Welcome to the online home of me, some guy given the name John Cleveland Payne. In the grand scheme of life, I am just another guy with another blog. But to myself, and hopefully to all of you who actually read this, I am something a little more special. From a young age, I fell in love of the idea of ‘the message’ and medium in which you try to transmit.
Basically, everyone has a message to give to the world. Some are basic, some complex, some have the power to up lift and some are just out there to bring as many people down as possible. But everyone has a message, and most people have problems identifying their message. And the ones who get that far can seem to figure out how to get the world to listen.
Well, I have a message, and this is where I will get a chance to share it. Hopefully, you’ll get plenty of things to keep you motivated or inspired, provide knowledge and comfort, and just have a little fun. Apologies for the state of flux and state of seemingly confusing messages that you’ll get here for a while, as I am doing a lot of personal soul searching, and scrubbing of old ideas to take the best of the past to build a new beginning.
In 2007, I changed the name of blog from “The Mis-Adventures Of The Jazzy Cool One” to “Life In Fast Forward.” I began to tear down old blogs and newsletters and try to find places for them here. My goal is to take the focus off of me the person, and show the world the life I live and share with every human on the planet. I aspire to life at a very high standard, and instead of dealing with people who rather slow us down, I want to find ways to help people pick up there own pace. As you get to see an insight to the further adventures I hope to lead, hopefully you’ll enjoy the ride, and want to come along.
Other things
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Other things
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I’ve got some New Year’s advice that you’re probably not going to like.
If you’re holding onto anything that has become old and useless, throw it away. If you’re holding on the anything that is constantly in your way or carrying around something that only has the purpose of weighing you down (excluding ankle weights for a workout, of course), throw it away.
This applies to the mental and emotional hang-ups that have been nagging at you since childhood. This applies to the relationships with people and organizations that do not empower you.
This applies doubly to all the old physical stuff that you’ve collected over time that you truly hate, and do nothing but get in the way and keep you from getting the new things you truly want.
Feeling cluttered and choked by stuff will make you push back any new opportunities that may arrive at your mental or literal door step. You might be afraid to let the opportunity see your place as such a disaster, or you might just know that you have no more room for more stuff, even if it is the good stuff.
Those hard feelings left behind by an old friend who never apologized from doing you wrong. Years of doubt of your success as you have been actively living it. Shoeboxes of old love letters from a lover three love’s ago, or worse, receipts from ten years ago, long reconciled.
In trying to live a life where every space is a place, if that space is just a place holder for something that brings misery, pain, or even no feeling whatsoever, and you could easily replace it with something that would instantly give you joy, what are you waiting for?
I have found myself with some bona fide free time as I am winding down to the end of 2008. As a result, I'm having a less stressful time in my 2009 goal making and business planning. Yes, actually goal making and business planning and not just scribbling stuff down on random sheets of paper to shuffle through for the first few weeks of the year. Even better, I have been able to make time to research and put my ideas into some semblance of logical order (thought spelling and grammar will always be a little suspect).
As I continue setting up my goal plans, I have been sifting through some of the on-line tools I have collected to see which ones will be most useful for getting in gear for the new year (check out my mad rhyming skills, yo!), and wanted to share a few with y'all. Here are some sources for free stuff to get your business or personal life in line for the year 2009 (I'm a poet and I didn't even know it...):
Today's TQ
Today's TQ offers a daily system designed to remind you to achieve your personal best. That's right, remind you that you can and should give your all everyday to stay committed to your dreams. They start you out with a extensive test to gauge you current level in 10 factors to your overall success, and for a small fee you can purchase your own personal book on yourself and audio programs to help you raise your scores. But you want free stuff, and they have plenty of pdfs with calendars and planning tools to help you out.
Have you been putting up Facebook status updates for the past three months proclaiming you're cleaning your office? Well I have, and I'm no where near finished yet. Assuming you have the same issue with clutter creep, but aren't so vocal about it, the Fly Lady has all the tricks you could ever dream of, and says if you take it 15 minutes at a time, you'll eventually find your way to clean. We won't go into how many 15 minute intervals you can accumulate in three months.
Your need for free software alternatives and mobile access to computer programs are both solved at PortableApps.com, where a USB flash drive is all you need to carry your favorite computer programs with you, along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more. Portable versions of popular open source applications are offered here free, with no spyware and no limitations.
For free guilt moral support for getting yourself in shape this year, I'm offering up a new site I am still getting the hang of: Dailymile. It is described as a social training log for runners, triathletes, and cyclists, and is an easy way to share your training with friends and stay motivated, assuming you need a little one-up-manship as part of your motivation. Look up and share local races and post your workout time to throw in the face of compare with friends you make on the site.
The United States of America, while we've got plenty of serious problems, is in my opinion the greatest nation on the planet. I admit my bias, but I also provide here my 'indisputable proof'* to the fact, also know as my list of things I am grateful for in living in this country:
- you are truly born with infinite possibilities - you are limited by your own imagination - we are not waring with our neighbors - stupid, while often annoying and occasionally dangerous, is itself not a crime - we are nation of second nearly infinite chances (helping those who are stupid...) - the purely talentless can somehow thrive in any economy
* 'Indisputable proof' may in fact be disputed. My only response is "Yeah, what's your point? U-S-A! U-S-A!”
One of early members of child was wanting to be President of the United States. Then, I wanted to be President of NBC. Then a DJ. Then a center for the Atlanta Hawks. Somewhere along the way I ended up going to college to be study to be an engineer, and ended up being an Air Force Acquisitions Officer, to give it all up to become a DJ.
Never once did the thought of becoming a fireman cross my mind. But that is main role with my company, despite every effort I take to make it otherwise. This becomes more apparent every time I take a true day off like I did Tuesday...then came back to mass insanity of half-projects yesterday...which lead to me working about 6 hours (so far) on work related project on this supposed day off...and will drive probably drive me insane as I am slated to take off every Tuesday and Thursday in the month of December to burn my vacation days.
Because the real reason I hate taking the day off and being to myself: I can effectively schedule a productive day for myself. I can also be flexible enough for interruptions and emergencies. In fact, I found I could make a list of things to do for the day, and then could chose to blow off every activity on the entire list, and would have found some way to accomplish something.
At work, I often begin with a long list of things to get done, and find myself quickly confronted with various ‘emergencies’ that take me away from my list that after completion didn’t pan out to be exactly emergencies. And I always end the day by leaving work late, and always leaving work frustrated from not making any actual progress in the job.
Unfortunately, I can not change my fate at work (oh, have I tried...) at this moment, and as I choose to continue showing up every morning, I am stuck with the weary and tireless (yes, I know they mean the same thing) life of a fireman, keeping a corporation from coming down on itself.
But for you, I offer some advice. If you find yourself stressed out at work by maximum effort but minimum, if any, progress, steal a moment to yourself and think about what your workday might be missing:
A Routine: the act of following a ritualistic daily routine will help you easily gage your progress in your daily tasks...unless you routinely never get anything done.
Proper Focus: the ability to focus on a single goal as you move toward it, or even focus on a single task as you try to finish it, will do wonders for your sanity and productivity.
A Score Card: I might not have mastered getting anything checked off my daily master list, but I still attempt it. Your to do list becomes your roadmap to success, or at least a way to gauge when you have finished something.
A System To Keep People Away: If you don’t plan out what you are going to do with your time, someone else will easily fill that time up for you. But if you have bosses that respect what you do for you company and themselves personally, they will find ways to divert some of the problem children and their problem projects far enough away from their office aces (you are an office ace, right?) to minimize distractions. If the boss can’t help, partner up with a co-worker to work a little misdirection for each other. And if you are lucky enough to be a supervisor, make sure you take good care of that assistant who is able to say “no” in just the right manner to get the point across.
Today is Thanksgiving in the U.S., and instead of spending time with my family, am stuck at the house alone, with just Puffy the Puppy to meander in the way keep me company for the weekend. And while I’m not to thrilled with the circumstances that are keeping me from enjoying fried turkey and pork spare ribs with my wife stealing food off my plate, I am actually thankful for a couple of days of quiet to get a few things done and to clear my head. Being dubbed a ‘serial starter,’ I have a lot of half-baked schemed floating around that are cluttering my head, my inbox, and my office. A day to clear out some of that mental clutter, and even get started on raking the yard, is actually blessing, despite the sacrifice of alone time on a family weekend.
Not only am I thankful for a crummy weekend leading to a semi-productive weekend, I’m thankful for the crummy year I have had. I pledged that 2008 was going to be my year, and then watched 11 months go by full of false starts, letdowns, and setbacks. But this has been a valuable year for lessons learned, and the price paid for most of those were just frustration and a little time lost. Not a lot of money and definitely no lives or relationships. In fact, some relationships were made stronger do to the strain of a lack of success, and some new ones where created that have the potential to outshine any other.
I am not thankful for the large loss of financial capital I had this year. I am thankful I lost less than most, and that I still have plenty of years to recover, even if my current projects don’t have much time to recover. I am thankful for the opportunities I didn’t get a chance to take, because it has allowed for plenty of opportunities that I am glad I didn’t miss.
And I give thanks to God for lining up all the opportunities and responsibilities that lie ahead that I truly don’t want. Only through them will I get to the opportunities and responsibilities that I actually want. I am especially thankful to have just enough wisdom to know they are all opportunities and responsibilities that I AM SUPPOSED TO HAVE.
I’m thankful to live in a country that gives everybody the day off to eat, and I’ve got to get to cooking. Happy Thanksgiving, America.
