I'm giving in to peer pressure here; willingly, I should add. Teli tagged me; I'm flattered.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on these bits of my life (as well as the rest of my life too). :)
I've chosen the theme of Passion to add structure.
I need to move out of my parents' house to reach my full potential, but I'm scared and broke.
I'm excited (and scared) about Ethical Beads, it needs human rights and environmentalist researchers to work. Plus, time. Any takers?
I have an obsessive personality, whereby I get really passionate about specific people and projects, plus other things.
Currently that includes All Things Bright, my health, coffee, Yo Sushi, Giraffe and spodding (def: "the action of sitting at a computer on the Internet, and wasting time").
I oscillate between fear and lack of time as my chief reasons for procrastinating. But mainly it's because I'm spodding. (Bad K, no cookie).
If you'd like to know more, please do feel free to email me; I love answering questions.
If you're sick of the self-obsessiveness, never fear: Come back on Thursday for an insightful entry about money, finances and all the fiscal 'joys' of the season. In actuality, it's an article about more realistic subjects for this time of year, like how to handle it when you're broke.
This is the third, and final, installment of Power of three: Goal-setting: Business (3 of 3), in which I discuss studying & education. See my last two entries for the first two installments, Goal-setting: Health (1 of 3) & Goal-setting: Studying (2 of 3).
Mistakes & Failure: I will fail. Good. (Entire premise of my blog, Make More Mistakes, which I'm relaunching in January 2007).
Execute, don't deliberate. Make intuitive decisions. (Note: Intuitive does not mean impulsive).
One way of tackling this fear is to learn from other people's failures. Another is make more mistakes myself (and this is the entire reason for the existence of Make More Mistakes, my blog which re-launches in January 2007).
2. Execute
Intimately linked to #1. Fail.
Whatever you want you either create it for yourself or you exchange something you have with someone who's created what you want.
3. Money
Intimately linked to #2. Execute.
I need to change beliefs about, and my attitude to, money. I never seem to have enough, even when I acquire it unexpectedly. I've tried hoarding it and that hasn't worked.
As Steve Pavlina said, "Money has no inherent value of its own, but we assign it value through social agreement. If I give you $100, you can withdraw $100 of value from society. The only reason this works is that we agree by consensus that $100 has a certain value." Making money consciously, Steve Pavlina.
In future entries, I'll be exploring different approaches to money and wealth.
Finale
This concludes my series on goal-setting. I hope you've enjoyed it and found it useful. Don't forget to let me know what you think about my thoughts on: 1. Health, 2. Studying & 3. Business.
This is the second installment of Power of three: Goal-setting: Studying (2 of 3), in which I discuss studying & education. See my last entry for the first installment, Goal-setting: Health (1 of 3).
1. Organisation: Overcoming fear
Not much to say on this one, except that I'm inclined to procrastinate out of fear.
I feel like a hypocrite suggesting to other people that they should conquer their fears, because I struggle so much with this advice myself. So I'll just point you in the direction of some who've said it better than I could.
I've been trying an experiment for the past month, which is to take on more than I'm comfortable with… The idea of doing things that are outside my comfort zone is also an anxiety-inducing exercise in facing my own demons. Coupled with my continuing search for “creative and career identityâ€, all these negative associations contribute, I think, to a failure to really live up to my potential. And what IS that potential? By overbooking myself, slowly, I am finding where my cracking points are… don't let undefined fear be your reason for saying “noâ€. Say yes instead.
Dude, you're procrastinating because you fear your imperfections… 1. Embrace your suckiness… use failures/imperfections as guideposts to construct the destination's route. When you embrace your suckiness, you drive yourself to do something — anything. 2. You don't need to do anything… When you replace the "I-have-to's" with the "I-choose-to's", you empower your mind to become fully assertive and open to kicking ass. Chillax.
You can't let fear stand in your way to success. You can't become that timid person who wishes and prays for things to happen with your who isn't willing to take any action and make moves with your business.
Fear is the great inhibitor. All of the excuses that you find for not doing work you love have solutions. You do not enact them because you are afraid: of showing up too big in the world; of failing; of appearing as an imposter; of living in poverty. There is nothing wrong with fear. Feel it, talk to it, examine it and walk with it. Then step out and let yourself show up, warts and all. It will liberate you.
There is a price to pay for success and it is to be able to do things that ARE good but still may FEEL bad or may scare the crap out of you… Commit to throwing up your hand when you get the tug from inside and you're instantly a success.
Making unsubstantiated claims, or What I believe versus what I can explain rationally.
I can't remember who it was, but one brilliant philosopher felt he wasn't being true to himself in his capacity as a Philosophy lecturer because he felt compelled to say more than he knew. I worry about doing this myself. Of course, I know much less than he did, so I'm more likely to run across this problem.
I'm concerned about saying anything without providing evidence or good reasons for why I think what I do, which makes writing essays tough.
As I mentioned in my last post, studying is both helping and hindering my progress here: Helping because my reasoning skills improve as I exercise my brain, hindering because the more I think about things the more I sink in to confusion. Chris assures me that this is normal.
3. Evaluation
Actually, I can't decide whether all my self-analysis is a good thing or not. I might be over-analysing. *thinks for a bit* I think the main thing is to work through these in order. By the time I finish organising and executing I probably won't feel the need for evaluation. What do you reckon?
Looking forward
Come back on Sunday for the final installment of Power of three: Goal-setting: Business (3 of 3). I'll be developing some of my thoughts about Ethical Beads too, as well as sharing my business plan and recruiting people who care about human beings & the environment.
Cue this series in three parts. In Power of three: Goal-setting I explore three areas (health, studying & business) and go through some simple instructions for myself. By doing so, I make it easier to achieve my goals (meaning, happiness for myself & happiness for others) because I've broken them down in to easy-to-follow steps, which include things I like doing.
I hope these entries help you to achieve similar success with your goals too. Do write in (email or leave comments) and let me know how you get on.
Health
Physical
Water: The easiest, cheapest way to be healthy.
Dancing: I love dancing. In On Religion, the secret to happiness is dance. It's an excellent way to combat "blogfat – an aversion to doing anything physical that takes us away from crafting a new post." Pam.
Healthy-eating: Yo Sushi (review coming soon) and vegetarian cuisine, like Food For Thought seem like excellent ways to go, because yummy and healthy is the only way I ever maintain a healthy diet for any reasonable length of time. Experimenting in the kitchen is fun too.
Emotional
Love: It can be such a devastating heartache and yet still there are numerous poems in awe of love. Kant defined human beings as distinctly rational beings; why not as loving beings?
Kindness: I find it amazing when that truism 'a stranger is a friend you haven't met yet' really does ring true. The kindness of strangers is so unexpected. I'm in the company of a couple of Texans (they're from Austin, which is 'the hole in the Bible-belt', can I call them Austinians?!) who are so welcoming and lovely that I can't get over it. I'd love to make people feel that way around me.
Niceness: Being nice is one of those virtues that really is its own reward. It's closely linked to being charitable. It seems to me that being nice is about the warmness you feel in your heart when you're nice, not about boasting about it. (Reminds me of something in the Bible, New Testament, about how charity should be given in secret). With the exception of when public charity-giving raises awareness and encourages others to do it too.
Mental: This is going to be the toughest nut to crack, definitely. Notice how the steps get increasingly vague as they progress from physical to emotional to mental, mainly because my mental anguishes at the moment revolve around:
Philosophy conflicts: What I believe versus what I can explain rationally. Studying is both helping and hindering my progress here. (In my next entry on Studying, I'll discuss my philosophy conflicts in more depth).
Being good: Sometimes it's so hard. Sometimes it feels like being good only results in more pain and unhappiness for everyone involved. Sometimes being bad feels good.
Spirituality: Trying to explain how I feel about it seems like a mammoth, impossible task at the moment. It feels completely indefinable and uncategorisable.
Looking forward
Come back on Friday for the next installment of Power of three: Goal-setting: Studying (2 of 3). I'll be developing some of my thoughts on the 'Mental' side of things too.
Some of these thoughts emerged in my entry How to be happy, or Why you're sad and how to fix it, which explores, "why I'm sad, how to be happy and my thoughts about what I want to do in my life, where I want to go and how I want to get there".
This entry takes a step back from happiness per se, to consider the second part of that discussion more closely; considering my ideas about my life in conjunction with what it might mean to live a fulfilled life.
I've included lots of links to Steve Pavlina in case you're interested in particular ideas I've mentioned and want to pursue them. I find Steve's writing to be really clear and helpful; I hope you do too.
Firstly, I want my life to have meaning
I want the areas of my life to cohere in to a pattern with an overarching aim, vision or mission. I want my decisions to have a non-arbitrary basis. I don't want pursuing my desires to be a random mess of conflicting actions. See Living Congruently, Steve Pavlina.
Some ideas I've considered
Existentialism: Creating meaning for oneself
I was particularly enamoured with this when I was studying my undergraduate degree. Existentialism is something I will explore in future entries I'm sure. In the meantime, if you're interested, Wikipedia: Existentialism has some pointers and references for where to find out more.
Kant on free will
Immanuel Kant helped me a lot today, especially with Peter's exegesis. Read Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (book, currently £9.99 new, £5 used), because it's clear & convincing. Plus, it's something I'll explore in future entries, so if you read it now you'll be ready to discuss it when I write about it here. It's the only course book on my wishlist; aw, Peter would be so proud. :)
I now have a way of thinking about free will that neither sounds completely implausible to me (Compatibilism & Libertarianism), nor includes discomforting counter-intuitiveness (Determinism). Instead, it soothes me. (Yes, Kant, soothing!)
Secondly, I'm in pursuit of happiness
Currently, a big chunk of this is my being in pursuit of healthiness (mentally, physically & spirituality). I'm achieving this in a number of ways:
Re-evaluating my life, in particular my attitudes to studying, following less than phenomenal experiences writing the essays. (The Christmas break is coming at an excellent time, giving me some much needed time to sort myself out).
Dancing, I do love it. What really makes one happy is to dance! It's so true. Well, it's true for me, dancing certainly makes me feel great. I love watching dancing too. (In fact, if you ever see any good dancing on YouTube, please recommend it to me by tagging it with for:inspirewithhope at del.icio.us. Thanks! Oh, and do you know of any daytime dance classes in London? Let me know, cheers).
Being good. Or, rather, thinking about what it means to be good. Chris' classes have always had a profound effect on me. He's leading our Ethics seminars, therefore I'm thinking about morality.
'What is Goodness?' is connected with 'What is Reality?'
Steve's thought about subjective reality speak to me. So that, whilst I espouse a realist view (sorry, I can't think of a straightforward summary), I think, in a sense, I create (my) reality. Subjective reality is fascinating, something else I should write about!
In the meantime, definitely read Steve Pavlina on Subjective Reality, as that's what I'll be responding to: "Subjective reality is an integrated belief system where consciousness and awareness are primary. They are the container in which everything else exists. And I do mean EVERYTHING."
Yes, I realise those views (realism and subjective reality) are complete opposites, but it makes sense in my head!
Thirdly, happiness is located in happiness for myself & happiness for others
Cue entrepreneurship (for me) and social enterprise (for others), united. Brilliant. This is something I'm doing a lot of thinking about at the moment and it's going to occupy an increasingly large part of my life. Interested? See How Selfish Are You? Steve Pavlina.
Ooh, another soundbite from Steve; this one's really motivating:
Getting past a 7 [your comfort zone] is hard. It can take more effort to get past a 7 than it takes to reach a 7 in the first place. Some people would complain that it takes too long to get past a 7. But the truth is that the time is going to pass anyway. Even if it takes 5-10 years, you might as well get yourself to a higher level within that time, since the years are going to pass anyway…
You might get a bit scratched and bruised along the way. You might mess up your current relationship, your career, or your lifestyle. You won't be able to see very far in front of you because everything will be moving faster than you're used to. Sometimes you'll just have to take it one day at a time and guess at the best direction. You might even hit a wall now and then.
Bruises just come with the territory. But getting moving again is far better than remaining stuck. The wounds will heal, and I've always found an exciting new path to explore. It sure beats dying a slow death while waiting for the vultures to swoop down…
If you want to experience deep fulfillment, take lots and lots of action. Action can be physical, mental, social — even spiritual.
So, what difference does all this thinking make? Looking to the future…
So, next steps?
I had a lot of brilliant ideas today about things I want to do in the future. Now I just need to decide what I'm doing now to make that future happen.
Over the Christmas holidays, I'll be studying and working on my main business idea. I'll be meeting up with my study buddies (uniting business & pleasure is an excellent way to be motivated) and, of course, doing some more thinking. Stay tuned to All Things Bright for more every-other-day updates and let me know what you think, because I love hearing from my readers.
I'm currently a full-time student. When I leave university, I'll probably have very little money. I'm trying to decide whether I should get a job when I finish or whether I should embrace my poverty and do the entrepreneurship thing anyway.
I'm 90% determined that I should resist the pressure to 'just' make money. (No doubt the other 10% will follow by the time I've been in part-time employment for another year, especially with all these entrepreneurship resources I keep reading… :))
Over time, there will be periods where I'll be working for myself indirectly, i.e. officially employed. The key point is that no matter what I'm doing, it's crucial for me to maintain my entrepreneurship mindset. Cue this (growing!) collection of resources.
Resources to ensure you get the most from employment
In the meantime, skills to cultivate:
Student frugality
Self-motivation
Inner strength
Watch this space: In my next entry, I'll explore these: Why they're important and how I'm going to master them.
I've believed for a long time that having a team of inspirational people behind me really, well, inspires me. (Sorry, not all of my thoughts are mind-blowing breakthroughs :))
Plus, lots of people have asked me about entrepreneurship: How does one get started? Where to go for advice? Who can help out?! To that end, here's my hand-selected team; I hope you find them inspiring too:
Steve Pavlina, Personal Development for Smart People Master of the manifested intention, personal development guru and a hugely successful entrepreneur to boot, by public standards and his own.
Pamela Slim, Escape From Cubicle Nation So supportive and so passionate about helping people to start their own businesses. Her podcasts are brilliant, easy to listen to and packed with information. I'll be writing about them shortly.
Jon J. Symons, Art of Money Down-to-earth, completely willing to engage with his readers and listen to feedback. It's very encouraging to read his blog.
Brian Clark, Copyblogger Brilliant contemporary, non-fiction writer. Top of the RSS subscription, along with the other greats above.
Emily Dickinson (ref: Wikipedia) Sticking it to convention to be truly original, superficially through just uncommon punctuation usage, but really through so much more. Plus, amazing output! Beautiful poetry. Oh, and independent too, brilliant.
Bonus: Cheshire Cat, Alice in Wonderland (ref: Wikipedia) Big grins now! The Cheshire Cat has much to teach us about leaving a lasting positive impression, as well as his immortal words — If you don't mind where you end up, "Then it doesn't matter which way you go." (Implying, quite correctly, that if you do mind, you'd better decide).
I'm considering writing extended biographies, especially something on the Cheshire Cat. I'd love to do some investigative journalism and research on him and on Alice in Wonderland (my favourite book) generally. Oh, and some sort of comparative literature on Emily's stuff.
In this entry, I'm exploring why I'm sad, how to be happy and my thoughts about what I want to do in my life, where I want to go and how I want to get there. I hope you find it informative too. To that end, I've included some links to sites I've found useful, with brief summaries and/or reviews.
Career, life plans, aspirations, hopes & dreams
Aside from the seemingly obvious, what do you absolutely, totally, without-a-doubt, enjoy–no, love–doing? Something that just sends shivers through your spine when you talk about it?
If you're not overwhelmingly emotionally-connected to your business, you're in the wrong industry.
For me, entrepreneurship is the only way to go. Entrepreneurship, to me, means I'm completely in charge of where my life goes, the buck stops at me, it's my responsibility to make sure I do everything that needs to be done or delegate it to the right people.
For me, it's important that I get to do a massive variety of things. At the moment, the things I most love doing are being on the Internet, talking to people, writing, thinking up new ideas, playing around with new ideas and just generally being creative. Hence, All Things Bright.
For me, I've got to be highly stimulated by something in order to be passionate about it. I can work really hard on a project 'if I have to', but my best work definitely comes out when I desperately want to be working on it. Why's that? Because my creativity pours out when I'm loving what I'm doing.
Gratitude, or How to be thankful
Dwelling on things that have gone well can help pick you up, he says. "You have to thank your lucky stars about what goes right on a daily basis. Whenever you get the feeling of being negative about things, just take a moment out and remind yourself of the stuff that has gone well. It could be anything from a conversation to your garden looking nice, or that it didn't rain on you when you were out on your bike. It's an extremely powerful technique.
I had been thinking about writing an entry about things for which I'm grateful, but I thought a list would make pretty dull reading for you.
However, reading the article I've just quoted above, I'm re-convinced it's a good idea. By breaking up the list in to bitesize chunks, it'll be easy to make it interesting and/or insightful. Consequently, I'm going to write on this theme each day at 43 things.
I'll be doing this every day for the next 30 days (and then I may carry on). The first one is: Thank you for friends. In future, you can read these at Say thank you, by Kx; they also appear in the Thanks box, in the sidebar to the right, between the Subscribe and Pages boxes.
How to be happy: Useful links for you
Depression Cure: How to be Happy!
1. Place conditions on your happiness leads to unhappiness.
2. Blaming others leads to unhappiness.
3. Decide to be happy.
I can easily accept that 1 & 2 are true; but 3 seems a little tricky.
The Guardian: Why do some people enjoy life and others don't? (How to be happy)
"Positive psychologists believe optimism can be learned, that we can teach ourselves to see a half-empty glass as half-full. All we have to do is spend time mulling over all the things that have gone right for us, rather than dwelling on what has gone badly."
Trizoko: How to Best Spend a Minute
"When you think of one thing that makes you thankful, another sucka pops up. And another, and another, and another — until you fully appreciate what a sweet life you really have."
eHow: How to Be Happy
"Happiness has different meanings for everyone; we each have to define and seek it for ourselves." Step-by-step instructions on how to be happy!
On a related note, I've completely re-written my About page – spent the best part of my weekend doing that and I'm really happy with the result. I've added pictures, more information and a much improved structure. Do let me know what you think.
Self-knowledge
I've always valued self-awareness. Lately I haven't been doing a very good job of knowing myself, although I still valued self-knowledge highly as was evident from my lauding personal development so much.
However, today marks a return to my enviably high self-awareness, as well as offering insight in to what happened to make it disappear. In essence, my character has changed markedly, which meant that my self-knowledge no longer reflected my self, leading to much confusion. The biggest change was my conversion from shyness, which has been the catalyst for a host of personality and practical changes in my life.
I realised that I'd been identifying as someone who draws energy from being alone, due to avoiding other people, due to being shy. I'm no longer shy and, now that I realise that, I can finally identify as someone who draws energy from others, who develops ideas by brainstorming and discussing things. I had a 'Eureka!' moment about this today, whilst at KCL Enterprises, thinking about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. (Previously I'd thought I was an INFP/INFJ, but I'm now sure I'm an ENFP).
Shyness
Shyness is a feeling of insecurity and awkwardness that certain people experience while being among others, talking with others, asking favors of others, etc.
When I stopped being shy, and how; plus 3 lessons to help you too
I actually don't know the precise details of how and when I stopped being shy. I've self-identified as shy for so long that it's really hard to realise I'm not shy any more – I have to make a conscious effort to remember!
One of the things that helped me to be less shy was acting confident. For example, working in retail means I have to interact with the public. I used to hate talking on the telephone, so I avoided answering it at work, but there's only so long you can go on doing that. Over time, I got used to answering it and then moved on to initiating phone calls voluntarily and even willingly.
The first lesson is that acting confident can help you actually become confident.
Over the last two years, I've spent a lot of time with Ian, which has built up my self-confidence no end, because he's so lovely to me. This definitely contributed significantly to my overcoming my shyness.
The second lesson: Self-confidence is a crucial factor in overcoming shyness.
One of my uni mates asked me how one can gain (increased) self-confidence, spending time with people who really appreciate you will do wonders. Once your confidence starts increasing generally, you'll be able to increase your self-confidence with next to no effort because it will be natural for you to think of yourself in positive terms.
The third lesson: Seek out positive, nice people (like me!); they'll be happy to have more friends too, so it's mutually-beneficial.
Read & reflect on some of the things others have written about shyness too.
Helpful sites for shy people
What Is Shyness?
"Shyness means to feel a little scared when you're around other people"
Shy and Free
Personal growth site dedicated to transforming shyness into wholeness and happiness
Shykids.com
"The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid" Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson
INFJ or INFP? A Closer Look (Update: Link added 21 Nov 2006)
"Introverting" and "extroverting"… We all do both." How do you work out which you are? Read on to find out.
How to Go From Introvert to Extrovert (Update: Link added 21 Nov 2006)
Steve Pavlina used to be introverted too: "In order to become an extrovert, I found that I had to overcome several blocks to being more extroverted." Read on to find out how, and how to balance the two.
Seamlessly & effortlessly balancing my work, study & social lives
Happy & healthy
FREE (i.e. no longer living with my parents)
CVS to BVS (Current View of Situation to Better View of Situation)
The main thrust of this method is instead of thinking about how to make your life (or specific 'problem' areas of it) a bit better than it is, think about how to make it lots better: Imagine your life ten times better than it is now, then work backwards to figure out how to get there. It's also a good way of thinking outside the box.
Areas marked for improvement
Living arrangements
25% better: Cadging whatever freedom I can, rejoicing in small victories like being allowed to stay out later.
10x better: Moving out.
Independently wealth
25% better: Getting promoted at Next, doing some work for Night Island, pay off debts
10x better: Leaving Next to focus on my own projects, earning tonnes for Night Island with bigger & better contracts, have someone else pay off my debts
Career / Entrepreneurship
25% better: Spending a bit more time on EthicalBeads.com, getting the word out amongst King's Entrepreneurs
10x better: Investing serious time & money in EthicalBeads.com, actively marketing to King's students generally.
Life: Work-study-play balance
25% better: Fiddling with iCal & Google Calendar
10x better: Dying of exhaustion. Well, okay, that one was a bit tongue-in-cheek, admittedly. :)
My take on 'CVS to BVS' (Current View of Situation to Better View of Situation)
How I see it, the 25% better plans are like the short-term, urgent solutions, the 10x better ideas are the long-term, important solutions. The key point is that it's the important goals that give meaning to a life, they're the things about which you're so passionate. Think about it, what makes you more excited, thinking about paying the bill that's due at the end of the month or going on that trekking holiday you've got on your 'things to do before I die' or 43things list?
What is of value in this CVS to BVS document is the motivation and inspiration to focus on your important goals and concrete ways to achieve them. Procrastinating on my goals only hurts me, so I need to step up!
First step, start working on the steps leading to my 10x better goals.
Second step, work on the business plan for EthicalBeads.com.
No matter how self-aware, how happy you are with your life, locale, and person, there is always room for improvement. What do you want to change? What, who, where, when, or how do you wish you were…?
Independently wealthy, successful businesswoman (EthicalBeads.com); seamlessly & effortlessly balancing my work, study & social lives, happy & healthy and finally FREE (i.e. no longer living with my parents).
Luckily, this isn't all just wishful thinking or some idle daydream because my business partner has suggested a getting-things-done-esque method, which I think might work well. It's called CVS to BVS (Current View Situation to Better View Situation).
I'm going to work through it tomorrow and share the results of my labour here on Monday. So, look out for it!
No wife can cook as well as her mother-in-law, because as you grow older your palate becomes more critical and you no longer enjoy food as much as once you did.
– Some psychologist, as quoted by my dad.
Poppycock.
(I prefer calling 'poppycock' to 'bullsh*t' because it's simultaneously funnier & more polite).
I choose to believe that the refinement of taste, as one matures, means we're able to enjoy food more too, not just less.
How else can you explain my trying new foods and – shock! horror! – liking them?!
I'm really good at focusing on one thing to the exclusion of all else. Usually I compromise (a little) and focus on one thing to the exclusion of most everything else. However, this isn't the best way to get ahead or stay balanced. It's no good having one area of your life perfect and the rest in ruins. It's not even any good having a few ideal areas, you've got to be making progress on all of them. Yes, it's tough, but it's worth it.
Or so I'm reliably informed… :)
How I'm doing with areas of my life
I've awarded each area some stars out of 5 to indicate how I'm doing with it.
Entrepreneurship & blogging
4 stars
Exceedingly happy with this area! I've been blogging professionally for four months now. Wow, what an achievement! I've heard it said that six months of blogging is the first major milestone – if you can keep going after six months and continue consistently for a year, I think that says something important about your commitment to professional blogging.
I'm maintaining a regular schedule at Make More Mistakes (every other Tuesday) and a regular & frequent schedule at All Things Bright (every other today).
I'm working on Ethical Beads (dotORG & dotCOM), which is my next BIG project. I'm very excited about it; lots of potential there.
So far, my overall main challenge with entrepreneurial blogging is writing for a minimum of an hour each day. I tend to spend hours researching instead, but I need to discipline myself to do both. The negative consequences of not doing this include manic writing frenzies when posts are due. I have most of the information in front of me, but I have to get it ready & weave it all together with some creativity & original content. It makes blogging more stressful doing it that way.
In addition, I need to make as much headway as I can with Ethical Beads before I go back to university. I want to have all the systems in place and a decent variety of excellent quality links in order to pique interest & encourage interaction. My ideal set-up would be one whereby users submit links themselves, I moderate where necessary and everything goes up very quickly and correctly, with lots of viral publicity. I need to make that happen.
Recreation
3 stars
It's been hard to relax and I'm still working long days. However, I have made space to see quite a lot of DVDs, including new films (Snakes on a Plane, Volver), recent classics (Pulp Fiction, Signs, Unbreakable) and the hilarious adult cartoon series, Futurama. I've caught up with a couple of friends recently, which has been great.
Sites – Change Things Now! & Refresh London
2 stars
My enthusiasm for these sites is still present, but it's waning due to lack of contributions & support. With All Things Bright I wholly expect to go it alone (comments are always welcome, of course), but Change Things Now! & Refresh London are social sites and I expected them to be partially community-driven. Never mind, once I've made some moe headway with my entrepreneurial blogging (see above), I will delve in to these projects with renewed vigour, inspiring those around me to contribute too.
Change Things Now!
I need to create the London Feminism Calendar with the little information I have and an easy way for users to add events themselves.
Refresh London
I need to install WordPress, put a basic theme in place, contact Ahmed about creating a theme, mail the group with a suggested date, time & place for meeting… Lots to do, but all of it easy.
Healthy eating
0.5 stars
Er, not so much. It's not that I don't try, it's just that… Actually, what am I talking about, it is that I don't try.
One of my main reasons for not eating healthily is that I hate cooking and healthy fast food is hard to come by. I suppose what I need to do is come up with an easy list of easy, quick, tasty dishes I don't mind preparing.
I'm worried about this one for a few reasons, the most easily tackled one is my lack of reading to date, due to my focusing on entrepreneurship & blogging. Later on, my MA & blogging are going to clash big time, unless I do something to change that. Need to start thinking about that now, the main solution seems to be planning, as usual, again.
Seth Godin wrote an excellent article about how it's more important to be different, than it is to be better, which is just as well because I'm more of a fellow traveller than an expert. Which is to say, I'm exploring topics in which I'm interested and sharing what I learn & experience with you, so we can increase our knowledge together.
It does mean that it's very important for me to think about my Unique Selling Points and to convey this in my writing. What makes my blog unique? What makes my posts unique? Even, what makes me unique?
So far, the main differentiating factor I can readily identify is I'm female + geek + entrepreneur.
Other elements that make me interesting:
creative
intelligent, intellectual, educated
passion, will to succeed
love of learning
addicted to blogs
I believe the combination of all the above make me unique and I hope All Things Bright reflects that. I'm always working on defining & refining the meaning of inspirewithhope.com, it's aims & purposes etc. I'm fairly introspective, which I think is great but meets with varied opinion…
Resources
I wasn't able to release the Glossary as planned earlier this week. I am still working on it, never fear! The main difficulty is that I have so many excellent definitions, but that the aim of the Glossary is not to overwhelm visitors with tonnes of information; the aim is to make everything simple.
So the challenge becomes how to reduce all these wonderful definitions to the essence of what the words mean; it becomes a practice in only selecting the essential complexities requiring simple definitions in the first place. For example, one might not know what RDF is, but do WordPress beginners really need to know? No.
Personal blogging
So concludes this week's personal entries about Kathleen. I hope you enjoyed them. If you did, you'll be pleased to know I'll be writing more personal entries in the future. If not, you'll be pleased to know I resume my regular explorations of entrepreneurship, blogging, marketing etc. on Sunday. Either way, let me know what you thought.
Darren Rowse (ProBlogger) has made me re-evaluate what I hope to achieve here and why I reference him & Steve (Steve Pavlina) so much. Well, I do it because their ideas are amazing, genius, even. (Although, I definitely need to be more actively linking to lesser known sources too). I don't expect that my readers will necessarily start reading their blogs just because I've linked to them: After all, my target audience is people who want to know about me.
Notoriety; Kathleen: Virtual celebrity
I was talking to one of my friends last night and realised I've neglected to share the main aim of All Things Bright, as it has evolved to be: The clue was always in the name – All Things Bright – really. As I told Dave, the purpose of All Things Bright is to make me a virtual celebrity. Some people like to go on 'reality' tv for their five minutes of fame, some like to go on talk shows to tell the world their dirty secrets, some like to go in to acting or music. Not me.
It girl of the IT world
I want to be the 'it' girl of the IT world. Famous for being famous, but in the blogosphere (i.e. the whole network of online journals) and cyberspace, not in 'Real Life'.
I updated Projects today, so have a look to get an overview of my current activities.
Ethics; Kathleen: Social entrepreneur
I want to use my creativity to help people too. Hence the launch of Change Things Now! – my site to make feminism mainstream, building on my involvement with local feminist groups. I started Refresh London, an initiative to rejuvenate web professionalism and help those starting out.
Ethical Beads
My latest product, one which merges vitally important ideals about humanity & social justice with e-commerce is Ethical Beads. Ethical Beads bridges two sites – EthicalBeads.org, directory for info & resources about ethical beads and EthicalBeads.com, store for bead & jewellery shopping.
Ethical Beads is in development, I recently completed the designs for both sites (just tweaking left now) and am focusing on research. I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, now as always, I welcome all links to related news & articles about working practices, environmental effects etc. of beads & jewellery. Thanks!
Change the world
You can change the world by joining me at any of these sites. I am always looking for people to help. Just sending me some related links makes a world of difference, that way I can share your knowledge with others. Please do email me with feedback, links etc. Much appreciated.
So far, I'm not doing great with that. However, I am making a special effort to relax. I do a fair bit of travelling each day and my working day is long (8am – I fall asleep (past midnight), although that's by no means continuous working), so it is important. This week I've managed to watch the entire first series of Futurama, very funny. It's by the same guy who does/did The Simpsons.