- RT @bargainr: Life in North Korea is absolutely dreadful http://nyti.ms/dAcL26 #
- RT @bitfs: Weekly Favorites and Gratitude!: My Favorite Posts this Week Jeff at Deliver Away Debt threw together the .. http://bit.ly/9J0gGo #
- @LiveRealNow is giving away a copy of Delivering Happiness(@dhbook). Follow and RT to enter. http://bit.ly/czd31X # #
- Baseless claims, biased assumptions, poor understanding of history. Don't bother. #AnimalSpirits #KeynesianCult #
- RT @zappos: Super exciting! "Delivering Happiness" hit #1 on NY Times Bestseller list! Thanks everyone! Details: http://bit.ly/96vEfF #
- @ericabiz Funny, we found a kitten in a box last week. Unfortunately, it was abandoned there, not playing. Now, we have a 5th cat. in reply to ericabiz #
Book Review: The Art of Non-Conformity
We grew up in a world of expectations: Eat your vegetables, don’t poop on the carpet, do your homework. It continues right up to “Go to college”, “Get married”, “Having a dozen kids”. Are those the expectations you want to use to guide your life?
Chris Guillebeau, author of The Art of Non-Conformity (the blog and the book) puts the question like this: We we were younger, we heard “If everyone else was jumping off of a cliff, would you do that too?” In theory, that meant we were supposed to think for ourselves. Yet, as adults, we are absolutely expected to conform and do the things everyone else is doing. Work your 40, take a week’s vacation once a year, and repeat until retirement or death.
Is that our only choice?
The Art of Non-Conformity attempts to be a guidebook, showing you how to live the live you want to live. Chris has made a lifelong series of decidedly unconventional choices, from dropping out of high school to attending 3 colleges simultaneously to spending 4 years as a volunteer in Africa. For the past few years, he has been working his way through visiting every country in the world. He is an expert on non-conformity.
The books tells a lot (a LOT) of stories of people who have either made the leap into a self-defined life or people who have done nothing but talk about taking that leap while staying comfortable in their soul-numbing careers.
The Good
The Art of Non-Conformity is an inspirational book. It spends a lot of time explaining how to break through the wall of fear to take control of your like. More important, it explains why you’d want to. It does not pretend to define how you should live your life, it just provides the framework for the mentality to help you make that decision for yourself.
The Bad
If you’re looking for a step-by-step guide, complete with a list of possible work-alternatives, this isn’t the book for you. This book approaches lifestyle design from the conceptual end rather than the practical. If you want a practical manual, I’d get the 4 Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris. Ideally, you should get both. They complement each other well.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. If you’re considering taking a non-standard path or just hate the career- or life-track you are on, you should read The Art of Non-Conformity. I’m planning to read it again in a couple of weeks, just to make sure I absorb all of the lessons.
So You’re Getting Evicted…
Last week, I had the opportunity to visit eviction court, though not for anything having to do with my properties.
It was an interesting experience. Eviction court is a day when nobody is at their best. Landlords are fighting to remove bad tenants, sometimes questioning their desire to be a landlord, while tenants are fighting to keep their homes, often with no backup plan. Occasionally, you get someone who just wants to get out of their lease because the landlord is a creepy peeper who digs through the dirty laundry.
Nobody goes to eviction court in a good mood.
If you ever find yourself in eviction court, here are some things to remember:
Everyone
- If you don’t show up, you lose. Period. Landlord or tenant, judges don’t like waiting around. You will get the worst possible outcome if you stay home.
- The first day is a hearing. The judge will either accept a settlement between the two parties, or he’ll check if there is a valid reason for a full trial. The trial will be schedule for another day. In Minnesota, that happens within 6 days of the hearing.
- Don’t make faces at the other side while they are talking to the judge. Do you want to go to jail for being a smartass? It’s called contempt of court.
Landlords
- Fix the mold, rot, and other habitability issues. You’ll have a hard time getting your rent back if you are a slumlord forcing your tenants to live in a biohazard.
- If you’ve got an automatically renewing lease, don’t file the eviction notice with the renewed lease for violations that happened under the old lease. If you do, you’ll be handing a win to your tenant.
- Make sure you lease has an eviction clause. If it doesn’t, you may not have the right to kick out your tenant for any reason.
- Your tenant’s dirty underwear is not a toy for you to play with. Creep.
Tenants
- Pay your rent. If you are withholding rent to get something fixed, you’ll be expected to put that in escrow the day of the hearing, so don’t spend it on vodka or a new stereo.
- Read your lease and the filing. It may have a backdoor that lets you escape the eviction.
- Try not to get evicted. An unlawful detainer can make it hard to rent again for a couple of years.
- Dress nice. I’m amazed by how many people showed up in ratty jeans and uncombed hair. Look professional. The judge will appreciate the effort.
All in all, it’s best if landlords and tenants try to keep each other happy. The whole business relationship will go much smoother if you do.
Blacksmithing, or Quality Time With a Teenager
For the past few months, I’ve been taking blacksmithing lessons with my 16 year old son.
It’s something I’ve wanted to do for quite a while, but my schedule never lined up with the places that teach near me.
Then I forgot about it.
Last year, the History Channel started a new series called Forged In Fire, that made me think about it again. Better, the boy was interested, too.
If you don’t have a teenager, here’s some interesting information that’s almost universal: teenagers suck. You spend a dozen years of your life essentially doing everything for them. Then one day, they have their own interests and want nothing to do with their parents. I get it, it’s good for them to be independent and all, but it sucks for the parent who wants to spend time with the kid.
Enter blacksmithing. I’m interested, the boy’s interested, and I’ve dropped most of my side projects to have more time for my family and myself. Let’s do this.
Class number 1: 5 miles away, teaches Tuesday evenings at the height of rush hour. That’s a 45 minute 5 mile drive. It costs $350 each for an 8 session class, that I’d have to leave work early for and would cut into the kid’s homework.
Class number 2: 15 miles away, teaches full-day classes over eight consecutive Saturdays…for $120 each. That’s awesome. Except they book their entire year’s calendar of classes within 3 days of posting the schedule for the year. When they got my paper registration in the mail(seriously, paper? In 2015?), they called to tell me we were 6th on the waiting list.
Class number 3: 2 hours away. Full day classes on Saturdays. Held every Saturday, so we could come on our schedules. Cost $100, but $200 total for a class as we want them is way more affordable than the $700 up front for class #1. I’m sold.
Four classes into it, I find out that that’s the most classes I can pay for. I’m still welcome to use the facility, but now I have to supply my own charcoal. From here on out, it’s $50 for gas and $20 for charcoal to forge all day…and still get taught. If we pass some tests, we can officially join and sell our creations in the gift shop.
Totally sold.
So now, the boy and I are making the drive once a month. We talk during the drive, we work together on the forge. I love my kid, and I love spending time with him. I love making things, and I love sharing that love with my kids. In a few years, he’ll move out, but he’ll remember this for the rest of his life. It’s worth every cent.
30 Day Project Update – January
For those who don’t remember–or are just tuning in–I am doing a 30 Day Project every month this year, sometimes two. For the month of January, I am doing two projects. I am waking up at 5AM every day, and I had planned to read to my kids every night before bed.
Waking up hasn’t been that difficult. I’m tempted to snooze the alarm, but I haven’t done that yet. My routine has been to wake up at 5, watch or read the news until I am fully awake, have breakfast, get ready for work, read all of the websites I follow in Google Reader, then get the kids ready. Until this month, my routine was to get up at 6:30, rush to get ready, rush more to get the kids ready, head out the door. This has been more relaxing and it let’s me start my workday fully awake, which wasn’t happening before. I’m hoping to get some writing time in there and next month, exercise time. The interesting thing is that I haven’t adjusted what time I go to bed by much, so this has actually added 90 minutes to my day.
It’s been interesting. I’m dead tired at 9PM, but I’m surprisingly wide awake by 5:30. It hasn’t been nearly as hard as I had feared. I’m looking forward to spring, when I can greet the sunrise.
Reading hasn’t gone as well. At the beginning of the month, I told the girls I would read to them every night. We started out wonderfully. Then, the real world came in uninvited. I had a meeting at school that ran late. My son’s wrestling season started. Things just kept getting in the way of a bedtime story. The solution? We modified the deal. It’s not a bedtime story any more. I am reading to the girls whenever there is time. I may not be home at bedtime every day, but I am certainly home at other times. We’re making it happen, even if it’s not exactly as planned.
It’s just a demonstration of the old rule: Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. A small amount of flexibility has turned a potentially failed goal into happy family time. It’s still a win.
How are your resolutions progressing?
The Secret to Fearless Change
Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking cross the floor
Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking out the door
You never will get where you’re going
If you never get up on your feet
Come on, there’s a good tail wind blowing
A fast walking man is hard to beat
Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking cross the floor
Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking out the door
If you want to change your direction
If your time of life is at hand
Well don’t be the rule be the exception
A good way to start is to stand
Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking cross the floor
Put one foot in front of the other
And soon you’ll be walking out the door
If I want to change the reflection
I see in the mirror each morn
You mean that it’s just my election
To vote for a chance to be reborn
