A Better Life

As a son I appreciate the need to celebrate Mothers. My mother especially. She is not the easy going June Cleaver type or the Jane Wyman Father Knows Best type. She is more of a cross between Ma Kettle and Mrs. Tasmanian Devil. She has good core country values, Christian purpose but is not one to tangle with. I love my mother but she can be a handful. She is protective, sometimes belligerent, always defending herself and her family but not willing or able to just let slights go by. As her son, I have seen her in good times and bad. When we were poor living in a project and when we had everything. Through it all she remains consistently true to herself and family. She is a little bit different because she hails from New Orleans, actually East of New Orleans in the swamps and Mississippi delta which breeds a particularly strong type of inidividual. She can dish it out and she can take it. There are times to joke around with her, get in an insult match but then there are times ...

Now that tablets have taken over (I am typing this on my iPad Pro), finding the right tools is more important than ever. Used to be a couple of apps would suffice. For this article I am using Blogo which is usable but in the free version imposes some arbitrary limits. One non-app purchase i have made is a bluetooth keyboard. Typing onscreen is not intuitive nor is it useful for those of us who cantouch type. 2 finger typing is painful at best.

So, after being almost completely out of money for over a week I now have funds again.  Tonight we through caution to the wind and have a bona fide old fashioned date night with my wife.  What a great time to celebrate life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Of course, once the rent is paid and the utilities we will be back to tight budget again but for tonight we rejoice!

Before April 28 I was childless which was cool you know, the on April 28 about 6:00 PM I had 2 daughters.  Who I love more than I can describe   Now at 2:44 Friday morning I became a grandpa.  Whew, I need a nap. Such a year but surrounded by a growing family. I love my brood.   They are what makes life worthwhile.

So you've seen all the ads and the come hither looks of the internet. You are bored with your daily routine and want the riches promised by the home-based business on the internet. Well, welcome to the club. But beware, there be monsters in here. Before you dive in to the murky waters of internet marketing you will need a wee bit of instruction to avoid the sharks that lie in wait. You see anytime there is a promise of riches you can bet there will parasites destined to relieve you of your life savings without so much as a how do you do. They will promise riches to the tune of thousands each day and only having to put in a fraction of the time you now spend earning your scratch. So where in lies the problem? Although there are billions of people out there surfing the internet, there are millions trying to make money. This makes for a very crowded space and the opportunities for getting noticed are dwindling as well. So now that you are sufficiently discouraged you can now approach ...

Having multiple blogs and article directories to write for, I sometimes find it difficult to start a blog post or article. Sometimes I have trouble just constructing an informal email. What causes this? Lack of motivation? Lack of ideas? No, just blocked. What exactly is blocked? You have ideas and you can write endlessly but none of it sounds good enough to publish. How does one overcome this blockage? My experience has shown that if you continue to write, even if you don't like it and let it set for a day or two you will find that the article you wrote isn't that bad and should be shared. The main thing is to get writing by whatever means necessary. Read a newspaper, peruse CNN.com or any other news site, look over previous posts or review other blogs and articles to get ideas (ideas not articles and blog posts, plagiarism is a big no no). Sometimes I just don't feel like writing so I take a walk, a long walk something on the order of 5 miles or so to get the...

As we go through our lives sometimes circumstances beyond our control force us to take a break. Imagine you are going along and due to budget constraints or the Sequester, you are laid off from your job. This would be a forced break. You didn’t ask for it, you didn’t do anything to cause it, you just drew the short straw and now have to consider your options. One aspect of my job has been that it doesn’t really fit any particular mold or category recognized on job search sites. What should your resume (or resumes) focus on? Is it time for a career change? Should you even be searching for a job or try to build a business instead? It is very difficult and if you are fortunate enough to have finances in place to cover you for 6 months or so, maybe it is time to just kick back and review your life for a couple of weeks. Give yourself time to look over your work history and chart the course that best fits your experience, abilities and interests. Maybe starting a business has been ...