. Focus on that. Find out what pain other people have and come up with solutions that work. Record them, prove them, put them into an e-book and sell that from your blog. If you can come up with 10 tips that each save a minimum of $20 a year guaranteed, and you sell that book for $20, then each customer can make a $180 gain for that year, and for every subsequent year that they apply these things and for which they are still valid. Now that’s an interesting proposition (more exciting to potential customers than studying statistics, don’t you think?).

Lise: One quote really caught my eye in your ebook. You write about working within your comfort zone, saying “we have such confidence in these [routine] processes that … if you could live your entire life from now with a requirement to only ever fulfill desires based upon these skills then you would live a life of full contentment, with no difficult problems.”

The big question I asked here is: why don’t we? I mean, for a moment ignore that it’s difficult in Western society to just do what you want and are comfortable doing. But say I decided that all I wanted to do for the rest of my life was play World of Warcraft. I’m good at WoW. I enjoy it, and rarely get bored. What’s wrong with that? I think both you and I have the sense that something IS wrong with that, but it’s in line with this statement, no?

Nick: Playing WoW is in line with the statement, but it is only practically possible if you have reached a position in life where you can support yourself to indulge in this desire forever afterwards. If any part of the whole system cannot allow this, then you will not sustain such a desire.

Lise: In short, why can’t we just live within the realm of routine skills and strengths?

Nick: We can only live within the realm of routine skills and strengths if they provide us with our basic needs and our chosen desires in a satisfactory manner. If they don’t do that, then we have to build our skills and strengths to reach that level of providence. Actually, most people do live within the realm of routine skills and strengths everyday, but the important distinction is that they are not content with what that provides. Rather than accepting their limitations, they desire more. Since they struggle to meet those desires, they then generate negative emotions for themselves. To live within your current realm of skills and strengths requires you to eliminate any desires that you cannot currently fulfill and to accept the limitations that such a stance would leave you with. If you can accept that, then you’ve got it made, because you don’t seek to deal with anything outside the scope of your current abilities and what they can provide for you. Most people are discontented, because they desire more and the only way that they can deliver those desires is by expanding their capacity to solve the inherent problems that prevent them from having those desires right now.

Lise: It seems to me that overall you’re proposing a system whereby we “work smart” rather than working hard – we apply all our problem-solving skills to moving around the resistance we feel to work, rather than to just trying to push through the pain.

If I might try to apply your examples to a current project I’m working on…

Right now I’m working on writing my first LARP (live action role-playing game). It’s a large task composed of many pieces – designing the world, creating the characters, coming up with the combat and deduction systems that players will use to navigate the world, etc, etc. The game has a drop-dead deadline of March 6, 2009, as we will be running it at a LARP convention that weekend. Additionally, I would like to do a trial run this fall.

As with any multi-part, distant task, I feel resistance. I tell myself that, “It’s all creative work, I can’t *make* myself work on it,” which is only partially true – there’s work of all kinds, creative or just plain mechanical–that needs to be done. Some of the problem-solving I’ve been doing in this regard includes:

• Scheduling a time every week to meet with a friend of mine whose presence always inspires me to go home and work on the game.
• Doing a monthly challenge to work on the LARP a little bit each day.
• Reading books to keep me inspired (the LARP takes place in a Victorian setting, so I’ll read Victorian literature as an inspiration–I’m rereading Dracula right now)

Obviously only I can say what actions will increase the likeliness that I can move past those feelings of resistance, but are there are any other methods from your system that you would recommend? Maybe you can give an example of how you’ve used your own methods to make progress on a recent project?

Nick: My project, since Feb of this year, has been to write the book that I’m leading up to launching soon…

Because this is a creative / judgmental issue I meet a lot of resistance in the form of indecision. The voice in my head is saying, “I don’t know how to do this / make it better. How can I be sure of what’s good or bad, right or wrong?” The answer, of course, is that no one can really say for sure, but that doesn’t lead me to solving the problem. In this situation I tell myself to speculate. I say, “What might be good here?” or “What could prove better / more suitable here?” This speculation over possibilities rather than an out and out desire to be right encourages me to look at lots of alternatives. This in itself is a creative act. When I have several options, then a good one often shines forth and if many shine forth, then I just conclude that probably anyone of them will do, so there’s no need to labor over a decision. Take action and make progress and perfection be damned.

As for resistance, I eliminate wherever possible by giving up on the desire if it’s not important. If it is important then I seek a way to remove the barrier, go around it, over it, under it, or whatever it takes to get beyond it and make progress again. The important thing is recognize the barrier, accept its presence, accept that running into it with brute force is not going to dislodge it and use crafty intelligence to move beyond it somehow. Acceptance is a very vital part of that process. It overcomes disappointment, or outright denial, and it puts us into practical mode rather than emotional mode.

Consistency in progressing is very important and it’s best done in small doses. Anthony Trollope was one of the most prolific writers of the Victorian age and yet he wrote for just two hours everyday, day in and day out. He was criticized for making art routine and for not waiting for the muse to hit him, but the productive output speaks for itself (I’ve never read his books, so I can’t comment on the artistry).

Thank you, Nick, for your time and thoughts! As he mentioned above, he has another book coming out soon, and by joining his newsletter you can stay up to date on that project.

Post from: Frugal in the Fruitlands

Interview with Nick Pagan on Establishing Alternative Income With Limited Energy

Without further ado, my goals at age 16:

1. Hike the Appalachian Trail
   
2. Learn how to sail and crew around the world
3. Visit Morocco
4. Learn Spanish, German, Italian, Arabic, Irish Gaelic, Japanese, Hindi, Chinese, and Portuguese.
   
5. Learn the ancient languages Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Persian, etc.
6. Become a woods guide.
   
7. Visit Alaska
8. Learn how to ride and own horses
9. Learn to fence
10. Learn to play the piano and violin
11. Visit India and study in an ashram
12. Have a collection of medieval weapons
13. Finish and publish A Dangerous Age (the novel I was writing at the time)
14. Write songs for a band
15. Play flute in an orchestra
16. Work for TSR and/or White Wolf (heh, I’m showing my age there)
17. Meet Anne Rice (wtf?????)
18. Write and/or direct a film
19. Act in a film
20. Learn how to windsurf (better than J.C.) (J.C. == Boy With Whom I Was Obsessed At the Time)
21. Learn to ski
22. Meet Terry Goodkind
23. (There is no goal number 23. I would venture it should be “learn to count”)
24. Join the Peace Corps
25. Start an Interact/Rotaract club in Plattsburgh
26. Live in Montreal
27. Get accepted to the University of Pennsylvania
28. Be in a Highlander movie (or episode of the TV series) (Alas, I think this one must go terminally unfulfilled)
29. Return to France and teach English
30. Join the organization that organises all those work-study programs (name forgotten) and spend some more time abroad
31. Get my black belt in taekwondo (this, in part with no. 9, 19, 12, and 8, should, I hope, lead to no. 28)

I’m not sure what to think, staring at this list. They can be fit into a few different categories. For one, there are the goals that obviously can no longer be accomplished, like getting accepted to UPenn (I’ve already got my undergrad degree from Vassar, and the tone seemed to imply undergraduate), being in a Highlander episode (sad, that), or working for TSR (I suppose Hasbro/WotC might count).

Then there are the completely silly goals. Nowadays, for example, my goal is to avoid meeting Anne Rice, pursuant to the revelation that she is batshit crazy. She might find I’m interrogating the text from the wrong perspective. Meeting Terry Goodkind doesn’t seem so awesome now – for one, I just got rid of my collection of his books; secondly, I can go to a convention somewhere and meet just about any author I want these days. Dude, Tim Powers drew an upside-down dog on my copy of Expiration Date at WorldCon in LA a few years ago. From that point of view my life is complete. On a similar note, goals like starting a Rotaract club in my hometown are completely meaningless to me these days.
Then there are the goals I have to be realistic about never accomplishing. I’m really, really terrible at music, for example, so I’m not sure why I ever had goals that had to do with it. Especially playing a flute in an orchestra. My parents and teachers let me struggle along playing the flute for five years or more, and never once did someone say to me, “Hey, uh, your lips are kind of the wrong shape for this.” Also, I have no sense of tone. Or rhythm. Small problems. In a similar vein, I have a lot of woodsy goals on here, but after spending a summer working in the Adirondacks, I discovered I really don’t like the out of doors that much. I wouldn’t completely rule out “Hike the Appalachian Trail,” but I know now the process would make me absolutely miserable.

There are still goals here that mean something to me. I still love languages, and I still would love to be dropped down in a country for three months, not have to worry about money, and learn to speak a new language. I’d take off the Gaelic and maybe add Russian, or Finnish, though. I’d still like to learn how to fence, or to ride horseback. Visiting Alaska is still on my list, and it’s imminently doable. Matt and I couldn’t figure out why Morocco was on the list, but hey, I’ll take it.

Post from: Frugal in the Fruitlands

30 Goals at age 16

I have a shameful confession to make. It’s April 21st, and I’ve only exercised 15 out of 20 of the days this month. Last week was especially bad, because I’d been feeling sick and run-down. This all culminated on Thursday on what I think was a migraine. Oy… what a perfect month to devote to health, hm?

But, as promised, some fabulous frugal fitness links. (Yeah, I totally said that just for the alliteration).

RealAge.com. The “real age” quiz – which is quite comprehensive – is the namesake of the site, but the site is much more than that. Basically, it’s the web hub for Doctors Roizen and Oz, the doctors behind the YOU series of books (You: On a Diet; You: Staying Young, etc), which I consider to be the most sensible diet and fitness books out there. I’d especially recommend the Workout Center, where you can view videos of different workouts from their books (some with basic gym equipment, some without). This is good for uncoordinated people like me who spend entirely too much time frowning over text descriptions of exercises. Note: if you opt to view one of the workouts; it will take you to a log-in page, but you can skip signing up for the website if it bothers you – just click on the links to the left to get where you want to go.

I mentioned Cool Running’s Couch to 5K running program before, and I’d like to mention it again. To quote the article in question, “The idea is to transform you from couch potato to runner, getting you running three miles (or 5K) on a regular basis in just two months.” The authors admit it is more of a “walking-and-jogging” program, as you build up your endurance, than it is training for any kind of foot race. In my continuing effort to Bike Up The Big Ass Hill, I may be starting this myself next month. The only equipment you need here is a good pair of running shoes.

Some geeks prefer the Lifetime Fitness Ladder of the Hacker’s Diet as a way to improve their fitness. Each rung on the ladder is composed of a series of basic calisthenics – for example, bend, sit-up, leg lift – which you may remember them from gym class. As you climb the ladder, you simply do more of each. The benefit of this program is that it’s short (10-15 minutes each) and that you can easily track your progress as you ascend the ladder. Like the YOU workouts, there’s no equipment needed, but keep in mind – no doctors were involved in authoring this program (though it is based on the Royal Canadian Air Force’s “5BX” program).

Spending 40 hours a week at work, it’s hard to find time to exercise. I make sure to take a 30-minute walk over my lunch, but I also value the simple exercises mentioned in Exercise on the Job. I’m not sure I’d necessarily crunch abs in my office chair, but I have done some of the wall work while in the bathroom, or leg work under my desk.

Post from: Frugal in the Fruitlands

Four Frugal Fitness Resources

Delayed, but good: Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, writes about The Real Recession Problem: Consumers Are At the End of Their Ropes (h/t to Brian). We’re finally reaping the whirlwind of widening inequality and ever more concentrated wealth, he writes, acknowledging that there is more to this financial situation than just “HOMG yuppies bought bigger houses than they could afford!” This makes him rare among American finance writers I’ve encountered, who seem to ignore the social inequalities in how sub-prime mortgages were sold to minority and immigrant families by shady lenders. (The BBC’s The U.S. Subprime Crisis in Graphics in another good resource).

On a lighter note, I’ve discovered the new-ish Retirement: A Full-Time Job blog. I, too, aspire to be a “young retired bitch.”

Leo writes about The Magical Power of Focus and reminds me that- ooh, shiny!

Post from: Frugal in the Fruitlands

Link Love: Recessed But Not Depressed edition

“My only criticism of ZTD is your emphasis on recording progress, and what I would call over routinization. I completely agree that routines such as getting up early, going on a run, getting hard work done first, make a lot of sense. What I don’t agree with is making a routine out of the whole day almost, I don’t want to be a robot.”

It is worth mentioning that this commentator is in his teens. I suspect that at that age, I may have felt the same way. As the level of responsibility in my life has increased, I’ve gained the wisdom that you can’t always depend on passion and spontaneity to meet all those demands.

I’m a fan of FlyLady, and FlyLady herself is a devotee of routines. She coined the phrase “routines are not straitjackets,” and that is pretty much my sentiment on the matter. There are a couple of ways to interpret this phrase, all equally valid:

1. Routines aren’t things you have to do; they’re things you do to nourish your own well-being. You’re not meant to wake up and say, “Ho-hum, I have to make the bed again.” Ideally, you’re not even supposed to think about it. It’s supposed to be something you do automatically so that when you come back to it later, you think, “Wow, the bed’s made! Isn’t that awesome? Now I have a clean and comfortable place to rest.”

One of my favorite parts of the FlyLady regimen is the evening routine. The basic routine involves picking out your clothes for tomorrow, shining your sink, and cleaning up “hot spots” – those places where clutter tends to gather. Why do you pick out your clothes for tomorrow? So that you don’t waste time hunting for them in the morning. Why do you shine your sink? So that you wake up to find the heart of the kitchen cleaned. Why do you put out the hot spots? So that clutter doesn’t build up to the point where it would take a monumental effort to take care of it. All of these activities are a short-time investment of time for a long-term investment of peace in the home.

2. Routines, like rules, are meant to be broken. Ultimately you need to realize that you are your own master, not any arbitrary set of rules. The rules are simply tools that you use to keep yourself on track. If you see yourself as the master of the rules, there’s no guilt in breaking them. That said, we are most tempted to break with routine when something “out of the ordinary” occurs. It helps to realize that almost everyday is out of the ordinary in some way, and that routines are the very thing that helps us to order those kinds of days.

3. Routines provide tangible progress towards a goal. Last month, I set the goal to study for the GRE for 30 minutes a day. I used the ZenHabits July challenge to keep me on track. Therefore I know that I met this goal 14 out of 31 days last month. My bookmark in my review book adds another tangible measure of success. I know I am now better prepared for the GRE. How better prepared? At least 7 hours more prepared, in fact.

I still have a lot to learn about making friends with routines. I know the sense of peace they can engender; but I, too, often have a hard time escaping the perception of authority that they imply.

Post from: Frugal in the Fruitlands

Three reasons why routines are not straitjackets

… at least for two weeks.

The first thing to understand about my tragicomic relationship with caffeine is that I appear to be hypersensitive to it. Only two cups or so has the power to send me on jittery, edgy – and yet delightfully hypomanic – trip. The further problem is that I am by nature an anxious person. Stress alone can keep me awake; but caffeine sends my body into an adrenaline spiral that remains even after the caffeine itself has filtered off.

I’ve known this for a long time about myself, but lately I’ve chosen to ignore it, because I do so like that edge between hypomania and dysfunction. This is not a unique phenomenon – caffeine is glorified in geek culture for exactly this reason. Maybe some geeks have a better tolerance for caffeine that I do, but not surprisingly, as I’ve been drinking more of it, I’ve had more problems sleeping. Because I have problems sleeping, and I’m tired in the morning, I drink more of it.

Now it’s time to put this cycle to rest.

Two strategies I plan to use:

1. Enlist help. I’ve enlisted BardWench to join me in this caffeine detox – actually, it started out as her idea. The ‘feen doesn’t have quite the hold on her that it does on me, but I look forward to checking in with a kind friend every morning, nonetheless.

2. Start a new morning habit. My morning habit used to involve coming into work, starting up my computer, and getting a cup of coffee. Now I’m going to start my day with a cup of herbal tea instead.

And two inspirational links:

1. Dear Caffeine, We Need to Talk @ Modern Worker.

2. Stop Being a Slave to Starbucks: How to Quit Caffeine @ Wise Bread.

So far I’m on day three, and I’m doing very well – I’m sleeping better and I don’t feel deprived. The only problem is that a humongo box of tea just arrived from a tea swap – ho noez! I’ve decided that I’m allowed to pick out caffeinated teas, but I’m not going to drink them until my two weeks is up.

Post from: Frugal in the Fruitlands

I don’t like the ‘feen but the ‘feen likes me.