Fire By Sea

Things are different. I’m working harder. I believe in my potential. Money is on its way. I’m needed and I have a purpose.

All good, but the crux of change is contingent on consistency — hard work and sticking to one thing long enough to actually generate the resources to do more than that one thing.

C’mon — I’m on the right track! Don’t blow and slip back into becoming a hobbyist, a dabbler, a generalist. Plenty of those types around — people I once admired for their money but now see them as tit-sucklers.

Without their source they are stripped of their power and left in their original naked amateur state.

(9/10)

I like most rappers. I grew up on their music, and collectively, their story fascinates and inspires me: tough upbringing in a bad neighborhood, lyrical genius, unafraid to express, completion of task. All quite brilliant if you ask me.

I don’t pay much attention to modern rappers’ music, but I still listen to the old stuff and keep tabs on who is mainstream. It’s my opinion that Tupac and Notorious B.I.G are the unrivaled best rappers of all time, in that order.

I mean, who else can throw down dope rhymes and beats about some of the hardest struggles America has seen?

(9/10)

I crack my knuckles, and it’s admittedly a bad habit (loud, distracting, ugly). I’m trying to stop but, like any lifelong bad habit, it’s hard to do.

I remember some months ago waking up with a powerful decision to stop cracking my knuckles. I did pretty well for awhile, but then the habit crept back in. My fingers feel like they need it to relax. And here I am still doing all the time.

But now I’m getting concerned again. I want to stop. It’s a personal challenge to stop. I want to crack them now but I’m refraining.

Discipline.

(9/10)

Yesterday I was on a call with some wealthy marketers, and it occurred to me that these are just normal guys doing what they do and embracing a positive lifestyle.

Funny how I never thought about that — the personal perspective. I always saw them for the work they do and how, quite often, their tactics come off as sleazy. And they still are…BUT…there’s ways to still succeed using their system, and then eventually evolving from it.

What am I trying to say here? That I need to stick with a system, learn the ropes and move up from there. The only thing that was missing this whole time was the personal connection. That’s so valuable.

The remaining struggle is the threshold of making money and being 1000% respectable in the mainstream. (9/10)

I’m still wiping out ants, and still feeling worse about it. It’s getting to the point where they’re practically sharing my office with me: I put a napkin down with some food residue on it and in minutes the whole napkin is black and crawling.

They are ants: they are not programmed with fear but only instinct. When I kill them I keep thinking how terrible it is to be an ant following your instinct and then it’s all over in a second.

Something has to change. I will be devising a plan to let the ants in my office live without bothering me. Update to follow.

Today is the birthday of a good friend of mine. so good, in fact, that I named one of my children after him and declared him the Godfather of that same child.

We’ve kept in touch over the years, but I’m starting to worry. He’s hasn’t evolved much at all and I have. He still drinks heavily, never has money and is always chasing hopeless moneymaking schemes (too many to list, and very diverse, too).

I still wish him the best, though. He’s still a close friend. I just wish he hadn’t told me the other day some of the things he told me, like how he had to look for spare change to buy some food, and how he got in an arguement with his dad and decided to sleep in his work warehouse.

C’mon now, get it together. Time to put aside our childish things.

So far, so good. I could do without it, but increasingly less so. It’s a 3rd device, different than the phone and the laptop — easy to check email, play a game or check news, then switch off.

What I haven’t yet mastered is how to be productive on the iPad. That’s key. Typing requires some getting used to. My palm keeps hitting the number key, which renders my words as garbled numbers and symbols (kind of like a cryptogram).

The coolest thing by far are the way the kids use it. It’s like the iPad was actually made for them and their generation. One day they’ll say to each other, “Remember that old iPad of Dad’s that we used to play with? that thing is so ancient now!”

Funny how I’m the generation that had no computers as a child (or very primitive ones) and my kids won’t even know what that means.

is actually pretty wonderful: you watch the sun come up and the stars fade as the sky rotates like one great big orbiting shell. In the winter, it’s all darkness but you see shooting stars and all kinds of glimmering bewilderment.

It’s also nice to have your exercise done no later than 7am — that’s when most people are just waking up and rubbing the sleepy dust out of their eyes, stumbling to the bathroom and fussing over their day.

One drawback, though, is the collective tiredness you get from running every morning early. Towards the end of the week you’re awake but feeling like you should be sleeping.

That’s how I feel right now. I think I’ll go get a coffee. (9/2)

is usually all I have a day. Even that isn’t too good. Physically, life is better without coffee, but socially and epicurily — it’s awesome.

This great thing about coffee is the bond you can share with people. “Hey let’s talk about this over coffee,” usually denotes a casual conversation about something pleasant, something desired. Plus it’s no real high pressure for whoever is buying it.

Also, walking into the local coffee shop, which I like to sometimes do, means that you’re going to deliberately run into people you know. If you want to check in with the citizens and friends in your town, going out for coffee is the way to do it.

It’s a casual, token beverage that tastes good. Too much is evil, though. (9/2)