This might be a bit long but I have to share. A couple months ago I met with a few paving contractors (actually their salesmen). One of them (let’s call him Chief), an elderly man, in poor health with difficulty speaking came by, measured, gave me the lowest quote and left. He came across as trustworthy. In all my recent dealings I look for integrity and trustworthiness above all…

I looked at what Google brought up as lessons learned from blogging and was amazed to see no thoughts like the ones I’m about to write. Mostly people share advice on how to make money from a blog, increase traffic to a site, implement SEO, or stand out… For me the lessons learned are very different. Bottom line, I am simply amazed how educational this experience has been so far…

I read Random thoughts by a childhood friend where one of the sentences caused me to pause for a minute and think. The thought that caused me to stop was “… why would I never tell my closest people some of the things I write here.” How else can we be close with those closest to us if we are not able to share all our thoughts and feelings? This reminded me of a lesson learned when I was maybe eleven or twelve…

Everything around us affects us. Our experiences, the experiences of others, and everything that is captured by our senses affects us. Let’s call these the external stimuli. Now, let’s say for reasons known or unknown you’re really sad (market crashing is a good enough reason for me). What can you do about it? I have found one solution that seems to work for me. I use the external stimuli to my advantage. Since I know that I’m affected by everything around me, I change something to affect me in a …

As I was driving to work a couple days ago, a strange question came into my mind. Why am I so different from so many men who enjoy working on their cars? They like to keep their vehicles clean, engines bright, and wheels shining. Many men (around the globe) spend hours on their cars while also dreaming of owning better cars. Being fairly mechanically inclined, I am sure I could fix just about any issue in a car but I don’t even have the interest, let alone the tools. I …