Milt Reynolds: Thinking Out Loud

Getting Up Early Seven months have passed since my last post. Seven months ago my wife and I were managing a self-storage business, living on-site, in a small town in eastern Oregon. The work was interesting (for awhile), frustrating (often), but it provided for our living. Sharing the work with my wife allowed me several days off each week. I connected with a fishing buddy, learned to fish for salmon and sturgeon. I caught two salmon, a couple bass, and one huge monster of a sturgeon (a 7-foot long sturgeon is a monster in my book). We had deep connections there with family and friends, but felt cut off from our grown children and our one grandchild, who all lived in southwestern Idaho. Many applications for work in Idaho returned unanswered, but we decided in early May to buy a camp trailer, move to our daughter's farmhouse in Meridian, Idaho, and see what might develop. We submitted our resignation from the self-storage business, began packing and saying our goodbyes. ...

Procrastination Trent Hamm has written a review of Brian Tracy's book Eat That Frog! Here is a quick description of the important points about procrastination that Trent draws out of the book: The 80/20 Rule Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist, observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population . Curiously, he also calculated that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas. He surveyed the economies of other countries and found a similar income and wealth distribution in each. A business-management consultant, Joseph M. Juran, developed the observations of Pareto into a principle of economics, the Pareto Principle. Businesses commonly cite a rule of thumb: "80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients" . The Pareto Principle is also known as the "Champagne Glass Effect" , with the wider mouth of the glass holding 80% of the champagne, although it's only the top 20% of the height of the gla...

Writing a Guest Post What a thrill! Peevish Penman asked me to submit a guest post for her blog! And she's posted it! I feel like I've been published , or that I've been chosen to represent all the struggling, lackadaisical, and aimless writers of the world! Really, peevishpenman.blogspot.com is a very encouraging, informative, and interesting blog about the art and skill of writing. My small contribution to this fount of knowledge and inspiration is about how to kickstart your creative juices when your mind is saying, "I just want to vegge out and surf the internet... I have nothing interesting to write ." I heartily commend Peevish Penman for your reading pleasure and writing encouragement. Read my guest post here: http://peevishpenman.blogspot.com/2010/06/writing-is-hard-part-one.html .

Blogging My Keep I've just read an interesting article on the very topic I was bouncing around earlier: Can Blogging provide monetary support? Trent Hamm publishes a website called "Simple Dollar" ( http://www.thesimpledollar.com ). I subscribe to his RSS feed and today's column helps me see the issues much clearer. Here are some of my reactions to his article ( Some Notes on Do-It-Yourself Self-Employment ): Trent started his website simply because he loved to write and he felt like his main interest was something other people could relate to. His website, in the beginning, brought in NO income...he wrote because he enjoyed it. This fits me. I've spent the last two days recuperating from a strained knee, and most of it was spent writing for the internet...none of it earning a dime. I do have a few ads placed on a couple of my sites, but Trent and I both know that they will not pay anything until I get a few thousand faithful readers. But I simply enjoy ...

It is highly satisfying to me to post content on the World Wide Web. I've spent the day updating my blogs and websites, a welcome side-benefit of allowing my strained knee and back to heal today. I know some energetic, smart, and skillful bloggers are successful in supporting themselves, at least partially, by full-time writing on the internet: maintaining blogs, reviewing books and websites, promoting lifestyle changes, supporting others with written resources. To allow my knee to heal, I've spent the last two days resting at home. I've spent most of those hours at my computer. I'm maintaining four active blogging websites, counting this one, as well as a family website. Today I published my first "Instructable", a how-to article with photos and step-by-step instructions, hosted by http://www.instructables.com. I likely will add this site to my daily commitment to writing. None of this work pays, at least not in money. But if it could, I'd do it full-t...