Why you have to be selfish.

Yesterday afternoon when I was at work, I received an email, a facebook message, and the promise of a phone call from a "friend" of mine who wanted me to go somewhere with them [some place totally inconvenient for me] the next morning at 8:30.

I had not heard from this person in several months, so it came to me as kind of a shock as well as an annoyance that this invitation was seemingly so last minute as it was presenting the event as some sort of an obligation I had to carry through on.



My stomach twisted at the thought of saying no to her, knowing that there will be questions, comments -- "What are you doing instead? Why can't you come? You'll miss out". Those types of comments.

The thing was, I wanted my time. Saturdays for me are the only day where I don't have to immediately interact with people when I'm first waking up. I want to do whatever the hell I want to do. The thought of me doing something at 10:30 on a Saturday also appalled me, as the event involved mass consumption of alcohol. I didn't want to be having to find a taxi in some obscure part of the area, because I will not drive under the influence of alcohol.

I began to think about what it meant to be selfish, to be greedy about your time. I simply do not have to tell people what I'm doing with my time, nor do I have to spend it on them. It kind of feels to be greedy, after giving away my time so freely for so long. I'm greedy, selfish, and I like it!

People act like their feelings get hurt when you say no. But saying no is powerful and under-rated. Do you think Jennifer Lopez agrees to do whatever people who randomly text her want to do? Do you think Madonna got where she was by accepting weird "dates" with people early on Saturday mornings?

So I will vow to be selfish with my time. I will do what I want to do. I don't feel bad or guilty about it -- in fact, I feel quite liberated!

What do you do that's selfish yet positive? Leave a comment and let's chat!!

Why you have to make mistakes to succeed.

Why do we want to be perfect? Why do we have such huge goals that we wish to come to us in the blink of an eye -- a new car, a new house, a book deal, and so on? Why do we want these things? Why do we want to get these things without making any mistakes?

Mistakes don't really exist. They're just learning experiences. This blog entry is likely going to be poorly written and difficult to read. I would be surprised if half the people that have started reading this blog have already moved to another site or skipped ahead to a new article.

But my point is this -- we need to make mistakes, and make them consistently. Make as many mistakes as you can, because each mistake brings you closer to your goal.

Is writing a bad article bringing me closer to my goal? Of course it is! Simply writing this blog entry gives me writing practice, even though the writing is crude and uninteresting. Writing this blog also helps me achieve my goal of being creative -- I am creating this article, thus, I am creative! I also wanted to not only practice writing, but practice writing consistently. By writing this article, I am doing that and am glad.

So it really doesn't matter if what you're doing is not to the level of quality that you would ideally want to achieve. By doing a poor job, you are setting the stage so that you will one day do an excellent job!

What do you think?

Never stop posting.

I am going to avoid the common pitfall of bloggers who start and then stop posting after a few weeks (in some cases, days). Maybe they don't get enough of a response, maybe they don't get enough advertising revenue.

I am going to continue post, even if it's worthless and stupid. It is so important to me that I follow through on this. It's essential. If I start now, what will I have learned in 10 years? Maybe I would have learned so much about advertising and html and coding and scripting that I can start a huge internet site or service and be rich and contribute to the world.

I am not going to give up. Even each stupid post is important, because it gets me closer to my goal and affirms that I care enough about myself to follow through on what I started.

Why is Youtube so slow?

Today while I was taking a break from cleaning, I was watching some videos on Youtube and it was slow. I was so upset, it took like 5 minutes to load one video.

But Youtube is slow in another way. Why is Youtube going to acknowledge that they profit so substantially from the efforts from others -- hosting videos that play music from artists, scenes from movies, etc. -- and none of these people are seeing any profit. It seems like a bad deal to me.

A common argument I have heard is that "Well, the people are getting publicity." I don't think that's really true. Maybe it helps to a certain extent, but then it gets to the point where people are so used to listening to bad-quality recordings of music that they would rather just load up a Youtube page than pay 99 cents for an MP3.

What are we going to do about this? I find it disturbing. What do you think??