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diagram from what consumes me, copyright Bud Caddell (prints of which Bud is now selling).
Love love love this diagram of the intersection of What we do
well, What we want to do, and What we can be paid to do. Succinct and
lovely. We all can use more “Hooray!”
with Merlin
Mann on 5 by 5's podcast "The Pipeline"
A good interview, especially the bits about getting yourself in motion.
I’m really looking forward to his upcoming book!
Hi. Enough dilly-dallying. America – and indeed the world – have been hitting snooze on the climate alarm for over 30 years. Now a whole new generation and more beyond it have to deal with the consequences, but we don't have to let the situation get worse.
In fact, by doing something about climate change now, we have a great opportunity to lift economies, improve world health, and kickstart new technologies which will start an upward spiral of opportunity.
Americans, do one quick thing now. Go to http://www.repoweramerica.org/earthday and tell congress
"I support clean energy legislation that will create millions of
jobs and help solve the climate crisis by closing the carbon pollution
loophole."
All you have to do is enter your name and zip code.
Tell 'em wecansolveit@metagrrrl.com sent you. And thanks.
(Those of you outside the U.S., let your government know too that it's time to support clean energy.)
Discardian is revived in this season of positive change as a Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/discardia
Follow Discardia if you're a Twitter member or visit that page to see short tips, reminders and encouragement to let go of that dumb crap that's weighing you down.
Share your discardian efforts by starting your tweets with @discardia by including @discardia in your message!
Tonight you should go to bed a little early.
Play a soothing song or have someone sweet read you Where The Wild Things Are before you turn out the light.
Snuggle down under the covers and have happy dreams.
A really proper night's sleep is a lovely gift to give your body.
(Posted early for extra bonus sleeping on Monday too!)
One of the benefits of growing older and having experienced more things is you get better at estimating how things will work out. This skill is worth improving and making use of whenever you're deciding if something is worth doing.
Here's an example. Let's say you have a bunch of stuff you want to get rid of. You do, yes? Yes.
It can be tough to make the call between sell and give away. We often lean toward sell because we feel guilty about just giving away something we spent money on or which was a gift. However, it's not always the best path.
Look over what you have and roughly decide what you would price it at if you were going to have a yard sale or sell it on Ebay or Craig's List.
I don't think you can sell something without spending a minimum of one hour dealing with selling it. For a lot of things – e.g. a yard sale or a trip to the flea market – assume at least 5 or 6 hours spent trying to sell the lot of it and that you might only sell half of it. (Don't forget to include the time spent sprawling around or taking a nap afterwards because you're too tired and sunbaked to do anything else).
Now look at what you'd get paid per hour for that time.
On Sunday morning I had a yard sale and made $61. (Yay! Sushi dinner at Sebo with Joe!) But, hmmm, even though it wasn't hard (I was mostly reading a book), I did only get paid at best $10/hour for the work it took to do the sale and that's not counting the recovery time after. Worth it? Could I have just done something else to save the same amount of money and had my Sunday free? And $50 of that came from one customer whose taste, apparently, matches very well my own, or at least my old taste. What if he hadn't happened by? (I would have knocked off an hour or two earlier, probably).
So, in my case, most stuff didn't sell, but it's now all sorted out by price and it would be easy to take it to the flea market to reach a much larger audience. Here's the decision process I just went through:
What I could probably get for the remaining stuff: $250
Amount of that represented by 3 more expensive items: $125
"Best possible case" return for selling at flea market = $250/6 = around $40 an hour
"Optimistic, but more realistic" case return for selling at flea market = half that = $20 an hour
"Entirely possible" case of return for selling at flea market = only a quarter of the stuff = about $60 = $10 an hour
Now, suppose I sold those 3 expensive items on Ebay or Craig's List. Two of them could be put in a lot together, so that's $125/2 = about $60 an hour. Much better.
My conclusion: try placing those 3 big items up for sale online and donate all the rest to charity.
Sometimes, maybe often, the best choice is to cut your losses and get the non-monetary benefit of having the crap out of your way.
Congratulations on a month of Discardia!
Take a look around and see how things have improved. Go you!
Small steps add up over time. Feeling a little lighter and a little closer to how you want things to be? I hope so. If not, hang in there. Revisit the archives when you can and just do what is right for you.
I took time to survey my progress after a few years of Discardia in Getting To The Happy Home.
Discardia 