Album Photo by: kevindooley

Isn’t this a great retro LP cover?  No, my post today is not about dinner parties but it is about the genius of planning.  It can make you rich, famous, well-liked, and any other goal you might have.  It’s been said that if you do the right things long enough then the right things will inevitably happen to you.  I agree with that saying and that’s why I subscribe to the idea of startegic planning.  My greatest drive in life is to plan and do great things.  I don’t always accomplish them, but I will always try until my last breath.  Are you speaking my language?

I once heard a motivational speaker on the radio say that, in order to be successful we need to “stand in the spout where the blessings come out.”  It sounds corny huh?  After years since hearing that, I have come to understand it better than I ever imagined.  It means what I said: doing the right things. You may be rich, you may be poor, you may be nothing in this world at all.  A little allusion to my 80’s rock heroes the Alarm there ;)  The “Absolute Reality” we all live under is the truth that if we do the right things, the right things will happen to us.  Life will never be perfect, but we can aim at perfection.  Would Bill gates have made billions on his vision without doing what he thought was right?  Answer: no.

We will never be as huge as we wish we could be without standing in the spout where the blessings come out.  I make $200-400 a month off blogging and freelance writing.  I want to make $2000.  What is stopping me?  The only limitation is in my mind.  Watch me go!  I hope you’ll set big goals and come along with me.

FYI: You can read more of the “right” things I have done in my writing career at my online resume.  I am actively accepting freelance writing work.

I’ve been emailing and managing tasks through Yahoo! since 1997 and after a set of frustrating attempts to get service, it may be time to move to Google.  I am trying not to be hasty since I’ve made heavy “migrations” like this in the past, in anger, only to find myself crawling back with my tail between my legs.  I think it’s important when  you lose important service like email or your calendar to make your request known to the company.  Problems I had: 1) Yahoo is all but unreachable in every sense.  2) My ISP, Verizon, said that only a smattering of their customers were experiencing this “blockage.”  I was told they can’t reach Yahoo either.  I don’t know if you can imagine my dillemma:  I can see my email titles but cannot access them.  It’s like a carrot in from of a donkey.  It’s gone on all day.  I want to be calm and collected but I wonder how long I should wait before I start officially changing my email address.  In modern times this is a bigger deal that out predecessors would have imagined.  I can’t tell you the sense of withdrawal I’ve felt all day without access to my emails.  Do you think I’m handling it right?

I found an applicationon the web that makes color coding way easier. The program is free and it’s called AdesClrPicker. It installs in a few seconds and there is no spyware or any of that annoying stuff. It’s a color picker tool that any blog or webmaster should have in her/his arsenal. I know at least 5 times a day I run across sites with amazing color schemes I’d like to emulate. Now, I can get the codes for those colors and put them in a Notepad immediately for quick reference later as I am tweaking themes. If this kind of work consumes your time as it does mine, you should really go out and get this little tool.

A close friend who will remain unnamed is to be thanked for the idea here.  Folks, thanks for tuning in today to PFTFF (AKA Postcards from the Funny Farm).  In celebration of Damien Riley’s 1,000th post on Postcards he has agreed to sit with me and talk about his blog(s) and what he thinks after 1,000 posts have been submitted to the interweb.  Let’s jump right in:

How are you today?

Damien: Doing well.  Just watching Letterman here naked.  I’m a little worried about the laptop though, it feels a bit hot on top the lap.  Ha!  Just kidding, I’m never naked when I blog.

Ha ha. That is very funny.  Hey, thanks for talking to us today.  So how the hell did you write 1,000 posts in 21 months.  Is your melon warped?

Damien: Quite.  Recently I have started bic-ing my head.  The gray and receding hairline was really starting to bug me.  I found out my melon is a bit malshaped, but nothing that bothers my wife.  No, seriously though … I enjoy making posts.  They are therapeutic to me.  Many of those months my wife was not happy with all the time I spent blogging.  In the past few months though as you guys know, I have started making crazy money with this stuff.  I added two other blogs and now I am blogging for money all the time.  I take my wife out for cocktails and a movie once or twice a week on blogging money now.  Thank you to my advertisers and for Google for recognizing me at a solid 4/10 rating.  To summarize: My melon is warped, my psyche is not :)  I am well aware I work on my laptop and am happy with the pay (in all forms).

LOL.  Once again the joker.  So dude, I have to ask: why so many typos?

Damien: I am a search and plunk typist.  That means I look at the keys not the screen when I type.  I learned it wrong in high school and have never fixed it.  I am very embarassed I have so many typos.  I don’t know what to do.  Hopefully you guys will forgive me and try to fill in the blanks.

What are you going to focus on the next 1,000 posts?

Damien: Before I am 90, because I hope to live to 90, I hope to wear out 5 or 6 laptops.  Blogging makes my thoughts clearer.  I hope to learn more about writing and strengthen my mond while wearing out laptops.  I just got a fresh Acer.  My wife rocks.  She bought it for me because I had broken my last one.  I want to know what the people out of the web are saying and doing and of course, put me where the easy money is.  That is always nice (though now that I think of it, it’s not all that easy is it kids?  Do I get an amen?)

I see.  Well, this is a special day and we appreciate you answering these questions.  What word do you have for people reading this:

Damien: Don’t take yourself seriously, take yourself very seriously.  Care about other people and their brains and try to find something to love in everyone in your circle.  Mostly though, try to laugh and have fun, we’ll all be dead before you know it.  Seriously, the 1,000 posts thing is no big deal.

1,000 posts for this guy and counting!  I encourage you to give him some comments in this post.  It’s a landmark moment that will vanish like the wind in a day or so.  Thanks for reading!  Follow your vision.

I had an absolute blast this week reading blogosphere posts about the brain and inspiration. Here are some I stumbled along the way. Please stumble them all, they are very deserving.

52 Sunday Evening Meditations on Life | Marc and A...
Great list of 52 “mantras” or meditations. Give ‘em a read.

ALEXEY TITARENKO | PHOTOGRAPHY
This is the kind of picture where you stare it it and it keeps getting weirder and weirder with the possibilities of what you are seeing.

A Blog About The Law of Inspiration: Creating Unli...
I really like and agree with these ideas to keep inspiration flowing.

Drumroll Please
CK is one of the coolest bloggers out there. She dedicates her posts to describing what mental health issues feel like. What a contribution! It so happens she nominated me for an award in this post. I want to recommend her to you.

overeating and anorexia: a dialogue
A very candid and informative dialogue on a therapist’s blog. Archive this one as an excellent, eye-opening resource on anorexia.

Life’s Little Gifts | Growing Happiness
An amazing tip on finding inspiration in the little things. This is an inspiration blog I really recommend.

D’oh! It’s not a comedy cell
I really like how this guy once again describes how the brain is working in ordinary situations, like watching the Simpsons. I can’t promote his blog enough. Did you ver see the episode where he called Chicago personal injury lawyers. Me neither because I don’t think it existed. I saw the one where they showed his brain though :) That’s the kind of fun you get on his site.

My wife invited me up as she was painting our son’s room. She’s sort of “owned” it as her task and art project and up to now she hadn’t invited me into the mall of plastic, masking tape, and drop cloths that is Brandon’s room.

As I saw her virtually collapsed under the window, I asked her what I could do to help finish the job. I could tell she was feeling overwhelmed so I started showing her how it would be easy for me to finish the last wall. It needed tape on the base and the top and it needed primering and then a couple coats of paint on top of that. At the time I had just received a $30 writing offer which for me is huge. I’ve been trying lately to get blog jobs that pay, but here my wife was virtually collapsed. I decided I’d be quite the selfish idiot if I put this job off.

I sent my wife downstairs with the order of getting some food. It was after noon and she was a little shaky from not having eaten yet. After she left I learned a great lesson. I looked at all the stuff that needed to be done and decided instead of trying to do it all, I would select a small part and do it perfectly. Then I did that. After that, I picked another one and so on. Within an hour, I finished the room. When my wife came up to check on me with a piece of toast in her hand, she was astonished at all I had accomplished.

She went out to the jacuzzi with our one and three year old, and I went downstairs where I was able to finish that big writing job. Victory! Lesson learned?

When painting, or life, gets overwhelming, map out chunks at a time to finish. Don’t get overwhelmed. Before you know it, you’ll be victorious.

Over the past year or so, I’ve met several excellent bloggers who really know their stuff. One in particular is Jacob Share who authors a few really “top-shelf” blogs. I call them that because their circulation is high along with their analytics. However, In addition to that, they have subjects relevant and helpful to me as a blogger. Group Writing Projects, is one of those excellent blogs. If you have a blog to promote or if you enjoy reading blogs, I want you to know about this resource. Getting into one of these things can explode a post. One of mine went from 27 views to nearly 3,000 as a result of a group writing project. Every little strategy helps, they are like seeds. After all, most of us internet writers secretly hope to be more popular in searches than stuff like women’s lingerie, do we not ;)

Jacob was kind enough to let me interview him and share it with you all. Please visit Group Writing Projects after reading, it’s an excellent resource. Here it is:

1. Who should use Group Writing Projects.

By announcing their group writing projects on my site, creators get more exposure for their group writing project and their blog, which in turn drives more traffic, participants and potential subscribers. Plus they earn more links for their project and its participants, which they can use to attract even more of the above. Finally, creators will also be able to share and learn best practices to make their projects even better next time.

Every creator is also a potential participant and participants have it good on Group Writing Projects, the only place they need to subscribe to stay updated on where the latest group writing projects are happening. It’s a great way to get blog post suggestions regularly, with the additional benefit of guaranteed links and attention to your article AND blog. The “random” appearance of gwps also helps bring your blog to readers that have probably never seen it before.

It’s win-win.

2. What is the benefit to your visitors?

Very few blogs can keep up a high rate of quality unless they’re making enough money to support themselves full-time or the blogger doesn’t post very often. For other blogs to have success, even their “lower quality” posts need to have value for their readers, and that’s the tack I’ve been taking with Group Writing Projects. Most of the posts on the site are newsworthy project announcements and results roundups that will only pull you in when you need them but that you’re nevertheless happy to see. Otherwise, higher quality, instructional and opinion articles come out appear every few weeks but my goal is to increase that frequency to once a week.

Taking a different angle with your question, Group Writing Projects doesn’t filter. The site will announce any gwp that comes to my attention, but I will not hesitate to recommend against participating if it’s justified. I have an article coming out soon with more on that, it will surprise some people.

3. What was your motivation to start this?

Very simple. When I first discovered and fell in love with gwps while blogging on JobMob, my reflex was to search for more and I quickly realized that there was no centralized resource bringing them all together. I decided almost right away that I would take on the project but I actually put it off for almost 6 months before getting down to work on it. Both my blogs started to take shape in November, and both were launched a few months later. I may do that again this year as well with yet another :)

4. When did you start?

Group Writing Projects was semi-officially launched in February 2008. I say ’semi’ because I had a whole launch planned but I froze the launch halfway along the plan. That’s the topic of a whole blog post in itself that I’ve promised my readers so I won’t go further here. As for traffic, it varies, by design. The announcement and results posts were designed to be easy for subscribers- quick to scan in your feed reader, with links to creators’ sites if you decide to participate. They also don’t have much interest for search engines, and so they don’t bring many people to the site but that’s fine. The “higher quality” articles tend to do well for the opposite reasons.

5. What is your defining objective with Group Writing Projects?

I make websites that help people. JobMob is about helping people find jobs, and Group Writing Projects is about helping bloggers to achieve their blogging goals. For example my recent Building RSS group writing project has only begun to help bloggers with tips about how to get more subscribers, and the upcoming free e-book for my readers will be so handy that every blogger will want it.

As for an objective, I will only be satisfied when I see gwps as a regular blogging device appearing on blogs of all sizes, in all industries and niches. That’s when I’ll feel that my work is done ;)

Thanks for the interview, Damien. If anyone has questions, they should just come over to Group Writing Projects and ask in the comments or contact form.

If you wonder how I keep all the postcards flying with no more than a teacher’s paycheck and a hungry family of 5 taking most of it, here’s one way.

With my recent posts on PageRank and Making Money online being out there I thought I’d take one step beyond and mention a blog advertising company I recently started working with. It appears to be very lucrative. It’s called Buy Blog Reviews and it’s sort of an auctioneer between blogging writers and advertisers. It’s like PayPerPost but the difference is that you bid back and forth for jobs.

To the layman out there this means I will peruse a list of open ad offers. Then, if I find one that fits my blog niche and I like the idea of making a post out if it, I will make an offer. This format can be really cool because if the advertiser accepts you know they’ve seen your blog and she/he is ready to pay you based on the merits of your site.  There are even sorts of opportunities where the advertiser contacts you directly and “orders” a blog review from you.  I’ve had one of those so far and it made me feel that “warm fuzzy feeling” inside :)

I think some of the paid blogging companies just give the advertiser a general idea of the blogs they will be paying. In that respect, I like BuyBlogReviews better. I’ll be reporting how much work I get through them as well as the quality in my monthly updates but for now the work looks steady and promising. It should bring some unique topics to the blog as well since the advertising pool is highly eclectic.

Table of contents for How I Got My Google PageRank Back

1. Google Sends PFTFF to Dead Letter Office: PR0
2. My Google Page Rank Appears to be Back
3. How I Hope to Get my Google PageRank Back
4. How I Got My Google Page Rank Back

I didn’t post the last two days but I have still been hard at work online. My good friend KatelynJane’s migration to a self-hosted Wordpress blog got me back in the saddle with my too-long-neglected personal blog. By that I mean, giving her some pointers on how easy it is to create multiple blogs made me want to get my personal blog up and running again. I haven’t even launched it yet, but for a sneak peek (and to get me on your blogrolls out there) it is at:

Damien at the Speed of Life

I’ll be back with my next post in my current series on “Open Mind,” but for now expect a short delay as I get the Online Diary up and running and finish my last 4 days of teaching summer school. There are reasons why multiple blogs are a good idea. Then again, all the work does have its drawbacks. What do you think about having multiple blogs? Some people I talk to have dozens. What is your perception of an online diary?