New Zealand

Had a friend call me for the first time in 7 months.

He hated his job here, saved up and moved to New Zealand. I remember the night he sat on my couch, wearing his work clothes. He said "Man I just want to save up some money and get the fuck out of here." (Something along those lines)

Well he did it. He slaved at the job, rose to middle management and all the while saved every penny. He amassed a small chunk of money and just dropped everything and moved to New Zealand. I'm sure he misses Circuit City.

This was months ago. Well hes back in Austin and called me. His voice was calm. He didn't really know where to start. Funny how it feels like yesterday I talked to him.

The trip cleared his head. He is thinking about going back to school to study a whole new field. He is debating on leaving for Colorado or California. He doesn't know what he wants to do but it feels like a wide open highway for him.

Sometimes I am reminded how limited I see things. For all the ego I have about my own enlightenment, it frequently dawns on me that I really don't feel enough, take chances enough or follow adventure the way I should.

I'm not necessarily talking about running off to another country. Although that really seems pretty sweet at this moment in the night. But my friends finding their purpose lead me to think I am stagnant in that regard.

All my cracks are starting to show the older I get. I really don't know what I want. In any aspect of my life. How scary is that?

new song

i wrote a song tonight. From memories that almost seem sacred now. The kind of memories you don't feel you really deserve and maybe will only get to experience once. I understood as I was experiencing them that these were things I would never see again.

you called a cab
and you went back to bed
I said goodbye to your town

keep it simple
just a sleepy peck
I guess Ill call you when I touch down

i spent my last
on a magazine
and picked up a few new words

tried not to stare
at the gypsy queens
singing songs Ive never heard

ive been thinking about
what your father said
how the words get in the way

theres not enough time
to figure it out
"so many things I want to say"

I can still recall
the festival
and the children everywhere

the dizzy lights
the cathedral at night
and the way you did your hair

WOW

The choir was incredible. 18 people singing our little pop song. The girls went one way, the boys went the other and there were claps.

The song is officially badass now.

minutes away from history

i am watching the inauguration.

truly inspiring.

Big Choir of Voices

This coming Saturday we are going to grab as many people we can to sing the chorus for one of the songs on the EP. I need to find more females to balance out our confirmed guys singing on the track.

Its going to be fun to pack as many people we can into that room.

10 really weird fetishes

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Constant Education

That's how I would describe my opinion of business success.

I have been subscribing to an online affiliate marketing website that has a monthly payment of $30 bucks for a few months. I probably have read through 1/5th of all the info available to me so I kinda felt like I was wasting my money.

I went back to a section I had read already and found one little tidbit of info. It was an Aha moment and I applied it immediately. I woke up to some super numbers and a sale.

It goes to show me how for this to fly, I am going to have to be consistently studying, learning and moving forward with what I know about this industry. I am also going to create a separate blog for this kind of stuff because frankly its stuffy and only entertains myself.

learning my limits

so I have officially become obsessed. I watch the stats creep up, i freak out because they aren't where I want them to be.

I get home and work until 2 sometimes nearly 3 on this stuff. I dream about it.

Then this morning a very tense ball of stress appeared in my chest. Like a rock. I thought it was my heart for a second. It hurt.

So I took a hot shower, laid down awhile and breathed deeply and it got better.

Still this is no way to live. I am literally working 13-14 hour days, not unwinding at all and unusually obsessive about this stuff. Gotta be another way.

I have lost about $130 so far. Of course the stats I gain are invaluable. I need to see this as necessary costs of learning my market but I freak out over every penny. Some entrepreneur.

Valerie Plain

Do yourself a favor and listen to the song Valerie Plain by the Decemberists. It just keeps surprising you and its so catchy.

Everything a pop song should be. I heard it on the drive to work today. That and a great song by Ben Folds about when he fell and hit his head during a performance in Japan. Funny stuff.

weekend update

good weekend. vocals were recorded and I did pretty well. Of course I might feel differently going back to hear it later but it came off a lot better than i had planned. Inch by inch this EP will be released. Maybe it wont be a masterpiece or anything but its damn excellent for an ep by some guys who have only been together about a year.

in boring nerdy news, my sales letter is converting at a whopping 10%. Or course more data is needed to get accurate percentages but as it stands I am making a sale with every 10 visits to the page. 20 opt ins so far. 2 sales. I was hopefully optimistic I would get 2%. still 22 bucks in the hole after its all said and done but that was to be expected. I am on the right track here.

not sure why both sales were from canada though. weird.

weirdest craving ever

lately Ive been wanting to do algebra.

I know. ridiculous.

I seriously want to do math right now. wtf?

Friends....I need someone to lean on....

I am about to cancel my cable subscription....

Im weak..

no cnn...

no comedy central...

no....qvc. ;)

I know its in my best interest to spend my time elsewhere. Just turn to the television for a daily fix of the simpsons and seinfeld ONLY, if that.

I know I can go on the internet and watch the other shows if I really want to...

but honestly there is a certain comfort having cable. Living alone can get very very quiet and just having mildly entertaining TV on can really help with the the feelings of isolation that creep up every now and then.

of course I have to ask myself what is that comfort worth to me? 80 bucks a month is over 266 leads generated online. A 2% sales rate of that far exceeds $80.

Seems like the smart thing to do.

its now 2:39 am

and my site is live. the links work. The videos play seamlessly. Google is turned on. now I sleep and see if I had late night visitors in the morning.

nerd alert. I am stoked as all get out.

True...

"We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons." - Jim Rohn

swimming in details

so this little internet business is a massive amount of tiny little details...

tweaks to the opt in page need to be made, videos I recorded need editing in certain places, payment processing needs to be in place, stat tracking in Google needs to be fully functional before driving traffic to it. Keyword research...yada yada. This is not a fly by night get rich quick thing. I am working on a legitimate info product business that happens to have the internet as the storefront. But I got a lot done last night. And Im going to be doing things I dont see my competition doing at all. This is where my experience with my job comes into play. I see all these real estate gurus doing interesting marketing and I am totally copping the ideas in my niche. Hopefully this separates me from the others.

Of course the numbers wont lie. Thats the cool thing about marketing. You get instant results from your efforts that are inarguable.

I had a tiny technical breakthrough last night that excited the hell out of me so I stayed up way too late working on it. I may be a bit of a slacker sometimes but when I get into something I can literally work a solid 6 or 7 hours on it without getting up from my chair.

Im am very very excited to start making passive income.

the swang of it

ok it actually feels good to be back into the routine. Not laying around in my own filth and wondering what I am going to do today. I should have worked on my internet stuff this holiday but I managed to keep any smidgen of responsibility and productivity held down and suffocated until the new year.

Last night I met up with Daniel and we went over a new song we are working on. Its a dual song where we trade off lines in the chorus. our lines so far...

Daniel:

All the continental breakfasts and floral pattern carpets are the same

From the outskirts of Los Angeles to the inns that line the coast of Georgian Bay

And any one you're in makes you feel you're the only one without a lover on display

its the end of the world - Me
if I could just draw this out - Daniel
at a holiday inn - Me
Try not to think about - Daniel
I just couldn't wait - Me
How I need to remember - Daniel
to see you again - Me
The crack and the timbre - Daniel

There's more but were playing around with it. The harmonies are pretty spectacular. its a bouncy piano number and is going to be good. We have a lot of potential good stuff in the works

I also worked on my sales letter and tweaked my ebook some more when I got home.

2009 is going to be my bitch.

success aint shit....

I am reminded that there is nothing more important than your health. Money, power, prestige...screw all that.

case in point.

Its so easy to take your health for granted. We as humans only really want something when we realize we are lacking it. If you feel good today thank your maker and continue to do things that foster that feeling. Cause when its gone you will give ANYTHING to have it back.

Who thinks Mr Jobs would hand over his shares of Apple and step down if the doctors could make him 100% healthy tomorrow? I guess it depends on how serious the situation is but I would guess that he would consider the hell out of it.

I think we should conduct our lives the way we feel just after getting over the flu. You want to skydive, read more, have crazy monkey sex, and just drive around happy that you are not sweating underneath a blanket, sucking on nasty lozenges and painfully coughing your lungs out.

Hell you even look forward to work. Talk about a paradigm shift.