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When I said notebook I don’t mean the computer variety that needs power, I mean a good ol’ pad of paper and pen. I’ve carried notebook along with me everywhere I go for a long time now, but I hadn’t written in mine for a while (until recently.) Flipping through my notebook gave me a bunch of insight into the mind of me over the past year.

It was mostly full of random to-do items, wants and goals. There was one long (personal) passage in there that I really enjoyed reading, and read it from time to time. Reading that last week inspired me to start “journaling” everyday. My journaling is a “random” mix of thoughts, to-dos, wants, goals and scribbles that seem important at the time of scribbling. I can already see that the daily writings will help keep me focused and I’ll be able to track my focuses as they move from one thing to the next.

I’ve noticed that doing this can be an excellent way to track anything you have to do on a daily basis (that you might forget.) I have to take “brain candy” everyday, and I’ll easily let 3 days go by without my fix (a which point I’ll start seeing the “Pink Elephants on Parade” .) Now, in my journal, at the beginning of each day I draw two squares. I put an X in one when I take it in the morning, and an X in another when I take it at night. I think I might expand on this list to include other things I want to do on a daily basis:

• Strech
• Taiji
• Push-ups
• Practice freestyle soccer
• etc.

I think a daily checklist like this would work wonders for motivating a person (some people) to do things. A person could keep track of when they sleep and wake, foods they eat, whatever.
The notebook has also become the first thing I look at before I go to sleep and after I wake up. That allows me to stay on track with my thoughts.

I can understand how this whole notebook thing might sound lame to some, but if you “suffer” from the “problem” of having too many thoughts/ideas it becomes a burden to keep track of them all. This is one of the many things I’ve come up with to do a better job of keeping up an outside appearance of sanity.

I also know that this “discovery” of mine has been around for ages, but I’m finally getting in to this thing mortals call a “diary.”

It’s not a well known fact that I host websites on the side. It’s a business that I plan on doing more with now, and in the future.

The #1 reason to be a webhost is because you have the keys that unlock all doors to your customers’ sites. LOL!

Ok, that’s not really the number 1 reason, but it sure was fun. Robonutz is my buddy from back home and I convinced him that he should have a website some time ago. He started it, but didn’t go anywhere with it.

[Take a look at what it was like on the way back machine]

I ripped down the old site and put this one up. So now I’m going to school him in the art of wordpress blogging. I hooked him up with the same template as mine because the default one looks ass (I think.) He can choose or customize later. I should have a custom header on mine real soon.

Click the picture to see the original post (if you like.)

Here’s a post Sinclair can enjoy.  He’s been complaining about all my economics themed posts on and off-line.  I suppose this one is still economically themed, but at least it’s something he’ll like.  I ran into it this morning looking for barter sites.

Man, it took me 2 hours to right this because I ended up chatting with a thousand people this morning.  One of the people I talked was me ma and it’s always cool catching up with her.  I did realise that I need to turn these things off RIGHT AWAY if I’m ever trying to get work done (I wasn’t this morning though.)

That will be all.

I was flipping through my journal/diary this morning and noticed that it was a year ago today that I made my first attempt at following the steps from the book “Your Money or Your Life.” One of the first steps is finding out what your net worth is, so it was a list of all the items I own, money I had and liabilities.

I gotta say it was a long and bumpy road to get myself to the point where I kept track of every single dollar that came in or went out. I started and stopped three different times before this last attempt, which will have gone on for 2 months straight after next week. The longest run I had before this was actaully over two months, but I didn’t have the system down like I do now (now it’s like clockwork.)

In a few days I’ll be posting the new totals for this last months. I’ve been considering starting a separate blog about getting Financially Independant. That would keep all of my blabbering about money and stuff somewhere separate, I think that’s a good idea, what do you think?

Yesterday I had (professional) photos of I-Ping’s restaurant taken for the website. That’s all coming along really smoothly and I’ll know if I’ve scored that project or not by next week (I’m pretty sure I will.)

Back to my “journal”… My journal isn’t/wasn’t much of a journal. Actually, it was more of a to-do list with dates and the occasional scribble of numbers. Over the last year there has only been one written entry. I made the second written entry today and have told myself that I will make a written entry everyday. Blogging is not equal to journaling (not for me anyway.) There are tons of stuff I’d write to myself, that I wouldn’t post here. Plus, the cool thing about a journal is that you can flip through it. Try doing that with a blog. I learned a lot about myself in the 10 minutes I spent flipping through that book.

There’s the book I just finished reading. Clicking the picture will take you to the Publisher’s site, I’m through with all that Amazon linking crap.

I personally think this book should be required reading for EVERYONE (capitalized and in bold to show seriousness.) This book basically just squashed all misconception’s I had about economics and gave me new ones to think about. Watching CNN or reading the newspaper has all of the sudden turned into a totally new and exciting experience.

I was at Alleycats’ enjoying a Pizza this weekend and noticed they had a copy of the weekend edition of the Asian Wall Street Journal. Before reading “Basic Economics” (BBE) I would have skipped over the opportunity to read the paper. After reading “Basic Economics” (ABE) I not only picked the thing up, I devoured the thing. I read about the recent mafia hit on a Russian banker and it’s effect on the economy there. I read about Facebook being rumored to get sold at nearly a billion dollars and about how the 22 year old CEO handed out business cards that read “I’m CEO… bitch” for fun. I’m actually looking forward to doing the same thing next weekend.

I’ve gotten so many things from this book. I’ve found out that Unions aren’t always all they’re cracked up to be. I found out that the “Trickle Down” theory isn’t even a theory and there is no economists that believes in it (whatever it is suppose to be.) I found out that minimum wage isn’t not what it’s cracked up to be. I found out about the problems that things like rent control create.

I’m am 100% sure that this book is going to leave a long and lasting positive impression on me. I’m sure it would do the same to you. Now I can follow what the news and politicians are saying and am better able to navigate through the BS (bull shit.)

I highly recommend reading this book if you care about making the world a better place and/or making your pockets a fuller and greener.

My new employer, a man I will call Agent Smith, recommened I check out a “Economics in Six Minutes.” It’s not as good as the book, but maybe it’ll get you hungry for more.
[tags]economics, basic economics, Fred Foldvary[/tags]