It’s all about balance really.  Balance often stirs you to think about the mythical work-life balance that your company talks about.  Balance makes you think of young lady Olympians on the beams.  For the sillier among us, it makes us think of balancing things on our noses.

     Balance isn’t limited to just one aspect of our lives though, nor should it be strived for in only one.  Balance in life does not mean perfection or reaching a perfect state.  Balance isn’t something to be achieved, but it’s about a way of living.

     I believe balance is not an achievement to check off a list, nor is it something you can just decide to make happen.  Balance to me is really about walking that path instead of reaching a goal.

     I realized this past weekend that my life is not following a path of balance. I’ve not been seeking to out spiritual and leadership balance in my household.  It is most apparent in that though I seek God’s leadership in my household, I don’t act like a leader is going out after that.

     One of the key tenets of a relationship with anyone, including God, is that you have to listen as much or more than you try to talk.  The key ways you can listen to God are through prayer and reading His word, the Bible.

     It pains me to admit it, but I’ve become a Sunday Bible guy.  I still pray daily, but my prayers often aren’t about listening, but asking these days.  The balanced path has been forgotten in the hustle and bustle of trying to survive.

     Our marriage weekend was this past weekend and one of the workshops was the Irresistible Husband. No, it wasn’t about finding an irresistible husband, it was about being one.  At the end, your wife was asked to rank how important different things were.  At the top of my wife’s list was for me to be a spiritual leader in our house. WOW!

     So what am I going to do.  Luckily during the presentation, the speaker had a couple of recommendations.  The two key ones were daily reading in the scripture and leading the family in prayer. Again, it’s not about those dominating my life, but finding a balance of those activities in my daily routine.

     What can you do for me?  Help me get into a balanced way of life. Help me by praying for me and holding me accountable. Be sure to ask me on occasion if I’ve read any good scripture.  Ask me if I’ll pray for you.  Ask me in a few months if my wife still thinks that’s a top thing for me to work on.

     On an interesting note, helping with housework was number 2 on her list. That’s a whole nother post about balance.

     Thanks in advance.

      So I went and did it, I got an eye exam. A short while back I got an eye exam and the doctor told me I should be using glasses.

      Oh, I was gungho on that you might imagine. I was really motivated to get some after the consultation with the lens and frame specialist. The price tag was going to be over $300. Hm.

     The doctor also mentioned that since it wasn’t a super strong prescription, nor are both types of lenses she recommended that important, that there might be an alternative. She recommended reading glasses.

     Purchasing glasses took me longer than expected.  It seems that lots of places carry reading glasses for women.  Perhaps men don’t wear them? I did finally the pair above, and hopefully they don’t detract too much from my manliness.

     The difference though for that investment is big.  I’d not even realized how out of focus my close up reading had become. Flipping those glasses down suddenly makes reading or playing the Nintendo DS much easier.

     If you are holding off on making big investment in your eyes, how about a small one instead.  Reading glasses run from about $13 to $30.  In any case, that’s significantly cheaper than hundreds.  I’d wager too that most of us would benefit from even a low power set of reading glasses.

     So now that money isn’t an object, what’s stopping you?  I hear women dig a sexy man with glasses.

Who am I? I’m not asking this to myself. I’m always exploring the answer to that question.

I’m asking you.

I’m asking you one question about me specifically.

What would you tattoo on my forearms?

What would you get for a tattoo for yourself?

Share.

     This weekend my wife and I are at the Tan Tar A Festivals of Marriage Conference. It’s all about getting closer to your spouse and encouraging better relationships. There are workshops, worship and even a concert thrown in.

     Marriage and Balance is the theme this year. Part of being in balance is learning to have balance between the needs of each spouse, and the rest of their lives, including fun, sex, and raising kids.

     In the spirit of that, Sharon and I took some fun time for ourselves today. Our fun took outlet of shopping. The picture above is part of how we made the most of Dogpatch, one of the out of the way places we stopped to peruse.

     We discovered this little shop had the biggest collection of cool hats. Please check out the hat slideshow and laugh with us.

I have a bunch of wonderful ideas for topics, but sadly not enough hours left in the day to write about any of them.  So I’m throwing up a quick post to make my obligatory NaBloPoMo post for the fifth day in November. Yay.

Wait, that’s not the whole post, there’s more.

I wanted to follow up to my walking the talk post from the other day.

Thanks for the support here and on Twitter regarding that.  I’ve really tried to take that to heart the last couple of days and take positive action to where I can.  That mostly involves doing what I’m good at and keeping my ego and emotions out of the way of the work.  I’ve volunteered to tackle any and all programming issues related to this current project.  That’s big shoes if I’d actually get the all assigned to me, but the reality is there is another programmer doing part of the work as well.  The big thing is that I get to take on as much as I can keep up with. I like it.  Today I was able to put three programming changes through the paces and into production. I’ve got a couple more lined up hopefully for tomorrow. It’s a good feeling to be working.

On the writing front.

I’m keeping up on the National Blog Posting Month posts, but they are taking place later in the evening each day. Uhoh. As for the NaNoWriMo, I’m falling behind the pace that would really work best.  It’s this getting settled so late in the evening that I get little time to work on it.  I’m going to have to start righting at work on little breaks as well to even get come close to the pace I need.  On the upside, my wife is encouraging me to take the laptop along this weekend and write in the evenings. We’ll see.

On other fronts.

I’ve jumped on the bandwagon to do a Barcamp in St. Louis. Two other guys and myself had our first meeting tonight.  Already have one huge sponsor lined up.  Have a likely venue.  Getting the web sites up over the next couple of days.  Paypal account is set up.  Email is set up.  The email is barcampstl at gmail.com.  Send us your ideas, suggestions, problems, Barcamp horror stories, pictures…no naked ones please though.

Quick bunch of linky goodness:

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That is all. Good night.

     That’s me in the picture above. That’s me about to write this blog post.  A blog post about writing in general and writing for NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo.

     It’s always been a desire of mine to be a writer.  Not unlike many folks I guess, writing a novel is at the top of my dreams list.  Writing blog posts has fulfilled part of scratching the writing itch.  But it’s not enough honestly, nor do I get to it often enough to make a dent in the backlog of thoughts and ideas I’d love to flesh out and share. It seems I just don’t keep up a great blogging pace.

     I’ll be using NaBloPoMo to work on correcting the blogging side of things.  NaBloPoMo is National Blog Posting Month, and the goal is simple, one blog post per day for each day in the month.  Sounds simple doesn’t it? But if you’re not already a daily blogger, suddenly the blog can go from fun outlet to work.

     There are no shortage of ideas, but when forced to write daily, writer’s block seems to occur a lot more often. The worst enemy is your and my drive to get it right when we right. We worry over the little stuff sometimes more than the big.

     Helping remedy writers block is one of the benefits of working on NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month.  One goal there as well.  Write 50,000 words between 12 AM November 1st and 12 midnight November 30th. There’s no grading for spelling. There’s no grading for plot. There’s even no grading for grammar.  The site has it right, just write.

     Am I going to be able to keep two writing projects going this month? Will I succeed at either? That’s the question.  But to make my life more challenging, I’ve decided to start a second year of the 365 project on Flickr. Seen enough of me? Not yet!

     Writing for me has always been scary.  The cure for dealing with fears though is facing them.  I’m going to face them this month and do what I can. I’m going to be honest with myself though and realize that my success with the stated goals is ultimately up to me.

     Writing is always ultimately about the author.  Some writing transcends the author, but it must come from inside before it’s apparent outside.  I’m praying that God fills me full enough to spill a little out into the world as writing, at least for November.

     To help myself write, I’m going to keep the music on in the background. I’m going to write in a room by myself.  I’m going to write and be comfortable. I’m going to keep caffeinated.

     Don’t expect miracles, grand plots, or the world’s best blog posts. Expect as the month wears on to get down to the real me by the end.  Hopefully that won’t scare you off. Hopefully as time goes on we’ll become friends, buddies and companions. Perhaps we’ll connect on some new level, or sadly, go our separate ways.

     In any case, I’m writing. Hopefully I’ll only look up long enough to make sure I don’t run off my friends and family, and to relax my mind a bit.

     Wish me luck, cheer me on, but if not, then get out of my way.

     Today I’m in the middle of what seems to be a never ending bit of frustration at work.  Today the struggle though is as much inside as it is outside.  It’s taken some talking to though to make me realize that in what I’ve seen as an ongoing struggle that there’s an opportunity to live what I preach about.  There’s a chance to be playing the game for real and for keeps.

     The first person to speak with me really started our conversation on Saturday with a surprise call.  She spoke to me about visible authenticity. It’s a calling to walk the talk out loud and in public.  But the conversation didn’t stop there, today she came with full force about playing for keeps; that would be Liz Strauss for you.

     The second person to speak with me was someone that came as a total surprise, an upper level manager at work.  This person took time to not only listen to me grumble but responded with transparency and visibility.  They provided me with proof of their actions and intentions and explain why those didn’t happen.  This lead to how come my current situation seems so bad.  

     The manager chose to go beyond that though and talk with me about what was driving the frustration I’m having and help me see something about myself.  It became clear they saw my talk was that I want to be able to take better charge of my life and my situation, but they pointed out that I might be too busy focusing on what’s not right that I’m missing the opportunity to take the reigns more and walk like a leader instead of just talking about it.

     Talk about a message being received loud and clear. BAM! Right between the eyes with the hits. Both Liz and the manager spoke words that aren’t just random bits in the life stream. 

     Because of that, the truth comes out that I’ve been saying that leaders lead, they don’t wait for things to line up for them, but that’s just the opposite of what I’ve been doing.  I’ve been waiting for the perfect opportunities at my day job and in my life.  There won’t be better times if I’m not willing to work towards those times with my own two hands and my own spirit.

     Are you just talking? Are you really in the game for real and for keeps?  Are you waiting for something magic to happen? Perhaps your own personal fixit fairy?  BAM! There you go. The wait’s over. Now is the time to authentic and move forward from there.

If you’re like most folks, you value your appearance very highly. Oh, you may not be able to afford a $500 suit to wear, but you do what you can.  One thing we can all control to some extent though is our hair. That’s were a goodly amount of folks concentrate their efforts.

Hair though can be high maintenance.  Yes, it take more than combing it.  For men, a regular wash and cut is required. Most women with a full head of hair require even more work to keep it looking great.  We bother because of the hope that it affects our appearance in a positive way.

Most of us have maintained it to because of our culture.  In the US, most folks have become accustomed to men and women having a good head of hair, and consider it a sign of good health and success.  WItness the number of magazines that point out bad hair days of the more famous among us

We value our hair.  We put a solid investment in it.  But in the end, it’s just a passing trend.  Hair styles come and go, some trend expensive, while others might be cheaper to maintain, but our society worries about it.  We’ve become slaves to it in a way.

Likewise businesses become slaves to appearances.  Appearances have costs. Yes, it maybe that cost is the extra hours put in by a few employees here and there.  Maybe the cost is considered a necessary evil because how a business appears can be as important as how it actually performs.  At least in the short term that seems to work.  But in the end, what’s in the books is what matters.

So why not break with convention.  Instead of pushing luxurious offices, $500 suits, and big banner advertising, why not go more spartan, and take some pride in your frugalness.  Perhaps dollars spent on the fluff of a good hair style for a business could be put to work turning a real profit.  Perhaps the man hours spent maintaining the look of success could be spent actually achieving it.

In the end your customers will stay because of results, not because your offices have the best artwork, or are in the fanciest building.

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What brought this blog post on? Cutting my hair off.

In recent months I had the opportunity to help a good cause by shaving my beard and head.  Several hundred dollars were raised.  It could have ended its affect on my life there, but it hasn’t.  The loss of hair resulted in hours of my life back worrying about it.  It also challenged the status quo.  It make folks take another look.  More than a couple saw it as a bold move, and realized the freedom that might come with keeping it gone or short.

Yeah, it’s just hair, and in the end it’s not how you wear it that makes a difference, but whether your focus is stolen by it, and your energy spent on something that exists for mere appearance sake.

NaBloPoMo stands for National Blog Posting Month.  Funny thing is it’s every month these days.  That aside, I’ve decided to join up for this November, with this being my first post.

First post? That’s right, the first of 30. One post per day is the success criteria. There will be no exceptions.

What’s that mean for you?  You get more of me than on average per month.  Oh, I sometimes have streaks of 5 or 6 posts in a row, but 30 is unheard of.  That must be the reason I’ve not done this challenge before.

What can you do to help?  Keep me encouraged through comments, Tweets, and email.  But not just encouragement is welcome; I’d welcome your ideas and suggestions for topics.  No idea will be too far out for me to consider.

Too shy to write about something? Need your story told anonymously? Want to hear me talk about your charity, cause, or career? I’d love to have a backlog of great topics to write about.

Disclaimer: I might take your topic and run with it. It might go somewhere other than you’d expect.  Also, do consider I’m only an expert at so many things.  If I’m not an expert along the lines of the blog post, don’t expect a miracle.

I’ll be tagging all posts that apply for this challenge. This will be to distinguish them from extras that won’t count against the one per day criteria.