When I was sixteen, my biggest goal in life was to learn how to smoke. Not because I thought it was particularly good for me, but because hanging around a street corner, sucking on a cigarette butt commanded just about as much respect as any post-pubescent male could expect out of life. And, who wouldn’t respect someone for spending their allowance on something that was not only disgusting, but almost guaranteed to kill them, turn their teeth yellow, give them bad breath and make their clothes reek? Lighting up my first cigarette was everything I thought it would be and more – sort of like circling my lips around the…
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Can You Be Too Niched? A best-selling author describes his experience with finding his niche
If you’re one of the courageous people who have thrown off the yoke of working for the man and decided to start a business of your own, you’ve undoubtedly wrestled with the question of who your customers are. Just who will buy your services or products? Are they men or women? What age groups do they represent? In short, who are you trying to reach? The answer of course, defines your niche. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, there were 28 million small businesses in 2010. More than three-quarters were non-employers, meaning they are owner-worker shops. They’re freelancers of every variety. Baby sitters, dog walkers and marketing specialists. They’re…
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The Mother of All Boredom Keeping entertained while at work can be a mother...
I have no idea why the bank hired me. Apart from a warm body and pulse, I didn’t have a thing to offer Ferneyhough Savings. They didn’t have much to offer me, either. Unless, of course, you count never-ending boredom and the $9.65 an hour entry level tellers make. To be honest, I didn’t even want the job. I was just trying to survive until ski season. Bank tellers are a dying breed that have succumbed to a lethal combination of online banking, electronic deposits and Square Cash. Unlike my counterparts of the 1950s who actually worked for a living, I spent the majority of my day staring into space.…
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My Hoarding Life I've never bought ONE of anything... does that make me a collector or a hoarder?
There was a time when I could move everything I owned into the back of my VW bug. Give me an hour’s notice and I could be on my way to skiing in Alaska or picking pumpkins in Maine. All that’s changed. I’m a hoarder. It’s impossible to pass up a good deal. If I run across a special on melon-ballers, I never buy just one. I’ll buy two. Or three. Maybe even four. I never want to repeat the agony of having to dash out in the middle of the night searching for nail clippers. The same thing goes for claw hammers, Preparation H, or rubber bands. My accumulating…
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Making Errands Fun Again The secret to combining dreadful tasks with fun-filled activities
Thinking back to my childhood, my mother had the process of multi-tasking errands down cold. She’d pop a load of dirty laundry into the washer, drive to the market, pick up the dry cleaning, pay my older brother’s parking tickets, and stop by the bank just in time to get home and move the clean wash into the dryer. Then, she’d make dinner for a family of four. How on earth did she do it? How can I apply my mother’s errand skills to my own life? It’s simple. read more
