Postcards from the Funny Farm

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“when you accept everything for what it is without labels you are outside of your ego”
-Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

To me this is such an excellent thought. I’d say about 70-80% of ALL our anxiety is borne out of imagined conclusions. We could turn that imagination into creative thoughts to make our lives better. Did you know that most inventions I read about when I write my for biographical series “Amazing Visions” came about as a result of a person trying to make his/her life better? In some cases I’ve been reading about lately for celebrities, it can make the difference between contentment and adrug treatment center.

This house is ours. We move into it tomorrow. My mind would never have grasped we could own a house like this with a pool. It is a result of possibility thinking on the part of my wife and I and steady work toward a goal. This is my first home and I will be 39 years old next month. Those impossible dreams should turn into visions for all of us.

Do you know an example of a visionary? Maybe a famous person? Maybe your uncle Bill? Maybe you? You might want to blow us away and write about them for my Amazing Visions Writing Contest. It’s gonna be huge. Here’s a thought for today:

Let what is … BE. Down the road ahead, the only limitation is in your mind

One of my favorite songs is the Beatles: “Let it Be.”

When I find myself in times of trouble …
Speaking words of wisdom let it be.

We live in the most “multi-tasking” and multi-demanding society in history. The human mind wasn’t created and hasn’t evolved to handle all the stress and demands in a given day. Give yourself that reminder when you miss a deadline or forget to do something. That feeling when you ears feel hot from your sudden blood pressure rising, just remember that is a normal reaction to an overly complicated and fast paced world. Remember the stuff you did accomplish, chances are those outnumber the failures. The wealthy man goes out and buys a condo hotel, the moderately wealthy rents one, and the poor try to reach peace some other way. In the final analysis however, all walks of man can cope with stress the same way: by setting priorities in direction of goals. Here’s how:

If something in front of you is causing you stress, put it over to the “sidebar.” How many people actually read sidebars when they visit blogs? All those widgets in mine could represent the stuff I don’t find as the most pressing needs. The worries in your life can sit over in your “life sidebar” until you have to address them. I am not talking about procrastination, while they are there you can think about them, even takes steps toward dealing with them. ou should not, however, let them stress you out when you have plenty of stuff you need to address on the front page of your life. Pretty soon, the main page will be archives … the sidebar won’t go anywhere and neither will those far off pressing worries of your life! Question for you: When the heat is on and you are stressing, are you able to put it all aside?

Quick announcement folks: I’ve started a weekly newsletter where you’ll get all the posts of a week delivered to your email and you set the options. I think this is a great read once a week, see what you think!

-Damien

Subscribe to Postcards from the Funny Farm by email.

Update: I wrote the post below 8 months ago. Since then, Randy has been on Oprah and the cover of every magazine imaginable. You can read how he is doing on his journey here. This guy is an incredible example of a possibility thinker. I try to emulate him. As you read his story, I think you will see why.

This morning on the way to work I heard Bill Handel on 640 KFI am radio talking about The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch that took place at Carnegie Mellon University. It has become a trendy thing now for universities to have these lecture series with famous professors who “pretend” this is their last lecture, including all the wisdom they can muster. Usually these lectures draw in people from all over and they charge quite a bit for attendance.

At Carnegie Mellon a few days ago there was a “last lecture” that got the biggest turnout yet, probably because the 40-something lecturer Randy Pausch has invented an incredible software well known in the industry that teaches kids programming through 3D cartoon images. Unfortunately he won’t be able to see just how well it does because he has been given only 6 months to live with liver cancer. He amazingly still cracks joke better than a standup at the Improv.

As I listened to him lecture in a humorous “fun” way, I wiped back tears. This man, not much older than me and also with a family, is facing the biggest brick wall and limitaton to possibility thinking one can imagine, and yet he is still giving wisdom, joy, and wit to those of us who will remain. If anyone had an excuse to curl up and become a toxic person, it is this man. Still, he CHOOSES to live with an open mind toward the possibilities left in his life. Despite the storm, he is squinting to see the rainbow and I truly applaud him as a hero for that. At the KFI website this morning I was lucky to find a link to his “last lecture” (literally in his case). If you are interested in RAW words of inspiration from an in incredible guy you can watch this wmv video of the speech and hear this AMAZING thinker speak at length about possibility thinking. If you have the time, it is worth it. I am dedicating this post of the series to Randy Pausch and his family.

Video of the Speech:

Visit Randy Pausch’s Website: cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/

I was talking to someone the other day and they told me drama was inevitable in their life. I disagreed and made a suggestion that has worked for me during similar pessimistic times:

Make a list of what you want.

It’s great for focusing your own energies on your goals as well as setting an example for your family. I remember making a list like this with my wife several years ago. Many of my “dreams” on that list have since come true. For example, at the time I dabbled in a personal website but had a larger dream of being published. Since then, I’ve become a regular contributor to 3 online publishing platforms and I run 3 other blogs of my own. This has required a lot of patience on my wife’s part and a lot of hours of work on mine. I truly feel though it all started through making and sharing that list.

When making a list like this, one should let ones mind run free. Put on some relaxing music … go sit with a yellow pad under a tree … write it while sipping your favorite hot beverage … whatever. The point is, you shouldn’t let limitations of everyday family life, married life, your job, or other constraints get in the way of what you want. Things you see as impossible can materialize when you start “believing” anything can happen.

Furthermore these dreams can actually make the things you once saw as limitations transform into miracles. Those very limitations (or at least the things you see as limitations) can be the yellow brick road to your “Oz.” I am not into the modern bestseller they call “The Secret” per se, nor do I believe in karma 100%. I say 100% because I do believe in the direction of dreams. I see proof of it in people like Walt Disney, Wrig.... Then there’s me for example, when I see myself as a successful writer there is an energy there that brings things into concert with itself. But unlike the required success of the Secret, even if I don’t turn out being as famous as I’d hoped, I have an amazing experience along the way. When your cause is true, you can’t lose.

I think I’m about due for a new list.

It’s not that my dreams have all come true, but many have. My dream list now is more about simplifying. I want to be able to maintain the projects I’ve been blessed with. To further the writing example (just one of my many dreams): I want to be a great writer that creates images with words for people, like paths to paradise. I want to keep every writing endeavor “holy,” not in the religious sense but in the sense Allen Ginsberg talked about: sacred.

I know that through time my dreams will change, but I will not stop having them and writing them down. One day when my kids read these words, and they will because I’ve made a plan to keep these blogs intact ... hopefully many many years from now, they will know above all else that I was not a coward about dreaming. Their dad sets out to define what he wants and then works to make it happen. They are living proof since all three of them were once my dreams. The list is a good thing, I strongly recommend you make on and then get back to me on this question:

What’s in your book of dreams?

Around 1990, most every strip-mall-concept “Winchells” donuts mysteriously disappeared from Orange County. You might think this was good for all of our arteries. Of course I was 20 at the time so arteries weren’t really a concern. Again, you might say this phenomenon was healthy for us Orange County (OC) folk, but a real estate transaction with a pizza racket called “Pizza Hut” just challenged our collective vascular system further. In an unprecedented and mammoth OC industrial purchase, Pizza Hut purchased most all strip mall Winchells and uniformly transformed them into an exciting NEW (yes, then it was new folks) restaurant concept of “Delivery/Carryout” only. There were many innovations, some based on another budding enterprise called “Dominos Pizza: 30 minutes or it’s free.” But the most significant was the chain mail conveyer belt oven. This cooked pizzas beginning to end in 7 minutes. With a make-table time of 1-2 minutes, this “theoretically” would make the 30 minute promise time a piece of cake, or pie if you willl.

The yellow signs that once lured us in for sugar, flour and cholesterol became red ones that drew us to our phones like starved zombies. Instead of “brains brains . . .” it was “Large Pan Pepperoni and a 2 liter.” This transaction and subsequent pizza delivery behemoth of Pizza Hut (corporately based locally in Irvine, CA) is a signature business model of the OC. Think big, plan big, buy big, roll big. That might have been a better slogan than “Makin’ it great.”

I took a job as a delivery driver at Pizza Hut #709485 in Mission Viejo, CA in August of 1990 when I was 20. I can recall hearing significant events announced on the radio while delivering such as: “The LA Riots re: the Rodney King beating” (this still beats all Super Bowl records for delivery dollars) and Kurt Cobain’s suicide. When something was happening in a family or a culture, the OC ordered pizza. Pizza Hut leadership had the vision to see what yeast, flower, tomatoes, and cheese could do to change the world . . . and its cholesterol numbers.

I worked as a driver for a couple years while playing nights as singer/songwriter/guitarist in my rock band. After 2 years of not achieving my rock star dreams, I went back to school at Saddleback College. My AA came in 1993, then I transferred to California State University Fullerton where I earned my BA in English in 1995 and my MA in English with emphases in “Language, Writing, and Rhetoric” in 1998. Alongside my schooling I continued at Pizza Hut for what would become a 7 year “transition” job. After starting work in the academic realm in 1997, I later returned to try my hand at restaurant management running the Dana Point, CA Pizza Hut for 2 1/2 years (#705489). There’s nothing much you can tell me I don’t know about the company or about pizza for that matter :) I learned the “bonus” business wasn’t my bag. Now after being in teaching a collective 8 going on 9 years, I know my calling is outside the “Hut,” but I remember it fondly. In many ways, working there made me who I am today.

The OC is full of entrepreneurial endeavors. Sometimes they work, sometimes they flop. When it comes to OC businesses, change is the only constant: dollars to donuts to pizza dough. Take it from someone who was born and raised there for 33 years, you can place a bet on that business model continuing ad-infinitum.

My education has taught me that respect for a discipline necessitates study of it’s history. After that (and only then) can you truly hope to master it. Personal blogging has become my fixation. For some time now, I’ve sought to learn from current bloggers of notoriety and have mostly gotten used to tired posts on how to get the most “hits” and uninteresting “tricks” of some trade that eludes me. I’ve even written a few posts like that in emulation. Recently I started typing in words like “first blogs” and “blog history” into Google and I started to see the mystery of why I’ve been so mysteriously drawn to produce “blog posts” unfold. In fact, a historical “fold” of online diarists began to reveal itself page-click after after page-click, growing like time-elapsed photography of a small town’s comings and goings.

Wikipedia led me to the Online Diary History Project and I am so glad. My friends out there interested in the Gargantuan “NICHE” called “personal blogging” might enjoy reading it as I have. There are a ton of interviews with the first “online diary” authors from around 1993-1998. Prior to “page rank” and all the rest of the nonsense, these people kept online journals for purposes ranging from hating their job and looking for a new one to living with and beating the odds of AIDS.

Everyday writings in an online diary

It’s refreshing to read the interviews where no one mentions seo or digg or all the other accoutrements of today’s average “blogger.” I’ve been trying hard to find the best personalblogs/online diarists extant and have added quite a few to my reader. I’ve even added the best already to my blogroll. Incidentally, I read one of the best pieces of writing (not just blog writing) today on a new blog I had found, 4th Avenue Blues. I recommend reading it. It is like an oil painting in words. This is the kind of stuff I want to read, get to know, and promote on my blogroll. If you know of any from YOUR travels, please continue to let me know.

So far, my blogroll shows the best personal bloggers I know of (if you are interested in reading LIFE and not just SEO, have a look!) The most powerful and purely “online diarists” I’ve read lately are listed below. Head over and dialog with them on their stuff. That’s mostly what it’s all about, wouldn’t you say?

• Confessions of a Sophisticated Writer
• Courting Destiny
• Future Cave Paintings
• Here in Katie’s Head
• Hot Coffee Girl
• Life is RANTastic!
• the art of getting by
• The Doc Searls Weblog
• This Eclectic Life
• Tommy Devines Online Journal
• Tumbled Words

If you’re like me, and you have this kind of blog, then you should head over to the Online Diary History Project when you’re done answering emails and reading your circle of blogposts. I haven’t read all the interviews yet, but in my spare minutes over the past days I’ve read a few and they have been really eye opening. Knowledge is power and knowledge of the history in a discipline teaches you the mistakes to avoid.

Yesterday before our “date,” my wife and I had to mail out some packages so we went into the little post office by our house. It was 3:59 and the sign clearly said CLOSED at 4. We felt extremely lucky to have made it under the line. A tiny woman threw some keys to me and said, could you lock the door? I did, and then we saw why. Person after person tried opening just as we did earlier with different results.

I looked at the small woman running the counter and serving the line of 5 or 6 people we were in and saw her name tag said “Soon.” I started daydreaming, as I am wont to do, and imagining what type of ethnicity such an odd name was. My wife was was getting impatient and spoke out harshly, “When is she going to finish with that person!!” I saw my “LOL” opportunity and even at that moment imagined blogging about it (oh no!). I said to my wife:

“Rather than answer that for you, I think her name tag says it all.” Then my wife read her name tag and chuckled.

Speaking of chuckled, we saw “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” at the mall theater then had Italian food and a bottle of wine in Apple Valley last night. Needless to say, no one we have talked to since the post office has thought my “Soon” joke was as funny as we did, especially over the bottle of White Zin!

Through time, trial, and error, I have come to the realization that social networking/media/bookmarking is a mixed bag and probably a fad. In my opinion, it’s not useful.

I don’t “submit” posts I read to digg like I used to and I don’t put ghastly kitsch chicklets, for example, on my site advertising showing who visited last and how many readers have submitted my posts. I’ve seen the light.

It’s a freeing thing for me to be rid of all that stuff on my blog. But hey, to each his own and please note I judge no one. I simply weigh the pros and cons of things like social media and report what I find. I agree that, in and of themselves, they are neutral. But even as neutral tools, they are lacking.

It has been said on a couple posts I’ve visited lately, that social networking is not just digg and de.licio.us and the like. They claim it is also the act of commenting on posts, connecting with new bloggers and getting your blog read by new audiences. But the inference here still seems to be that I somehow need digg.com and other companies to network or I will miss out.

With all due respect to folks who think social networking media is crucial: I do not need it. And truth be told, neither do you. [quote]When it comes to companies like digg.com, de.licio.us, and the like, one can do for oneself what they so braggardly advertise as the genius innovation of Web 2.0.[/quote] (Although Stumbleupon is an innovation above them all and I have written a complimentary post about it and do use it regularly). We think Web 2.0 social networking is about smart people recommending links and us getting better articles. What it is in reality is mostly uneducated people submitting their own business related stuff along with their friends’ and more or less virally spreading lousy content. Bloggers don’t need social networking media. Let me give you 3 simple ways I function as my OWN social network BETTER than digg.com and any of the others I’ve tried:

Method#1
Use Google Blog Search to find blogs on topics you are interested in. (Hint, use your categories as search parameters)
Use good seo titles and vocabulary in your articles so you show up in these types of searches where you want to be. There is a plethora of free info out there on how to seo your posts and your blog for Google.

Method#2
Use Stumbleupon’s “Weblog” randomizer on the Stumbleupon toolbar to randomly discover “stumbled” blogs. (We hope these are usually good, but they have just as much of a chance as being good as other user-submitted blogs on social media services.)

Method#3
From time to time, write articles related to blog posts you have read by blogs you respect and TRACKBACK (when it applies ONLY! To do this every time at the expense of content is the equivalent of SPAMMING). This is a humble, honest, effective, and genuine method of networking.

In doing just these three things, you are doing more to network with quality blogs than you are by using social network media extant. If you try these 3 methods and you still feel forlorn for the social network media services, by all means head over there. I’m not blackballing them. But if you are like me, you’ll have a better time innovating your own experience than clicking on one of their icons, widgets, buttons, banners or chicklets.

Since Matt tagged me with a morph of my original meme, I figure I’d answer the tag with a morph once more ;)

8 Things I Wish I Knew When I Was In College.

1. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to do great things at work.
2. Be a listener or you will be disliked.
3. Slow, measured actions beat quick, spur of the moment ones every time.
4. Teaching pays very little in comparison to most other jobs you get student loans for.
5. Most people around you have been through what you have been through, so don’t be afraid to talk about stuff.
6. Dogs are just a long term handful.
7. Kids are totally worth the stress, but they are a big stress. (and a lot of work)
8. While gossip and naysaying at work may seem titillating and harmless at first, they can and will cause you much trouble if you let them into your life. Be the hoity-toity no-fun guy/gal who changes the subject.

Off the top of my head, there they are. Thanks Matt. Now for my willing victims (hopefullly!):

1. [This Eclectic Life]
2. [Life is RANTastic!]
3. [MeeAugraphie]
4. Some others I haven’t thought of . . . you know who you are!