starting from scratch

My last post wasn’t terribly clear; reading it now even I’m not sure what I was trying to say. Can I try again? The problem with my old effort to start a business is that I was trying to develop what Joel Splosky calls a “binary product”. Had I continued the path I was on it would have taken me years to get to the point where I could start getting objective feedback. In the meantime I was seriously burning out. I had already spent a couple of years just proving the concept, and now I was looking at a long road of product development and I just didn’t have it in me. I was ready to bag the whole thing.

And yet, every “find your purpose” exercise I do leads me back to this same effort. Every intellectual analysis of my options brings back to here, even when I am burnt out and sick of it. The I Ching assures me great success; it even goes so far as to interject this message into otherwise unrelated career questions. Erin Pavlina did a reading for me over the summer where she assured me that I was on the right path, but my real goal would not become clear until later on. So maybe this is a step in that direction.

Anyway, I decided to shift gears and develop a blog. I am going to develop the software, but from scratch, and along a different path. I want to develop something great, but the writing on the blog will offset the inevitable weaknesses in the early code. That is, the blog allows me to produce value now, while I spend the time developing the product. I have a lot of insights that I can share, that I have wanted to share, but didn’t because I was concerned about the immaturity of what I was working on. Foolish, in hindsight. What a relief to have finally made that breakthrough. I still have years of work ahead of me, but at least there something that I can focus on right now.

So here I am, starting from scratch. Again.

And by the way, I am intentionally not mentioning the names or websites of my projects. I’d like to keep this a place where I can talk about personal or wacky, far out stuff without worrying about scaring away potential customers or partners. Maybe someday later on, with success running rampant through my life, I’ll “cross the streams“.

I have long wanted to start my own business, and for several years now — years! — I have been trying to do just that. And yet after all that effort I have yet to produce a single damn thing. I’ve tried to face the facts before, to make adjustments and right the ship, but it was all just window dressing. My vision of my product has not changed substantially from day one, nor have my results. Truth be told, the thing is just too big.

My frustration with my day job continues to grow and it finally became overwhelming. I reached my breaking point this past week, with the futility of everything I had been doing really hitting home. I could have been lost in a deep depression but remember this is my year of appreciation and joy! Hmm, yeah…that sounds trite in the face of things but actually it did help keep it all in perspective.

I took a day and allowed my strong emotions to scour the slate clean. I reconsidered my ability to run my own business, and thought hard about possible employment opportunities I might take instead. No, I really do want my own business; it is important to me. I listened to Kickstart Your Own Business and read Cubicle Nation for a few hours and then brainstormed business ideas, from a clean slate. My skillset and my interests bring me back to essentially the same thing I have been working on — after all, how could I have worked on it for so long with no results unless it was something I was really passionate about?

Still, I can’t keep on the same path, something has to give. I am brutally hacking it down, cutting features, trying to get to the essential core of the thing. My intention is to deliver something my 04-July-2007 (Independence Day here in the States); the symbolism can only help. In the process, I have sort of turned the whole thing on its head. What if, instead of developing a product to sell, I sell me developing a product? That is, something along the lines of Werner Moise and Smart Software. The advantage of this approach is that I can put myself out there immediately, start building an audience immediately, instead of waiting years and years to develop this complex piece of software. I can be more comfortable sharing my work in its early states because I am selling the process more than the product.

I still have my doubts; I’m not going to take any action until I’ve had more time to think it through. Still, a ray of sun in a storm.

Steve Pavlina suggests setting a “primary focus” for the year, rather than a more specific resolution. I have had some success with resolutions, here and there, but my best results have come when I kept my goals general. Which is basically what Steve is suggesting.

I believe that my weakest area is best summed up as “spirituality”, in the sense of having a connection to the things and events around me. In particular, I need to work on appreciating and enjoying where I am and what I am doing, rather than just doing because it needs to be done. So that’s my focus for 2007: to appreciate and find joy in things.

I am also starting a new 30 day trial: to spend 15 minutes, three times a day on my own personal development. I plan to use this time for actively visualizing my goals. I want to identify beliefs or fears that are holding me back, particularly in the creation of my own business. I will also use the time to read articles and books, review my goals and my progress, and to optimize my efforts. And sometimes I might just sit and empty my head to be One With The Universe for 15 minutes. I expect it all to be time well spent.

What are your plans for 2007?

When I first started learning about intentions and manifestations I happened across a Wayne Dyer special on PBS. Up to that point he had never registered on my radar; I am sure I must have heard the name but it not carry any significance. He stated that if you find yourself waking up at two in the morning for no apparent reason it may be your spirit guides trying to communicate with you, at a time of day when it is quiet enough for you to hear the message. He recommended sitting up, turning on the light, and writing down whatever came into your head. Spirit writing, I think he called it.

For a while I focused on this idea, and did my level best to sit up and write if I found myself awake. I got a lot of nonsense, but a few thoughts did come through clearly. One was this: “Intentional living is not enough; be higher, be holy. Understand the nature of cause and effect.”

Erin did a reading for me last summer, and I asked her about this. At the time, this felt like a synchronicity for her, as she and Steve had just rented Down the Rabbit Hole the night before, which discusses similar topics. She recommended that I watch it, and so I did. While it was interesting (in places; I’m not a fan of this Ramtha character) it didn’t give me any satisfactory answers. As is my nature, I overanalyzed the statement, trying to understand cause and effect at a metaphysical level, far beyond my puny powers of comprehension. Some interesting insights there, but no answers. As things got crazy over the last several weeks with work and the upcoming holidays I gradually forgot the whole thing.

It came back to me in a rush as I lying in bed the other night reading The Diamond Cutter, which approaches the whole topic from the other direction. Here, your reality is dictated by your past actions. For instance, if you act in a generous way, your future reality will contain abundance — a simplified example; the book is excellent and very worth reading.

Anyway that, I believe, is what my “spirit message” was speaking about. It is not enough to hold an intention, I must give that intention energy through my actions now. It is important to be aware of my actions, and to understand what kind of energy those actions are creating. I believe this is why the Pavlina’s see so much success: they have aligned both their actions and intentions around serving others, and so their reality has evolved to encourage and reward that. My sister-in-law has seen similar, unexplainable success since she picked up my copy of Ask and It Is Given several months ago for, I believe, similar reasons. I do not see the same results, because my intentions and current actions are out of alignment.

Something I will need to work on, and then we will see.

So much has been happening lately, and no time to write. It feels, in a sense, as if everything is accelerating around me. Must be careful not to lose my grip.

I had two experiences — my first two experiences — of higher self. I can’t tell you how I know it to be higher self; the experience simply brought that label with it. Those of you who have had that experience already, I am curious if that is how it happens.

The first was while clearing my head at work, walking around the campus. I had just finished reading Erin’s article on chakras. I was focusing on spinning the colors up, not at all sure what I was doing or if it was having any result. As I moved up to white I suddenly had a very tangible experience of a deep, profound…humor, of all things. A feeling of joy and satisfaction, an experience of knowing a deep universal truth and finding it supremely…humorous. The experience — the only word that seems to fit — felt external, coming from above and around me, but connected. It lastest about 7-10 seconds, and left a lingering “afterglow” for several minutes beyond that.

The second came in a dream a few weeks later. The Dog started barking in the far too early a.m., and as I lay in bed attempting to restore quiet through sheer force of will, I remembered the dream that I had been having when I woke, of speaking to a woman among tall shelves of books, and of the encounter ending abruptly just before I woke, an ending that signified that what was spoken there was not to be remembered in the waking world. Again, the experience brought its own label; I knew “higher self” before knowing the memory.

Strange and curious. Must go be domestic now; I’ll try to plug in a bit more later.

I spent the morning working on my plan for the first quarter of 2007. This is the first time that I have tried to make a formal plan like this, and I am impressed with the results. As per my 30 day trial, I dragged myself out of bed at 5am (actually closer to 5:30 by the time I worked up the will to drag myself out from under the covers…it is cold) and hopped onto the laptop. I created a blank page on started with:

By April 1st, 2007? What can I do? What should I do? What do I want to do? What must I do?

And then I started typing. Assuming I have my purpose figured correctly (I have not, at this point, backposted that here yet, I need to get that done) my main focus is on getting my business up and running. A close second is continuing this personal growth push I’ve been on. Everything else is supporting those two efforts. In all, I ended up with these subheadings:

• the business
• self and spirit
• home and family
• work
• money

Looking over my notes again, I see that I could probably break out one more topic — career — which is currently scattered under the other headings. I will be continuing to work on this plan for the rest of the month, I’ll make that change next session.

I mostly put things down in a stream-of-consciousness fashion initially, thinking about what I could feasibly do in three months, keeping in mind my tendency to be grossly over-optimistic about such things. When my brain took a pause I pulled out goals into bullet lists under each topic, trying to phrase them in such a way that they were small, and well-defined. That tended to trigger more stream-of-consciousness ideas, and back and forth. After about two hours I felt like I had a pretty good sense of things. As a bonus, an overarching theme emerged: I am building a platform from which to expand.

I am toying with the idea of actually signing the plan, as if it were a contract, as motivation to stick with it (I am easily distracted).

I should mention that my 30 day goal of getting up at 5am made all of this possible by providing me with two solid hours of uninterrupted thinking time, with enough left over to write this post. But now M and The Youngest are up and about, and it is time to get back to life.

Today I started my first 30 day trial: every day this month I am going to get up at 5am. I hope it gets easier than it was today!

I usually get up between 6:00 and 6:30 (okay, some days maybe more like 7:00-7:30) which I can do without an alarm. That doesn’t leave much time to get anything done before I need to get out the door to work. And by the time the kids are in bed and the evening chores are finished I’m usually too braindead to get much done at the end of the day either. So this trial (and let me tell you, at 5am this morning it sure felt like a trial) is an attempt to find some additional productive time. Not just productive time but quiet time, where I can think about stuff like what I want to be when I grow up, without The Youngest climbing up my back.

The first morning went well and has me encouraged. I knocked off some household chores, exercised, and even meditated for fifteen minutes and still got off to work at about the same time. On the weekends I plan to skip the chores, jump right on the computer, and spend a couple of hours building my business before the kids get up. If all goes well I could add 50% to the amount of time I’m spending now.

Hopefully I don’t fall asleep during dinner.

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, there is not a single place in the entire country where a full-time, minimum-wage worker can afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment. We took a huge step toward increasing the minimum wage in the recent elections, but more work needs to be done to eliminate substandard poverty housing. The National Council of Churches has created a television documentary featuring John Edwards, Jack Kemp, and others, highlighting the problem and how businesses, faith groups, and non-profits can work together with the government to solve it. Faithful America is urging people to call their local NBC affiliate to make sure they add the documentary to their December lineup. For more information, visit the Faithful America website. You can see a clip of the documentary here.

Last night I dreamed that M was making out with her ex- in the living room. This was okay because I told her she could see other people (I didn’t) and he was a close friend who always spent time with us (he doesn’t). I was running interference with the kids, keeping them occupied and getting them ready for bed. I woke up feeling…disappointed. I was taking care of the errands and obligations while someone else was doing what I wanted to be doing. According to Ask and It Is Given, dreams are an indication of what you are bringing into your reality, so by that interpretation I am bringing in busy work for myself, and rewards for others. And quite honestly that sounds about right.

(I should mention that in the dream I got to play a very entertaining racing game with the kids, which gave me some ideas for my own project — call it a silver lining)

This follows up a frustrating day at work, where we are muddling through the endless details of a project rollout. I joined the company I am at now because, while they are primarily a consulting shop, they were starting development of a promising off-the-shelf software product. I saw it as an opportunity to get out of consulting and into the more the predictable and lower stress world of commercial software. I would have more ownership over the results, and in the long run I’d be better off personally, professionally, and financially. In the short-term, I am still a consultant, but making (considerably) less money to help fund the initial development. Unfortunately, I don’t like the way that development is being done; the person doing the work — my future boss — is not the right person for the job. Basic things that should be second nature at this level are not getting done, and I am getting frustrated. I don’t want to start throwing stones because I don’t feel like I’ve contributed enough to the effort (for numerous reasons) and I don’t want to come off as an uninformed malcontent. So to make things right, I have to spend some time contributing in order to understand and document the depth of the problem in order to drop a bomb on it. My gut tells me this is the right approach to take, even if I would rather spend that time working on my own code. Though I do wonder if I am simply creating the conditions for me to quit in good conscience.

Okay, that was more than enough bitching. Next post I’ll talk about how I’m making my reality a better place.

My spirit guides told me to take the day off of work today, to stay home and work on a plan for moving forward. I can’t really say how they told me. The thought appeared in my mind and wouldn’t go away. Thinking about going to work made me feel anxious, thinking about not going to work made me feel peaceful, that everything would be taken care of. I suppose that’s how it works. I usually would have let my sense of responsibility hold trump; this time I decided to pay attention.

I have not been making any progress on the personal growth front lately, mostly because I feel completely overwhelmed. The topic is just too damn big. I can’t get a handle on it. I have thought repeatedly that if I could just get a day, a weekend, to sit and just think, without interruption…

…and as I type this, the Youngest walks in to tell me he’s scared and can’t sleep, so you see what a daydream that is…

Anyway, those were the thoughts I was journaling last night, feeling anxious about going to work, so I stayed home and closed myself in my office on the porch and came up with a plan. At first I just brainstormed into FreeMind: what are my big unknowns? What are the topics I want to explore? I reread Steve Pavlina’s The Courage To Live Consciously which triggered some additional ideas. Then I went through and pulled out a couple of actions to get me started. It all went much more quickly than I expected, probably just a bit more than an hour.

If it turns out well I’ll talk more about it later, but my list currently looks something like this:

• Make time. My biggest problem is that I never take the time to pursue what should be the most important thing I’ve got going. Figure out a schedule that allows me a little bit of time, maybe 15 minutes twice a day plus 30 minutes on the weekend, to lock myself away for some “quiet time”. I can knock something off my action list, or spend it reading and learning.

• Start writing down questions I want to explore, and the goals I want to reach. These will eventually turn into the to-do items to fill the time I set aside.

• Research the five year vision. I’ve read several places about imagining where you want to be 3-5 years out, and then building your list of goals from there. Quickly find and skim through those sources. What questions should I be asking myself during this exercise? How much detail should I go into? What are the important topics to hit? I want to make the most of my time.

• Do it. Lock myself away on the weekend, imagine that future, and write it all down. Later on I’ll worry about turning it into something useful.

The full list is a fair bit longer, but these are the most immediate topics I want to hit. So how did you get started?