Sunday, April 26, 2009

Confirming my suspicions

My suspicions have been that I've always been an on the fence non-conformist. And it's easy to be seduced into the status-quo, but if I picture myself making all the safe decisions, I also know I would be drowning slowly in misery and utter boredom. At least I know myself and I apologize if this sounds too cryptic to make much sense.

The purpose of this post is to spread the word about a couple of writings from a blogger and traveler named Chris Guillebeau who has a site called The Art of Nonconformity. I'd never heard of him until I got a blog post in my reader from marketing sensation Seth Godin's site where he mentioned Guillebeau's new manifesto called 279 Days to Overnight Success. The title intrigued me, so I downloaded it.

It offers 11,000 words of free advice on how to create your own success with your own project.

Who It’s For:

Bloggers, writers, online artists, and anyone otherwise interested in creating a new career or expanding their influence using social media. If you want your online presence to grow far beyond what it is now, read and apply.

That's all I needed to read to know that I should download this manifesto and give it a gander. It was teriffic. It gave me some more ideas about my Expat website, and I'm kicking around some ideas for creating another project, both of which I hope to subsidize my art career.

The other manifesto Chris Guillebeau wrote is called A Brief Guide to World Domination.
It's a more generalized piece of writing about how to live a fulfilling life by living and working in service to others. He notes that all the mega-rich give out lots of money to help others, otherwise despite their wealth, their life feels hollow.

A Few Things You’ll Learn in the Report

  • The Two Most Important Questions in the Universe
  • Why Ruling and Changing the World are Interrelated
  • The Clear Alternative to Being Unremarkably Average
  • True Stories from Zen Habits, Kiva, Randy Pausch, and more
  • The Most Important Work We Can Do
  • Life Lessons from My Singapore Airlines flight to Tokyo
What does he mean by ruling and changing the world? Well he doesn't mean it in the traditional sense of the phrase. Download the PDF file and see for yourself.

Chris Guillebeau's writings got me thinking lately, so I wanted to pass on this information to anyone else who might want some inspiration. :)

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Art Blog Updated

Just wanted to let you know that I have updated my Art Blog with my new painting

Worth Savoring Slowly


Enjoy!

Subbing, Painting, Squidooing, Volunteering

Gosh, I've really neglected this blog a lot, and I'm sorry for anybody who still follows me on it. I've been quite active on the internet, though.

Like the rest of the world, it seems, I joined up on Facebook a few months ago and then a few days ago I finally joined Twitter, although I don't have much to do on that site, YET. I hope to use it to promote my art down the road later.

In the meantime I've been substitute teaching a lot, bringing in some extra income since Golf's translation jobs have been slow lately. That takes up most my day every day.

Then I've been painting like crazy, I just finished Melanie's birthday painting and I gave it to her yesterday. I will update my art blog about it as soon as I have the photos ready to upload.

Squidoo I've been working tirelessly on. I've got some new lenses up. If any of you reading this wouldn't mind, sign up for Squidoo and then go to my lensmaster page. Scroll down a bit and you will see all the articles I've written and then rate my articles! The higher the ratings, the better page rank I get and the more pageviews I get. It's a stay at home income revenue I've been working on.

I've listed some of the ones I've done already, but the rest I've finished lately are:
Bangkok by Boat
Short Stay in Bangkok?

Right now I'm working on a lens promoting Golf's online shop called Discovery Day Studio, where he sells PDF service manuals for various electronics.

Lastly, I've been volunteering a few hours a week at the Frank Bette Center for the Arts, and today's my day to go in. It's a chance to get my foot in the door and get to know other artists and those in the art business. I will eventually (hopefully) get to exhibit there too!