I've been a bit busy

I want to apologise to my regular readers for not having written anything for a couple days. I've been busy doing something else.

I'm going to be breaking off my online services from this personal blog and putting it all on a dedicated site.

It's been taking a lot of my focus. Lots of reading, lots of thinking, and some writing, to get what I want. It needs to be 'just right'.

What I wanted to do couldn't be done on Ghost, because presenting my online services needed more than the limited formatting and presenteation options Ghost has.

So I was doing it in blogspot for a while, testing it out. I ended up being disappointed at the page management functionality, so I decided today to move it over to Wordpress.

I was doing that today, along with moving the custom domain from blogspot to the Wordpress setup. And that's now going to involve a day or so of the site being unavailable while DNS propogates around the world.

So in the meantime, I'll spend time looking for a kick-ass, awesome theme to make the site look and feel as good as I can make it. Something that will be appropriate to presenting my online services as a business.

I've been focused on that the past few days. Forgive me for not writing in this blog, but I just felt the need to focus on one thing rather than two.

If you have 100% of effort over two or more things, then they're just not going to get 100% of your effort. Much better to give one thing 100% to get it to where it needs to be.

That's what I've been doing. Still a lot more to do though! And of course I'll talk more about it in here when I've finished it.

That one time in my life I had a fight

I'm one of these strange, rare men that have never been in a fight in their life - well, except for that one time when I was about 6 years old.

I don't know what it was about, but I just remember that the kid pissed me off. He had it coming. The next thing you know, we're rolling around on the ground, wrestling like 6 year olds wrestle.

Parents came running from everywhere. The kid was the son of my dad's boss at work, who stepped forward to try and break us up, but my dad stopped him and said, "Let them work it out themselves." So the kid's dad stepped back.

We rolled around some more, with the parents encouraging both of us. I'd like to say bets were placed, but I don't remember that. I ended up sitting on top of the kid and he started crying. I got up, and he ran away. The parents laughed, my dad was smiling. I don't remember anything else of that day, but I've never forgotten it.

I can imagine my dad must have been proud of me, beating up the boss's kid like that. Not that it was a beating - it was more like a rolling.

Growing up as a kid and a teenager, I never got into any fights. I just tried avoiding them. Where kids tried antagonising me I'd just shrug and walk away. Fighting never seemed like an appropriate solution.

When I was 15 or 16 I got into martial arts, and studied Rhee Tae Kwon Do. But when one of the black belts got beaten up by a young street punk I realised that the 'way of the feet and hands' was great for physical fitness and flexibility, but completley unsuitable for street fighting. And I also realised I wanted to defend myself more than I wanted to be fit, so I quit that martial art.

When I was 18 I joined the Australian Army Reserves (it's our version of the US National Guard) and learned how to go to war. I became proficient in the use of pistols, assault rifles, heavy machine guns, anti-tank weapons, and landmines. It was an interesting time.

But I never found myself in a situation where I felt the competitive urge of testosterone to beat someone up or to be beaten up by someone. None of that ever happened.

When I was about 19, a friend and I were walking home from a bar late at night. I had no 'street smarts' then. I didn't know that the car that slowly passed us and then did a u-turn to come back around, and then did a u-turn again to come up beside us was full of blacks looking for some chumps. I was being a 19-year old dick, naively walking along about 8 feet behind my friend who was urgently whispering to me to "Get up here with me!" I ignored him, not knowing why he wanted me to walk with him. I had a tree branch in my hand, and was using it like Gandalf's staff as we were walking along. I was curious about why the car was driving next to us. Unlike my friend, who was staring at the ground as we were walking, I was looking calmly and curiously at the car, unable to see the occupants in the dark interior. That they were black didn't help me - but I didn't even realise they were black, I was just curious about why I couldn't see anyone in there. But they drove off and nothing happened. My friend told me he didn't know why they didn't jump out of the car and beat the crap out of us. I remember being surprised that was a possible scenario!

After my 3 years of military service, I was in my early 20's, and I started doing a different martial art - Ninjutsu. This was an art of 'covert assassination', and was much more suited to street fighting because of its focus on causing severe pain to an opponent in as short a time as possible, to avoid a lengthy fight. The longer a fight goes, the more chance there is of you getting hurt - or killed - so I learned about nerve points and crippling strikes and how to end fights fast, as well as how to defend myself against knives and baseball bats (did you know baseball bats and swords are used in similar ways?).

And still, I never got into any fights.

Me and a girl I was dating were leaving a Michael Jackson concert in Sydney in 1995 or '96. A guy was walking into the grounds as we were leaving the grounds. He was angry. He was shouldering everyone as he walked against the crowd. I was the only one who stopped when he shouldered me as he walked on by. I stopped and turned to watch him, wondering why he was so angry. He realised I'd stopped, and he turned around and started walking back to me. His face was twisted, his mouth was open and snarling, and his hands were bunching into fists and his knuckles were going white. I was still wondering why he was so angry, but my only thought as he approached was, "This is going to be interesting." I had no fear. I don't know why. But when he got to about 4 feet away, his face changed. His face went blank. He looked at me, and then turned around and continued walking on, disappearing quickly into the crowd. I looked up, surprised, and said "Thank you," into the sky.

Some years later I was in my early 30's and had a part time job selling pizza slices from behind a bain marie out the front of a pizza shop, to drunks and nightclubbers, who were out late at night and into the very early hours of the morning.

The guy that used to work the bain marie before me, who I replaced, used to get into a fight with drunks on a weekly basis. I was warned it could be somewhat dangerous. Someone in the pizza shop offered me a thick rubber hose as a weapon ("Just in case," he said) but I didn't take it. I was only selling pizza - how hard could it be?

I worked that bain marie for about 2 years. In that time I never got in a fight, and never had to defend myself. But I also never took any shit from anyone.

I gained a kind of 'street smarts', a sixth sense about people, always looking around, always on the alert, always knowing what to say or not to say to the drunks that would be my customers.

A group of drunk guys saw the change I had in my money bag one night (hundreds of dollars by that time of the night) and one of them suggested to his buddies, "We should roll this guy." I looked up at him, looked him in the eye and said, "Do that and I'll have to hurt you." I wasn't smiling. There were 6 of them. He looked at me and after a few seconds looked down at the ground. I continued counting out the change, gave it to them, and they moved on.

Another time a large Hells Angel biker threatened to kill me because I wouldn't give him 3 slices of pizza for $2 (they were $2 each). "Dude, I'm a Hell's Angel biker. Give me my three slices of pizza for $2 or I'll fucking kill you where you stand."

I looked at him and said somewhat sternly, "Over a slice of pizza? I don't fucking think so. It's six dollars for three slices!" He muttered and walked away, dejected.

I witnessed a lot of fights between other drunks on the street, but was never in one myself.

When I quit that job after doing it for a couple years, the guy who replaced me got in a fight on his first night. And again a week later.

A year later I met one of my regular customers, and during our catchup he told me something that amazed me. I had a reputation as the toughest pizza seller on the street. People didn't want to mess with me. I just shook my head, amazed. I had a 'street rep'.

I remember also, maybe a couple years after I quit, I was walking late at night with a friend in Sydney, along a dark path at the top of some cliffs. We were talking and just being friends out late at night for a walk. We'd gone through areas of bushes here and there, but then when we came upon another area of bushes that our path would have to go through, I got a strange feeling. A feeling that continuing on that path would be a bad idea. I told my friend we should go back now.

He shrugged and we turned around and headed back. I looked back and saw a couple dodgy-looking guys come out of the bushes, looking at us, before they moved off in a different direction.

Some years later, when I was living in New Zealand (this incident was probably around ten years ago now), my 'street smarts' came in handy again. I was walking along a street with a girlfriend at the time, maybe 11pm on a Saturday night. It was in the centre of town, there were lots of nightclubs, lots of lights, lots of people. It was active, it was 'happening'. We were talking and enjoying ourselves as we were walking along, going 'somewhere'. I don't remember where. But then as we were walking along there was a group of people up ahead, just like lots of other groups, but the 'vibe' felt all wrong to me. I took my girlfriend by the arm and we crossed the road. She was asking me why, I was silent. I was watching the group. Suddenly they erupted into a fight and there was mass chaos - across the road from us. We watched it for a few seconds before I moved us on. If we hadn't crossed the road when we did, we would have been walking right through them when the fight broke out. My girlfriend looked at me oddly but didn't say anything.

I'm 47 years old now. And the only fight I've had in my life has been when I was 6 years old and rolling around on the ground with the son of my dad's boss, with all those parents looking on and encouraging us to fight.

It amazes me that I've managed to avoid conflict and violence in my life journey.

I'm incredibly grateful and thankful for that.

An eBook is coming

I woke up this morning with an idea on my mind, and as a result I've spent all day putting the idea into an eBook. I'll edit it over the next day or so and then publish it.

I'm going to use it as an incentive. If visitors to this site sign up to my mailing list, I'll give them the eBook as a free gift.

All of my current mailing list subscribers will be able to get a copy. Maybe they'll even be able to provide me with some feedback and help me improve it for future versions.

I'm not sure how well it'll be received, but I think it will be reflective of what this site is all about, as well as what I want to present to the world.

I'm excited about it!

At the beginning of this year I wrote 6 Predictions For My Life In 2014, and one of the predictions was:

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.

Even though I predicted that I'd have 3 eBooks available over the 12 months of 2014, I'm thinking that it's going to be achievable to make that one eBook per month.

I like that idea.

But I've got a question for you.

Is there anything that I've written on this blog that you would like me to turn into an eBook? Anything you'd like me to write more of? I'm open to suggestions.

Experimenting with a new writing style

Some of the common 'how to write' suggestions I've seen here and there over the years, scattered around the internet, has been to 'write to one person'. Write as if you're writing a letter to someone. Make it personal. Make it about you and the one person you're writing to.

So I'm going to be experimenting with that. I'm going to write for a while as if I'm writing to a friend, and see where it takes me.

It could be a bit challenging though. Which friend do I write to? Well, that probably depends on the topic I'm writing about. Different people in my life relate to different topics, so I'll think of each of them when I write about a topic relative to them.

To be honest, I don't think it'll be too much different to how I've already been writing so far. Some of my best articles in the past have been originally written to friends in emails, which I then thought was awesome enough to put on my blog, and so I did.

The difference will be that I'm going to try and make it a bit more personal. I'll be thinking about YOU when I write it. Whoever you are, I'll be writing to you.

I think that I've proven to myself over the past couple of months that I can write about lots of different topics on a daily basis, consistently, of at least 500 words a day. I'm pretty excited about how easy that's become for me.

What I think I'm doing now is stepping up a bit. Stretching the comfort zone, and exploring other ways of writing. I might find something that works better for me, or I might find that it just doesn't. But it might lead to yet another style that I experiment with instead. It's all part of the journey.

I did that years ago. I remember exploring a style of writing that was as if it was a conversation between myself and a friend, and I would explore a topic through the written conversation. It was like writing a conversation between two people in a fiction book, but the conversation had a meaning that I wanted to present.

I ended up giving up, because putting a meaningful article into a written conversation made the posts about 5 times longer than they would have been if it was just an article. I enjoyed writing them, but people didn't enjoy reading them. So I discontinued that experiment after only 3 or 4 attempts.

Maybe this will be similar. But I have to try it to find out.

I'm not a young man any more

One of the things I've noticed is that a lot of young people, as they travel around to different countries, just love 'doing it rough'. They sleep on the ground, in bus shelters, up in trees, or in dormitory style hostels with groups of other young people.

That's not for me!

With my back issues, I'm going to have to sleep in a decent bed every night. And I snore like a trooper, so if I sleep with a group of people they're going to smother me to death before the sun rises.



That's not quite the outcome I'd be happy with.

So my travels are going to have to include a decent bed, in a room that's shared only with my wife (who's pretty much used to my snoring by now!).

To this end, my options include house sitting in other countries, where you look after someone's house while they're on holiday, or renting a cheap furnished apartment that can be used as a home base while you're in the country. From all accounts, many countries that I'll be visiting will have cheap apartment rentals, for a fraction of the cost of what we pay in our first world countries.

You can enjoy backpacking while young

When you're young and fit, you can carry huge backpacks around with you, without it detracting from your ability to walk the roads and mountains of the countries you visit.

When you're in your late 40s like me, with a collapsed disc in your back that prevents you from carrying anything more than 5kg - and even then with great discomfort - as well as prevent you from walking more than a hundred metres before having to rest, then backpacking becomes impossible.

So no backpacks for me. Unless it's 5kg or less.

In the recent past I've looked at how I can 'pack my life into a bag'. I think a small 30 litre backpack would be entirely adequate.



When you're travelling, you only need to pack the things you're going to need, while wearing the rest. It's called ultra-light packing.

Think about it. Let's say you're wearing decent travel / walking shoes, maybe some socks, light trousers (with legs that unzip to become shorts), underwear, a shirt, a hat, sunglasses, and you're carrying your smartphone which doubles as your camera, and your wallet and passport are in your pockets, secured by zippers.

What more do you need?

• Another couple items of underwear / bra


• another pair of lightweight trousers


• another pair of socks


• another couple of shirts (everything lightweight, remember)


• a towel


• lightweight leg and body thermals for when it gets cool


• fleece jacket


• bathers / bikini


• raincoat


• basic toiletries like toothbrush and toothpaste, shower gel, and shaving kit


• small first aid kit


• some kind of Swiss army knife (that doesn't violate airport security procedures)

You can wash your dirty clothes while wearing the clean clothes.

And then you've got the really important stuff.

• 13" laptop with 2-3 USB ports


• universal power adaptor


• USB charging cables for the devices you take with you (phone, camera, etc)


• maybe a digital camera that'll take better photos than your smartphone, but if you're happy with your phone (like I currently am), why use a larger camera? No need, so discard that extra weight.

What else do you think you would need?

I don't think there's anything else you'll need that can't be considered a 'want', or 'paranoia'. Many people pack more than they need just because they think there's the possibility that they'll need ten items of underwear, four towels, five pairs of shoes, half the contents of the bathroom cupboard, a fresh change of clothes for every day of their holiday, and fancy clothes just in case they meet someone important.

Avoiding extra luggage with things you don't need also has the following benefits:

• You save money by not having to pay for checked in baggage fees at airports. Your flights can become that much cheaper.


• You don't need to wait around for your baggage to come out on the conveyor belt.


• You don't need to struggle with walking long distances while carrying a suitcase and half a dozen travel bags.


• You can go to a coffee shop somewhere with everything you own in your small backpack, relaxing without needing to worry about suitcases and travel bags.


• If you get tired of one place, or you're just ready to move on anyway, you just pack your light backpack and move on. You don't need to pack or manage suitcases with tons of crap in them.

Everything that's in the bullet point list above is all that's really needed when you go long term travelling. It's light, so you can carry it in a small backpack, and it's comprehensive. You've got replacements to wear if your clothes get dirty, and you can always wash clothes along the way. Even if it's in a stream and you lay it out on a rock to dry.

If you find something you need that you don't have, or you need to replace something, then you can buy it in the country that you're in. And you can sell it again or give it away if appropriate, before you move on to the next country.

It just makes sense to travel light when travelling.

You can enjoy long walks while young

Many travel destinations for young people include many hours or days of walking around town, or in the countryside, or up mountains.



Not for me! I can walk a few minutes and then I have to stop for a rest somewhere, to ease my back complaints. It's a pain in the ass (not to mention in the back!), but it's what I have to take into consideration.

So wherever I go has to be within civilisation. Taxis, buses, trains, cars or trams. Those are my only choices.

Sure, I'll still go for walks here and there, but it can only be for very short distances. And I'll have a walking stick.

But it's not something I'm interested in letting stop me. The world is still out there for me to see, even if I'm not young any more.

You can enjoy life without responsibility when young

Responsibility. It's a dirty word for many young people. Many of them travel just to avoid it! But the older you get, the more responsibilities you end up having to deal with.

I'm married now, with a plan to have children this year (we're working on it...). That's a big responsibility!

I know that there are people who do travel the world with their small children. They do it quite successfully, and the concept is attractive to me. I have no doubt that my wife and I could do exactly the same thing.


Photo courtesy of Baby Travel Tips from Traveling FamiliesThe question, however, is not when, but if.

I can't do it if my wife doesn't want to. That's irresponsible and negligent towards the relationship we have. So compromises have to be made.

So after lots of thought and many conversations, the result is that we'll play it by ear. We both want to travel, and travel is important to her too. So we'll find a way.

My goal in life is to find freedom. Freedom to travel, to see the world, and to eventually decide where I'm going to settle down and retire; not because it will be what I can afford, or because I'm restricted to location, but because I've seen the world and found a place I want to call home.

My wife's goal in life is to find security and stability in life, with a family. Our goals could potentially be quite incompatible, but it just means we have to work hard to find a middle ground somewhere.

At the end of the day, I'm not a young man any more. I just can't pack up without a care in the world and go galavanting off around the world on a whim. It has to be planned and managed as the huge project that it really is.

But it's very exciting to think about how I can make it work!

One of my wife's challenges is with a stable and secure source of income. She feels that you can only have a stable and secure source of income when you have a steady job, where you get up each day and go off to work, and then come home at the end of each day exhausted. Once a year you go on a holiday somewhere to make up for the rest of the year that you've spent working.

Oh my... Anyone who's been a regular on this blog can probably understand how much that makes me grit my teeth, smile and nod and say, 'Yes dear,' while inwardly trying to work out how the hell I can create security and stability for her with multiple sources of online income.

It's going to be challenging, that's for sure, but I do see how I can make it happen.

And if I can see it, then I can achieve it.

Part of the challenge I have is to find a way to help my wife see it too.

The answer lies in achieving 'security and stability' with my online sources of income. If I can consistently earn enough to pay for our weekly expenses over at least 6 months, then that will be a good start on this journey.

Wish me luck! :)

Would you like to be a guest author?

Would you like to write a guest post on this blog? Would you like to add your own unique experiences, observations or insights to the posts already here? If you have even the slightest interest in writing for this blog on a topic that you've seen here and you're interested in, then I'd really like to hear from you!

If you'd like to be a guest author on this site, I encourage you to send me your post for publishing, but please make sure your written submission adheres to the following guidelines:

• It must be a minimum of 500 words, and you must make sure the words tell a story that's meaningful to you, in a way that other people might get some value from.


• It must be related to a topic on this blog


• It must include at least one link to other relevant posts of the same topic on this blog


• There must be no links to an un-related website or affiliate site (but if you have a blog as well, you can include a link to it at the bottom of your submission)


• Images included with your post are welcome, but no more than 2 images for the post, in the correct positions that you'd like them


• Your submission is preferred in a Word document, so that you can format images correctly. If there's no images, an email will be fine


• You will not have permission to re-publish your guest post on another blog, but feel free to link to it from your own blog or social sites.


• I reserve the right to edit your submission for quality, but I will first send any editing back to you for your approval

Any questions? Please ask below in the comments.

I look forward to receiving your submissions for guest posts! Click on this link to send me your guest post submission, or to just talk to me about it.

The Writer's Manifesto

I am a writer, and this is my manifesto.

I write to explore the inner workings of my mind, and to share what I learn from my life and my experiences with others.

I am tired of ignoring my true calling and my special talents for the sake of conformity and pleasing others, in a world where so many people are afraid to live their dreams.

My purpose in life is to write in ways that help others find the courage to make better choices for their lives, to bring about their success as much as I bring about my own.

The world is constantly changing, and those of us who don't change with it will be left behind. I write to help others change too. I want people to join me, rather than be left behind.

Today I embrace my most inner desires to be creative, authentic, admired and notoriously brave with what I choose to write.

I am now defining and choosing my life purpose as a writer and I will choose activities and opportunities in my life that are aligned with that purpose.

I am ready and open to follow the paths of success which are unfolding in front of me at this very moment.

As I write these words, the right people and the right circumstances are shifting to recognise my passion and ingenuity, as the universe itself conspires to bring me the perfect opportunities for wealth, happiness, peace and freedom.

I will not be deviated from my passion for writing and self-expression. And I will not shrink when people diminish or laugh at my writing and my ambitions.

I am a deserving, admired and successful writer.

So it is, and so it will be.

Birds of a feather flock together

“A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.” - Seth Godin

I'm not a leader, and I don't want to be. It would be silly for me to even try. But I do enjoy sharing my ideas with the world and finding people that 'flock to me' as a result of what I share.

Birds of a feather flock together.

Over the years I've had a number of people find the ideas that I've shared on my blog/s, and they've connected with me in the comments sections, or emailed me to discuss them. Some of them have even become friends over time, which I've really valued.

Seth Godin talked about something like this in his book, Tribes, which is where I got the quote from at the start of this post.

I find myself aligned with his thoughts on tribes - people connecting to each other and to a common idea.

Even though I'm a huge introvert, I also sometimes seem like a huge extrovert - amongst my introverted friends, that is. I enjoy social contact with people, and even seek it out. I'm not a hermit, just an introvert that enjoys mixing with people.

This lends itself well to wanting to be part of a tribe of like-minded people, who join me as we share our thoughts and our lives around a common idea.

Over the years the 'common idea' has changed, but what strikes me as amazing is that many of the people who joined me as I shared my ideas years ago, are still with me today, as I share new ideas that they also relate to.

It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

To all those birds out there, flocking to me around the common ideas we share, thank you. It's good to have you sticking around with me over these past years.

How to know if you're a multi-passionate Scanner

Multi-passionate is another name for Scanner. One who has many passions in life, and doesn't want to have to choose. And you shouldn't have to!

If you're wondering if you're a Scanner or Multi-passionate or whatever else you might want to call it, here's a few questions you can ask yourself. If you answer YES to most of them, then you're just like me. Hi!

1. Do you find that you have a lot of different interests or hobbies that you enjoy, and you don't want to just choose one of them?


2. Do you find yourself working different jobs, business ventures or projects at the same time, while enjoying the variety it brings you?


3. Do you find people seem to suggest that you should focus more on one thing, or that you're inconsistent and don't follow things through to the end?


4. Do you find yourself wanting to learn about something new all the time, but then you lose interest in it and look for something else?


5. Do you find that when you have some spare time, you have difficulty making a choice about which one of your activities, interests or projects you want to do, because you want to do them all?


6. Did you have trouble choosing a degree at university, maybe deciding that it would be better to choose a course that allowed you to learn lots of different things?


7. Do you find yourself curious about why people would dedicate themselves to becoming an expert in one field, knowing that you could never do the same thing?


8. Do you find it difficult to describe your perfect job, but find it easy to describe ten things you'd absolutely love to do in an ideal job - even though that job probably doesn't exist in this world?


9. Have you ever tried to come up with a business idea but end up frustrated because you can't work out how to bring all your interests together to make you money?


10. Do you find that you're more of a generalist instead of a specialist, and that you know a little bit about many different things?

If you answered yes to most of those, then welcome to my little corner of the world.

You and I, we're the same. We have lots of different interests and ideas about how we want to do things, and a lot of difficulty deciding what to actually focus our attention on. They all look so inviting!

And then there's #9 which I really relate to - how the hell do I bring all my interests together (or even just some of them!) so that I can make money doing what I love?

I'm working on that.

Understanding more about how much I love doing lots of different things at the same time and allowing myself to be that way, even appreciating that about myself, is allowing me to see opportunities for offering some of my passions as services to others.

I can also see that I can create a business where I offer many of my passions as services, all within the same business. I'm passionate about providing IT support services, web design, web content and web administration. I love this kind of stuff.

Maybe you can do something similar? What many talents do you have that you could possibly offer within a broad range of services to others, to help them solve problems in their lives and want them to reward you with their money?

I'm on a journey to find out these things about myself, and to change my life in ways that help me turn my passions into an income. Maybe you'd like to join me on this journey too.

Share your thoughts below, and tell me what passions you think you have that you could start selling.

Time travel is a fact

I had my mind blown tonight. It literally exploded. It was messy. You wouldn't have wanted to be there.

I discovered that scientists have sent photons back in time and have proven time travel works for quite a few years now.

What the....?

I also discovered that it seems that the photons can only travel back in time if they're not going back to kill themselves.

Or, to put it another way, it's been proven impossible to go back and kill your father before you were born. They've proven this.

If they send a photon back in time, it works. But if they send a photon back in time to kill itself before it goes back in time, then they just can't send it back in time. It doesn't work.

One of the theories as to why is that the universe has a self-defence mechanism to protect such things.

Another theory is that there's no Multiple Universes, and that there's just one universe that doesn't allow you to go back in time to do anything that prevents your own existence before you go back in time...

What blew my mind was that they're engaging in time travel.

Just... wow.

The second thing that blew my mind was that the multiple universe theory has been disproven.

You see, if there were multiple universes, then you could go back in time and kill your father before you were conceived, which would split your reality off into another universe where you never existed. You'd now be following a different timeline.

In this new timeline, if you tried to go forward in time to where you started this process, then you'd find yourself in a time where you never existed. No one would know you.

It's a theory that tried to overcome the paradox of going back in time to prevent your own existence, meaning you wouldn't be able to go back in time - unless the action created an alternative timeline where you were never born, but also where you could never return to your own universe.

So these experiments they've been doing have apparently proven that you can go back in time as long as it's not to prevent your own existence.

Which suggests that if there's any time travel from the future of actual people or material objects that can interact with this reality, that it essentially becomes part of this timeline.

If you go back in time to prevent the birth of Hitler, for example, you wouldn't succeed, because we all know about Hitler. Instead, your incursion into the past would simply become part of the past. Your actions were already there, as part of this timeline.

You might go back to kill Hitler but end up getting killed first, or it might even be that you were the one that caused Hitler to rise to power...

No one knows what will happen. There's lots of conjecture, however. Lots of thoughts about possibilities.

That's how we get all our science fiction stories, where someone thinks about 'what if' and decides to write it down.

What do you think about this?

My online services are starting to take off

I'm quite pleased to see that my online services are starting to actually earn me a little bit of money. People are buying services from me to help them with Mailchimp mailing list setups, as well as content writing.

It's not much, but it's a really good start. About $150 in the past week or so. Encouraging!

I've even had people tip me for good work, which I'm happy about.

But I need to keep it up and expand upon it. I need to put myself out there more than I currently am, and do a lot more than what I currently am.

I've also been considering what other services I can offer. I had a bit of a brainstorm in the shower the other day when I realised that I can turn my Business Analyst experience with documentation into an online service as well.

I've got experience with creating all kinds of different kinds of business documents and templates for those documents. If I set up templates and then offer to provide businesses or individuals with high-quality templates of a professional level, it could be relatively lucrative.

I can also work on using the templates for myself - take information provided to me and put it together into a template for the customer. Leverage template-driven creation of content so that instead of taking hours to do a document, it'll only take no more than half an hour or so.

Of course, for those custom, high quality jobs where someone wants a professional business case document done for them that might actually take a few hours, then I can do that too.

The point is, everything that I've learned over the past 5-6 years as a Business Analyst can still be applied online, without actual physical client contact.

I can do documentation work for individuals, companies or organisations all over the world, and not just within Australia. Realistically, this should be a good means of earning a good income from what I can do.

I just need to find a way of getting it out there that I can do these things. I'll keep working on that, on expanding my 'presence' out there.

I'm considering starting a new website completely focused on my services only, so that they're not part of this blog. It'll be easier for potential customers to see information about my services by dedicating a site to them.

I might have to do a Wordpress site for that. This Ghost blog is built just to present a focus on written content with some imagery. I'm going to need a lot more than that, and Wordpress will be a much better solution for what I want to do.

Having my services on this blog has been a good start, for sure, but I think having a far more focused website for my services will be MUCH better for what I want to do.

I can also blog about my services on that site, keeping them all separate from this personal blog.

It'll be important to build a dedicated site for my services, so that's what I'm going to do this week.

Another project to work on! I love it... (Here's a link to my article about discovering I'm a Scanner - we love new projects!)

Have you heard of Lifestyle Design?

What is Lifestyle Design? Well, it's pretty much exactly what it sounds like. It's the art and practice of designing your own lifestyle. Hopefully exactly as you want it to be.

The New Rich (NR) are those who abandon the deferred-life plan and create luxury lifestyles in the present using the currency of the New Rich: time and mobility. This is an art and a science we will refer to as Lifestyle Design (LD). - Tim Ferris, The 4-Hour work Week

Most men work their entire life in a job they hate, to support their family and earn enough money to retire. And then they have a few years where they're playing golf or lawn bowls before they die of boredom. For most women it's working, then raising children until they leave home, and then playing lawn bowls until they die of boredom.

Just the thought of any of that makes me feel like I'd rather throw myself off a tall building right now than go through that kind of hell.

Which is apparently exactly what most Scanners feel when they think of such things.

I think that people who prefer following their heart, and changing their mind all the time, and can be happy doing that, are the types of people who choose to design the lifestyle of their choice.

Instead of accepting the life that others want them to live, they'll choose the life that's most meaningful to them - even if they don't get all that much money from it.

If they can design a lifestyle for themselves that pays their living expenses while allowing them to live a life that is rewarding and fulfilling and feels like heaven on earth, then they're 'living the dream'.

Everyone desires to live the life of their dreams, but not everyone does what they can to achieve the life of their dreams. Not everyone designs their life to get the results they want.

Lifestyle Design is about creating a plan of how you want to live, and then making choices about your life and your work that fits into that plan.

The end result will hopefully be a more rewarding and fulfilling life, based on your design.

I think that I've been doing an element of Lifestyle Design for many years now, but not really succeeding at it. It's obvious to me I'm doing it wrong, but at least my experiences are helping me learn how to improve upon what I'm doing.

What I need to work on for myself is the design of a lifestyle that gives me what I need, and gives my wife what she needs, and my future family what they need.

I have to take into consideration my responsibilities related to the choices that I've made, and the people that I've brought into my life, that I've made myself responsible for as a partner and future father. (No, Fanfan is not pregnant, but we're working on it.)

Any lifestyle designs I work on needs to be for a lot more than just me and my own selfish needs. My choices, my responsibilities, my design.

A worthy project, I think. Designing a life that helps all of us find reward and fullfillment.

Have you been designing your own lifestyle? Have you been living a life of your dreams? Or are you still trying to work it out for yourself? Share your story or your thoughts below.

The problem with Facebook is that it's keeping things from you

Are you happy with Facebook keeping stuff hidden from you?

Watch this video for more information about it.



It seems that some people will have problems in some browsers, with the video being only a black screen and unable to be played. I can't find a resolution to this error that doesn't seem to have a resolution. If you're experiencing this issue, I apologise. Click on the link below to go directly to the video on YouTube itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZqXlHl65g

Have you ever wondered what to do with your life?

Have you ever asked yourself the question, "What should I do with my life?" Have you ever wondered what you're going to be when you grow up, even though you're in your 30's or 40's, or even older? Have you ever wondered why you keep starting things that you never finish? Why you get bored once you've learned something, and decide to move on to something else? Have you ever found yourself with so many interests that you don't know what to focus on - you just want to do them all? Have you ever struggled with sticking with something because that's what others do, and you're made to feel that there's something wrong with you if you don't?

If you identify with all the above, then it's likely you're one of a select group of people called 'Scanners', a title invented by Barbara Sher, the author of Refuse to Choose - What do I do when I want to do everything.

Scanners want to taste everything. They love to learn about the structure of a flower, and they love to learn about the theory of music. And the adventures of travel. And the tangle of politics. To scanners, the universe is a treasure house full of a million works of art, and life is hardly long enough to see them all. - Barbara Sher

Of course, if you don't identify with the above, then you're probably a 'Diver':

If you're someone who is happy being completely absorbed by one field, I've labeled you a Diver. Some clear examples of Divers are professional musicians, scientists, mathematicians, professional chess players, athletes, business owners, and financiers. These people may "relax" with a hobby, but they're rarely passionate about anything but their field. - Barbara Sher

I've been wondering what to do with my life for ALL OF MY LIFE, so learning about being a Scanner is just awesome for me.

Let me share with you a list of 'jobs' and major life changes that I've experienced over the years. This is my 'job / life resume', a list of my work and travels in order of earliest (1985) to most recent (2014). It shows my own story of trying to work out what to do with my life...

1985 to 1992 - aged 18 to 25, unemployed with these odd jobs:

• fruit picker


• fruit packer


• public servant (hated it like you wouldn't believe, left after 6 months)


• left home and moved to Adelaide, SA (1988)


• lawnmowing


• door to door vacuum cleaner salesman (1990-92, for two years, amazingly - but I only averaged a $90 a week income at the end of it)


• moved house more than a dozen times between 88-92

1992 to 2000 - aged 25 to 33, still unemployed with odd jobs:

• moved from Adelaide to Canberra, ACT (1992)


• sold printed certificates of surname histories and coats of arms at a stall that I took around from shopping centre to shopping centre


• car salesman (lasted 3 months, told the manager he was an idiot with his 'women are the enemy and exist only to give us their money' philosophy of sales, he fired me)


• freelance web designer (a friend gave me his old computer in '96)


• pizza delivery guy


• late night pizza seller to nightclubbers (bain marie outside pizza store)


• headhunted by an ISP as their in-house web designer


• became the ISP's tech support guy for customers


• became the ISP's office manager/tech support/web designer (until I quit because I didn't like how the owner didn't care about the customers)


• moved house more than a dozen times between 92-2000

2000 to 2007 - my first (and ONLY) full-time job(!):

• moved to New Zealand


• worked in an internet cafe owned by a kiwi who lived in a boat


• contract role on a help desk with a company called Computerland, providing support to farmers with computers


• permanent role on help desk with Computerland (this lasted from early 2001 through to early 2007, but with the following different types of jobs: help desk analyst (level 1, then 2, then 3), then moved into Systems Administration and became a Sharepoint Trainer / Administrator, as well as a VOIP Administrator and Service Delivery Manager - all at the same time!


• moved house only 6 times between 2000 - 2007

2007 to present - my life as a contractor:

• moved back to Australia


• 3 mth contract: helpdesk support to defence force scientists


• 6 mth contract: application support to DEWR (Australian govt agency)

By this time I'd been doing tech support for a decade and needed a change. I was over it. But what to do next? I decided to reinvent myself and become a Business Analyst.

• 6 mth contract: Business Analyst with AGD (Australian govt agency)


• 6 mth contract: Business Analyst with ACMA (Australian govt agency)


• 6 mth contract: Business Analyst with Hewlett Packard


• 12 mth contract: Business Analyst with Hewlett Packard


• 12 mth contract: Business Analyst with Hewlett Packard


• 6 mth contract: Business Analyst with DHS (Australian govt agency)


• 9 mth contract: Senior Business Analyst with Lockheed Martin Australia


• 1 mth contract: Business Analyst with FaHCSIA (Australian govt agency)


• 2 mth contract: Senior Business Analyst with Westpac Bank


• moved around only 5 times between 2007 - 2014

And now here we are today.

I've been out of work for 3 months now (as of this writing), and find myself in the process of trying to reinvent myself once again.

While I can do Business Analyst work, I really don't want to. I want more freedom, more variety, more interesting things to do in my life. More interesting to me, of course.

When I look at this list of my jobs and my life over the past 29 years, it's obvious that over time I've been not only 'settling down' and finding some elements of stability, but I've also gone from being long-term unemployed (for 15 years) with odd jobs here and there, to executive-level and high-paying work within a decade. But while continuing to earn $150,000+ a year remains attractive to me, it's not fulfilling.

I'm at a point where I'm looking for fulfilling work, rather than just work. I want to work on the internet, doing things that I LOVE, and which I can make money from. I want to write for a living, as well as to share myself with the world. I want to be able to use my internet-based income to support myself, my wife and my family as we travel around the country and the world.

I have goals. But I'm still working out how the hell I can achieve them.

I asked a buddy today a question (it was in the context of a conversation we were having): "what's your perception of who I am, what kind of person I am.... I'm curious." I was curious about what their perception was of the person that I am, based on my interactions and conversations with them in the game. Their answer surprised me.

"I think you don't know...as if you haven't made up your mind."

Very perceptive, and very accurate.

I haven't made up my mind what kind of person I am yet. I'm still wondering what to do with my life. I'm still exploring.

But I feel like I'm getting closer. I feel like I'm finding it ok to pursue what will make me happy and fullfilled instead of 'just a job'.

However, until I start making an actual income that consistently pays for my living expenses from what I love, then I'll still look for a job. I still need to pay for my life.

Honestly, I hope I can earn a living from what I love before I find another job. The idea of doing something I don't actually enjoy, when I'm that much closer to understanding what I would actually love to do, just fills me with dread.

And that's part of being a Scanner.

It's a journey through the things that you enjoy, until you don't enjoy them any more. And then you find something else that you enjoy, and you repeat the process.

I'm also getting closer to understanding what I need to do to make use of my life and my skills and my personality type and turn it into an income.

All those things that I've done over the years, that I've enjoyed, that I've learned something valuable from but then moved on to something else... They're all still there inside of me. All those skills and experiences aren't of value to me any more because I'm not interested in them.

But they could be of value to others.

Teaching others how to do what I can do has been part of what I've found enjoyable throughout my life.

I think I need to work out how to promote myself within a structure that allows me to do more to help others learn how to do what I've done, while also making money from it.

What about you? Have you been wondering what to do with your life? Have you gotten any closer to finding out? Please share your story below.

The traits of being a Scanner

So I've been doing some research into being a Scanner, which I just learned about this morning and wrote about here: I'm a Scanner. Are you one too?

I'm going to list the traits of being a Scanner that I identify with, that I've found on the internet. If you identify with them too, then I'll get excited if you leave a comment below that tells me you're a Scanner too, and what your own thoughts are about being a Scanner.

• Lots of different interests, all at the same time


• Change (some of) your interests when you find something new


• Embrace a new interest with everything you have (discovering I'm a Scanner is a new interest I've embraced. Look at me go as I delve into researching it!)


• Have a hard time choosing what my passion actually is


• Start lots of new 'projects' only to give up on them after a few weeks or months


• Find something to be passionate about, learn all I can about it, then get bored with it


• People find it hard to understand me - so do I


• I've never understood why it's so hard for me to settle into one thing


• I've never settled into one thing in my entire life


• The longest job I had (for the same company) was between 2000 and 2007, but even then, I took on a multitude of roles in that time; at one point I took on four different roles (Sharepoint Administrator, Sharepoint Trainer, Systems Administrator, VOIP Administrator. All 'admin' roles, but nothing focused into a specific area)


• Scanners are suited to freelance work more than permanent work (I've been an IT contractor for 7 years now, and this year I'm really focusing on being a freelance writer)

"If you're doing what makes you happy, you're contributing your talent to the world." - Barbara Sher

I know that labels are something I attach to if they feel like they'll help me understand more about myself and what I need to move forward in my life. I've recognised part of this is my Aspergers Syndrome in action, and I accept that I have difficulty understanding many of the basic elements of living life that many people take for granted. When I find something that provides me more information about how to live a better life, then I want to hold on to it.

Until I find the next thing that helps me. And the next interest. And the next project. And the next job. And the next idea about how I can improve my life.

And so it goes on. I keep on looking for things that explain who I am and why I am the ways that I am. I'm looking for answers to questions I ask myself, or even if I don't ask them, I have an awareness about my difficulties that I'm seeking to overcome.

I've always enjoyed doing my own thing. But doing my own thing has never paid the bills, so I've tried to find 'real jobs' to pay the bills. Well, at least in the past 15 years I have. I was long-term unemployed for the first 15 of my adult years, as I was trying to work out who I was and how I fit into the world and what I wanted to do.

It's been a story of my life, the lack of clarity about... well, pretty much everything.

So something comes along that helps me understand more, I latch on to it. If it allows me to connect with other people that are the same as me, in their own unique ways, then I value that.

I value connecting with people who understand me, who have been where I've been, who can help me grow, or who are helped by me to grow because of what we share with each other.

So I value being a Scanner. And someone with Aspergers. And an INTP. And a writer. And a dreamer. And a traveller. And anything and everything else that I have been, and will be in the future.

I've always felt that change is the only constant in my life, and embraced it at all times. I even seek out change often simply because of the sake of it, because life is too boring without change.

Change comes in many different forms. Different interests or activities, different job, different friends, different city, even different country.

So today I'm a Scanner. I'll be a Scanner tomorrow too. But I don't know about the day after that. We'll just have to see.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing. If you'd like to get future post

I'm a Scanner. Are you one too?

Along with everything else, I've just discovered that I'm a 'Scanner'.

Some people just like giving themselves a name that's unique to anything else. Makes them feel special.

I like calling myself a Scanner. It makes me feel... special.

I was reading a blog and found that the author discovered they were a Scanner. I was intrigued, wanted to learn more. So I followed their link and read about their discovery on their page, A Multi-Passionate ‘Entrepreneur’ / Scanner’s Resume: How to Tell if You’re One Too!

...here’s what a Scanner’s process looks like:

• Discover new passion


• Become obsessed and think about it day and night


• Learn all you can about it, delve into information as though it’s Nutella


• Give in to burning desire to tell the world what you’ve discovered, cos of COURSE this is the most amazing thing since fire was discovered


• Started talking about _ (in my case, scanners) to anyone who’ll listen


• Start doing _ (a weekly telecall series discussing Refuse to Choose a year ago)


• In true scanner tradition, either lose interest / finish grudgingly / quit with the intention to complete later, __ (we did about 6 calls and then dropped the ball)

My understanding is that this is what people with Aspergers Syndrome do.

But you know what? I like the term 'Scanner' much better.

Here's what else they wrote on their blog:

I help multi-passionate people with shiny object syndrome get clear on what they want, turn their primary passions into a career / business they love and live a life that rocks. I write about finding your purpose, being fulfilled, self actualisation, personal growth, courage, authenticity & living a life that matters, your way.

(I know someone with 'shiny object syndrome'...)

But I also like what the author is saying. I've been doing some of that myself in my life.

I'm going to explore this some more. I like where this might take me...

New version of Ghost blogging platform - I'll wait

I've been waiting for the new 0.4 version of Ghost to come out, which would apparently let me sort posts by tags, as well as edit posts from the online post itself, as well as many, many other new features and updates that would make things more interesting and functional.

It came out yesterday, and I was alerted by email last night. I was going to upgrade this morning, but having a look at the installation forum, it seems that it's broken.



I think I'll wait for 0.4.1 maybe....

Update (a few hours later):

Stupid me couldn't wait. After seeing a number of reports that 'following the official upgrade process' would work, I followed the official upgrade process. Only to discover that while it may have worked, the Ghostium theme I was using had a problem.

In trying to roll back to Ghost 0.3.3 I seemingly broke the VPS and had to set up a new one. I decided to set it up with Ghost 0.4.0 and it works fine. I just can't use my favourite Ghostium theme until its author fixes whatever problems it has with the new version of Ghost.

Once I confirmed everything was working on the new VPS I changed the DNS A Records to point the blog to the new server, and the transition happened almost instantly. Nice!

My apologies for using this theme. It's only temporary until Ghostium is restored to 'business as usual'.

I'm thinking that I need to create an 'upgrade process' that actually works. It seems every time I want to update Ghost on a DigitalOcean VPS, the end result is a 502 'bad gateway' error, which is only resolved by creating a new VPS and starting afresh. I'll probably do that in future, set up new version on a new VPS, test them to make sure they work with imported blog data and images, and then change the A records to point to the new server.

Seems to work every time, so I'm going to do it that way in future. Hopefully there'll be less downtime that way...

Update (15 Jan 2014):

And we're back. Seems there was an issue because one of the pages in the Ghostium theme was empty, which caused Ghost's javascript code to have a spastic fit and die. Putting {{! This is featured comment }} into the otherwise empty content/themes/ghostium/partials/custom/featured.hbs page fixed it.

Back to 'business as usual', thankfully!

Why are Indigo Adults on this planet?

There's a lot of people who have discovered they are or might be an 'Indigo Adult', and they're looking for answers. A lot of them have stumbled on my blog, in particular my post Are you an Indigo Adult?Then they contact me, wanting to connect with someone who is just like them.

Indigo Adults feel alone and confused. No one understands them, and they don't know what they're supposed to do with their life. They've heard or read that being an Indigo Adult means they're supposed to help people with the transition to an Age of Enlightenment. Or something like that.

No one really knows, but one thing is clear - all Indigo Adults have gone through traumatic childhoods, and have come through it with spiritual awareness and experiences that help them see the truth in people and in reality around them.

My own feeling is that we're here to simply help other people get through their own pain and trauma. We know what it's like, we've been there ourselves.

Whether we're here to help people as a whole through a global spiritual awakening, or just here to help people individually through their own traumas, I don't think it really matters.

We have a strong feeling that we're here to help others. And so we should focus everything we can on our own growth in ways that are important to us individually, so that we can help people with our own special skills and talents, whatever they might be.

My talent is writing. My desire is to help people make better choices in their lives so that they can make better lives for themselves. I'm working on improving my writing and getting my messages out to as many people as I can.

If you're an Indigo Adult, what's your talent? What do you absolutely love doing and dream about, that you could use to help other people through their own pain and trauma?

Work that out, and you'll be able to find your purpose in your life.

I wrote the below in 2012 on Google+, but I think it's relevant to this post, so I thought I'd reprint it:

---

Many Indigos are here to help others. That's the common theme amongst us all as to why we're here. But to help others we've had to go through a lot of pain and terrible experiences of our own, so that we can truly empathise with those we're here to help.

You might be sensitive to people's feelings or emotions. You might be psychic, and you might even be a healer.

Or maybe you haven't worked that out yet, and you're still searching for your special gift. Just think about how you've helped people in the past and accept that as the starting point for your path of discovering your gifts. (My gift is writing, and helping people with my words. I'm working on getting better at it.)

Don't be afraid to talk to people, to share your feelings and insights. You'll meet the ones that you need in your life to help you develop your gifts, and who will need your help.

Have faith that you'll receive everything you need in your life to help you move forward on the path that you were meant for.

If you don't know why you're here yet, you soon will.

'Seek, and you shall find.'

How to see 'Online Contacts' in Skype for Linux

Once I started using Skype for Linux tonight I had trouble working out how to view only my Online Contacts. It was showing all contacts by default, with online contacts at the top of the list, but no apparent way to show only those online contacts.



I like things being tidy. Minimalist. And so I needed to fix this.

However, after searching on the internet I discovered that there's no information out there about how to do it!

Amazing. Not even on Skype's website, and no one seemed to know how to do it in their support pages either.

So I did some exploring into the various functions of the software itself, and I found out how to show the Online Contacts. Hopefully you'll find this helpful.

Clicking on the blue S at bottom-left of the application will open up the Skype menu:



Click on Show Contact Groups.

Voila! Your display will change from showing all contacts to showing all your groups, one of which is Online Contacts.



If you go back to the Skype Menu - Contact Groups, you'll see some NEW menus that you can pop out and select.



You can see that all the ticked groups equate to the same groups that are visible in the application. So untick all the ones you don't want to see (by clicking them one at a time), so that you're left with 'All Contacts' and 'Online Contacts'.



You're welcome.

How to install Skype for Linux using Terminal

[This is a technical article for Linux users that might be looking for help with installing Skype for Linux via the Terminal.]

Open Terminal and copy/paste this line into it:

sudo apt-get install libqt4-dbus libqt4-network libqt4-xml libasound2

and then enter your password.

This downloads the necessary dependencies for Skype (which you might already have installed, but it's worthwhile making sure).

If you're using Ubuntu 32-bit then use this command:

wget http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-beta-ubuntu-32

and hit Enter.

For Ubuntu 64-bit, use this command:

wget http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-beta-ubuntu-64

and hit Enter.

Once it's finished downloading Skype, enter this command:

sudo dpkg -i getskype-*

Now to install it:

sudo apt-get -f install

Once it's installed you'll find it in your list of applications.



Yay! You can use Skype on Linux now.

Feel free to add me and say hello: 'alanzeyes'

Sunset Photos (10 Jan 2014)

I'm going to share in this blog some of my best photos from now on. I hope you enjoy.

9 Steps to Becoming a Successful Writer

There's billions of web pages out there, written by millions of people who have something to say, all of them thinking it would be great to become a successful writer. Their work is important to them, and they want their work to be important to others too. But over time they get discouraged, because their writing isn't getting the attention they wanted or the audience they expected. They give up. As the years pass they'll remember with sadness about their failed attempts at writing, and wonder if things could have been different.

Yes, things could very well have been different.

This post started when I found a few posts yesterday in my 'saved for later' archive about how to be a better writer. I started reading them this morning, thinking that I'd use them as reference material for my own post about how to be a better writer.

But as I was reading them, I realised something. They all say the same things. And their words started to blur together and I got bored. And I realised that this post I'm writing now will say the same thing too.

Everything that can be written has already been written.

So I closed the tabs of those other posts and deleted the bookmarks. I don't need their words. I'll use my own. And this leads us to the first tip.

1. Don't worry about writing things that have already been written

It doesn't matter that you want to write about a topic others have already written about. Those topics haven't been written with your unique perspective based on your own unique observations and experiences in life. No one else in the world can write about anything quite like how you can write about it. No one else has your life's experiences or the thoughts in your mind that shape your use of these words.

If you have something you want to write about, just start writing. Be original in what you write about. Be informative, entertaining, enlightening, funny... Be whatever is natural to you.

2. Give people answers to YOUR questions

People are looking for answers to their questions. That's why Google, Bing and Yahoo! are popular search engines. Every time a search engine is used, someone is asking a question and they're looking for answers. The only reason people will come to your website is because their search for answers has led them to you.



Write about what you've learned. Write about the questions you've had and the answers you've found. Write about how others can apply your answers to their own life, so they can achieve similar outcomes to you.

What you write will be discovered by people who are searching for answers to the same questions. They'll instantly connect with you because they'll see that they're not alone in their search. You've written about how you share their pain or their frustration, and you've found answers to their questions that have resulted in successful outcomes for you, and which might result in successful outcomes for them too. They'll love you for sharing your journey and your achievements with them, and they'll be inspired to share your writing with others too.

3. Make the time

One of the biggest issues most aspiring writers have is finding the time to write. They might have a busy career as well as a busy family, and by the end of the day they're completely and absolutely exhausted. All they can do is watch an hour of TV at the end of the night before collapsing into bed and hopefully getting enough sleep to give them energy to make it through another day tomorrow. Or they might have a very busy lifestyle that leaves them with no time for writing, even though they'd really like to find the time.

It's about priorities. If you want to make writing your priority, then you'll make the time to write.



Don't watch TV at the end of the day. Write instead. If you're too tired to write at the end of the day, then don't watch TV and go to bed an hour earlier. Wake up the next morning an hour earlier at 5am before anyone else is up and spend an hour writing in the early hours of the morning.

If you do have the time but you've got bad habits or distracting hobbies that are preventing you from writing, then make careful and conscious decisions about your priorities in life. If other things are just more important to you than writing, then let go of your desire to be a writer. Stop beating yourself up about it. It's just not important enough to you. Maybe in a few years it will be, but until then, enjoy your life for what it is now. It might be that the experiences you're enjoying now can lend themselves to creating better writing material in the future.

However, if you decide that writing is more important than the distractions you have, then you absolutely must let go of those distractions. Like me, you might decide to stop using Facebook so that you can have more time to write. Or you might stop playing that computer game so often. Or you might spend a few hours less with your drinking buddies each week so you can have more time to write.

If something is important to you, you'll make the time for it. Just work out what you can do less of, so that you can spend that extra time doing more writing.

4. Write every single day

This definitely leads on from making the time. Don't make the time once a month, or once a week - it suggests you're not really serious about it.Make the time at least once a day.

If you want to be successful at writing, you have to be serious about writing.

Write every day. Write a few times a day. Write at least 250 words a day until you develop the habit of writing every day, and then decide if you want to write 500 words a day. Or 1000 words a day.

Or, like me, you can throw yourself into the deep end and start writing 1000 words a day for 30 days until it becomes a habit, and then you can decide if you want to write less or keep it up.

But write every single day. You won't become successful at writing until you put a LOT of effort into practicing it.

5. Learn how to create more interest in your writing

It's no good writing every day if no one is finding and reading what you write. So to become successful you really have to start looking into how you can improve not only your writing, but also how you're delivering your writing, and how people can find it.

To that end you need to do the following:

• have your own website or blog to store your writing


• read other people's writing every day, see how they write, what makes it interesting or compelling, and what you can learn from their work


• learn how to write titles that suggest 'the answers to your questions are in here'


• make your first paragraph a compelling 'hook' to catch people and make them want to read the rest of your article or post


• learn 'search engine optimization' (SEO) techniques to use relevant keywords and phrases to help your writing get on to the first page of searches about your topic, making it easier for people to find


• integrate sharing functionality to encourage people to share your work with others in their favourite social networks


• engage with your readers who leave comments, being friendly and supportive


• take note of what people are searching for when they come to your site, and if it's aligned with what you're interested in writing about, then do more of those topics


• encourage visitors to join a mailing list to receive your updates in their Inbox

The more people you can get to find and be interested in your writing and engage with you, the more chances you'll have of building a loyal and ever-expanding audience. The bigger your audience, the more chances you have of becoming 'a successful writer', because many of those people may want you to write for them too.

6. Seek opportunities to be paid to write for other people

Once you start becoming comfortable with:

1. writing in your own unique way


2. about how you've resolved questions unique to you


3. while making it a priority in your life


4. and doing it every single day


5. in ways that are growing your audience

...then you're ready to start working on building monetary value in your writing.

It's all well and good to write for free, for nothing but the joy of it, but if you want to be successful then you have to build value into your writing. You have to make your writing so good that people will be happy to pay you for it.

The only way to do that is to start putting yourself out there to find clients who will pay you for your writing. You'll have to start off small, and you'll have very little confidence in people actually paying you for your writing, but they're out there, looking for writers to write for them.

Take advantage of opportunities that come your way, or seek opportunities by signing up to websites like fiverr, oDesk, eLance, etc ec. Become a freelance writer, web content developer, ghost writer, whatever you want. Just put yourself out there on these sites (and there are many others out there) so that you're offering your writing to people in exchange for money.



The reason for this is that you'll be forced to improve your writing so that more people are happier to pay you for it. You'll be forcing yourself to learn more about writing, and you'll practice more, so that you'll get better feedback on your profiles about how wonderful you are, so that you'll get more clients, so that you can receive more money for your work. Your confidence will increase, and the benefit will be a significant and speedy improvement in the quality of your writing.

Don't limit yourself to just writing blog posts for people, but also write articles, short stories, even novels if the opportunity presents itself. Focus on something that you're knowledgable about. Become a technical writer for software development websites, or an article writer for moms and babies websites, or a fiction ghostwriter for Star Trek novels. Whatever you have knowledge of, that you're intersted in and passionate about - there are people that will want to pay you for your words.

You can also consider writing eBooks to sell on your website, or to your mailing list subscribers, or even to Amazon so people can buy and read on their Kindles. Some of your articles can be turned into free giveaways to encourage people to sign up to your mailing list. You can also have a free mailing list for your post updates, and a 'premium' mailing list for people to pay you for receiving articles or information that will be of direct value to them, of a higher quality than what you put on your site for free.

There are many options and opportunities that can become available to you over time, once you develop your skills, your experience, and your 'portfolio' (or archive) of work. It's all entirely up to you, how much you learn, and how much you promote yourself.

Your work has value. People will pay you for it. But you have to learn how to present it in ways that they'll be willing to pay you for.

By the way, if you do a Google search for 'ways of making money from writing', you'll get about 2.95 BILLION results. It seems to be a question that a lot of people want answers to, so there's no end of resources you can find that will help you find how to make money from your writing. I'll even do a post about it myself in the near future, because not a single one of those 2.95 billion results will be the same as how I'll write about it (see #1 above).

7. Don't ever give up.

For everything you aspire to achieving in life, as long as it's achievable the only reason you would fail to achieve it is if you give up.

"We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." - Winston Churchill, British PM, World War 2

Don't ever give up on your writing. Keep going. Work through the frustrations, the self-doubt and the insecurities you feel about what you're doing. Ignore the naysayers around you (or in your own mind) who say you won't succeed, because they tried years ago and they didn't succeed so they gave up and they think the same will be true for you. Their life is not your life. They failed because they gave up. Don't you ever give up.

8. Quit your day job when your writing income covers your weekly expenses

You don't need your writing to be earning you as much as your day job pays you, you just need it be consistently covering your weekly expenses. Once you reach that point, you no longer need your day job.

By this stage, you've managed to build your income only from the time you've been able to devote to it outside of your normal daily responsibilities and your normal day job. Your 'part time' writing has now become something that can replace your day job as your primary source of income.

Of course, you can still keep your day job if you want to, but if you let it go you'll suddenly have a spare 8 hours a day - imagine all that spare time you can put into your writing to expand upon it and even increase your income even further.

9. Enjoy your success

You're a successful writer now. Your primary source of income comes from your writing. You're doing it for love and, surprisingly, you're receiving an income from it! You have more time in your life to give to other things that are important to you, and you're not tied down to a 'day job' that you hate. You're 'location independent' and can travel while still being able to write on your laptop from anywhere in the world if you want to.

Congratulations! Well done. I applaud you for becoming a succcessful writer. It took a lot of hard work, time and dedication to get to this point. You deserve it.



 

 

Disclaimer: I'm not a successful writer yet, but I'm working on it, and this article pretty much outlines how I intend becoming successful. In writing about what's important for me and how I intend going about things, while also providing answers for other people at the same time.

“We teach best what we most need to learn.” - Richard Bach

The quandaries of online work

I'm really just starting out as an online writer (or 'web content developer' as I'm enjoying calling myself now), but I'm already seeing some of the interesting challenges with promoting my services through a variety of different locations.

I received some work via fiverr.com today, which is the site that inspired me to provide 'direct to client' services instead of having them keep 20% of my income. But I haven't closed my account with them or anything, so when I got this extra work I was faced with a quandary.

Do I want to continue doing work through a site that I don't like, for my own reasons, or is 80% of something better than 100% of nothing?

After debating it with myself, I came to an agreement with myself that it certainly would be better to get 80% of something rather than 100% of nothing.

So it's great that I'm still getting work through fiverr.com. It's also great that I'm offering services direct to clients. Doing it directly to the client is better for me, but it's nice having the extra sources adding to the total.

It helped me come to an understanding with myself, to get past certain morals that can get in the way, and even expand upon those different sources, signing up with different sites to get writing work through as many as I can.

The more the merrier!

I need to get as much work as I can, from as many different locations as I can, to maximise my potential income from this venture I'm engaging in.

I also realised tonight that being out of work and finding it difficult to get a 'day job' at the moment is forcing me to chase my dreams.

When I wrote my predictions for my life in 2014, #1 was:

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

My plan is moving forward.

Saving articles over the years

I was browsing my 'saved for later' articles in Feedly, which is what I use since Google Reader was switched off in July of 2013. Thankfully, all the RSS feeds and 'saved for later' articles I'd saved over the years were transferred over from Google Reader into Feedly, which I'm very grateful for.

Just as a side note - Feedly is awesome. You should use it too. (Maybe I'll do another post in the near future about why you should use it too...)



Anyway, to continue...

I was just browsing some of my recent saves this morning, when I wondered how far back they go.

I was surprised to see that they go all the way back to 2007. I have articles that I've 'saved for later' dating back 7 years. Lots of articles.

The reason I saved them was because, when I read them at the time, they made me feel like writing about them in some fashion, or writing a post somewhat unrelated but inspired by them. But for 99% of these 'saved for later' articles, I never got around to following up on them.

So they've stayed there, residing in my 'saved for later' archive in Google Reader over the years. And then when Reader died and was taken up by Feedly, they were all transferred over. Nice!

I really should go through them and read them, one by one. Unsave the ones that are no longer relevant, and keep the ones that are.

They'll be a good source of inspiration when I need something to write about.

Assuming I don't forget about them for another 7 years....

Fun and games with Paypal

I've been REALLY busy yesterday and today, working on developing my online services page - My Online Services. It's been a lot of fun! I've really enjoyed the process of sitting down and getting serious about what I'm doing, and putting it all onto my website.

But I ran into a small problem today with PayPal...

I used a 'Donation' button to allow the payment of variable amounts via PayPal, since there didn't seem to be an option available for variable amount selections with any of their other payment and button options.

This worked fine for a single transaction this morning, but then shortly after I received an email stating that my account was being limited in its functionality while a legal investigation proceeded with my use of the Donation button.

It seems that in Australia, PayPal need to comply with Australian laws that make it illegal for any person or business to receive donations unless they're a non-profit organisation. Good on ya, Australia....

PayPal advised me I'll need to prove I was a non-profit organisation before they'd return full functionality to my account. Until this happened, I would not be able to send money to anyone, nor would I be able to withdraw money from my account, but my account could still receive money.

So I immediately deleted the Donations button from my account. I did some research and found that I could use a Buy Now button which required an amount to be set - but I could put in $0.00 which would mean the buyer would have to set the amount themselves.

This is what I should have done in the first place, but there was no documentation anywhere that discussed that. And the only way I found out about it was on a site that was talking about 'a secret tip' that would allow me to do that.

Why the hell does PayPal want it secret? Blows my mind.

Anyway, after deleting the Donations button and setting up the Buy Now button to do what I wanted, I then phoned PayPal to discuss the problem.

They accepted it was an error, noted that I'd removed the button from my account, and advised me to simply confirm my identity via the Resolution process. Their Legal Department would review my account, the notes on it that I'd advised, and would get back to me within the next 3 business days.

I do hope this gets resolved. I'd hate to have to use an alternative to PayPal because I've already got all payment options and bank accounts linked up through PayPal; it'd be really annoying having to go through it all again with some other provider.

However, if any of you reading this think there's a much better solution with an alternate provider to PayPal, I'm open minded enough to look into it if you think it's worthwhile. Please leave your recommendations in the comments below. Thanks!

UPDATE 10 Jan 2014

It took them only 15 hours instead of 3 days, but I was advised their review is complete and they've returned my account back to normal. Yay!

The joys of government bureaucracy

When I got married, we submitted all the correct paperwork to the marriage celebrant who was the medium between us and the government system that authorises marriages. We checked that all the paperwork was in order, and all the spelling and details were correct.

Maybe you can already imagine where this is going...

So after the marriage we got the marriage certificate in the mail. We noticed typos, where the spelling of our address was incorrect, and so was the spelling of Fanfan's maiden name.

So acting on the advice of our celebrant, we went to the Registrar of Births, Deaths & Marriages here in Canberra. We waited a little while and then our number was called out. The lady behind the counter heard our problem, took a look at our marriage certificate, and said we were in the wrong place. The certificate was for New South Wales (NSW), not ACT (Australian Capital Territory). This was because we got married across the border in NSW, so we'd have to take it across the border to the NSW government office.

We did that a few days later. We got there, waited a little while, and then spoke to someone about the errors in the certificate. They tried to find a form we'd need to fill in, but couldn't find it in their system. So they phoned their helpdesk and I spoke to a helpful man who got my email address and told me he'd send me the form by email.

Ok, great. So we went home to wait for the form. It came that afternoon and we filled it out to ensure corrections were made with the marriage certificate.

By this time, however, it was almost Christmas, so we didn't do anything about it until today.

We took the form back across the border to the NSW state government office and waited until we could see someone. They spent five minutes in silence, reading the certificate, the correction form, and whatever was on their computer screen. In silence.

I was getting annoyed by the counter girl's silence and slowness in whatever the hell she was doing. Lots of reading, no talking.

Eventually she printed something out and gave us the printout, the certificate and the correction form. She then spoke and told us that we'd need to provide proof of ID.

I said we've got proof of ID with us. She said we'd need to put copies of the proof of ID with the proof of ID form, scan them, and then send them by fax or email to their helpdesk.

There was nothing in the original email from the helpdesk that said anything about proving ID. It was just a simple correction form we needed to provide.

This woman was adamant, and didn't want to do anything more with us. We needed to send everything by email.

Awesome. What a waste of time all that was!

I just turned and walked out, Fanfan following me. As we were about to get into the car she asked why they were so consistently unhelpful; we just wanted to get some typos corrected.

You don't want to know the words I used to describe government bureaucracy to her. Your ears would burn.

5 Things that tell you it's time to move on from Facebook

It's amazing how many people are moving on from Facebook these days. I'm happy they are! It's becoming more and more a big waste of time and energy. I've given some reasons why I moved on from Facebook myself (6 Reasons why you should quit Facebook too), but I came up with some other reasons that I wanted to share with you as well.

1. When your friends' updates make you angry

As soon as you start getting angry about anything being said or shared on Facebook, it's time to get the hell out. Angry about Facebook updates? There's better things to get angry about. If you want to avoid being infected by other people's stupidity, move on!

2. You maintain connections with people who exist only on Facebook

Facebook is an easy way of finding groups and pages filled with people who share similar interests. But if all you're doing is maintaining 'online friendships', you've got less time to maintain 'real life friendships'. Instead of looking for new friends online that you'll never meet, look for new friends in real life. However, if you're more comfortable with having online friends rather than real life friends, then you've probably got some social avoidance issues you might want to think about. Move on!

3. The only original or creative thoughts you have comes from Facebook updates

We all have minds capable of original thought and beautiful creations. But you need to exercise it, like any muscle, otherwise it becomes useless. Your brain is becoming useless when your creativity comes only from Facebook updates. Get out, exercise your brain, and move on!

4. Your updates have a negative effect on your relationships and friendships

Some people enjoy drama in their life. Maybe you enjoy drama, and you inspire negative reactions in people. Maybe other people enjoy bringing drama into your own life from their Facebook updates. If, because of Facebook, you get lots of negative drama with the people you're close to in your life, it's time to move on!

5. You regularly 'hide' from or 'unfriend' groups of people

What's the point of actually having a Facebook account at all if you keep hiding from people or unfriending them? Move on!

What about you? Do you have any of your own things that tell you it's time to move on from Facebook? Please share below, I'd love to include them too (via your comments)!