Am I the only one who just noticed that it’s Wednesday? The holiday week with the free day is completely screwing me up.
Just to make this a relevant post:
Spend less!
Save more!
Invest!
Wee!
The no-pants guide to spending, saving, and thriving in the real world.
Today, I am sitting at a funeral. My oldest friend’s dad died on Sunday.
Mark had an amazing ability to make anyone feel like family, from the moment he met them. The day I introduced him to my wife, he taught her to throw a tomahawk, and she still talks about it, 10 years later.
I don’t have a post in me today.
Mark Wayne Dwire, 61, was accepted into his father’s arms surrounded by his family June 24th. Mark was born to Wyman
(Jack) and Donna (Hasbrouck) Dwire on March 25th, 1951 in Park Rapids, MN. Mark graduated from Walker/Hackensack High School in 1969. He was married to Sherry (Garbers) Dwire on July 31st, 1971. Mark was a business entrepreneur. He started as a logger when you could still make a living with a chainsaw and a tractor.
Mark was proceeded in death by his father, step father Robert Dwire and stepfather Patrick Harrington, his brother Kerwin Dwire.
Mark is survived by his wife Sherry, his mother Donna (Hasbrouck) Harrington, children Jesse, Jason, Terra Fine (Andrew), Jeremiah (Tanja), and Daughter-in-law Elizabeth. Mark loved his grandchildren Cameron, Emily, Madelyn, Lydia, Faith, Elaina and Ellery. He was fondly referred to as ‘Super Papa’. He is also survived by many siblings, nieces, nephews and cousins.
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
If you’re new to Dr. Who, one of the odder concepts in the program is that The Doctor periodically regenerates. This is a lampshade on the reality that the actors playing the lead character don’t want to be saddled with the role
for the entirety of their careers, and it allows an “in-universe” canonical way for the writers and show-runners to allow this change to happen. In fan circles, Matt Smith, the outgoing doctor, was “The Eleventh Doctor” (because he’s the eleventh actor to take on the role) and is going to be replaced, when the series comes on again, with Peter Capaldi, a Scots veteran of several BBC productions.
2005 saw Capaldi’s most famous role, before assuming the mantle of a Time Lord: That of spin doctor Malcolm Tucker in the BBC series “The Thick of It,” a role he inhabited through 2012. In that role, he plays a profoundly profane director of communications for the British Government, charged with public relations, cleaning up political gaffes, and ensuring that any dirt about an opposition party member is aired at the most politically advantageous moment. His role was noted for bringing nuance and complexity to a character described as a rabid political hatchetman who didn’t carry grudges – he had them stuffed and mounted on the wall.
Capaldi has previously appeared in Dr. Who as Caecilius in the episode “The Fires of Pompeii,’ which marked the first appearance of Karen Gillan, who went on to play the Doctor’s companion, Amy Pond. Later, he returned to Dr. Who spinoff Torchwood: Children of Earth as John Frobisher, who had a particularly dark turn, killing his own family rather than letting the 456 aliens use them as a human sacrifice.
In the press event where he was announced has having landed the role, Capaldi admitted to having been a fan of the series ever since he was a small boy. For fans of the long running franchise, this promises to be a very enthusiastic incarnation of the Doctor.
I had an email exchange with my close friend and business partner earlier this week.
“I get ideas but think they are probably stupid. Okay, I have some ideas. Again, I get scare you’ll think I’m reaaaally dumb.”
My response?
“No ideas are stupid. You start filtering **** like that, we’ll never find the ******* gold.
Brainstorming has no filter. You never know where a “stupid” idea might lead or what associations it might trigger.”
When you are trying to generate new ideas, applying a filter like “That sounds stupid” won’t get you anywhere. It’s idea suicide.
Could a discussion on the possibilities of becoming a lawn gnome distributor lead to becoming a successful manufacturer of combat gnomes?
Brainstorming involves turning off your stupid filters and running with it. Keep a recorder or a notebook handy and keep track of everything. Go off on tangents and see where they lead. Maybe they’ll lead to the gold.
The one thing you can’t do while brainstorming is criticize. If you start shooting down ideas, you are destroying the opportunity to find greatness. Even if an idea is impractical, build on it. There has to be an angle that becomes worthy of consideration. On the off-chance that there’s not, run with it anyway. It’s an exercise in creativity.
I regularly send my friend emails with potential business ideas. Most of them come to nothing, but once in a while, something clicks and we launch a successful venture together. If I were filtering ideas because they might be stupid, we might not have some of the projects we’ve got.
In addition to random & odd emails, I’ve got a notebook of some kind with me everywhere I go to record any passing idea I may have. In my car, I use a voice recorder. I periodically review everything I’ve noted and copy most of it into evernote.
Someday, those pieces may come together into a billion dollar idea.
How do you generate ideas? Do you bounce ideas off of friends or get drunk and shuffle a Trivial Pursuit deck into a Monopoly game?
My company uses a service called KnowYourCompany, that sends three emails each week to the entire staff. Each email asks a question that the staff can either respond to publicly, or just to the company leadership team.
The questions follow a formula.
On Monday, we get an email asking what we are working on. This allows us to see what everyone is doing, and in theory, makes offering your skills easier to do because you can see what you might be able to help with.
On Wednesday, the question is something about the company or our interaction with the company. One week this question was as simple as “Are there any company policies that aren’t completely clear?”
On Friday, the question is more personal. It’s a getting-to-know-each-other question. Last Friday’s question was “What’s something you want to do in the next year that you’ve never done before?”
I found that I don’t have an answer.
Right now, I don’t have any long-term goals. Recently, my personal life has been complicated enough that the idea of planning for later this year–much less the next 5 or 10 years–is more than I can deal with.
My side hustle goals are focused entirely on what needs to happen in the next week. Work goals are only a month out. My personal goals involve making it through the next few days without letting anything collapse.
Sometimes, life kicks you in the crotch so hard, you have to let the future worry about itself while you focus on what’s happening right now. Without a functional present, the future doesn’t matter. You have to focus on the Now first, or everything else evaporates.
It’s not a great situation, but it is an interesting perspective. I’ve spent so much of the last decade focusing on what comes next that what’s happening right now has suffered.
Focus on Now. Sometimes, What’s Next can take care of itself for a while.