On this Memorial Day I thought I would post this drawing I recently made for my grandson whom I've nicknamed The Blonde Bomber because of his beautiful blonde hair. One of the products I offer are these personalized posters from a small 8 x 10 to poster sized.

Part of my endeavor to be productive in my life's work is to become proficient in making people aware of products I can provide and selling them accordingly. One of my projects I'm undertaking, especially since covid restrictions are being loosened, is the digital presentation of gigs for my caricatures. This type of presentation provides a polished, professional look for company functions such as trade shows, company parties etc. and along with it comes the promise of more money.

 

The Pump

There is an illustrative story regarding motivation which was so eloquently and colorfully told by the late Zig Ziglar involving a pump type water well. The operations of a water well is that one must prime the pump with a small amount of water in order to get water flowing. In short, you must put something in before you can get something out. In fact, in order to actually get water from the well, one must pump vigorously to get the water to the surface but when the stream of sweet water arrives all one must do is keep up a slow steady pressure on the crank to keep it coming.

That's my commitment. I vow to ordain my efforts toward BDI until such a time as to enjoy it's rewards with steady pressure. I welcome the obstacles, temptations and heretofore unforeseen problems associated in pursuing this endeavor. This includes gigs, digital conversion, SUD editing, marketing SUD, merchandising and anything else associated with my life's work.

This includes a holistic approach that spills over into all my personal as well as private endeavors. The biggest benefit in reaching a goal is not in the accomplishment but the person one becomes in it's pursuit.

 

I recently realized that although awakening early as prescribed in The Morning Miracle by Hal Elrod is a good thing, I'm really not using it to my benefit if I don't actually perform any worthwhile task during those early hours. Oh, sure, running two miles a day defiantly has a positive affect on my health but I'm really not doing much of anything else. 

Author Dan Miller suggests that if a person has a 15 hour a week side gig then 5 hours should be spent  learning, 5 hours should be spent reaching out to others, connecting with people, customers and clients. The remaining 5 hours should be spent marketing. I have to admit that I'm doing little of those things in the morning or at any other time of the day for that matter. It certainly stands to reason that by performing better in these realms then I would see a noticeable change in the state of my business. It all comes down to the choices I make on how to spend my time. 

Everyone spends their time doing something and I could be accused of spending most of my day on low priority tasks. It would appear I have the world at my finger tips as an artist, author, t-shirt salesman etc. and yet my sales are painfully low. If I'm honest with myself I can trace my poor performance to focusing more on the learning, as in Miller's assessment, by drawing most of the time without making connections or marketing that which I draw. Then there is planning of which I'm a master. Planning is also futile without actually doing any of the things I've planned. 

Most people would love to stay in their warm bed at 5:30 am and most people would prefer to do things that are enjoyable. I'm no different but I have to make the choice of being responsible for my circumstances or flutily wait to be discovered.

My Special Purpose

Dan Miller is 73 years old and at an age where most other people his age are retiring and spending the rest of their lives sliding into there golden years and degenerating, Dan has actually planned the next 25 years of his life and on top of that, he's doe it one quarter at a time. 

It's prevalent, especially in America, to work for a company for an entire career then retire but Mr. Miller uses a different term. He calls it graduation which is a commencement; a new beginning. He likes to refer to his life up to this point as tenure. In the Marines, we referred to it as time in. "Rank has it's privilege's", we used to say.

Dan Miller has a perspective that steers away from the traditional philosophy of accumulating all the money you can at a career then retiring. His outlook is focused more on fulfilling his purpose in life even past the age of traditional retirement.

I, of course, latch on to this outlook because, lacking a career, I've reached a point where retirement is out of the question even if I wanted to. Continuing to work is essential just for my survival so it makes sense, then, to fulfill my purpose in doing so.  

   

 

Not My 600 lb Life

 The TV program My 600lb Life chronicles a people's lives who are extremely overweight by 100's of pounds, most of whom are over 600lbs in total weight. The characters are seeking solutions to their health issues which are easily connected to psychological factors.

In their journey toward a "normal" life, the specialist doctor instructs them to make small changes that to an average sized person would be nothing unusual but to the patient, produces big results. By sticking to the changes in eating habits and activity the obese patient can easily loose 25 lbs in the first week. It took me 6 month to loose that much weight but to the unusually overweight person it would barely make a dent.

I see my self in much the same light only not in the sense of my weight or even in the matter of having too much of anything but rather in the other direction, namely in the area of scarcity of income and enterprise. At the moment it's scant and slight changes in my behavior and activity can produce for me dramatic effects which to an average person may seem trivial. For someone who scrapes by day to day it can be a big difference.

Really?

 I'm frequently encountered with self-professed avid readers who declare with firmness, 

"I don't read fiction. If it's not true I'm not interested in it". 

Yet in most cases the boasters of this rigid affirmation will, without deliberation, watch the spurious tripe put out by modern Hollywood without a second thought and declare it a "good movie". 

It makes me seriously question the validity of there assertion that they love to read.