Just spotted Jim Collin’s latest book. I’ve always enjoyed his previous books – Built to Last and Good to Great. This one is Great to Bad! How once great companies fail. He identifies 5 stages of decline.

1. Hubris born of success.
2. Undisciplined pursuit of ‘more’.
3. Denial of risk and peril.
4. Grasping for salvation.
5. Capitulation to irrelevance or death.

Sobering reading as an individual, team, organisation or civilisation.

I’m thinking of climate change and the current financial meltdown.

I liked this quote – “The signature of the truly great versus the merely successful is not the absence of difficulty but the ability to come back from set-backs, even catastrophe, stronger than before.”

There’s always hope …. if it’s well-founded!

We have made the first possible mistake that some consider to be fatal for any business blogger – not to update blog- and twitter posts on a regular basis. Don’t judge us, we’re new at this! The beauty of it is that mistakes and failures are allowed in entrepreneurship, with the prequisite that the majority of them are not repeated. Therefore, a key factor in our future work is to not fail the expectations we create. Whether they are our own or of others. Our immature experience of entrepreneurship is that the initial greatest responsibility as an entrepreneur is to meet your own expectations. Others surely agree with us when alleging that the fulfilment, or rather exceeding of own expectations is the mother of self-realization. And entrepreneurship is probably the best tool to actually prove yourself wrong, when you think something is beyond reach. However, the way to do it is not evident, and God help us if it would be. Wouldn’t life be a drag if you knew exactly what to do in every given moment? Well it would have been risk-free and probably quite comfortable. But expectations would not have existed, and therefore neither the possibility to surprise, innovate or over-deliver. It’s not a lie to state that some (or many) live in the described world, where tomorrow is the closest excuse for inaction. Our reason for living our dream is that no dream is better than the one that actually comes true (nightmares excluded). Expectations will sometimes not be met the way we want or hope, but for sure is that we will try our hardest to do so. And when we launch our upcoming killer-app we will focus more and more on delivering upon the expectations and requests of our users and customers (and possibly, probably, supposedly investors).

Anywho, enough about the pseudo-existential bullshit! What’s actually going on? When will we see the miracle in action?

Today it’s the 1st of December, an incredibly cold 1st day of the winter month in Scandinavia, and this is the 2nd post on our blog although the 1st in a series of every 2 weekly posts. A lot has happened since July 8th 2009, the date of our last (and first) post to this blog. Let’s start off by mentioning that we most delightedly have welcomed Elias, a digital savvy mastermind and close friend of Magnus’s that is known by his friends and followers for his skills in building the totally unimaginable, to our team of four dudes (idiots) that aim to have a lot of fun while creating a web-app for staying on top of life and making the pursuit of opportunities a lot easier.

The story of developing a web service is not bump-free nor short. From the initial concept stage we were at last summer we have tweaked the user experience to a faster, easier, intuitive and user-generated content environment. What we now will see is a platform that lets people stay on top of their own lives, as well as sharing them with others and helping others to do the same in a hazzle-free way!

By running around and pitching the service to investors, business advisors and social media junkies we get the highly needed persuasion training and get to meet interesting people. The summoned perception is that this kind of people are mostly very helpful and positive about the initiative we’re pursuing.

The agenda is now to find out about and decide which strategy to use when launching the service. How many should we invite to test the alfa, and beta versions? That sort of questions are the ones that you should ask yourself, with that in mind that this is no science. What we do know is that any launch is better than a non-launch! As it seems at the moment we will release a superprivate testversion on january 4th and then after testing for a couple of weeks we will send invites to a narrower group of people to test it further. Please give us a holla if your interested in testing new sites!

It’s also on the money to take a deeper dive into advertising. Gustav von Sydow, a creative ad tool entrepreneur, posted a list of great books to read if you’re interested in implementing ad solutions to your site. We certainly will!

1. Create something worth making (Purple Cow by Godin, Re-imagine by Peters, Art of the start by Kawasaki)
2. Sell something worth talking about (All marketers are liars by Godin, Selling the dream by Kawasaki, Unleashing the ideavirus by Godin)
3. Believe in what you do because the big break might take a while (Tipping point by Gladwell)
4. Don’t listen to the first people that give you feedback (Blink by Gladwell)
5. Don’t give up. Not for a while, at least (Jane Eyre by Brontë)

Lessons learnt:

• Update the blog regularly, e.g. once a week or once every two weeks, even if not much can be said. The key is to satisfy the readers’ expectations by delivering on promised dates, e.g every monday.
• Don’t underestimate the power of being busy. If you can’t dedicate all your time to a project; plan your everyday life and prioritize selectively among obligations and leisures.
• Never stop learning
• Test & Release ASAP

Until next time, live well and prosper humbly!

///Posted by Joakim

Did you ever spend your money on something only to realize you now owned complete junk? That happened to me. Over Thanksgiving weekend, we purchased some new outdoor Christmas lighting. Nothing two tacky; just a couple red and green spotlights, some walkway candy canes, and some clear lights to line our roof. Roof lights can be the easiest or the most time consuming lights to put up. They are the easiest if you put up a few hooks and hang your lights like Garland to look nice. They can take quite a while if you want them to be evenly spaced, straight, and clipped in a certain direction. You can guess what the Burke family party committee preferred. Not wishing to upset the committee, I bought a case (not a box) of lights, and a few hundred clips.

What a disaster. The old school clear glass bulbs we bought at Lowes were more fragile than Serena Williams’ temper. The bulbs broke, a fuse popped and could not be removed due to a defective cord, and the three hours spent clipping them all up was eclipsed by the 60 seconds it took me to rip them down and bring them back in the house. The problem was not bad efforts or bad planning; we just had only junk to work with. I didn’t want to get back on the ladder again.

Well, we returned the shoddy materials to Lowes, purchased more durable (and energy efficient) LED lights, and put them all back up the next day. It was a great family time to be honest. I stood on the ladder, my wife fed the strands of lights to me, my son verbally encouraged the effort, and each bulb was clipped evenly on the roof… all 525 of them! After regrouping, putting in some time to start over, and working hard, our house looks great!

Psalm 127:1reads, “Unless the Lord build the house, those who build it labor in vain.” That can be a tough verse to swallow. Sometimes we spend our time working hard on things God never intended us to do. Ministries allocate major resources to projects with no real lasting significance. Life can be like that. Sometimes we do a lot of work and try our best and frankly it isn’t good enough, period. As in our case, sometimes the very materials we have to work with are just no good.

I will be honest: the last thing I felt like doing after standing on a ladder all afternoon was start over; I did not want to get back on the ladder. But, I did. Maybe you need to start over, maybe you don’t. Maybe you feel like a lot of stuff in your life is probably a waste of time and maybe you don’t. Whatever your situation, there is still a new day, a fresh breath, and an eternal God. Seek out Jesus Christ and you’ll find what you need. For me, I work so much harder when I keep in mind what God has created me to do. In fact, nothing I am really working for is about me at all. It is about Jesus. Knowing that I am not working for nothing gets me back on the ladder again.

The first of December… What a random day. The skies this morning were beautifully pink- a definite great way to start the day. After a few lessons, and some fun drawing lessons, I decided to stay home, and do… Basically… Nothing.

Provided nothing can equate to something not to do with my “goals for December”, then something actually was done. But what was done today? Good old final plans.

It’s going to be pretty hard to get through the month without organizing things in a rather casual manner. I recall many times before of failures- failures caused by failing to get things into gear. Hopefully it won’t occur this December. And this time, no painful toes to stop me! Although there was some pain today from that damn toe… D:

Procrastination is definitely Not the Habit of Most Successful Business Leaders?

Because where Success is Procrastination isn’t.

And, what is one of the great habits of the Most Effective Leaders –

That they do the most urgent and important jobs first.

Are you doing the most urgent thing first?

It doesn’t matter how best you can deliver or how brilliant or creative you are, but how much you deliver has the final say in your success meter.

You may have best of the ideas, but might fail at the execution of it.

“My evil genius Procrastination has whispered me to carry ’til a more convenient season”, said Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of U.S.

So, have you ever felt like saying to yourself, ‘o.k., I’ll do this after Christmas? Then, from New Year onwards’ and, then, wait from one season to another and then felt good for not feeling the burden of doing the job right away. I have felt it. In fact, I have done this as a student and paid heavily for this. The good feeling, for not doing that job that very moment, is only for short time. Later it is chaos.

We all have that lazy streak. As human beings we all don’t like pressure. And, one easy way to do away with pressure is to postpone. But, the moment we push the pressure, we push ourselves more towards urgency in the future.

FIVE Things that go in our minds when we decide that we will do this task later …Or, PROCRASTINATE!

…It’s easy. I can do it anytime later.

…I am not prepared enough to do this.

…I’m too tired right now.

…This is not the right time.

…Let me do this (an unimportant task) first.

As a Procrastinator you must use these excuses when you have to…

Make a sales call
Call someone important for business presentation
Write an important e-mail
Finish a project along with time line, e.g. write an article
Take clients feedback
Read important industry related news/articles
Or, anything requiring a serious effort on our part and will add value to our work.

Surely, I know that you know that till the time you are giving these answers, errrr….Excuses to yourself for not doing the most important thing first.

How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time. – Fred Brooks

Mostly, a procrastinator will get involved with researching more and more, arranging stack of files, cleaning up work drawers, rearranging excel and other files, checking Facebook or linkedin status, calling up friends and eating in between. Tell me if you have more of these to add to the list

So, you know that you are doing it, still you are doing it.

FIVE most common traits of Procrastinators

According to various scholars like Dr. Michael Neenan, Dr. Ferrari, Dr. Albert Ellis, Procrastinators-

1. Are not born.
2. Are self – deceptive
3. Are perfectionists.
4. Look for something else to do.
5. Are usually Bright

Five Results of Procrastination -

Delays in projects

Inefficiency/ Low Productivity / Low Profits

Discontentment/ reduced motivation in the team.

Failure

Low Self – Esteem

Five ways to Combat Procrastination

“There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing.” – Brian Tracy, Canada born Self Help author and Chairman of Brian Tracy International based in California. One of his famous books – Eat that Frog: 21 Ways to stop Procrastination and get More Done in Less Time.

Mark TIME as ‘That Is Most Essential’!

List it – As a procrastinator you are usually blank about where to start from, what to do. Make a list of the entire tasks that come to your mind, whether small or big, Urgent or not urgent, Important or not important. I use both – my MS Outlook and my traditional notebook.

Mark it and over again– Mark Most Urgent tasks, not so urgent, Important, Not So Important. Mark most urgent tasks at the top of priority list. For my most urgent tasks, I put on my post it and place it on the board over my workstation.

Mark TIME as ‘That Is Most Essential’. That means, most essential at a given point of time to be accomplished in a given set of time period. Sometimes, you might need to take timely care of the tasks that are not so important. Otherwise, they might soon become urgent tasks and put pressure on you.

So, you might to renew the list over again and mark accordingly.

Start it – Push the START button. Start with the most urgent thing first. If you have tendency to get confused, especially when you have too many things to be done, best way is to start one thing at a time. As you complete task, strike it in your traditional notebook or outlook. As you do this, you will feel less burdened. More strikes, more will be your confidence level and dedication to complete the list.

Beat it – Beat the time – Beat the Deadline. How you can beat the clock? Only way to do is be the proverbial tortoise. He may be slow, but he is consistent and focused. He just knows that he has to win the race. He knows it is important to win the race and not just to cover the distance. Are you getting the difference here? So he cannot take things for granted. He is not distracted. And, he doesn’t suffer from overconfidence. He may not be very smart as Hare. But, finally who wins the race is the smarter one. Right?

Are you the tortoise or hare, who thinks is smarter than others, who is over confident, is easily distracted, takes many breaks, and sleeps just before the deadline? Decide and act accordingly.

Shout it! Who wins in the end is the one who shouts out aloud. You win, I mean, win over your first attempt in beating procrastination, shout it to the whole world and to your entire social network etc. Use your own example for your future achievements. Of course, people will remember it too. People are good at remembering Success. Failures are forgotten rather too easily. Tortoise is remembered to date. What happened to the hare after that race? Nobody knows.

Hello December – my favoritist month ever!  It’s my birthday month and the whole country celebrates by putting up pretty lights, singing pretty songs, and expressing goodwill towards all.  Thanks everyone – I think you’re swell too!

I’ve been out of the news-loop for quite awhile now – but perhaps I’ll start paying attention again.   After all, I have no complaints these days and therefore, apparently nothing to talk about. 

Grossly uninformed I am about the state of politics these days so I’ll work with the celebrity news…

• Rihanna calls leak of naked pictures “humiliting”.  From what I have heard and seen, I might be tempted to think the naked pictures may be the high point.  I have not been wildly impressed by neither her music nor her comments on domestic abuse or interpersonal relationships.  Certainly I hope her experiences help young women avoid domestic abuse – that should go without saying, but there, I said it anyway.
• Domestic abuse is no laughing matter but I’m sure we’ll hear plenty of jokes about Tiger Woods if (or even if not) the rumors are true.  Dark humor is certainly something with which I am both familiar and a frequent participant, and when man bites dog, it’s ironic.  But when I remember Phil Hartman, I can’t think these things are too funny.  I’m comfortable with being a wet blanket on this point.
• So Alec Baldwin thinks his movie career is a failure?  “I consider my entire movie career a complete failure,” Baldwin added. “The goal of movie-making is to star in a film where your performance drives the film, and the film is either a soaring critical or commercial success, and I never had that.”  Taking a 20+ year into account, no doubt, he’s made some dogs – in which he was usually the only saving grace – but he’s made so many great movies, I tend to think his “failure” may be in his vanity.
• And the ex-Miss Argentina dies after cosmetic surgery on her derriere.  It’s not funny – but it is certainly ridiculous.  The whole argument of “well, if it makes her feel better about herself” is horseshit.  How does she feel now?  There’s probably not a single woman around that hasn’t a considered the nip or tuck including yours truly – but why?  The striving for physical perfection is both futile and pointless and perpetuates the message to our daughters that youth and beauty are worth dying for.  They are not.  I could make a long list about when it’s reasonable to get cosmetic surgery but when The Stunning are risking and even losing their lives for a slighty firmer behind I get a little sick to my soft and squishy tummy.

Okay – I guess that’s my take on the news for today.

Til we meet again!!

Few people have the courage to kill their "puppy"

Before you call animal protection agencies, I need to warn you upfront that this blog post is not about taking the life of man’s best friend. This post is about making difficult decisions – very difficult decisions when it comes to ending your own initiatives. For the record, I love animals but I found the analogy so powerful that I decided to use it to support my perspective [thanks to André for the analogy].

I wrote about an organization’s ability to create, select and grow new ideas in an earlier blog post. I already highlighted 2 very different methods of launching new initiatives and in this post, I want to write about a leader’s ability to kill an initiative before it reaches full potential. No sane person launches an initiative or a project with the objective of not being successful.

Too many organizations lack the ability to innovate so when an organization has the amazing ability to generate new ideas, it is a wonderful thing. In such organizations, employees are motivated and the company makes sure it will continue to grow by bringing innovations to the market. Such organizations typically have a healthy pipeline of ideas that help them re-invent themselves. Some large organizations even have the goal to generate more than 30% of their revenues from products created in the last 24 months. That’s an aggressive but worthwhile strategy.

The challenge I have seen is with smaller organizations where the initiator of the idea is also typically its leader. In such circumstances, the leader no longer has the ability to take a step back and see things as they are – not as he wants them to be. After investing money and personal energy and imagining such high potential, making the right decision about pursuing the project (or not) when the results aren’t there is nearly impossible. The emotional ties to the project are so strong, it requires a lot of courage to make the decision to kill the project.

What do you do when the initiative doesn’t deliver on its expectation? Do you keep moving forward or do you put an end to the project? When do you know when enough is enough? How do you know you didn’t kill the idea too soon?

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers to these questions except it depends… It is obvious that the decision to end an initiative is much easier to make when you are not emotionally associated with the initiative. Not having taken part of the initiative makes it easier to use clear-cut criteria and apply them. If the project didn’t generate the expected revenue or doesn’t meet which ever other criteria used to evaluate it, it is much easier to decide to cancel it – to make a rational decision instead of an emotional one.

As with every thing in life, no one can ever be certain that the decision was the right one but I firmly believe that making no decision (or maintaining the status quo) is worst than making a decision. Isn’t insanity the behavior of repeating the same actions and expecting a different outcome?

As for your initiatives, stop seeing them as puppies. Take a step back and if you must kill your project, see the experience as an opportunity to develop new skills that you will need further down the line. As Agile people keep saying “Inspect and Adapt” which is a clever way of saying “Learn from your mistakes, and move on”. Very few large success happened on the first attempt. See your failed initiatives as a pre requisite for your next success.

I’ll tell you about some of my “puppies” in an upcoming post…

I was avoiding and stressing about making these gifts that are going in the mail tomorrow. Over half the package was finished, there was just something missing. I totally knew what it was, I just dreaded making them. You see, I have a fear of failure AND a fear of success. I am afraid of being a flop AND not living up to others expectations. They balance each other out to keep me paralyzed a good part of the time.

To get around this, because Brooklyne is not a lazy girl, I tend to do a lot of self talk to get projects out of my head. I love designing. I love creating. But formulating an idea and tending to it to make it look, feel and represent the way I imagined it, is a tall order. I think this same issue is why I don’t stick to one craft for very long. Check out my history page, it speaks volumes, even if it’s not finished.

So, today, while avoiding making the gifts, I decided to try an idea for a craft show coming this summer. If it didn’t work, I’d put the idea away and think of something else. The thing is, it worked! It totally worked. The items came out amazing and I’ll probably be making a bunch more. Not sure about listing them online, as my artfire shop doesn’t get much play and Etsy is too expensive for someone who doesn’t have sales. I digress.

Oh, and I finished the gifts. I finally kicked my own arse and finished them. They turned out like something I’ve never made before. Eh, being lopsided is cute. I refuse to fret over these. I’ve seen worse. Now onto the rest of the gifts for the family.

examples:

the time when I thought I could spring up very high on a diving board and curve my body up and over like a rainbow, to get in to the water pin straight and diagonal, hands pointed above my head. The classic dive. Whilst midair I realized it was not going to work or I got scared. Whatever the reason was, I belly flopped HARD! It jolted my neck like sedan whiplash. That plane of water slapped me hard and taught me a lesson. That lesson is the title of this blog.

One time I thought about making a snappy comeback in jest by using the voice and words of Eric Cartman. I chickened out on the voice, and what I said didn’t come across as being a quote from a foul mouthed cartoon character, but rather as my own feeling about the situation. That lead to a big misundestanding later, and a great deal of awkwardness.

I was in the spelling bee when I was in sixth grade. I studied my ass off. I was so sure that I was going to do great. So many times I had stood on the stage at church and sang, my knees quivering, and would go cry after I was done. Not because I had done poorly, but just from the sheer terror of being watched by so many people made my nerves fray. When I went to the spelling bee, I had unusual courage. I bombed. I was the third one out. The word that was the nail in my coffin was one that my mom gave me a pneumonic device to remember. It was wrong though, so I had memorized it wrong. I wasn’t mad at my mom. I was mad at myself for having been so bold, brave and confident. Never again, I vowed, would I ever be so sure of myself.

If you ever feel like putting yourself on the line, make sure you go full balls out and see it through, or have the wills or skills to do it in the first place. Otherwise, it’s gonna hurt. Have you ever seen a tattoo where the person chickened out half way through?

Today was one of rare oddity days where I actually feel like doing something productive! LOL! Most days I have an agenda…I follow www.flylady.net  and have an awesome group of women that are great motivators over at www.cafemom.com . I make out a to do list, get all organized, start going down my list crossing things off..then Lyla walks by and smells like God only knows and I have to break to change her. While I break to change her..we play chase..then peek a boo. Then we need milk and maybe some fruit snacks. Oh what the heck..let’s turn on the Bee Movie and cuddle a little bit…I mean she’s only little once right? Well…now it is 8:00 so it’s bathtime…we bathe…get in our jammies…turn the lights down low…cuddle in the recliner…I watch a few of my TV shows while rocking her to sleep and BOOM…they day is over!!

Today was one of those rare days where Lyla was entertaining herself so I took off as soon as we got home and started cleaning. I love having a productive day..it makes me feel like I am finally fulfilling my job! I have so many tasks to do and things to get done..I never get them all in and feel like I fail a the majority of the time. Not to mention I am a preschool teacher so most of my “work” comes home with me to do. Today I felt like I did everything I needed to do.

My house is clean, supper was cooked, laundry is getting done, Lyla is having fun watching the Bee Movie, and I feel like the kind of woman God wants me to be. The kind that does not have idle hands..always busy doing something for her home or family. And since all of my chores are done…I get some uninterrupted cuddling time with Lyla without thinking of what I have to do next! So cuddle time…starts…now!

It’s the last night of November, so I should be typing frantically enough to finish my NaNoWriMo novella by midnight. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can crank out 43 pages or 29,000 words within four and a half hours without breaking a tendon. So I guess that’s a massive fail. But more on that tomorrow. Tonight, for at least one post, I want to bring this blog back to its original intent–writing about cars.

There’s a fair amount of accuracy to this blog’s name. When I first got Oliver, one of David’s friends really did tell me, “That’s totally a girl’s car.” I still disagree and think that Oliver’s pretty masculine. But I saw a vehicle today that…well, I don’t even know how to categorize it, other than hilarious. And perhaps insane.

I give you the cupcake car.

Pour some sugar in that gas tank.

It’s not a girl’s car. It’s not a boy’s car. It’s not even really a human’s car. Maybe a leprechaun’s? Or a Keebler Elf’s? Or Ryan Seacrest’s?

Regardless, it costs $25k, which is more money than I made in my first post-college job. So thank you for the less-than-sweet temptation, Neiman Marcus crazy-ass wish book, but I don’t think I’ll be procuring one this year. I might rent one if I could, but where would I take it? A go-cart track? The neighborhood sidewalk? I guess that’s the point–if you can afford one of these, you can afford to have your own cupcake race track, away from raucous kids and sugar junkies and judgmental bloggers and people who keep asking you if you’re feeling all right and suggesting that maybe you should get someone to handle your financial affairs, just for a while, until you stop feeling the urge to buy automobiles shaped like desserts.

God, I wish “Top Gear” would cover these monstrosities. It would be almost as great as the Peel P50 adventure.

Copyright 2009, Sarah at ThatsAGirlsCar.com. All rights reserved.

Interesting little wreck going on.  No, Not Tiger’s car wreck, but the wreck of the Crunchpad. 

According to Mr. Arrington, the Crunchpad, a very nicely designed tablet designed to surf the web, was ready to debut at the Real-Time Crunchup event on November 20.  Then, well, I’ll let Mr. Arrington take it from here:

“On November 17, our deadline date for greenlighting the debut three days later, the CEO of our partner on the project, Chandra Rathakrishnan, sent me an email with the subject “no good news.” Yuck, I thought. Another delay, probably with the screen that had been giving us so much trouble – capacitive touch at 12 inches isn’t trivial. And sure enough, the email started off with “no good news to update. updated hardware is still on its way , so that’s a timing issue. friday will be a challenge now.”

But the email went on. Bizarrely, we were being notified that we were no longer involved with the project. Our project. Chandra said that based on pressure from his shareholders he had decided to move forward and sell the device directly through Fusion Garage, without our involvement.”

Interesting, to say the least. Considering the intellectual property is shared between Arrington’s group and Fusion Garage, it makes one wonder exactly where someone could come up with the scenario of basically saying  “OK, well, thanks for all your hard work on your idea, I’ll be taking everything now and saying good-bye.”  As Arrington put it :

“This is the equivalent of Foxconn, who build the iPhone, notifying Apple a couple of days before launch that they’d be moving ahead and selling the iPhone directly without any involvement from Apple.”

Fusion Garage blames “shareholders” for the abrupt change in plans, at least in the e-mail that Arrington placed onto the blog.  Fusion Garage’s blog hasn’t been updated since February and no news has come out of the camp. 

While there are plenty of times when I don’t agree with Mr. Arrington, this is not one of them.  Something smells foul and it looks like it is coming from the direction of Fusion Garage.  Time, the courts and lots of lawyers will tell, but my gut is backing Arrington on this one. 

So what was it?  A renegotiation of the equity split gone sour?  Pure greed?  Corporate sabotage?    As I have said, tablets are “the next big thing”, whatever that is supposed to mean.  And there is more than one player out there in tablet-land.  And the fact is, things like this happen in corporate America all the time.  Great ideas have been bought and then conveniently left to rot because they might pose a market threat to another competitor.  The best ideas sometimes never make it out of the gates. 

This, I’m afraid, is one of those times. 

Now Playing: Cake – Prolonging the Magic – You Turn the Screws

I think this quote would also fit the concept of love as well- it is far better to love than to not have loved at all.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. — Theodore Roosevelt

via Facebook | Michael Mann.

Most people who haven’t seen their other halves for 5 days can’t wait to get back and see them again.
Unfortunately, my boyfriend is not most people. Which is why, despite the fact that he came back from Vienna today, I’m spending the night alone, again. It seems putting the washing machine on is way more important than seeing your girlfriend.
I suppose I should just be grateful he didn’t bring the laundry over for me to do. Oh yes, there really is a bright side to everything…

Remind me why I spent 25 euros on a king size quilt then another 30 on a sheet and pillowcases when 90% of the time I’m the only one sleeping in my bed anyway? Come to think of it, why did I even waste my money on a single bed? If I’d got a single one I might have been able to afford a sofa as well…

Oh, and I’m fairly sure I’ve failed my photo challenge for the third month in a row. Which makes me wonder whether there’s even any point in continuing with this 1001 days thing. I probably will though. Because I’m stubborn like that.

Did you do NaNoWriMo? I did and I didn’t get to the goal of 50,000 words. Not even close. But I did gain some insight on the creative process. Some nights I got in the groove and was really sailing along. Sparkling dialouge, wonderful syntax, excellent descriptions-it was all good. Other nights it was like trying to squeeze an elephant through a keyhole. Nothing sounded good and I had to really fight the urge to edit as I was writing. My mantra was, “just write, just write”. Now I do have a fairly cohesive story that I could take futher and make something of. Isn’t that the whole reason we put ourselves through a month of stress and fun?

Anne Wayman pointed us to a very good article on Men With Pens about NaNoWriMo. It’s titled, Did You Reach Your NaNoWriMo Goal? Like Anne, it did make me feel better about my effort. Now I’m off to continue my saga and do some very needed edits.

I’m starting to get the hang of this – not living in a hotel – I’m starting to get the hang of expecting failure. Don’t get me wrong – this hotel room is nice, but there are little things that could so easily have been right. It’s a big Hilton, if that means anything.

Let’s start with checking in, when the girl told me exactly the wrong direction to go. I half suspected, and asked a porter in the corridor – who smiled, told me I wasn’t the first to have been given such instructions, and pointed me in the right direction.

Next, there’s the wardrobe in the room, and it’s coat hangar. That’s right – singular. Whoever stayed in this room last stole all the coat hangars. I guess it’s no accident that other hotels have hangars without hooks, but it still doesn’t excuse the staff from putting some back.

What next? Maybe the kettle and it’s 1ft flex, which requires IQ test logical abilities to plug in and keep using the desk.

Other than the above, the room is good. It will be my home for the next 3 nights, and rooms like it will house me for the next 3 weeks. It’s no accident of course that I plan on camping out at the desk most evenings. The rest of the room that I’m so busy complaining about is of little real use to me.

A question therefore comes to mind; what would your ideal hotel room have in it? What do you require ?

I know I’m somewhat late to this party, but I wanted to point out to all who are still unaware that the ‘too big to fail’ banks which caused are late crisis are even bigger.

JP Morgan, AIG, Citigroup, Goldman, and Bank of America were the winners of Geithner-Paulson’s free money giveaway (with Lehman a bad loser), and together they have swallowed the hundreds of small and medium banks that have failed since. They now present an even bigger and more systemic risk, should they choose to gamble away their money once again.

Despite repeated calls from almost every respected economist (notably Joseph Stiglitz) that these banks are a menace, Lords Geithner and Bernanke have done nothing to restrict their size – indeed, they have made them impossibly more dangerous and lucrative.

Furthermore, none of the incentives which led to such reckless gambling (ludicrous bonus packages, easy credit, low intrest, short-term rewards) have been addressed, and instead have been reinforced.

The next bailout will have to be 700 trillion instead of a mere 700 billion.

My husband and I are studying a marriage book together.  One of the sections talks about the importance of understanding the concept of “rebound,” as in basketball.  When the ball misses the hoop, it is simply an opportunity to get it and try to make another play.  The principle is, when we don’t do well in treating our spouse the way we should, to not see ourselves as failures, just as the basketball player doesn’t stop and mope over his lack of success on the court, but rather to go for the rebound  and try again.

I explained this concept to my son as a life principle.  Kids with special challenges have so many opportunities to try and to fail.  It’s important for them to understand that failure is just another opportunity to try again, to go for the rebound!

Brad is working on his social skills (among many other kinds of life skills).  When he came home from youth group last week, he said, “I should have wished my friends at youth group a happy Thanksgiving.  That would have been a good way to build relationships.”  I said, “Well, how about when you go back after the break, you ask them how their holiday was?”  Without skipping a beat, his face lit up and he said, “Rebound!”  And my  heart said, “Yay! he gets it.”

The above example is a small piece of life, but this rebound principle is freeing and strengthening when our kids learn it in all areas of their lives.  We can help to put a little voice in their heads that says, “OK, you missed that one.  Go for it again.  Try a little different angle this time.  Keep trying.  Rebound!”

What could be more freeing than to know that mistakes, failures, and even sins (because of our forgiveness in Christ) don’t have to bring us down.  We don’t have to evaluate our lives based on our failures, and neither do our kids.  This all takes grace toward one another and toward ourselves to know that there is a new, fresh start each moment.  God extends this grace to us, and we should be free to give it to ourselves and to our kids, teaching them to take that fresh start and to put the failure behind them—in all areas of life. Avoid any communication that includes thoughts such as “all is lost,” “the damage is done,” “it’s no use,” “it’ll never happen.”

Did your child have a melt-down in class?  Encourage him to go back and show self-control and courtesy to his classmates.  Was he unable to participate in something he would like to be a part of because of a physical limitation?  Help him to think of new ways of trying or to simply be able to enjoy watching others enjoy themselves and to cheer them on.  Did she fail yet another school assignment?  Help her to rebound and to approach the challenge from a way that will help her to be successful next time. Or get her in a different situation where failure isn’t so likely, such as, for example, home schooling.

And how about you?  Have you failed at being an encouraging parent?  Rebound, start fresh.  Do better today. Our Lord’s “mercies are new every morning.” (Lamentations 3: 22-23)

Having courage doesn’t mean that we are unafraid. Because life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death, this is a spectacular ending.