progress – Annienygma

How Will You Spend the Time You Have Left?

My father died when he was 57. My mother wasn’t much older when she was killed.

My nephew was just 35 when he died a couple of weeks ago, but my uncle was 88 when he passed away right after Christmas.

At my current age of 51, that gives me a wide range of odds, especially since I’ve relatives who lived to be over 100.

But with COVID on the rise, I may not make it to tomorrow.

So what do I do with my now?

As news has trickled through friends and family that I’ve actively began to immerse myself into computers again the reactions have been mixed.

“Why are you doing that? I thought you liked your job.”

“You know you’re too old to go back into computers. You’re the wrong gender, besides! All they hire are young guys. You know that!”

“I’m surprised you waited so long. You’ve always had a gift when it comes to computers. Way to go!”

“At least you won’t be binge watching movies any longer. That was so unlike you.”

“It’s good that you’re still learning. Shame that you’re on the verge of retirement, though–you won’t get to use the knowledge at a job.”

“Only you!” (spoken with a good-natured shake of the head)

Lessons Learned

One thing I have learned over the years is to disregard any negativity I receive. In fact, my greatest successes have been when the responses I received were overwhelming negative.

Even so, my critics have a point. I am older. In just ten short years, I’ll be eligible for early retirement. In 13 years, I’ll be eligible for normal retirement.

But if I wait until I’m 70, I’ve got 18 whole years to enjoy myself.

With modern medical science, I believe that it is safe to say that, barring COVID or accidents, I can live until my 80s. That’s almost three decades of life I have left.

So how do I spend that time? Do I spend it living, or do I spend it dying?

We all die

That’s a fact. None of us can escape it, so we need to accept it.

We don’t have to sit around and wait for it, however.

Whatever your age, you don’t have to just give up and wait for death to take you. Whatever your age, it makes no sense to continue living if you’re just waiting to die.

If we’re going to be here anyway, why not have fun while it lasts? After all, none of us really knows what the next adventure will bring.

So look around. Is there anything you’ve always wanted to do but haven’t yet? Do you want to take a trip, learn something new, change careers, or explore a path you’ve not dared to take?

Why not do it now?

You don’t have to take major steps. If you have always wanted to travel, you can research places and pick one to visit. Save up money, or maybe think of ways to go on your current budget.

If you’re interested in learning something new, you can take a class online. The prices are amazingly reasonable, and you may catch it on sale. I had a look around Udemy this weekend and I was amazed at how far online learning has came. You can take a class for almost anything these days!

I don’t care what society says, and I certainly don’t care about the opinions of those around me, and you shouldn’t either.

You may be old, but you’re not dead yet.

So stop acting like it!

Take the trip. Have the adventure. Join the class.

But don’t stop there. Make sure to tell others that you’re not done living yet. Share stories about your dreams and adventures. You can start by sharing them in the comment section below.

Do the Thing

Don’t let anyone or anything stop you from achieving your dreams.

I come from the Mountains of Eastern Kentucky. I’m the daughter of an ex-con and a dancer. My formal education was a joke, yet despite everything I managed to achieve everything I really set my mind to.

I opened a computer repair service in my thirties.
I pivoted to writing by my forties.
I became a stay-at-home single mother by teaching myself how to write online.

And now I’ve given myself permission to dive deep into the world of computers in a way I’ve never given myself permission before.

If I can do all of that with barely a high-school education and all of the odds stacked against me, there is no limit to what you can do with the advantages you have today.

This is your chance. Don’t waste it.

~#~

If you happen to find this post helpful, would you consider sharing it with a friend or on social media? Thanks!

I’ve written a lot of books sharing my odd view of life in hopes of helping others. My most notorious book is titled The Shoestring Girl: How I Live on Practically Nothing and You Can Too, but The Minimalist Cleaning Method is pretty popular as well. You can find them at the following places:

Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Apple iBooks
Smashwords (non-DRM)

Thank you for your support!

Beware the Company You Keep

Do not be misled. Bad company ruins character.
(1 Corinthians 15:33, The Bible: An American Translation, 1931).

If you are reading this blog, chances are that you have a goal you are working to achieve. If so, congratulations. It takes a special kind of determination to begin actively pursuing a goal.

Over time you may have noticed that your progress has slowed if not stopped completely. Or perhaps you want to start working on your goal but you have yet to begin.

If this is the case, you may be thinking that the problem is with you. You aren’t dedicated enough or you don’t have enough time. Perhaps you think that you were just born to be a failure.

Before you castigate yourself any further, take a look at the company you keep.

The people we surround ourselves with directly influence who we are and what we are becoming. In fact,

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Jim Rohn.

If your goal is to get in shape but your best friend is a couch potato, guess what is going to happen? Instead of hanging out at the gym doing squats, you’ll end up camping out on the couch with them watching workout videos.

If your goal is to conserve money and build wealth but your friends are perpetually broke spendthrifts, you’ll spend your time at the mall.

If you goal is to declutter your home but your best friend is a hoarder guess what? Your house will never become clean and tidy.

There is a reason for this. Your friends may like the life they lead. They may enjoy doing the things that you no longer want to do. If a clutterbug sees you cleaning your house, for instance, they may take it (consciously or unconsciously) as a judgement against their personal lifestyle choices. So deep down they aren’t going to want you to clean your home. They may not want you to improve your finances, get in shape, or go back to school. While they may encourage you to your face, deep down they want you to fail.

If you fail, they become justified because they never tried. If you fail, you will be just like them. If you fail, they will gain the opportunity to pretend to sympathize with you while they cheer inwardly.

They want you to fail because it will justify their personal failures. They will do whatever it takes to secretly derail your success.

If you have a person like that in your life, run. Unfriend them on Facebook. Block their phone number. Send their emails to the junk folder and avoid them at all costs. I don’t care if you’ve known them since preschool. It doesn’t matter if they promise to always “have your back.” Their secret goal is to keep you down at their level and they will do whatever it takes to make that happen.

I have had to do this two times in my life. Both were friends I’d had since childhood. Many years ago, the first friend decided to go ballistic after I began making some changes to my life. I dealt with their drama for ages as I tried to figure out why my writing business was spluttering.

Within months of eliminating that person from my life, I was earning enough from my writing to quit my day job. I hadn’t even realized that they were sabotaging things until years later but in hindsight the negative comments, the drama they invariably started whenever I began working on a new blog post or a book, and their insistence that I was “working too hard” formed into a barrier that was impossible to overcome until I cut them out of my life.

I recently noticed a similar pattern with another longstanding friendship. The more I worked towards my goals, the more concerned they became. “You need to stop working so hard!” They stated repeatedly. They seemed determined to keep me chatting for hours online to the point where I would have to ignore them when I was working. When I would ignore their texts, they would show up at my job since they were “in the area” around my quitting time. It would take 30 minutes to an hour to escape their litany of complaints.

I tolerated the situation. They were my friend, I reasoned.

But then I pounced upon the opportunity to go to college.

This person immediately began a series of rants concerning the subject. An unrelated rant left me with the distinct impression that they wanted me to cancel my plans to attend college since they weren’t willing or able to go as well.

I thought I was being paranoid but as the evidence continued to mount over the next few weeks I took a few days away from the friendship to clear my head.

The peace I felt was immense. I had not realized how much stress this person was adding to my life until it was gone. The difference was noticeable enough that others began to comment on my change in mood.

That helped me to realize just how unhealthy the friendship had become.

As I considered the person I want to become I realized that this was not a person I would choose to associate with in my future life. Even sadder, I realized that if I were to meet a complete stranger that was exactly like my friend tomorrow that I would want nothing to do with them or their chosen lifestyle.

I realized that the only thing we had in common any more was the time we had known each other.

It is a hard thing to lose a friend; harder still when you have to actively purge them from your life. Even so, as one must prune the diseased branches from a tree so it can flourish, we must prune away our toxic relationships if we want to grow.

Before you go to bed tonight, think about the company you keep. Do you see yourself wanting to associate with them once you reach your goals? Do they show any indications of trying to sabotage your progress through discouragement or distraction?

Do they live the life you want to live, or the life you’re leaving behind?

Do what you have to do.

–

Much thanks to John Grebe, author of Pray As You Can: Exploring The Diverse Nature of Christian Prayer. His donation of Bibles to my private collection helped immensely as I came to a decision in the situation described above. I received a copy of his book some time ago and I found his thoughts on prayer immensely refreshing.

REFERENCES

Maarten van Doorn. (2018). You Are The Average Of The Five People You Spend The Most Time With. Retrieved from https://medium.com/the-polymath-project/you-are-the-average-of-the-five-people-you-spend-the-most-time-with-a2ea32d08c72

–

Frustrated? Stick to Your Plan

Last night Murphy’s Law seemed to reign at my job. I awoke this morning with the frustration still eating at me.

The details don’t matter. You’ve probably felt the same, that desire to just say “fuck it” and change your plan.

So what can you do when that desire hits?

You can do the same thing that I do.

You can stand tall, pull up your panties, and keep working towards your goals.

Every single day you need to do something to bring your dreams closer. Every single day you need to wake up and take one step towards your goals.

You may not see any results at first. Like the Chinese Bamboo, it can take years to see progress. Like the Chinese Bamboo, you need to feed and water your dreams every day.

And like the Chinese Bamboo, when the time comes, success will appear so suddenly that you will be amazed.

That was exactly what happened when I achieved my freedom for the first time. I had spent two years of my life writing nonstop as I struggled to support my family. I had almost given up. I had taken yet another public job making shit for pay and resigned myself to a life of struggle.

But I kept writing.

Despite the fact that I had resigned myself to the fact that I would always be forced to work at a public job I still kept working on my plan. Each and every day I wrote a little bit more. I wrote on this blog. I wrote on my books. I would not allow myself to go to bed at night until I had done at least one thing, had taken one step towards my goal.

You know what? It worked. One day I woke up and checked on my progress. My jaw bounced off of the floor. There was more than enough book royalties coming to me to cover three months of living expenses.

I was finally free.

A dream that I had first allowed myself to dream back at the turn of the century had finally come to fruition. A dream that I hadn’t seriously started working towards until 2009 had become reality with a suddenness that left me amazed.

Now I have a new dream. In order to achieve that dream I find myself in yet another public job, earning less as a manager than I would make as an entry-level burger flipper at the local McDonalds and right now that grates, especially after the frustration of last night.

It would be easy to throw in the towel. It is hard when you look around and you feel as if you are barely making progress. You look around, questioning yourself as you wonder if you made the right decision.

Those are the moments that define you. Those are the moments when you discover if you are dedicated to your plan. How you move through those moments determines whether you are destined for success or failure.

I know what I intend to do. In fact, I’m doing it right now.

Are you?

What Were You Doing Eight Years Ago?

Time has a way of flying by when you get older. Ev Bogue reminded me of this in his latest post, as he reminisced about what he was doing eight years ago.

Just for fun, I’m going to look at the old me from eight years ago, in January 2009.

In January 2009 I was living in the projects in Western Kentucky. We had a nice home but I didn’t enjoy the person in charge of the place. It was a beautiful apartment, however–the most beautiful home I have lived in before or since.

I started writing online on Christmas of 2007 so I had been writing professionally for a year. My first submissions didn’t go online until after the new year had arrived. I wasn’t making much, just a couple of dollars a month, but I was proud of that income.

I was working at home in the Internet troubleshooting department of a major cable company. I would wake up on weekdays, log into the system, and help customers troubleshoot their internet connectivity problems. I enjoyed that job.

I had yet to start my first blog. Several of my friends were encouraging me to give it a try. I would do that shortly before I was laid off from my job in May of 2009.

I had never written a book. I didn’t even believe I had a book inside of me at that point, though it had been a dream to write books for most of my life. I could see myself with a whole bookshelf filled with the books I had written.

I had discovered minimalism so I had thinned out my possessions to what I believed was a manageable size. I wouldn’t get drastic until early 2011 when I moved back to Central Kentucky. I still owned a vehicle back then, though I rode my bike to work when the weather allowed.

Thinking back

Thinking back, I am amazed at how far I’ve come since then. I’ve published 30 books and am well on the way to writing my 31^st. I’m finally working out the best way for me to write longer fiction as well.

I’ve seen great times and awful times; throughout all of them I have just kept writing. I still remember the thrill when the first person purchased the very first book I published. I remember the delight when I said farewell to my day job and spent several years living on my royalties.

I recall my disappointment when I went back to a public job when my royalties dropped and the fear I’ve had about paying my bills since I got hurt there.

And now, with my pain levels dropped, I am writing again. I believe that this is going to be a very eventful year.

What about you?

What were you doing eight years ago? Please share your stories in the comments below.