Stick with it!

The two main difficulties I have in life when it comes to projects are as follows:

1. Starting the project in a passionate and enthusiastic way (aka STARTING the project at all)

2. Sticking with it!

Let's start with the first idea. If we don't start a project, we'll never be able to finish it. Secondly, if we start a project, but find that we are not enthusiastic about it, we will never be able to find the motivation to follow through with it.

Sometimes, "sticking with it" can be more difficult than it seems. Chores start to come up in our lives, and we find ourselves making excuses for not finishing things that we know deep down we enjoy doing. A classic example of this is the idea of "avoidance", in which we will put off tasks to do other tasks, like washing the dishes instead of writing chapter two of that novel. In my case, it is reading the paper or chewing some bubble gum instead of doing guitar scales. Sometimes I will eat several pieces of watermelon before I sit down and write.

Of course, I'm kidding around, but these things aren't very far from the truth. I've been known to walk around my studio bouncing a tennis ball up and down on a racket just to get the creative juices flowing.

My advice to you all is to sit down and work on your projects while you have the energy and passion inside of you. If you feel like you've tried and tried and tried and you can't summon the energy to do it, you should probably try to do something new. But always stick with it and try to progress through the early stages. Starting is always the hardest part.

Love is all you need

One of the things that most personal development blogs seem to lack, is a section on love. I read a lot of bloggers talking about how they feel bad about taking their wives out to dinner or something, just because it caused them to overspend a little. I think this frame of mine is completely asinine, since love is pretty much the only reason why we're here on earth, so I'm going to be adding a section to this blog regarding several different components of love, and my own personal experiences.

How to get over balding and itchy / dry scalp.

If you're anything like me, you've been worrying about male pattern baldness since you were sixteen years old. My father was bald, his father was bald, and his father was bald. Same goes with my mother's side (my mother has quite a large forehead herself!)

The best things you can do are the following:

1. Stop worrying so much about it.

Whatever happens, happens. You don't really have much control over genetics, but one thing you can do to slow down the process is to reduce your anxiety levels. Stress is a common cause of accelerated hair loss, so relax, take a deep breath, and realize that the average person loses 50-100 hairs a day. Don't worry.

2. Avoid scratching your scalp.

I know I'm a huge hypocrite when it comes to this tip, since I'm having trouble not scratching my dry scalp right now. This can lead to scarring and scalp damage, which simply makes you lose hair faster. I'm going to try never to scratch again!

3. Don't wash your hair every day.

When we soak our hair entirely in water, and then start rubbing and pulling it all over the place, it simply isn't good for the health of our hair. What I recommend is washing your hair every other day, and start using dry hair/dry scalp shampoo and conditioner. When washing it, try not to scratch the scalp, but rather, use the tips of your fingers to gently massage the scalp.

4. Make sure you intake enough essential vitamins and minerals.

Not drinking enough water and not getting enough A, B, C, and E vitamins can hamper the normal oil secretions from your sebaceous glands. Make sure you get enough healthy nutrition or else your hair loss will definitely get worse.

5. Don't overheat your head using hot water or the blow dryer.

This one is very straight forward. Water that is too hot will damage the hair, along with using the highest settings of a blow dryer. Air drying is best, but if you must blow dry, use a lower heat setting.

6. Avoid using sprays and styling creams.

This is another example of products that may lead to damaging your hair. Regular contact with the chemicals and additives in these products can lead to dry scalp, building up residue.

7. If all else fails, laugh about it.

Sometimes there's nothing we can do about what mother nature will do to our bodies. We can get ourselves healthy and fit to try and focus attention to other parts of our bodies, but the best thing you can do is have a good sense of humor about the situation. If you act like your balding is nothing but a negative source of energy, other people will too.

Don't allow yourself to mentally stagnate

Sometimes when we create a daily routine for ourselves, things can start to get a little boring. For instance, I've created a daily schedule of waking up around 8 or 9, writing for an hour or two, eating breakfast, go to work, come home for lunch, exercise for an hour, rest a little bit, go back to work, and come home to either practice music, read, or watch a movie.

Though I've come to enjoy my little daily ritual, I've started to notice that I'm becoming increasingly bored with my life. It's nice to be dependent on myself for entertainment and contentment, but really, I need to change things up a bit or I'm literally going to go insane. Boredom is the cause of so many vices in life, and we need to try to stave it off as much as possible.

Here are a few things I'm going to try and do to stave it off entirely:

1. Switch this blog to my own personal domain, and create a few side project domains in the process.

-- One of the things I want to do with this blog is generate enough traffic to create a large enough user base where I can start putting ads up around the blog. That isn't the only reason I've started to blog, but to be perfectly honest, it's a nice goal to work toward. It motivates me to post every day, and it helps me exorcise new information for blog entries since I have true inspiration to do so.

Of course, the whole point of journaling is to keep written track record of my thoughts, goals, and inspirations, and so far, it's been a wonderful wonderful thing in my life. When I talk about my vices in this blog for all the world to see, it makes me realize how stupid I've been at times in my life, and makes me more accountable for my actions.

Anyway, creating my own personal domain would help direct traffic here, versus to blogspot. I've been thinking

2. Start up a new sport.

- Recently I've entertained the idea of playing tennis regularly (the last time I played was ten I believe). Not only would it help put all the exercising I'm doing to good use, but it would help me get out of my room for once (and stop breathing in all this carpet fuzz), and have an activity that I could use with friends to socialize.

I'm sorta tired of all the friends I have that just want to sit around a television and stare like zombies. Ever since I came back from university this seems to be more of the norm than not. However, if I were playing tennis with some of these zombies, it'd probably inspire all of us to not only improve our health, but our mental/physical coordination as well.

3. Write letters to old friends.

-My aunt used to tell me to show the people that you love how much you love them (in fact she still tells me this). Especially as we get older, you never really know when a friend or a relative is going to pass away, or at least, be out of your life for a good long while.

Take this opportunity to compile a list of people who truly matter to you in your life, and take time out of your day to write to them. Everyone loves to get letters from people they care about, so don't feel anxious or paranoid that they're going to think you're silly for writing to them. As long as you are being honest and genuine, anyone will appreciate a letter coming from you.

Let them know what you've been up to, new interests you've taken up, new projects, or even complain to them a little bit about what frustrates you. A friend is a friend is a friend, so don't be afraid to pour your heart out.

4. Learn to play a new song on an instrument.

- One of the biggest reasons people stop playing instruments is because they become impatient with the progress they're making and stop playing altogether. I know I did this in my youth, and I really regret my own impatience with myself.

We all like to be good at something, so when we see so many rock stars on television or in the movies, we want to be like them right away. Little do we know that most of the people who are famous, aren't even all that good at what they're playing.

I'm not going to be preachy here and act like I'm a master of anything. Only recently have I gone back to piano (my keyboard is currently broken which is driving me crazy) and picked up the guitar again, and only recently have I rediscovered the frustrations of trying to learn an instrument from the beginning.

However, with daily practice you really start pushing through, and you become proud of the accomplishments you make on your instrument. It starts becoming a fun hobby rather than a chore. There is always awkwardness in the beginning (I'm still going through it, and I'm sure I always will), but once you break through that awkwardness it becomes a really rewarding activity.

Also, we all know about those guys who go to parties with guitars strapped to their backs and play kumbaya 24/7 just to impress the ladies. Don't start playing just to mimick those guys. I hate those guys. Enjoy playing an instrument just for the sake of making yourself happy. If playing music doesn't interest you deep down, don't do it. But if you've always felt yourself wanting to play an instrument and feeling musical on the inside but not on the outside, you really do owe it to yourself to pick one up.

Don't be afraid to experiment with different instruments until you find one that you really enjoy playing. Just because everyone else plays guitar doesn't mean you have to. If you want to play the bassoon, play the bassoon. If you find happiness playing the djembe, play the djembe. It's up to you.

5. Actually start doing the chores that you've told yourself you'd do a million times over.

This one is pretty self explanatory. For the sake of discussion I'll list some of mine that I've had for myself the past week (I always seem to address myself as "you" in my writing, which I'm thinking is sort of a nasty habit to distance myself from my goals) :

-"Vacuum the damn house, since you're breathing in all that damn carpet dust lately".

- Buy an air purifier.

- Research comics for your upcoming November 4th comedy show (I'm starting one up on Thursdays at the restaurant that I work at, and November 4th is the first show. Given the fact that it's September 22nd, I really need to start finding an opening act, or be content with the fact that I'm probably going to have to open. Start working on a routine now, and start trying to promote the show in a week or so. Get into contact with the other two comics that are performing ASAP!)

- Practice writing Mandarin, starting with the dishes we use at the restaurant.

- Get some groceries and plan out a diet in accordance to the workouts you've been doing.

I suppose that's about it. In future posts I will keep adding to this list of things you can do to stave off boredom (I forgot to mention one more for myself - create videos to explore the acting side of me). Hopefully this list inspires you to do some of the things you've been meaning to do, and avoid creating a sickly stale routine each day.

Best.

Always try to put aside a certain percentage of each paycheck into Savings.

When we don't put aside any money into our Savings, we end up doing our future selves a major disservice.

I look back on my younger self and I always think to myself, "if only I had saved a quarter, or even a tenth of what I had earned, I'd be in such a better financial situation right now." The good thing is that if you're in your 20's or 30's, now is the perfect time to start saving. Even if you are in your 40's or 50's, it's not too late to save. You really don't want to end up being in your 60's and 70's with no money in the bank to live off of. It's honestly a miserable existence.

My recommendation is to try and put a certain percentage of your savings into an untouchable savings account. 10% seems like a reasonable amount, but if you have any excess money floating around in your budget, I recommend saving that as well. You never know what might happen down the road. And even if you have an idea, you never know if you want to change your mind about what you want to do with your life. And when you figure that out, it'll be nice to have a little money in the bank to help you achieve your goals.

Super savers choose to put 20, 30, even 50% of their monthly budget into savings. Of course, this simply isn't possible for the most of us, but if you can, you should really strive to save as much as possible. I'm 23 right now, and even though I could've made a lot more mistakes (i.e. credit card debt), I still made some that I really regret. I gambled a lot of my student loan money away, and I used that loan money as excess money to eat out with, when really I could've been saving thousands if only I had been more frugal. Of course, that's what being young is for - to make and learn from your mistakes.

Remember - if it's not too late for you to start saving, then you're doing yourself a wonderful favor by starting right now. Tell yourself that the money you've saved is untouchable and you'll soon find that your Savings account will grow more rapidly than you think.

Don't confuse frugality with cheapness.

Yesterday morning I was looking through my book collection, and I realized there was utterly nothing there that I wanted to read. This led me to a few decisions I could make:

1. Do nothing at all and give up reading as a hobby until I could get some books for free.

2. Re-read books I had read before and sacrifice a significant amount of mental stimulation.

3. Just cave in to my impulses and buy a few books to read.

I thought about doing the first two, but as I scoured some of my old books I realized they just didn't do anything for me anymore. Maybe sometime down the line, but as for right now, at this very moment, I need to read something new or else my mind will remain completely stagnant. I need to read something that's relevant to our times and not to people 50 or 100 years ago.

So, I immediately decided to scour ebay and amazon for cheap novels, and spent $24.34 (including shipping) on three.

This is where the main point of this article comes in.

If you feel like you are sacrificing the things you truly enjoy just to be frugal, why be frugal at all? Are you simply saving money just to save money? Or are you trying to save money to eventually improve the quality of your life?

Now I'm not saying that you should go out and buy impulsively, it took me a little while before I decided to cave in and buy those books. And when I did, I was sure to look for the best deals online rather than go straight to the retail bookseller, which probably would have cost me about double the amount I spent online.

If you're a guitar player and you need to buy new strings, don't just wait around miserably playing your jankcity guitar over and over again, that won't be fulfilling at all. Go buy some new strings, but be sure to get the best deal you can on them. What I'm preaching here is to balance frugality with happiness, or else you will end up a miserable old miser with no hobbies and no passions to spend his/her money on. People who live without passions are practically the living dead, so be sure to develop the hobbies you enjoy while you're still young (or at least, during the precise moments you are passionate about them) or else you will simply lose the love of what you are doing.

Or, at least, it won't be as strong.

Remember, time is as valuable an asset as money, perhaps even more important. If you don't spend time doing the things that you enjoy, and you simply just want to save money just to say you have money, you aren't truly living.

Be frugal, and be happy.

Get your dumbbells at walmart!

I just wanted to quickly tell people looking for cheap dumbbells to try walmart. Unlike me, who is a totally idiot for spending 98 dollars on dumbbells at big five, you should get a much cheaper deal by shopping at Walmart. You'll be glad you did.