Making This Year Challenge A Little More Interesting: An Ultimatum

I’ve made up my decision. Well, after talking to a good friend about it all. I am giving myself an ultimatum and it wasn’t something I thought about ever since talking to him a couple of days ago.

I Learned Something Last Year Reading One of My Favorite Writers

Most people wouldn’t consider Steve Martin much of a writer. I didn’t, until I read 3 of his books last year. The guy is just talented in all ways and I encourage people to give him a shot–as a writer–if you are not fond of his films. While I was reading his non-fiction work about becoming a comedian, the section that stuck out to me was, well actually there were a couple:

Practicing the passion- Steve worked his ass off without the much thought of making money from it. He did multiple stand-ups, changed his act, talk to many people, watched and copy, to an extent, his favorite comedians.

Money wasn’t an issue until he couldn’t pay for his lifestyle- Steve started to make some money from his comedic act, but nothing to sustain a life of partying, women, traveling around the country, and whatever else he wanted to do. He knew he had to do something about it.

He gave himself an ultimatum- Steve was nearing the age of 30 and realized that his passion had to make him money or he had to do something else. He just wasn’t making enough money and had to be real with himself. I believe Steve gave himself 3 years or so to get paid.

This Year’s Challenge is Difficult

This challenge/goal this year is going to be rather difficult. I knew what I was getting myself into, but didn’t truly know what I was getting myself into. See, the reason why I say that is because this is something that doesn’t have a clear-cut path of accomplishing.

Business is some hard shit, just like becoming the writer. The thing that made becoming a writer more focus-driven and planned out was that all I had to was to write. Once I started writing (which I’m still doing this year) everything became aligned and I started to figure out what I needed to do in order to get better.

Becoming the businessman is something that needs to be thought out and it is more about my character than what I’m selling. I have the product already: my skills as a photographer–but I’m lacking in the areas of selling my idea to other people. It is something that will be a battle but once I continue to put myself in those atmosphere and push myself to get better, I will see my potential growing.

This First Month of Business

So, What Did I Accomplish and Learn About Myself in 2009?

This year has been great and I learned so much about myself and what I can do if I set few goals and saw what happened. These are some of the highlights of my year.

1. No internet for 2 weeks.
2. Read a book in a day.
3. Did a crazy cardio challenge for a whole week.
4. Multiple times walking 29 flight of stairs (twice with 10lb ankle weights on each leg).
5. Went to California and enjoyed myself immensely.
6. Figured out my other passion: Photography!
7. Read 5 books in a month.
8. Did task/goals on my someday list.
9. Set my countdown to leave Corporate America.
10. I learn how to write better; also, my grammar improved so damn much.
11. Start a novel.
12. Wrote over 300,000 words.
13. Take a trip for the sole purpose of seeing how fucked up a city truly is (Detroit).
14. A 900-plus-mile road trip from Detroit to New York.
15. Saw how a small business is striving during a shitty economy.
16. Wrote for a full month in my novel (nearly 30k words of dedication).
17. Bought a house.
18. Proposed to my girlfriend!!!!! (She said yes).
19. Finished writing my first novel. (Wrote over 108k words! It is a pile of shit right now, but I’m the shit for completing this crazy challenge).
20. Wrote every single day of the year and will never stop doing so…

I also figured out many things about myself.

1. I’m an impatient person.
2. I work best with less goals.
3. I think way too fucken much and wish I can turn it off.
4. I go into loops of thought and don’t know how to stop thinking about what I don’t want to think about. (This one is weird, will explain once I figure out how to get out of my head).
5. I am an extreme type of person. My fiancée notice this when I was doing my crazy challenges.
6. I truly found myself. This is an on-going experience, but writing everyday gave me a chance to question everything about myself. In the beginning of the year, I wrote for 2 straight months of thoughts that were in my head. I was surprised by the information that was effecting the way I lived. I strongly recommend people to write for a couple of minutes a couple of days a week to have a clearer vision of what they want to do or struggling with.
7. I like walking. It is great exercise and very therapeutic. Besides laughing at all of the fat people running on the trail I frequently walk, I’m still amazed how better it is on my joints and how the weight disappears. Since I’m so much in my head, the walking helps me to not think (well, as little as possible) and gives me the opportunity to calm my thought, provoking ass down.

A Good Day at the Tea Shop…

The smell and taste of Matcha green tea filled my body. I didn’t know a table size of tea at the local tea house was a damn kettle size. I played it off by continuously drinking one cup after another.

There were many people in the tea house, most of them were hippie-like, eccentric young adults doing something on their macs. My night started well, I was making plenty of head-way with my photography website. I was able to make it have the look and feel of a simple design. I just have to spend a couple more hours with it to get it to the level that is presentable.

There were plenty of people coming and going, many talking about boyfriends or guys who acted weird. Some other ladies just talked about whatever, I wasn’t really paying attention to their conversation—it might have been too boring or I was in the flow of improving my website.

I had roughly an hour before I was going to get kicked out of the tea house and my laptop battery only had 9% or about 15 minutes left before I was force to drink all of the tea in the kettle. So I saw an extension cord near a young Asian woman, with her pretty mac that was nicely decorated with an array of colors that I couldn’t make out the design of. I asked her if I could plug in my cord (just thinking about that statement makes me laugh with the sexual innuendo). My cord wasn’t long enough so I had to move to the table right next to her (see, there it goes again).

Instantly, there was chatter.

December: The Last Month of the Year

I actually wrote this post over a week ago. I need to be better about posting, I’ve gotten use to writing, saving and closing my computer to repeat the same task the next day. I now all I have been writing about lately is about my novel and how difficult it is and all. The next couple of post will be a change a pace–I’m not promising, though…

I’ve been busy lately. It is something I don’t want to explain right now, but life is moving and I’m also doing what I can with the amount of time I have for this year.

Last week felt tremendous, I was able to get rid of my weight set and felt energize because of doing so. I want to continue to get rid of stuff and declutter my apartment, which will in turn declutter my life.

Clueless on What to Write

November: 2 More Months to Go

It has been a month since I’ve started my challenge of writing my novel. I learned many things about myself and the dedication that I put forward towards this challenge. If I want to do anything, I can do it, it just depends on how bad I want to do something. I don’t need to know how to make the goal happen, that will come with time.

What Did I Learn From my Novel Writing?

However, I did realize that I have many loose ends in my writing. It is something that will take me the rest of the year to make my goal of getting it done by the end of the year. It is okay. I plan to also enter this writing competition and will need to edit a passage of my novel to make it contest ready. This step of editing and reediting is what I will be doing sometime next year with my whole book altogether. I’m looking forward to that moment and will see how I do with this particular task in the coming week.

What Did and Didn’t Get Completed

On Business: My Brother is Kicking My Ass at Ecommerce

It has been well over 2 months since I have started my business experiment. Each day that passes by I get a clearer view of the next step with it. The post isn’t about me and the struggles I’m having to sell vintage wear (4), but about my bro, so here it is.

I didn’t think I would be saying this, but my youngest brother is kicking my ass at the ecommerce business of etsy.com. I don’t know how to explain it, but it is actually bitter-sweet at the same time. When I started, he was at 40 or so sells. I told him that I would catch him in no time—now he is well over 100 and making over a sell a day.

I didn’t know if he truly had it in him, I have been the one talking about business and expressing what I’ve done in the past, but just sitting back and watching him operate is quite amazing.

The Big October Challenge(s)

It has been a long time since I’ve written anything. The last post frighten a couple of people and some thought that I was going to kill myself. But, that is simply not true, besides, I have so much to live for.

I’ve already started this challenge and will post from time to time on the progress I’m making towards both goals.

The year is almost done and still is the best year of my life, so far. I’ve learned many things about myself through various challenges I’ve put myself through, and taken a dream and made it a reality. I’m already thinking of next year and how I want to push myself even more towards my passions, business endeavors, and family and friends.

The Novel Challenge

I still have plenty of plenty of fight in me this year and have started the last quarter of the year off grandly. What I have done and will continue to do for the month of October is to write everyday towards my novel. So far so good, the novel is picking up and now managing to provide content by averaging 1200 words per day.