6 Predictions for my life in 2014

It's still New Year's Eve as I write this. It's almost 10pm and I'm sitting in bed with the laptop. I don't even have a drink with me. All my friends are doing their own thing this evening, so it's just me and my wife. One of my friends was going to come over for some drinks, but he hasn't shown up or texted to let me know what's going on.

So I'm sitting in bed writing to you instead.

Both my wife and I are introverts and proud of it, so if either of us have a choice, then we prefer the quiet, peaceful, calm choice.



While it's great to spend time with friends, if there's no friends to spend time with then we find it's also great to just spend time by ourselves; either doing something together, or doing our own things independently, or doing our own things together. Like right now.

It's New Year's Eve and she's watching Chinese TV shows over the internet on her laptop. And I'm writing to you.

I've already written my obligatory new year's eve post, Goodbye 2013, hello 2014, but I wanted to write something else. I wanted to write about my predictions for this coming year for me, which I intend to review at the end of 2014.

I believe that our life's experiences are based on our thoughts leading to actions, leading to outcomes. So I also believe that if we spend time with our thoughts, working out what we want to act upon, then we can dictate outcomes with a better degree of accuracy than if we act without thinking.

So I want to make 2014 a more thoughtful, determined year, and I'm starting now by putting into motion the thoughts that will lead to actions, which I plan on leading to outcomes.

My wife thinks these are my New Year's Resolutions. Maybe she's right. But I still prefer to treat them as predictions of my desired outcomes for 2014.

These are the outcomes that I predict I will achieve by the end of 2014:

Outcome 1: I'll be earning a minimum of $500 a week from paid online writing.

I say 'minimum' because I don't want to limit my prediction. The sky's the limit!



I've already started earning a bit of money from content writing for website developers, helping them create website content for their clients. I have one company I've started working with here in Canberra (a few weeks ago), and I started talking to another company today, based in Sydney. They're both seeking to provide websites for clients, and they need someone who's good at writing content to flesh out website pages for those clients. That's where I come in.

My thinking is that as long as I continue doing what I've started, and seeking more and more opportunities to build upon what I'm doing, that I'll see this prediction come true.

Outcome 2: I will have 3 eBooks available for people to purchase.

To have 3 eBooks available in 12 months, I'll aim for 1 eBook per every 4 months.

What will they be about? I expect they'll be related to the theme of this blog - my journey in life.

Outcome 3: I will have a baby [boy? girl?] and my family life will begin.

One of the things I don't want to do is have children as a result of an accidental pregnancy. Now that we're married, my wife and I are planning to have our first child in the next 12 months. We think twins would be a great outcome, but we plan on having no more than two children, with at most a 2 year break between them.



Outcome 4: I will have travelled to New Zealand for our honeymoon, as well as to China for a holiday.

Due to 2013 being a particularly tough year, we haven't been able to afford a honeymoon. So we're looking forward to being able to go to New Zealand for our honeymoon in 2014.

I used to live there for a period, from 2000 to 2007. It's the most beautiful country on Earth, and I want to take my wife to see it and appreciate its beauty as much as I do. She loves Lord of the Rings as well as The Hobbit, so she already has her own motivations for seeing the country.



Her parents are in China, and we both want to go there not just to see them, but to see more of the country. She wants to show me around her home, and I want to see more of one of the most fascinating countries in the world. We'll go to Hong Kong and Guangzhou.

Outcome 5: I will have written a minimum of 200,000 words for the year.

With my intention to write at least 500 words a day, that's at least 182,500 words over 365 days. With some extra words from those 1000 word posts I'll still continue to do (this one is at 810 words right now), as well as the eBooks I'll be writing, I think 200,000 words is quite a reasonable outcome over a 12 month period.

With an average book being over 40,000 words, it means I'll have written enough for 5 books...

Outcome 6: I will have a plan for how I can travel around the world, with a family, while earning money from the internet, while disabled.

That's my ultimate goal right now: to travel the world, despite my disability, while being able to afford such a life with money earned from internet businesses, and having a wife and children along for the ride.

Others do it, so I'm sure I can too.



Remember, this outcome is simply to have a plan in place. For me, that requires a lot of research into how I can make it happen, and then writing it out in a way that I can make it happen for me, while making sure that all requirements are also in place to make it happen.

Once that's done, I think 2015 will be a very interesting year indeed.

What about you? What are your predictions - or resolutions - for your life in 2014?

As a final note

I like to believe that what we do on New Year's Eve sets the tone for what we do in the following year.

Tonight I've written over 1000 words with this post so far, and I've finished at 11:45pm. I strongly feel that this has set a wonderfully positive foundation for what I'll be doing over the next 12 months.

My darling wife has to work tomorrow, so she's already gone to sleep.


This isn't us, but it's almost exactly like this exact moment. :)Remember what I said above about peace and quiet? That's right - sleeping on New Year's Eve is much better for us than going out partying and experiencing loud noises and loud people!

I'm going to have a shower and join her. We'll sleep blissfully into the new year.

All the best to you and your loved ones for 2014. I wish you all the very best.

Goodbye 2013, hello 2014!

Thank the Gods this year is ending! It's been one of the worst years of my life (due to bankruptcy and a ridiculous political climate making it difficult for me to find a job), and yet one of the best years of my life, what with getting married and all.

Here's to a much better year in 2014 for all of us. I hope that you can find ways of making your own dreams come true this coming year.

Happy new year to you, from over here in Australia!

6 Reasons why you should quit Facebook too

Almost a week ago I decided to remove myself from Facebook (I'm taking a sabbatical from Facebook) so that I could have more time to do things that were more important to me, other than waste it on Facebook.



I've enjoyed reading more about how to write better, and exploring Ghost coding, and Linux usage, and spending more time with my wife.

I've also talked about it with a couple friends, and they admitted they're thinking about quitting Facebook too. So I thought it might be a good idea to talk about a few reasons why YOU should quit Facebook (if you haven't already!). Maybe you can relate to one or more of these, and you'll be inspired to take the leap too.

1. You'll have more TIME to focus on things that are important to you.

This was primarily the reason I moved on from it, to give myself more time. Facebook is a time-sink - you put time into it and you get very little or nothing back.

If it's not part of the solution, then it must be part of the problem.

To explain that quote in context, if you think of your various goals in life, then 'the solution' is whatever helps you come closer to achieving those goals. If something is not part of the solution, then it may be part of the problem.

Some of your goals might be to:

• have better relationships


• learn a new language


• travel overseas


• learn a new skill


• change careers


• save for a house


• find someone to love


• write a book

There are countless goals that we could have in life, and all of us have more than enough goals to occupy our time.



But we have less time to do that if we're distracted by inane bullshit that has no meaning to us, and doesn't help us achieve our goals in life.

It's all well and good to relax occasionally, but when a 'relaxing activity' takes you away from doing the things that you know would be of more value to you, then it becomes a problem. That's when you have to start taking drastic steps to change things around and get that time back.

Quitting Facebook is like quitting an addiction. You can do it, I know you can!

2. Your emotional wellbeing will no longer be determined by how popular (or not) your status updates are.

A lot of people on Facebook end up angry, frustrated or depressed when their updates or shared content is being ignored. They might think something is really important or worthwhile, but no one likes it or cares about it. Meanwhile, your buddy who posts cat photos gets a thousand likes and 370 people commenting about it.



Comparing yourself to others based on their popularity on Facebook leads to 'the dark side'. Breaking away from this behaviour will be better for your health.

3. You won't have Facebook notifications to distract you from other important activities.

When you're out at brunch or dinner with friends, your phone buzzes from a new notification. You've been trained to check it, so you interrupt your conversation with them to see who's honouring you with a like or comment.

Meanwhile your friends look at you annoyed as they wait for you to return to the conversation.

Or you're in a cinema and you do a status update on Facebook about how you're about to watch a movie. Half an hour into it, you try to discreetly see if anyone's commented on your update. If they have, you engage in a brief conversation for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, you've missed an important scene or plot explanation, and a bunch of people around you are annoyed at you because of the light from your phone...



Quitting Facebook will help you stay connected with your friends, enjoying the moment. And it'll help you avoid the wrath of strangers!

4. You'll get your privacy back.

Facebook encourages you to share your life with friends and family. But it's not just your friends and family that are getting everything you share.

If you're not paying for it, then YOU are the product.

Someone - a lot of someones - are paying Facebook for the information you're providing.

Mostly companies that can make money from knowing what you're talking about or interested in, so they can direct relevant advertising at you within the walls of Facebook or elsewhere on the internet.

But there's also government agencies that love to gather all the information about what you're doing, who you're doing it with, and where you're doing it.



All this that you're providing them for free. They're very thankful!

And then, of course, there's your boss, who will quite happily use your 'I hate my boss' status updates against you if you should happen to make them public. Or, heaven forbid, you've got your boss as a friend... (What the hell were you thinking?)

By quitting Facebook you'll get your privacy back. There's less of your personal life for companies to buy from Facebook, so they can sell you stuff you don't actually want.

5. You'll have less online arguments.

Someone's left a nasty update about someone or something you care about. So you decide to leave your own nasty comment in return, or you try to correct their ignorance. The next thing you know, it's midnight and you're still in a nasty discussion about something of no importance with someone you don't even care about.



And your wife has gone to bed angry, giving you the cold shoulder when you finally get there. You blame Facebook, she just blames you.

Quitting Facebook can help save your important relationships by giving you less distraction.

6. Rediscover the real connections you have with people in your life.

One of the things that being on Facebook does is disconnect you from real life people. They remain as friends in Facebook, there's often little incentive to connect with them in real life.

By quitting Facebook you can rediscover connections with people that you haven't hung out with for months or years.

Instead of just sharing an update with them on Facebook, you arrange to meet them for coffee, or dinner, or a movie.



Quitting Facebook can help you reconnect with people that are important to you. You can talk around a dinner table and share more intimate discussions than you can ever do online.

Quitting Facebook helps you get your life back, mixing with people who are real, rather than pixels on a screen.

Join me. Quit Facebook and rediscover your life.

Problems are opportunities for growth

I fixed it!

'Fixed what?' I hear you ask. Yesterday I wrote a post called "Your post was not shared. Please try again." In it, I was discussing how the Google+ sharing feature was no longer working, and I'd spent all day trying to fix it.

I spent another 6-7 hours on it today, with the end result being a successful outcome.



But I had to start again and rebuild the entire blog from the beginning because in the process of troubleshooting the problem, I broke the blog.

But that's ok. I had saved the database and the images, so I was able to easily rebuild it all on a new VPS (virtual private server) and reinstate the database and images.

Before making it live, I took the opportunity to slowly integrate the changes I'd previously made, and tested every single change before moving on to the next change. I finally found the culprit.

It turned out that I had previously deleted some css 'class' codes in the footer when I had replaced it with something of my own, and that was what broke it, by removing a relevant class code.

Don't worry if you don't understand, I'm still trying to get my head around it all as well.

Once I'd got it working properly again, I redirected the DNS settings to the new VPS and everything has continued on as normal. I think I had an outage from breaking it for maybe a couple hours, so it wasn't too bad.

I love this kind of thing. It's certainly helped improve my knowledge and understanding of the code structure of the Ghost blogging platform and the Ghostium theme, that's for sure.

Problems are opportunities for growth

Every problem we have in life is an opportunity for growth. Taking the time to understand the problem and how it came about can help us minimise or eliminate similar problems occurring again in the future.



This is relevant for anything - whether it's trying to resolve a problem with your website, or with your financial situation, or with your relationship. As long as we're alive we're always going to have problems cropping up here and there.

What's important is that you take the time to understand why the problem is occurring, and then understand how you can resolve it.

Trying to ignore a problem or running away from it is useless, because you'll learn nothing and the problems will keep coming back - particularly if you haven't learned why they occur in the first place.

Once you learn how to resolve a problem - whatever it might be - you then have to keep trying to resolve the problem until you succeed.

And you WILL succeed, even if it takes a while. The only way you can fail is if you stop.

You might have to learn new skills along the way, or do new things that you've never done before, and gain a confidence you've never had. But the more you try, the better you'll become.

It can be quite exciting when you realise you're confident you can fix problems you have in your life.

"Your post was not shared. Please try again."

I've found that there's a problem somewhere in the backend of my blog that prevents blog posts from being shared on Google+. When I try to share to G+ I get the following result:



 

You can see the message: "Your post was not shared. Please try again."

I've been trying for days!!

Today I tried to fix it, but I haven't been successful.

First, I tried to find if it's a known error and what a solution might be. Turns out that it's a common error but no one knows what the problem is. Google Help staff have no idea, and there's a lot of people who are stuck with this problem with no known solution.

So then I spent most of today doing a lot of troubleshooting with my blog and various themes.

I found out that I only had this problem with the theme that I'm currently using (Ghostium), but the theme doesn't have the same problem on the provider's website. I can share there perfectly fine.

I also know that I've been able to share perfectly fine up until recently, so it's likely to be a change I made somewhere that's causing this problem.

In fact, thinking about it now as I'm writing, it probably started happening after I got rid of Facebook and focused on Google+ integration instead.

I'm going to try something... I'll be right back.

---

Well, that didn't work. I just spent another hour troubleshooting the Google+ code that shares the posts, but it didn't work. But I think I'm on the right track though. There's a conflict occurring somewhere with Google+ coding.

I'll keep trying tomorrow. It's bedtime now....

By the way. This post is less than my daily 500 word minimum, but I don't care. This problem I'm trying to fix has taken up all my mental processing ability, so I haven't had any available headspace to write about anything else.

We'll see how tomorrow turns out...

---

Update: 29 Dec 2013

Part 2 of this issue continues in Problems are opportunities for growth

Improving my life with Google+

After disconnecting from Facebook the other day, I redesigned this blog's sidebar to the left so that Facebook Likes are no longer an option. Since I'm not active there, there's no point promoting it...

Instead, I enhanced my Google+ badge, but pointing it to my personal profile on G+ instead of my page. I decided that I'll be integrating this blog as myself on G+, rather than as a separate page.

This is all about me, personal, raw... and I'm going to keep it that way.

I also spent some time today going through the past month's activity on my stream and catching up on everyone that's active, and unfollowing those who aren't sharing anything of value to me any more.

We all change as we go through our life experiences, and what's of value to us one day will become of no value at all another day, months or years down the track. Who we are changes over time.

As Doctor Who said to me last night, in the 2013 Christmas Special:

"...times change, and so must I… We all change. When you think about it, we are all different people, all through our lives and that’s okay, that’s good! You've gotta keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be."

I remember who I used to be, back when some of the people I was following on G+ were of interest to me. But I'm different now, and what I'm interested in reading now is different too.

So some people got dropped, others remained. Interestingly, one of those I unfollowed had over 2 million followers. It made me pause - if they had so many followers, surely they had so much of value? But I took another look through their personal stream and thought, 'Nope. Not at all.' And happily unfollowed them.

My stream of updates that I'm seeing is now a lot tidier to me, and a lot more focused on the things that actually interest me.

It's good to be who I am today.

We all change

My journey in life is also about my changes in life. As I have new experiences, they change me. Every day, in every way, I change, bit by bit.

I endeavour to make sure those changes are positive and worthwhile.

As I say to my wife when she complains about something she wants me to change - will it improve me, or my life, or our relationship? If it doesn't fit into those parameters, then I don't see any need for me to make a change that she wants. We'll talk about it, and work through why such a change is important to her, but I'm not going to change who I am just on a whim, even if it's my wife's whim.

If something is not improving me, my life or my relationship with my wife, then I'm not likely to see the value of maintaining it or adopting it into my life.

And the same for social media.

It's why I left Facebook. It wasn't making me a better person, and it wasn't making my life better, and it wasn't improving my relationship. So why bother with it?

If something is not helping you, then it's probably hindering you.

Better to remove it from your life to make room for other things that can be more helpful for you.

My interaction with Google+ is helping me improve my life, because it's giving me a greater audience to provide me with feedback and insight about things that are important to me.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell.

As someone that wants to improve my writing and my potential audience, Google+ is far better for me than Facebook.

After I quit Facebook, someone asked me, "How does g+ differ from Facebook in the essential time sapping though?" I replied with:

not much, but 1) there's more quality content on here than on Facebook, and 2) if there's 3 timewasters in your life, reducing one of them at least gives you back a third more time :)

Since then, I've worked out that removing Facebook as a time waster has allowed me to focus on G+ as a means of improving my life, in ways that Facebook never can.

I'm happy with that.

I'm taking a sabbatical from Facebook

What does Facebook do for you? I think this is the same for everyone that uses Facebook - it takes away your time and exchanges it with stuff that has no ultimate value to your life.



That time could be better spent on something far more meaningful to you.

A few possibilities come to mind...

• Having more time with your family, helping them appreciate good memories of quality time you spend with them, instead of the (non-quality) time you spend with Facebook.


• Having more time to focus on that career-changing skill that could change your life, if only your time wasn't being sucked up by Facebook.


• Having more time to focus on writing that book you've been promising, if only you weren't being distracted by Facebook.


• Having more time to focus on that hobby that brings you so much enjoyment in life, if only Facebook wasn't taking you away from it all the time.


• Having more time to socialise in person with your friends, instead of socialising online via Facebook.

Whatever your situation is, Facebook is a time-sink with no value being added to your life in exchange for your time.

What you do is always up to you, but I've decided that I'm going to change this for myself. I'm going to stop using Facebook for a while. I'm going to 'unplug' from it.

I'll disable notifications and chat so I'll not get notified by likes or comments - which I'm unlikely to anyway, since I won't be adding anything or liking/commenting on anything myself.

By not receiving notifications, I won't be reminded of its existence, and that will help me stay away from it.

Those people in my friends list will have to email, phone or text me if they want to talk with me. Communication will be more intimate, without being shared to everyone or to the world.

If no one ever contacts me, I'll end up being like a hermit or something, alone in the woods.



But at least I'll have more time to write and read and spend quality time with my wife and real life friends, without being distracted by what's going on in Facebook.

I'm looking forward to this already!

---

If you're on Facebook and want to contact me, you can always email me. I'm good at responding to that. If you want to phone me, you should already have my phone number, otherwise you're not getting it. Email will be fine.

---

What about you? Have you taken a Facebook sabbatical? Did you ever go back to it? Or maybe you're considering it? Please let me know your story in a comment below.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

It's Christmas Eve, and I'm about to go to bed and wait for Santa Claus to come, but I'm not sure if he'll make it to my place. Here's a letter I wrote to him the other day.



So yeh, I've bought my own shit, just in case. It's been one of those years.

But I hope your 2013 has been a good one, and that you're having a great Christmas with people you love, and who love you. I just hope that it's warm, loving, relaxing and enjoyable. You deserve it.

Thank you to all those of you who have continued coming back to read more of what I have to say. It's been a journey, and I've appreciated you joining me on it. I hope some of it has been of value to you!

My Facebook Experiment

I recently learned that Facebook has started to penalise Pages by only showing new updates to less than 20% (figures gathered according to my own research) of those who have actually Liked the page, who expect to be able to see what's being shared on that Page. Nuh-uh. Facebook doesn't want 80% of your 'fans' actually seeing anything.



But there's two ways you can get around it.

1. Pay Facebook money to increase the exposure of your post, or 'boost' it, as it's called. When you do this, it's shown to all those who Like your page, as well as thousands of other people who see it show up randomly in their stream. (If you've seen random shit from people or pages that you're not actually following, this is why - you've been randomly chosen in the 'boost' target audience parameters).


2. Share content that people actually care to Like, share with others, or comment on. As people are engaged in those ways, Facebook will increase its exposure to more of those who Liked your page. If the engagement is small, then the increase is small as well. But if the engagement is large enough (eg. you have lots of people engaged in discussion about your post), then the increase in exposure is also larger, until you can eventually reach 100% of those who Liked your page.

In my experiment, a post with zero comments seemed to average about 19% of the page's followers (those who have Liked it). When I got 4 comments a post, that seemed to increase to just less than 50% exposure. But when I got about 12 comments on a post and a number of likes, then exposure was at 100%.

So the experiment showed me that you don't actually have to pay to 'boost' your posts so all your followers can see it (unless you want to actually promote it to thousands of others, depending on how much you pay to 'boost' it), but you DO have to share content that encourages your followers to talk about it or be engaged with it in some way.

So for those pages that have boring or shitty content that no one is interested in, only 20% of their followers will get to see it. If they find it interesting and engage with it, then more followers will see it.

So I've come to the conclusion that I think that Facebook's attempts to encourage the sharing of quality content is a good thing.

I was originally against it, believing that Facebook were a bunch of greedy assholes, forcing page owners to pay money to them so that their content could be shared to those that wanted to see it anyway.

But after my experiment and the results I've found, I'm ok with it.

If I want more of my followers to see my content, I just have to do my best to make it interesting enough that they'll get engaged with it. Ask questions, etc.

It's been a good learning experience for me. Instead of just accepting and believing the complaints of others, which is what originally alerted me to this, I did my own experiments and learned a bit more about how Facebook works and also about how I can make it work better for me.

What about you? Have you had any experiences of your own that turned you off Facebook or helped you learn how to better use it?

Adding Google+ to Ghost

I wanted to integrate a Google+ button into the sidebar of this blog, and I thought it would be a nice idea for those who are interested to describe the process of integrating it (eg. other Ghost platform bloggers that might stumble upon this blog).

Now, I use the Ghostium theme for my blog and I love it and think it's worth promoting, so I'll be focusing this post on how to integrate Google+ into that theme (but don't worry, I address the base Casper theme near the bottom of this post). Ghostium is a theme based on Medium.com - you can find out more and get it from here: Ghostium Theme.

Note: right-click on any image and open in new tab if you want to see a larger version of it.

Setting up the Google+ badge

To start with, I went to Google's web page that allows you to play around with badges: https://developers.google.com/+/web/badge/



I did a bit of playing around with the options there, as well as coding it into my site, and then playing around some more until I got it right.

But once you've got your Google+ badge set up the way you want it (you'll probably change it yourself, as you go through this proces), copy the code from the bottom right box below your badge. In my case I chose to go with the non-Asynchronous code because I liked keeping the code base simple. I tested both Asynchronous and non-Asynchronous and there was no difference in the display.

There's two sections to the code.

Section 1

<!-- Place this tag in your head or just before your close body tag. --><script type="text/javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/platform.js"></script>

Section 2

<!-- Place this tag where you want the widget to render. --><div class="g-page" data-width="200" data-href="//plus.google.com/109031301407549473271" data-theme="dark" data-showtagline="false" data-showcoverphoto="false" data-rel="publisher"></div>

So now that you've got the code for your badge, you need to log into your unix/linux server via Terminal and navigate to where you've placed your theme.

cd /var/www/ghost/content/themes/ghostium/

Once you're there, you'll have a number of items within that directory. You'll want to do this:

nano default.hbs

This will open up the 'default.hbs' page in an editor. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you'll see you need to insert the 'Section 1' code from above in this way:



Save and exit from that, and then go to the following location:

/var/www/ghost/content/themes/ghostium/partials/custom

From this directory you want to edit the page that controls the pop-out sidebar:

nano navigation.hbs

You'll have to make sure you play nicely with integrating it into the vertical location that's best for you, to fit in nicely with whatever other menu options you might have.

Exit and save, and that's it. The last thing you need to do is this:

sudo service ghost restart

The end result is a working Google+ badge on your Ghost blog, which you'll see when you refresh your blog after the Ghost service has been restarted.



The Casper theme

As promised, I'll now address integrating it into the Casper theme as well.

First, you should change the appearance of your badge on the Google+ badge page so that it looks better with the Casper theme, which is very basic.

For the 'section 1' of the code, place it in the default.hbs file, just before your /head tag:

/var/www/ghost/content/themes/casper/default.hbs

For the 'section 2' of the code, place it in the same default.hbs file, but within the footer area:



The end result will be the Google+ badge appearing at the bottom of your page, in the footer, like this:

Today's adventures with Linux and Ghost

This is a 'technical' post. You probably won't be interested, so you should stop reading now. Of course, if you are interested, then I hope you enjoy it!

I've been using Linux Mint 15 (and recently updated to version 16) on my laptop for the past few months, and quite enjoying the experience. It's new, it's fresh, it's fast and trouble-free. Very enjoyable.

(Not my desktop.)

I've become quite competent at installing and setting up various Linux distributions. I've been trying them out on my Windows computer, via VMware Workstation. I've got half a dozen different 'distros' sitting in it as I've boeen playing around with different versions, but I've come upon one that I decided is better than Linux Mint.

It's called Xubuntu.



That's my desktop. It's very clean, smooth and fast. It's got a taskbar at the top, like all OS's, that gives you access to programs and functions, as well as a dockbar that I decided to place on the right side of the screen.

It's a faster and 'lighter' than Linux Mint, and looks a little bit different without being too different for me to navigate my way around it.

And that's why I decided to upgrade my laptop today to Xubuntu (I'm using it now as I write this). I originally started using Linux Mint on the laptop because it was faster and lighter than Ubuntu, but Xubuntu is a step up again.

I've talked about installing and setting up CJDNS in the past as well, with Project Meshnet and Hyperboria. It used to be a struggle to get it all going, but now I seem a lot more competent at it than I used to.

Now I can install CJDNS onto a new Linux distro in just a few minutes, which is a nice achievement for me (compared to how much of a struggle it used to be back in the beginning!).

Zorin OS

One of the distros I played with via VMware, Zorin OS, was promoted as Windows-app friendly, because of strong integration with Wine (Windows emulator, allowing you to run Windows apps in Linux systems) built into it. With high interest, I installed that, set it up and played around with it. But I was left sorely disappointed.

The Wine integration sucked. Absolutely nothing worked at all, and with the hassles I've had playing with Wine in the past, I didn't want to waste any time on it trying to make it work in a system that promoted it as already working. So that one was removed.

Which was a shame, it was a nice system too, with a nice toolbar. Here's an image of it.



And now onto the Ghost blogging platform.

Because of the familiarity I've gained with setting that up and configuring it, I've decided to start promoting myself on fiverr.com as someone that can do it for others.

My Ghost gig on fiverr.com

Maybe I'll get some gigs from that, I don't know. But I thought it was worth experimenting with.

My Ghost issues from today

This morning I was securing my passwords using LastPass, going through a security check and starting the process of creating unique passwords for every single site I have an account on. Yes, a tedious process.

But in the process of doing it for my blog, I found a bug which was mighty inconvenient. The platform accepted a password change that accidentally had a different password in the password confirmation field. Just as I pressed submit on the password change, I realised the number of asterisks in both fields were different.

When I tried going into the blog with one of the passwords, it failed and wouldn't let me log in. So then I tried to do a 'forgot your password?' reset, but discovered that the mail setup in the backend coding wasn't working.

So I had to go into the Ghost coding and adjust the mail setup, only to find after a bit of testing that Gmail (who I had setup for blog mail) didn't like that I was using them via my blog's backend functionality and decided to suspend my account.

After getting that fixed, I set up a new email account with an email provider that was recommended by the official Ghost creators, in accordance with their Help documentation. It worked!

Ghost Mail Configuration

So I was finally able to get my password reset and log in to my blog again.

Happy days!

That's all from me today. I'm all tuckered out from my adventures around Ghost and Linux...

Life is a highway

A long time ago I was 24 years old. Well, it seems like a long time ago, but it was only 23 years ago... Anyway, back then I got my driver's licence and I was able to drive without needing to have a licensed driver with me. I remember driving through some mountains and this song was on the radio.

Life is a highway 

Life's like a road that you travel on
There's one day here and the next day gone
Sometimes you bend, sometimes you stand
Sometimes you turn your back to the wind

There's a world outside every darkened door
Where blues won't haunt you anymore
Where the brave are free and lovers soar
Come ride with me to the distant shore

We won't hesitate
To break down the garden gate
There's not much time left today, yeah

Life is a highway, I wanna ride it
All night long
If you're going my way, I wanna drive it
All night long

Etc etc

I remember feeling so damn excited! I felt freedom for the first time in my life. I was free to drive by myself, to go anywhere I wanted. I was free to make my own choices without needing to have someone else with me.

It was an exciting time, being able to feel like life was a highway, and I wanted to drive it all night long.

I think I did, that night. I drove and drove and drove, for hours, through the nearby mountains, enjoying the drive like it was everything in the world to me.



And in that moment, it was. Being able to drive was my freedom from having to rely on others.

And yet, as the years have gone by, I've still relied on others. My friends, and my loved ones. They've been there for me when I've needed them. They've joined me in my journey.

I stop long enough to open the passenger door, and they get in with me. They join me in my journey along the highway of life. Without them sharing my journey with me, it would be pretty lonely.

Freedom is nothing if you have noone to share it with. What use is freedom if you're alone?

I wasn't running away from people, nor was I running away from my own fears. I wasn't seeking freedom from people around me. Maybe that was what made it different for me.

Instead of wanting to be free of people, I just wanted people to join me in my freedom.

I think I still do.

As I explore my life with the words I write, this blog is my car, and it holds me and the sum of my experiences. I have passengers that I'm happy to join me in my adventure through life.

Some of them stay a while, they join me in my drive over the hills and through beautiful fields. We share adventures together, sing songs together on the stereo, and then we part ways as I drop them by the side of the road somewhere.

Some of them stay longer, and Fanfan recently has decided that she wants to stay with me in my car forever. I couldn't imagine anyone more awesome to be with me forever as I travel the highways of life.

Life is a highway, I wanna ride it
All night long
If you're going my way, I wanna drive it
All night long

Be with people who truly value you

Look around you at the people you hang out with. How many of them seek to be with you, compared to how many you seek to be with? If you didn't keep in touch with them, would they try to keep in touch with you? Would they want to catch up? Would they care?

How many people in your life never call you? Never get in touch with you? Never hang out with you the way they used to?

I can imagine that there's a few people who come to your mind straight away.

Here's the thing - if people value you in their lives, they'll want to be around you. If they don't value you, then they won't want to be around you.

Think about that when you think about your 'close' friends that never call or contact you in any way.

When you're chasing someone who isn't chasing you, you're trying to convince them that you're worth being with. But the truth is, you don't believe that yourself, because if you did, you would sit back and let people come to you while you're enjoying your life.

If you were someone that people wanted to be with, to share their lives with, then the truth is that they would be trying to spend more time with you.

If they're not doing that, then you're not worth it to them.

But they're not worth it to you either.

Why are you chasing them? What are you getting from them that makes you want to continue having them in your life?

In this kind of situation, you're seeking validation; these people will tolerate you, and that makes you feel better about yourself and your life.

A long time ago I used to chase my friends. I used to think I had friendssimply because they tolerated my presence when I turned up to spend time with them.

But then I started experimenting in my life. I started wondering who my real friends were, which of them would get in touch with me if they didn't hear from me for a while.

I quickly broke the habit of chasing people, and ended up being very surprised about which of them would end up contacting me and finding out how I was, because they were concerned they hadn't heard from me.

But the rest of them, I just let them drift on in the wake of my life's journey.

If I wasn't someone that they wanted to be with, why should I push that upon them? Why should I try and force them to be with someone they cared so little about?

I know that life's experiences and the passing of time can make us lose touch with people that we once did care about, but if we still care about them, then we'll make the effort to keep in touch with them.

The best you can do is get on with your life, learn how to enjoy yourself and your life without needing other people to validate it for you.

If a person doesn't appreciate you for who you are, they don't deserve you. Respect yourself and be with people in your life who truly value who you are.

The evolution of socialising

How often do you see people out and about with their friends or family, but seemingly ignoring them while they're constantly checking their smartphones? These days, quite a lot. You probably think they're being really unsociable, but maybe you're not seeing the big picture.



The social world has changed. It's not just those you're physically present with any more.

Today's technology is allowing people to connect with family, friends and loved ones all around the world. While we're socialising face to face with people around the table, we're also socialising with others that aren't physically present, via our smartphones, tablets and laptops.

Today, socialising includes people all around the world.

We share updates on Facebook and Twitter about what we're doing and who we're doing it with, because we want to share our activities and life events with those nearby and around the world who are special to us - or even with complete strangers who are interested in what we're doing with our lives.

It used to be that we could only socialise with those in our suburb or city. Now we can socialise with everyone.

I quite enjoy it. I like knowing that there are people around the world who are getting something of value in their lives from what I'm doing and sharing with them.

Whether it's personal updates about something that caught my attention in the moment, or photos of something I'm seeing and experiencing - these people who are following me or are connected to me in some way are expanding their lives by being able to see something of my own life.

Technology is bringing more people together, making the world smaller, allowing people with similar interests and passions to connect with each other without needing to be in the same city.

When you see people in cafes, restaurants, or on the train who are engrossed in their phone, tablet or laptop, just remember that it's not always about staying isolated and being unsociable.

They could be - and usually are - connecting with people around the world, thanks to the wonders of technology.

Socialising has changed, and technology has allowed it to change quite drastically. But I think it's a great thing, rather than a bad thing.

Instead of remaining isolated in our own small groups of physical friends and families, we're broadening our emotional and spiritual selves by connecting with people in other countries and other cultures. We're sharing our lives with them, and having them share their lives with us.

I've enjoyed connecting with some of my regular readers on Facebook. Our interactions through commenting and even emails has brought us closer together, so that we've become Facebook friends. As a result, I get to see some of what's going on in their lives, and the experiences that they're having in their lives.

These aren't just commenters at the bottom of my blog posts any more; they're real people with real lives, and they're connecting with me because they're interested in seeing more of my life beyond this blog.

It honours me that they want to do this, and I'm privilieged to get a glimpse into the lives that they want to share with me.

We can't have too many friends in our lives. And if this technology can bring more people together, to share lives and interests, it can only help people feel more connected.

And having these connections can change our lives, give us meaning, reward us with personal growth, and allow us to change people's lives.

Strangers are friends not yet met.

If you're reading this, and we haven't already connected, I'd like to hear from you. Leave me a comment, or send me an email and say hi, introduce yourself, tell me what you like about this blog, and what you'd like to see more of.

Technology is wonderful. Look at the big picture, appreciate what others are getting from it, and maybe even get more involved in it yourself - you might just change your life in ways you couldn't possibly imagine.

Be gentle with yourself

This society we live in is very goal and results oriented. Look around you and you'll see deadlines, objectives, incentives and rewards. Sitting back and taking it easy is often frowned upon. People will tell you that you need to work hard to achieve your goals. If you're taking it easy, then you must be lazy, or something's wrong with you. But all of that is true only if you believe it is.



I began a writing project in early 2012 that included setting deadlines and goals for myself around a single topic. Then I spent time looking at the results so that I could measure the effectiveness of what I was doing against the goals and deadlines I had.

But that really wasn't working for me, not to mention just writing about a single topic, so I started to move away from doing that. The pressure of those deadlines was taking away my enjoyment of what I was doing. Instead of enjoying the writing and allowing my writing to come to me when I was inspired to do so, I was working to a deadline and forcing myself to find inspiration.

After a few months of this I ended up realising I needed to take a break.

What I really needed to take a break from was the expectations I was placing upon myself. I needed to stop thinking I should work to deadlines and objectives, and I needed to return to just enjoying the progression of my life.

Sometimes you just need to do what you feel like doing, instead of what you feel you have to do.

If you have a desire to do something, you should. Even if it feels like it's taking you away from the direction you originally want to go, you should definitely do it. Especially if you think it will be enjoyable and rewarding for you.

When you're doing things that your heart and mind just isn't into, and you feel like you could be doing something better - you're absolutely right. You really could be doing something better with your time, something that you're more interested in, that'll bring you more enjoyment.

Take a break from what's leaving you bored and unfulfilled, and do what interests you instead. Even if it's a distraction, like a game, you should do it. Don't beat yourself up about getting distracted from what you think you should be doing.

Be careful about procrastination though. You don't want to distract yourself by sabotaging your own efforts.

If your instincts are strongly telling you to take a break, follow your instincts. And when you do, you'll be refreshed and recharged by it. Let yourself do it for as long as you feel is right for you - however long that might be! You'll know when the time is right to go back to what you needed to be distracted from.

Be gentle on yourself. Don't believe the hype about objectives and deadlines in your personal life. Let yourself do something different when you feel like you should.

Go for a drive, play a game, read a book, see a movie, write a story, spend time with friends and family, have a bubble bath, meditate, talk to an animal, hug a tree, go for a swim, take a holiday, climb a mountain...

Whatever is in your heart, let yourself do it. And do it for as long as you feel you need to.

You might be surprised where it'll take you.

Why Ghost instead of Wordpress

As a follow-on from yesterday's post, You wouldn't believe what I've gone through, I thought it would be a nice idea to outline exactly why I've thrown away Wordpress after almost 10 years of using it, and why I'm now using the Ghost blogging platform.



The biggest reason for using Ghost - it's fast. Really fast.

Where Wordpress was taking 10 seconds to load a page - and longer if more people were visiting - Ghost takes only a second or two. As the popoularity of my blog increases, what I didn't want to see was the responsiveness and availability of my blog decrease.

The next big reason was that there's just too much 'bloat' in Wordpress.

Too many features, too many functions, and too much of a reliance on a database for my liking. Wordpress is a Content Management System (CMS), and it performs admirably to 'manage content'. As long as you don't care about the slowness, or about managing databases, or about managing plugins and themes and other aspects of Wordpress administration, and maintaining the security of one of the most hacked systems in the world. It's a great content management platform, but no longer is it a great blogging platform.

Don't get me wrong. I'm good at managing Wordpress, but for my personal blog I don't want to manage Wordpress - I just want to write for my blog and not have to worry too much about anything else.

The final biggest reason for Ghost instead of Wordpress is that Ghost is simple.

Once it's set up there's nothing to manage other than the posts you write. There's two sections to Ghost, side by side, and that's it.

The first section is your 'content management' section:



In the left section is an infinitely-scrolling list of all the posts that you've written, and in the right section is a preview of the selected post. At the top right of the preview is an edit button. When you select that, you get the following:



In the left section of this screen is the content that you're editing, and the right section has a constantly updated preview of what the content looks as a web page.

You get the same view when you click on +New Post and start writing.

And finally, it's so much easier to just write your blog posts in Ghost.

In Wordpress there's an editing section (amongst many complicated sections) which shows you how your content looks on a website (under a 'visual' tab), and there's also a 'text' tab that shows you the HTML. If something isn't working how you want it to, or you just want to make some tweaks to it, then you can go into the HTML tab and make your changes there. But that requires you to be able to work with HTML, the coding language behind the web pages.

Ghost uses a simpler method, something called Markdown Language, and it allows you to simply focus on the content that you want to write.

When you're writing, the standard keyboard shortcuts you're used to in other writing tools like Microsoft Word, etc, still work (so does HTML, if you want to use it), but the resulting 'code' is a lot simpler to understand and use. At any time you can also click on the question mark in the top right of the editing section and get a view of the common Markdown codes:



There's all the formatting information you're likely to need.

It's awesome. Simple, easy, and fast. Just what you want when you want to focus on writing without having to manage content systems.

Let me know if you want me to help you set up your own for you. :)

Pros and Cons of Dating a Programmer

I found this image on koding.com and loved it. It's me! Even though I'm not a programmer, I think it's obvious I'd be a good programmer, 'cause I'm already doing this with everything else on my computer. Maybe you can relate too.

You wouldn't believe what I've gone through

Yesterday I made a decision to change my blog over to a new platform. Instead of Wordpress I decided I was going to implement Ghost - a new blogging platform that was much faster than Wordpress, but also much more complicated. Oh, the horrors I was to experience...



A recent blog post that I wrote, Can I earn money from what I love, talked about my love for software technology. But that did nothing to prepare me for what was about to happen.

Before I continue with my tale, you should know it all worked out ok. The very fact you're reading this on a completely differently designed blog tells the story that no matter what my trials and tribulations were, I won. And that's what's important at the end of the day, that this blog is still alive.

But you should also be aware this is going to be a very technical tale, and if you're not that interested in such things, you should probably stop reading now.

So, when did it all start... Ah, that's right. It all started a couple months ago when Ghost was released to the public. I played around with it a little on a Linux VPS (Virtual Private Server), but couldn't get it to work properly. I decided this was because I didn't know enough about how to make it work on a Linux/Unix server, and I was just having too much trouble configuring the server and the internet domain settings to get it to work, so I left it behind.

However, a few days ago things started moving forward again, when I realised that due to an increase in traffic from sources interested in my writings on anti-feminism, my blog was really slowing down. The 'bloat' was causing too many problems when there was more than a few people visiting it at the same time.

So I tried implementing some plugins that would tidy up the blog and make it faster, but they didn't really do much.

So I started playing with Ghost again, and managed to get it working as a test build, but wasn't convinced it could be a good enough replacement for Wordpress, because it had NONE of the functionality that I'd implemented into Wordpress. It was difficult to consider moving away from it.

But then yesterday morning I tested the loading speeds of my blog compared to Ghost. I imported all my blog content into the test Ghost build and then compared the speeds. The Wordpress site took an average of 10 seconds to load the front page, while the Ghost site took about 2 seconds.

I was convinced. I decided to make the change.

I tried to install Ghost onto my domain server using a software installer called Softaculous, but into a test subdirectory - I wanted to make sure everything worked first before transferring it into the base directory and replacing the current blog. But that's when I ran into my first problem.

Ghost didn't want to be installed into a subdirectory - it was to be the home directory or not at all.

So I backed up my Wordpress blog (always make backups!) and then proceeded to completely delete it from the server, so that it would be free to install Ghost instead. But that was ok - I had a backup of the Wordpress blog should something go wrong, and I also had all the content in a file that could be imported into the new Ghost blog, which I had tested and confirmed would work.

Even with these safeguards in place, it was somewhat nervewracking to delete my blog.

Finally it was removed and I proceeded to install Ghost into the home directory, but that's when I got the second problem.

There were errors with the installation that made no sense to me. I deleted it and then tried installing again. Same thing. So I Googled the errors, and after some research I found out that I had a third problem. Installing Ghost via Softaculous onto an Apache server was beset with problems, and unless you had direct admin access to the Apache server to do some really complicated things, it wasn't going to happen. (I didn't have that access.) Ghost really needed to be installed on a Unix/Linux server.

Ok, no problem, I thought. Since I can't install Ghost onto the same server that I'd installed Wordpress, then I'll just restore Wordpress and explore other options later. And that's when I ran into the fourthproblem.

The Wordpress backup had corrupted and the blog could not be restored.

At this point I was saying, "You what?!" Well, there were a few other words included in there, but I can't repeat them for fear of corrupting minors. Corrupting Wordpress was enough for one day, I don't want to include minors as well!

Rest in peace, my dear blog. I knew you well.

So... There I was, with a Wordpress blog that couldn't be restored - gone completely - and a Ghost blogging platform that couldn't be installed. I had no blog.

That's when necessity kicked in, and things started changing drastically.

Since I couldn't restore the blog and I couldn't install Ghost, I had no more use for that domain server. I had to use the Linux/Unix server I'd already had a working copy of Ghost on.

This meant I needed to change some of the backend configuration of my domain to point to a different server.

You see, the domain of www.alansjourney.com sits on a server which has an IP (Internet Protocol) address, and the two entities are linked to allow you to access it. If I'm moving the domain to a different server, I have to re-associate the different IP address to the domain, changing the DNS (Domain Name System) settings.

So I did this, going through the backend administration of changing servers - essentially becoming my own host provider instead of using a commercial host provider - while also trying to configure the working Ghost installation that was originally a test, and make it into a 'production' version.

While the backend DNS changes were spreading out across the internet, from America and outwards to all the countries of the world, my blog was essentially unavailable. Because the change in server address was yet to reach various countries, they would find my blog as seemingly offline, since I'd deleted it. And I was having my fifth problem, which in the grand scheme of things, wasn't very minor compared to most of the other problems.

Because the DNS changes hadn't reached Australia, I was having to do all the configuration of my blog using its IP address instead of its domain (eg. 189.10.11.200 instead of www.alansjourney.com). It wasn't a big issue, it was just annoying.

So I managed to get the Ghost setup working with all my content from the old blog. I managed to find a theme that I really liked. I managed to work out how to modify that theme using text-editing via a Terminal that I was using to access the VPS and the blog config files. I managed to get all the important 'sidebar' links integrated into the theme/blog (you can see them to the left by clicking on the icon at top left), as well as the integration of Disqus for commenting, and do it so that all the old comments from the blog were still active on the new one. After all that, I managed to get everything working exactly as I wanted it to work.

In the space of 24 hours, I've had to cope with deleting a blog and finding it couldn't be restored, to becoming my own hosting provider and quickly learning how to change the DNS settings to a new server, to learning how to use the Linux server to deploy and manage my own self-hosted Linux-based blog. Successfully.

I finally had a happy Ghost blog!



I'd say that the past 24 hours has been both horrendously stressful and awesomely exciting, and that's why I love playing with and exploring software technology. It's awesome fun!

This blog theme is based on Medium.com, a new website for writers. (Thanks to the creator of this theme,http://ghostium.oswaldoacauan.com/)

I really like how the Medium.com website works, but they don't allow integration into your own domain, so at least this theme allows my blog to look and act somewhat similarly.

Today has been a good day!

(I'll be posting this tomorrow however, so when you read this, all this will have happened yesterday for you. :) I've already got today's blog post going out to email subscribers, and I want to try and keep the emails down to a single post per day. So until the Ghost developers implement scheduling, I'll have to do this manually with saving as a draft and then publishing it when I'm ready...)

An update on writing 1000 words every day

Writing 1000 words a day has been, to put it mildly, a struggle. It's because I'm somewhat of a perfectionist; I know I can't be PERFECT with my writing, but I always try to make it the best I think it can be. As a result, I spend more time on it than maybe I should, or I find it difficult to even find something interesting to write about in the first place.

I don't want it to be a stream of rubbish that has nothing of interest to anyone reading it, because ultimately, every bit of writing on this site is a reflection of me. I know that I'm going to be judged by whichever post a visitor happens to be reading. Whether it's about being anti-feminist, or about travel, politics, technology or just about life - it's sharing to the reader what my thoughts, feelings and beliefs are about those topics, and every article or post on this site is a window into my soul, into the very essence of who I am.

All readers will judge me on what they read. They'll judge me as knowing what I'm talking about, or not knowing. They'll judge me as being insightful or ignorant. They'll find interest in my writing, or they'll want to move on as fast as they can, to find something else more worthwhile for them.

One of my goals with writing is to become better. I WANT to be judged, but I also want feedback. I want people to tell me what they liked or didn't like about what they read; I want them to tell me what they want to see more of, or what they don't want to see. I want to know what part of my writing inspires people to do something more with their lives, or whether it just depresses or irritates them.

Writing 1000 words a day is part of that journey I'm on, to improve my ability to write, and to improve the content that I write.

But it's still a struggle. I know it's supposed to be. I know that if I burn through the struggle, it will become easier, and what I write will become more and more compelling over time. And that's what I'm counting on.

But in the meantime, I don't want to force you to navigate through all the rubbish of my mind, like this poor fellow:



Writing 1000 words a day is going to result in some of it being complete and utter rubbish. It won't make any sense, it won't be compelling, and it won't be interesting. Readers will read it and think to themselves, 'What the hell was he thinking?'

I'm not even sure I know how to let myself be happy with rubbish coming out of my fingers and onto the keyboard, into your mind. I'm not comfortable with you, the reader, receiving rubbish from me, the writer. I'm not comfortable with your judgements being negative, even though I know I can't please everyone all the time, so there's no point trying.

But still, I try.

506 words - that's how many I've written just now. I've reached the halfway point. Must keep going....

I didn't know when I started down this path of writing 1000 words a day what that actually meant. I found out after a week of doing it that 1000 words is actually 4 A4 pages of handwriting. Every day, I write 4-page essay about something.

Many people that try to do this, end up failing. End up giving up, or even shortening it. I did some research today about the different lengths of daily writing that people do, and that people recommend, and there's no real hard rules about it. Different people have different opinions about how much you should write every day.

Stephen King advocates 2000 words a day, but then he would - he doesn't do anything else with his time other than write.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. - Stephen King

Hmmm... Maybe that's the point. You see, I do other things with my time during the day, and then struggle with 1000 words. Maybe if I did nothing else but write, then it would be a lot easier for me.

That's probably true with anything, don't you think? If you could focus on it all day and every day, then it would very quickly become something easier to do.

So part of my own struggle is in finding the discipline within myself to not only write 1000 words a day, but to also make sure I spend all day doing it.

When I was doing something similar last year - but without the 1000 word minimum - I was forcing myself to write any number of words every day, but on a single topic. Doing this without any breaks was difficult, and got boring. It wasn't interesting enough, and I couldn't think up how to write about the same topic day after day, in different ways.

At least with different topics, I can find some variety, mix it up occasionally, and keep things somewhat interesting.

Which leads me to the 1000 words....

One of the things I'm acutely aware of is that most readers don't have the time or the interest in reading four pages of content on a daily basis, especially if some of the topics are of little interest, or even offensive.

Yes, I know that some of what I write is offensive to some people, but I'd like to refer you back to my earlier comment about not trying to please everyone all the time!

So I'm thinking of dropping the word limit. Instead of 1000 words a day, I'm thinking that I should make it only 500 words a day as the minimum, with no maximum limit. So if I feel like writing 1000 words - or even 2000 words if they come easily enough - then I can. But otherwise, I'm just going to focus on a minimum of 500 words.

The reason? Simply to assist with my motivation.

I had a break yesterday, where I didn't publish anything overnight. I just felt like having a break. I didn't want to stress myself into writing 1000 words because I absolutely didn't feel like it. So I took a break, and got back into it again today.

So that's my update on writing 1000 words. I hope you enjoyed it, and understanding a bit more of the thinking behind my journey with this.

Also, if you have any tips that you would like to recommend, please don't hesitate in leaving a comment. I'm completely open to any tips you'd feel happy to give me!

Perpetual travelling while disabled

Back in March this year I wrote about why I want to be a perpetual traveller. I still want it, but since I wrote that post I've learned a lot about what's likely to be involved with perpetual travelling, in the context of my own capabilities. It's been an eye-opening period of research and understanding for me.

Because my back gives me problems, I can't walk for more than 5-10 minutes before I need to sit down and rest. Considering a lot of travellers end up walking for quite long distances, I need to take into account when planning my travels. I essentially need to drive everywhere, or be able to take some form of transport to my destinations.

That rules out a lot of different locations around the world. Places that the only way I can see them is if I walk to them. So I'm going to have to just enjoy seeing other people's photos of them instead.

But there's still a lot of places I can travel to, as long as I plan to avoid walking.

Shanghai, China



Back in 2011 I spent a couple weeks in Shanghai, China (I took the photo above). That was fantastic, I loved it. I saw a lot of the city without too much of a problem, day and night. It was hot, and I had to rest a lot, but we got around in taxis all the time, and a couple times on the subway. Having Fanfan as my partner, guide and translator really helped, that's for sure!

But the great thing is that I was able to travel around while disabled.

I want to see a lot more of China - Hong Kong, Beijing, and more of Shanghai. I want to see Guangzhou (Fanfan's home town), and Shenzhen. I want to see Japan too, and Mount Fuji and cherry blossoms. I want to see Thailand, Fiji, and Singapore. I want to see Canada and its forests and mountains and snow. I want to travel around Europe and see its various cultures and history and scenery.

I can do all this - as long as I don't walk everywhere!

But ensuring I cater to my back also means ensuring I cater to my back - not just with walking, but with accommodation too.

Over the Christmas and New Year period almost a year ago, I did a camping holiday for a couple weeks, seeing a lot of locations in Victoria and South Australia that I've always wanted to see (or see again).

The Great Ocean Road, Victoria, Australia



Isn't that a beautiful photo? Yes, but it was even more beautiful to be there, taking that photo. It's that kind of beauty that inspires me to go travelling around the country, and around the world.



For that holiday I did months worth of planning and preparation, researching the best way to go travelling and camping in a way that I thought I could handle. I ensured that I had an easy camping setup, with a tent that would be easy for my back, so that it wouldn't be a problem. I bought a '3 second tent' that would take just a few seconds to setup, and a few seconds to pack up when finished.

It was a lot of fun, as you can probably imagine from this picture.



Now, even though it was fun, and I really did love it - I didn't love how my back felt during the process.

See, the tent took 3 seconds to setup, but what they didn't talk about in the reviews was the process of attaching the lines from the tent to the pegs, and then hammering them into the ground.

It required me to crouch down or get on my knees to whack away at the pegs, and then get back up again to do the same to the next peg. After 5 minutes of doing this, my back was killing me!

Packing up the next morning wasn't too bad, but still, with my back and its weakness, it was still a pain in the ass that left it feeling sore.

And then there was the time we tried to find a camp site in the Coorong National Park. We went to a number of sites, but the sites were either too exposed to the wind and sand, or the ground was hard as a rock and covered with ants.

No sooner had I laid the groundsheet and walked back to the truck to get the tent, the groundsheet was absolutely covered in ants. Regardless of location. After spending a couple of hours trying to find a suitable site, I was over it.

From that point on, my body was telling me that I NEEDED to stay in hotels that didn't require me to kill my back on a daily basis.

So in the future, as I plan my holidays and my travels, I'm going to need to make sure that hotel accommodation is included in the plans. As much as I love camping, it's too much of a pain in the ass for me.

Of course, there are other options. Like pulling a long a caravan behind us as we travel around, dump it somewhere as a 'base camp', and then go off-roading nearby, knowing that there's a campsite to return to that doesn't need to kill my back with setting up a tent, etc.

But being able to afford a caravan is a long way away yet.

Something like this would be nice enough:



There are ways of becoming a perpetual traveller around Australia, with offroad vehicle and caravan, but they involve either having lots of money, or being able to earn money while travelling.

Since I don't have lots of money, my choice is to earn money while travelling.

So the caravan will need an internet connection. It's achievable with mobile phone connections acting as a data and wifi hotspot, but obviously not out in the middle of the outback.

It'd be a nice adventure though, and something to look forward to. Travelling around Australia, seeing the beautiful countryside, camping in a caravan that would be better for my back and our outback lifestyle than camping in a tent, and earning money along the way.

Maybe from writing about the adventure and taking photos of it.

A question for you

Would you pay a reasonable monthly subscription to receive updates of my travels and photos of the country? Including the occasional travels around the world?

I'm considering all kinds of options to help me travel, and having you, the interested reader, assist me by paying me for my writing is just one of those ways.

There'd be lots more articles like this, that's for sure. And lots less articles about feminism and other things that are meaningless in the context of life and the wonderful experiences it offers.

I'm excited just thinking about it. And that's why I want to do more than just think about it.

How to eliminate jealousy from relationships

Many people in relationships, both men and women, have huge issues with their partner having friendships with the opposite sex, often experiencing jealousy at the thought. If you're someone who often finds yourself suspicious or jealous about your partner's opposite-sex friends, then you might find this article helpful.

What do I mean by 'opposite-sex friends'? Well, if you're a man then you'd be jealous or suspicious of your partner spending time with other men, and if you're a woman then you'd be jealous of your partner spending time with other women.

This is because you know that intimate temptations can often arise from platonic friendships, and your own insecurity about yourself and the strength of your relationship will cause you to fear losing your partner to someone who you're afraid might be better than you. Even if you don't lose them, you fear they will cheat on you behind your back.

These fears can be incredibly debilitating. They can drive you insane! You can have so much fear and jealousy inside of you that it can make you do things which really screw up the relationship in ways you never really thought about.

So how you get around that?

For a start, you need to know you do not have the right to dictate who your partner can or can’t see.

It doesn't matter if you're a man telling your girlfriend or wife who they can or can't see, or a woman telling your boyfriend or husband the same. It's completely and absolutely wrong, and will only end up completely and absolutely destroying the relationship you have with them. Do you really think they're going to love and respect you when you treat them like a slave, and order them around?

Freedom is of utmost importance.

Your jealousy is based on insecurity, and your insecurity inspires you to try and create security through control. If you’re trying to defeat your jealousy by controlling your partner, then your relationship is headed for disaster.

Men and women who are insecure and jealous need to understand a very basic fact: attempting to control your relationship with another person only creates resentment in them towards you. This will lead to them leaving you, often to run away and be with the very person that you're jealous about, but only because your jealousy was pushing them away in the first place.

You see, being afraid of this happening often makes it happen, because your jealousy inspires you to control them, which only inspires them to run away.

In order to ensure your partner stays with you, you have to be willing to let them go.

Yes, it’s almost a paradox. How can you let someone go that you want to stay with you more than anything?

You can do this by understanding that you’re not in control, and you never should be, and that your partner has the right to leave you any time they choose, just like you have that same right to leave them.

It all depends on how satisfying the relationship is that they're having with you. If you're giving your partner everything they needs and want, then they're not going to look for someone else to give them what you're already giving. If you're denying them anything that they need or want, however, then they will look for them somewhere else.

Freedom is the absolute foundation of what you must give the person you love and care about.

If you give your wife the freedom to have friendships with other men, and you satisfy her in all the ways that are important to her, then she’s not going to want to stray across any boundaries. How can she stray across boundaries when the boundaries don’t exist? Why would she look for happiness elsewhere, when you're already making her happy?



If you give your husband the freedom to have friendships with other women, and you satisfy him in all the ways that are important to him, then he's not going to stray either. He'll know a good thing when he's got it, and he won't do anything to harm that.

Remember what I wrote above: your partner has the right to leave you any time they choose.

This is really important, because it helps you understand that they can leave you at any time. Stopping your girlfriend or wife from being friends with other men is only going to make her want to leave sooner. And stopping him from being friends with other women only makes it obvious to him that you are jealous, insecure, weak, and a control freak. Do you want your partner to end up disliking everything you stand for?

Your jealousy, insecurity and control issues are your issues, not your partners. And if you don’t get leave those issues behind, then your partner will get leave you behind.

You need to understand that you will keep your relationship longer if you are the best that you can be, whether you're a man or a woman. Don’t be the worst you can be - be the best.

And if you're a woman, don't think that attitudes of entitlement will get you what you want. You have to give him what he wants, for him to give you what you want. If you don't, he's going to decide to go find another woman who will.

Treat each other with respect, love and understanding, and expect the same thing in return. Treat your loved partner as you want to be treated by them, and make sure they understands this, so that they know what your own expectations are about the relationship.

You need to communicate with each other what your thoughts are about your life, and your relationship, about yourself and about him or her. Communicate the freedom you’re giving. Get them to talk with you about anything. Don’t make your partner afraid or cautious to discuss things with you, because you react badly when they do. Let them have the safety and reassurance that no matter what, you're there in this world with each other and you will support each other. Let them understand that you know you can’t be everything for them, but if there’s anything that they feel is lacking in the relationship, reassure them that they can talk about it with you.

Having your partner feel comfortable to talk about relationship issues with you only helps you see where and how you can improve your attitudes towards them and the relationship. If she feels the desire to be friends with other men, let her. If he has friendships with other women, don’t even ask about them, just let him share his life and friends with you as he sees fit. Be appreciative that there are people in your partner's life that are helping give them happiness, which is happiness you can share in. You can’t be everything to your partner, so stop trying, and stop demanding they try.

You have to trust your partner, and trust that they're not going to screw up a good thing by playing around with others behind your back. You have to trust that they're going to treat you as you want to be treated, and you have to show that by first treating them the same way.

Give the person you love the freedom to live the life that they wants to live, to share with you what they want to share, and to have the friends – of any gender – that they want to have. Appreciate a life shared, with someone who loves you, and who is loved by you.



If there are any men in her life acting like ‘predators’, she’ll reject them if she has your trust, understanding and acceptance. Any man who tells her they’re better than you, that she should be with them instead of you, are only going to be told where to go! How can they be better than you - or even a good man in the first place - when they’re trying to destroy her current relationship? They prove themselves to be assholes. You have to trust that she’ll make the right choice.

If there's any women in your man's life acting like sluts, he'll reject them if he has your trust, understanding and acceptance. Any woman who tells him they're better than you will get dropped from his social circles faster than you can imagine. There's no way he'll want to screw over his wonderful, loving relationship with you for some 'skanky ho' that proves she's a bitch by not respecting the relationship he has with you.

And if your partner doesn’t, then that’s also their choice, even if you think it’s the wrong one. If they decide to sleep with someone else and betray your trust, then they're telling you that they're not worthy of your trust. They're helping you develop a greater understanding about who they are, and you can make better choices as a result.

Giving them freedom is about letting them do what they feel they need to do, even if it’s to leave you or betray you. And if you’ve understood that they have the right to make these choices at any time, then you’ll let them go. You can move on with your life, thankful that you're not wasting your time with someone that doesn't deserve you.

Sure, you’ll be incredibly heartbroken, especially if you feel your trust and your love was betrayed, but you can’t be any better than the best that you can be, and if that’s just not enough, then they're not the right one for you.

Look for the person who will love you, respect you and appreciate the freedom and trust you give them, and who gives you the same in return. You can’t do any better than that.