In reality, despite the fact that I’ve written this article and posted it on my blog, most visitors would conclude that I’ve given up blogging. I last posted in September of last year.That would be almost five months without posting at all. This blog seems to be dead. Right?

When I first started this blog back in January of 2006, I was posting pretty frequently. I started out with a post nearly every other day. This continued with some variety for the next couple of years. Life went on and I happily (and sometimes unhappily) continued to blog about things that were of interest to me. I was able to post generally at least once a week until November of 2007.

After that, my posting turned sporadic for the most part. I did make some attempts to revive Freshblogger and had some success, but never as much as I’d had before. It just wasn’t the same. I couldn’t find the motivation to sustain it.

So, what happened?

A lot of stuff. That’s the simple answer.

I blogged once upon a time about putting your personality into your writing. I emphasized the importance of doing this to separate yourself from the millions of other bloggers. There are many, many bloggers, but only one of you. Put a bit of your self into every post, everything you do, and you will stand out.

Through all of life’s changes, it became difficult for me to do this. I felt that I could no longer put my real self into what I was writing for this blog.

I didn’t feel like I could talk about the real things that were going on in my life. I couldn’t talk about my failing marriage and subsequent divorce. The devastation I felt as my life seemed to disintegrate. The guilt I felt, knowing that much of it was my own fault.

I couldn’t talk about the job that I hated for so long. How I was so bored that I wanted to stab myself in the eyes with any sharp objects just to stop the terrible pain of boredom.

I couldn’t talk about rediscovering my individuality. Feeling free for the first time in years after the end of the marriage and the job, neither of which was right for me.

Was I then supposed to talk about the joys of rediscovering dating? The thrill of the chase, of the touch of someone new? Shocking, wonderful delights.

How could I talk about the pain of not waking up to my children every day? Not being able to check on them in the middle of the night. Not being there to comfort them, take care of them, protect them from the horrors of the world.

What could I say about wondering if I could ever love, or even trust someone again? Could I talk about finding someone, falling in love, and marrying again?

How about the jobs? Would anyone care that I’d found another job that was interesting and challenging? But, then, would anyone want to know that it turned very bad after a few months and I realized I was working for a sociopath?

I would have liked to have written about the things that I’d experienced. Everything that I’d learned. I’d like to write about the things that I continue to learn.

I didn’t know how I could possibly write what I really wanted to.

There are a number of reasons for this, I suppose. Chief among them was the fear that it could adversely affect my search for a new job. You can’t very well talk about your douche-bag boss on the blog that’s attached to your real name.

My blogging became a victim of the filter of my own fears. I had to filter out all of those things that could possibly harm me in some way.

I couldn’t talk about my real life, my true concerns. I could only touch on them in the vaguest of senses. I could admit the truth of my divorce and the fact that I was changing jobs, but I didn’t feel like I could expose my true self.

I know this blog isn’t a diary, but I’ve always written it for myself, if not to myself. I’ve loved writing much of it. Other times, I can honestly say that I had to force myself to write.

Where do we go from here, then? That’s a good question. Unfortunately, I don’t have a solid answer for you or even for myself. Writing is somewhat of a painful pleasure for me. It’s exhausting, yet thoroughly cathartic.

I think that I’ll keep writing, keep chipping away at this awful filter, like a sculptor finding David inside a block of marble.

What is it that motivates us to do a task or start a project that we’re not all that enthusiastic about? We may be wholeheartedly in favor of the goal that is to be achieved, like organizing my new place, but it’s still a terrific struggle to get moving toward this goal. Those first little steps can be so difficult for some that they are literally never taken.

I’ve found this to be a factor in many areas of my life. While I can find the energy to get up and go to work every day, take care of my family, and take out the garbage, etc, getting beyond the basics almost takes an act of God. Why is it so hard to find time to put away boxes from the move, go to the gym, practice guitar, or write a few pages of a novel?

Thinking back on the last couple of months, the most progress we made in clearing out the boxes and organizing our home was when we had guests coming over to celebrate my daughter’s birthday. We worked our butts off for hours because we wanted to make a good impression on my wife’s parents. This is despite the fact that they are easy-going people who are not at all judgmental.

Regardless, we were able to make some great improvements in the time before our guests arrived. This underscores the importance of having some sort of outside influence as a motivator towards those projects that we’re having trouble starting. With this in mind, I have a few thoughts that may be helpful in kick-starting stalled progress towards our worthy, but rusty goals:

1. Find a motivator outside yourself. Whether it’s inviting guests over to impose a hard deadline on cleaning your apartment, or taking a creative writing class with weekly homework, sometimes it’s necessary to have someone hold you responsible for meeting your goals. Invite friends over to your place, then, or take a class in writing or guitar playing or pilates where there will be someone expecting you to deliver something tangible on a regular basis.

2. Multitask the simple stuff. If you have a box of papers sitting in the corner of your living room that needs to be sorted or shredded, grab a beer, pull up the box, and turn on that Breaking Bad or Californication that you’ve been waiting to watch on the DVR. OK, ladies, you’re allowed to watch Dancing with the Stars. While you’re watching, sort a few papers, you can shred during the commercials instead of fast-forwarding.

3. Focus on the built-in rewards. Having a clean, well-organized place makes you feel good. I don’t think anyone really likes living in a cluttered space. Similarly, it also feels good to work out, to burn away all the stresses that have been building up like clutter in your soul. This isn’t always the best motivator, obviously, because even though we know these things, we don’t always get started. This leads us to another step:

4. Make it fun. If you’re having trouble going to the gym, then it’s probably not fun enough for you to even want to begin. The answer to this is to mix it up. Do something different that will stimulate your motivation and build some excitement and interest. The treadmill is boring? Then join a hiking group or Krav Maga (brutal, but effective Israeli martial art) class. If the story you’ve been working on no longer gets your juices flowing, try writing about something completely different, a topic that you’ve never explored before.

5. Get a partner. I’m not saying that you should go sign up for e-harmony, but aligning yourself with a friend or family member who also needs a little encouragement toward a common goal can be an enormous benefit. Even if it’s someone from work whom you can trade updates with during lunch once a week, this can be the one thing that motivates you to do something before that next lunch date. Maybe you can talk your spouse or neighbor into trying out rock-climbing and then if you both like it, turn it into a regular exercise thing.

I hope that these ideas will prove useful for you. It’s the result of my reflecting on the issues affecting my own life and my own lack of progress toward certain goals. Living a successful and productive life means filling your days with positive activities that benefit you and the people around you. Feel free to leave a comment and tell me about your own experiences.

I don’t know if I’m any different from anyone else in this regard, but if I feel like my forward progress has stalled on any particular front, I know it’s time to make some changes. Maybe it’s time to learn a new skill, go back to school for that MBA, or even just start a hobby. Or, maybe it’s time for me to start blogging again.

Over the last few months I’ve lost a lot of readers due to my own lack of posting. At one time I had more than 1200 subscribers to my RSS feed. I’ve been thinking about this blog a lot lately, but today is the first time I’ve logged on and actually started to write a post. I performed some much-needed maintenance and upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress.

It feels good to be working with FreshBlogger again. I’ve had this blog through a number of significant changes in my life and I believe it really helped me to write about things, even when unrelated to the events going on behind the scenes. It also was a great help to be a member of the blogging community and to be supported through tough times by my blogging friends.

So, what am I trying to say in this meandering post? I think I’m trying to say that I’m restless (duh!) and that I’m going to make a renewed effort to begin posting again on a regular (or irregular) basis. Feel free to chime in with your thoughts!

1. Your skills are not respected. If you feel that your employer doesn’t recognize your value to the company, then it may be time for a change. Do you find that your opinions are taken for granted or that your judgment isn’t taken seriously? If you’re always wrong in the eyes of your employer, then there is definitely a problem.

Take the time to examine yourself, though. Are you really contributing as much as you can? Are you proving your value in your work assignments? If not, it may be worthwhile talking with your supervisor and asking for more challenging or interesting work. If this isn’t an option, then it’s time to start looking.

2. You’re stuck. If you’ve been in the same position, doing the same things, for nearly the same pay, for a long time, it’s time to shake things up. Has your job title been the same for five years? Do you have the same level of responsibility you had three years ago? Is your pay increasing at a snail’s pace with cost of living type raises? Enough is enough.

Again, look at your situation from an outside perspective before making final decisions. It’s true that you’re much more likely these days to make significant gains in salary and benefits by changing jobs than you are by staying at a job for a long time. However, if you’re content with what you’re making and/or the market won’t support paying much more for the work you do, then the scenario may be a little different. You may want to communicate to your supervisor that you’re ready for more responsibilities. It’s also possible that there may be another role in the same organization that can be more satisfying and more lucrative for you.

3. You’re bored! If you simply can’t get into what you’re doing right now, then it may be time to leave. There is some evidence that the human mind needs change in order to defeat boredom and depression. Many of us spend the greater part of our lives, more than 40 hours per week, working. This is a lot of time to be spending performing tasks that aren’t stimulating our brains in the ways that they need in order to thrive.

You have to be careful, though, that you’re focusing on the right parts of your life that need change or improvement. It could be that more outside activities will liven up your life. Perhaps meeting new people is what you need rather than switching jobs. Try expanding your social and activity circle to see if it makes life more interesting and enjoyable for you. If your work situation doesn’t improve after making some changes in your outside activities, then it may be time for you to move on.

Being unhappy in your employment has a profound effect on your life. When your job no longer is satisfying, you often begin thinking all sorts of negative thoughts about yourself. You start thinking that you’re not good at what you do, so maybe you should choose another career. You may think you’re just a bad employee, lazy, sloppy, or unintelligent. These thoughts are self-defeating and self-destructive. Instead of beating yourself up, take some time to make some changes to make your life and work more interesting, challenging, and enjoyable.

I hope to god some kind soul out there living in his mother’s basement will take some precious time away from masturbating to lesbian porn to show me the error of my ways in not upgrading my wordpress installation. Perhaps you can take away the few pennies I make from this little blog and show me the true meaning of life in pure Monte Python fashion.

I’m waiting with bated breath. I need schooling, I’m sure. Somehow, I’ve really screwed up by falling behind the times of the monthly or whatever schedule of wordpress releases. I must be crazy to risk my precious pennies against the ruthlessness of acne prone basement dwellers. I wonder if they put on their Star Wars costumes when they perpetrate their brave acts.

It’s possible that they gravitate more toward the benevolent and courageous Power Rangers of ridiculous special effects fame (No one has topped the pink ranger for sheer vacuous hotness). It would certainly be humbling to be put in my place by a person in such a cheesy rubber uniform. The humanity, the humanity… or rather, the horror, the horror…

Regardless, one of these days I’ll update. Maybe in the meantime I’ll make myself a target of the silly youngsters who sweat and blog in well-starched undergarments for the greater good of all. Ad majorem dei gloriam…

1. It’s good practice for writing. Whether you’re writing for a blog, writing stories, novels, or a weekly column for your local newspaper, a journal is a great place to practice your craft. Writing is something that does get somewhat easier with practice. I say somewhat because practice helps you to get better at putting thoughts into words and organizing them on a page, but the act of writing doesn’t necessarily help you generate those unique ideas in the first place. This leads to the next reason…

2. It helps you get ideas. Yes, journal writing, as opposed to other, more structured forms of writing, helps you to come up with ideas. The reason for this is simple: you don’t have the same constraints when you’re writing a journal for your own consumption as you might have if you were writing for your blog or column, etc. You can feel free to brainstorm and make a list of incomplete sentences. You don’t have to be self-conscious or embarrassed by what you write; it’s only for you. It’s much easier to just sit down and start writing when you’re writing in your journal. This is also why we have the next reason.

3. It’s great therapy. Your journal is the place to exercise those thoughts and feelings you don’t necessarily want to share with the world. Yes, some of those thoughts will come out as stories or blog entries some day, but the majority of what you write in your journal will most likely stay private forever. Your journal gives you a place to empty out the clutter in your brain, knowing that it’s safely stored somewhere you can process this emotional feedback later. The increased clarity is an obvious benefit to removing all those little things that nag at you. Now, I know you might be thinking of those tell-all journals of the presidents and VIPs that we hear about, but the truth is that those aren’t really private journals because the ones who write them are well aware that they’ll be exposed to the world some day and they’re written with that in mind. They do serve a useful purpose for the writers that your journal can also help with, though:

4. It’s a way of measuring your progress. Your journal can serve as a kind of audit trail of where you’ve been in your life. Have you ever seen on a television show where someone will be reading an old diary and say, “How could I ever have written that?” They’re making a comparison between the way the world appeared to them then as compared to the world of their today. You can do the same thing. You may want to remember how things were in the past in order to remind yourself of how far you’ve come and what you’ve gained. It’s often useful to remember that things may not have been as great back in the day as you remember them now. It’s also helpful to put things of the past into perspective. You’ve now overcome many of the obstacles that you once wrote in your journal about. A fresh reminder of your own resourcefulness and persistence can give you a renewed sense of purpose and positive outlook.

5. It can help you set goals. Not only can you see where you’ve been as you look back on your old journal entries, you can use your journal writing to explore where it is you want to go. Your journal is a place where you don’t have to stay within the confines of everyday life. You can think outside the box. This can be extremely useful in breaking out of the confines of what others think is possible. You can get a little crazy if you want to. No one’s going to be there pointing a finger and laughing (as long as you don’t leave it out for them to see!). It’s so easy to mentally get trapped in your own immediate environment. Use your journal to explore beyond those boundaries.

I’m sure you can think of a few more reasons for writing a journal. Feel free to leave a comment and let us know about them.

In his article Life Sucks, Then You Die, Steve talks about some of the same things that I wrote about in my earlier article:

Your human emotions serve as your feedback mechanism on your life’s journey. They’re like the dashboard display on your car. When your dashboard indicates a problem, it means you need to fix something with the car. It doesn’t mean the dashboard is broken.

He takes it a bit further by saying this:

When you’re not enjoying life, that’s a message you need to listen to. Feeling bad about your life doesn’t mean you have emotional problems or that you’re psychologically damaged in some way. Your feedback mechanism is doing its job just fine. You’re supposed to feel bad when your life is out of whack. You just need to interpret the message properly and then take action to correct the situation.

This is a great way to put it. We are built with all these feedback mechanisms that tell us when something isn’t right. We understand what to do when we feel something sharp poking us or something that’s hot enough to burn our skin. We get away from it as quickly as possible. This makes perfect sense. What Steve and I both have been saying is that our emotions offer the same sort of feedback mechanism.

It’s true that when we have these feelings a lot of people say to snap out of it or go see a shrink to get straightened out. Could it be possible that in many cases, we just need to make changes in our lives? Granted, sometimes there will be legitimate emotional or psychological issues that need to be dealt with. In these cases, professional help is probably the best route.

Most of us aren’t sick or unhealthy, though. Our bodies and minds are working correctly and are telling us that we need to take some action. We need to change:

If you feel negatively about your job, change it. If you feel negatively about your relationship, change it. If you feel negatively about your body, change it. If you feel negatively about your financial situation, change it.

This sounds so easy and it is in a lot of ways. It’s usually mostly our minds that are resistant to change. Our situations in life are often just what we make of them. This means that controlling our minds and making decisions and sticking with them is what will cause a change, hopefully a positive one, in our life situations. Steve talks about this a bit in his article:

You’re not powerless to change. In your mind you’re probably making the key actions a lot more complicated than they need to be. It’s pretty amazing how many stuck situations can get unstuck with just a few moments of action.

We have the power to control our lives. It’s easy to get all caught up in circumstances. This leads to paralysis. When you get to this state of habitually negative thinking, it’s very hard to break out of the boredom and depression it causes. But, it’s not impossible. It just takes using your power to make decisions and then taking action based on those decisions.

Steve’s take on what to do when you’re uncertain of what decision to make is interesting:

Getting unstuck is about making simple decisions and taking actions, always moving away from what you don’t want and towards what you want. If you don’t know what you want, then just move away from what you don’t want until you figure it out.

Ever heard people talk about changing for it’s own sake? Changing just to change. It sounds scary, but maybe that’s what necessary in those situations where you can’t seem to find a way out, when you feel trapped. Following Steve’s advice of just moving away from the negative things in order to find something more positive could be the best medicine. You won’t always know what you want, but often it quickly becomes clear what you don’t want. Maybe it’s time to make some fresh new decisions in your life and take some action.

For many adults in the industrialized societies, work is a daily and often hated part of every day life. You get up at least five days a week and commute in some stressful way for much too long a time to get to a job you dread walking in to. There are a lot of things that must contribute to these negative feelings.

Each day, you may have to deal with fighting through traffic in that crappy car of yours that barely runs, like the automatic transmission that you now have to shift manually, or the new, late model car that constantly reminds you that you really can’t afford it. Maybe your regular workday begins with the bus or subway ride with a nice selection of nutjobs and thugs mixed in with the rest of the bored commuters like you. Just be glad you don’t have to sit by the sweaty, stinky guy today.

After this trial, you end up safe and sound in your little cubicle, your 6 x 6 sanctuary from the horrors of the modern workplace. Actually, it’s often more like a cage than a place of safety and solitude. You can still hear that obese guy two cubes down who’s ripping open snack wrappers and slurping cans of soda pop all day long, right? And god forbid you happen to be there at lunchtime when he starts sucking his fingers with that sick popping sound that’s probably very similar to the sounds made by a pack of wolves ripping apart the joints of young lambs. Are you shuddering yet?

Aside from all the human horror shows you encounter on a daily basis, there’s the actual work you do. The work isn’t bad, though, is it? It’s just always the same. It’s boring. You don’t feel challenged by it and it eats away at your insides. You can feel the brain cells screaming in hellish pain and then dying a horrible death, but at least they’re not alone, like you in your cube… No, they’re dying together in hordes.

Anyway, you’re bored, right? That’s a huge problem these days and most people don’t seem to realize it. It’s easy to establish what’s boring, too. We know it when we see it. That is, we know it when we’re thinking about it. We may not realize that what’s killing us and our poor little brain cells is a terminal case of boredom. Let’s keep this in mind, though, as we start fighting back.

To begin our battle against the horrors of boredom, we need to find out what does not bore us. When we sit down to think about it, we realize what does bore us. The sameness of it all, the lack of real challenges, the absence of passion and creativity. These things that are missing are precisely the elements we need to begin searching for.

The answer is simple: Start looking for new things to do. You may not be able to go right out and find a new, exciting job, but there are ways you can spruce up the dusty old one you’ve got. Start trying to vary your routine a bit, for instance. Take a different route into work. Find a new group of people to carpool with. Get an ipod and listen to some new music or books. Take more breaks if you can and go outside and get some sun on your pale skin. Take a walk around the building. Maybe you’ll encounter other like-minded people who are attempting to break out of work robot mode for a few minutes here and there. The key is to break up the routine somehow with new activities.

This doesn’t just apply to your work life, either. Find a class at your local college to take part in. You’ve always wanted to learn how to crochet, take pictures, learn a language, scuba dive, right? So, do it now! What’s the point in waiting to do something new and fun? All these little things can usually be done for much less money than you might think. A couple of months ago, I took golf lessons with a group of other people for only $100 for 7 lessons. It was a lot of fun and I got to meet a bunch of cool new people.

See, it’s not just the lack of exciting and interesting activities that bores us, but also the lack of new people in our lives. It’s a good thing to go out and meet new people on a regular basis. After all, that’s why many of us are blogging. We’re not just here to vent and bare our souls for strangers from all over the world, but also to share, really share something of ourselves with people who are looking for the same things. It’s the interaction, the personal connections that make blogging such a wonderful tool and a great experience.

The whole point of this post, if you haven’t gotten it already, is to encourage you to find out what does not bore you. If you find yourself overworked, overstressed, and unhappy, find some new things to inject some vitality into your life. These new activities, people, and experiences will help to change your attitude into a much more positive one. Feel free to leave a comment and let us know what does not bore you!

I’m normally not much of an impulse buyer, but I jumped right on to Amazon and ordered the book. I did check out Tim’s website and blog first and found some good information on other topics, too, like bodybuilding and nutrition, of all things. This and the other articles related to the content of the book sold me on making the purchase.

I started reading right away and found Tim’s conversational style of writing to be refreshing and accessible. There isn’t a whole lot of technical jargon to bog you down. This book is a quick and relatively easy read. I say relatively because there are exercises at the end of most chapters that are intended to help the reader change his or her mindset over to one that will be more conducive to attaining the goals of the book.

So, what are the goals of this book? Tim’s whole philosophy centers around freeing yourself from the wage slave life so that you can fill your life with excitement. Sounds great, huh? It’s not as shallow a concept as it may seem at first. He talks about the stress and boredom of the average 9-5er and how many people spend 30 or 40 or even more years living this lifestyle in the hopes of someday being able to enjoy life.

This idea really resonated with me. Tim relates his fears of becoming the bald, fat guy in the red BMW convertible. As soon as I read this, I knew exactly what he was talking about. Since I was a teenager, I noticed how many of the really nice cars I saw on the road were driven by old guys. I shuddered at the thought of spending my whole life in drudgery to get to the point of driving that beautiful yellow convertible Corvette and then getting out with a cane or a walker. You get the idea, right?

Tim starts off talking about why you should want to change your life and join what he calls the New Rich. His points are simple and direct and will make a lot of sense to those who don’t like a bunch of fluffy nonsense. After that, he goes into the how-to of changing your life.

His ideas aren’t all new or groundbreaking but it’s the way they’re put together that makes this book worth the money. He includes many stories from his own life as well as stories of others in the New Rich who have taken a similar approach to life and changed theirs for the better. This helps the reader to see what people have done and that it really is possible.

If you’re looking for a detailed, paint by numbers text, don’t bother. This book isn’t about telling you every little detail to start a business and make lots of money. That’s not what it’s all about. This book is about changing your mindset more than anything else. Once you have the proper view of life, this type of change becomes possible.

At any rate, Tim’s book is good. It’s highly motivational for those of us who are interested in changing our lives and getting out of the rat race. If you find yourself terminally bored and hating life right now, pick up The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (aff). Even if you’re not at that state at the moment and you’re not looking to completely make over your life, this book has lots of tips that will have you wondering why you never realized that before. Pick up a copy and let me know what you think about it.

You might be waiting for that big break, that windfall of cash, that hot chick to come and ask you out. Let me tell you a secret: It’s not going to happen. Wait a minute! I can hear you screaming. I’m a talented guy or girl and I deserve it and I’m good-looking and fun, blah, blah, blah… You know what? Nobody cares!

Ouch. That kind of hurts, don’t it? Now, get over it. You have work to do. What I’m trying to tell you is that if you want something to happen to break you out of the excruciating holding pattern that life has become for you, you’re going to have to do it yourself.

That’s right. No one is going to do it for you. I know you already know that, but you have to really focus on this and make it a cause for action. If you want something good to happen in your life, if you want to make progress, you have to take action.

This is all about getting out of your comfort zone. This is a stretch for a lot of people because we all tend to stick with what we know, what feels safe. If this is how you feel and you hate it, here are the top 5 ways to break out of the holding pattern your life has become:

1. Go somewhere alone. Many of us don’t feel safe or secure doing things without other people. Maybe your significant other has moved on or is too busy to hang with you. Then do it yourself! Go see a movie or a band, go out to eat at a new place you’ve been wanting to try out.

2. Learn something new. Take a class at your local community college. Try something you’re not already good or experienced with, like golf lessons or learning to speak Italian or cook Indian food. It’ll give you a chance to stretch your horizons and meet new people who may be interested in some of the same things as you.

3. Talk to a stranger. Don’t be afraid to talk to people. Make a joke with the check out girl or the old guy in line ahead of you. Say hi to that cute girl or guy you keep seeing at the bookstore and don’t leave without an email address or phone number. Get over your fears of meeting new people.

4. Take risks professionally. Speak up in that meeting at work, volunteer for a project, stand up for yourself against an attack or unfair comment by a coworker. It’s time to start asserting yourself. This will help build your confidence to change the way you act which will change the way others act toward you and eventually change the way you perceive the world around you.

5. Start/stop a habit. For God’s sake, stop biting your fingernails! Stop doing those things that you hate that you do and start taking up habits that are good for you. If it’s a quick rush of something that makes you feel good for a couple minutes and then bad afterward, that’s a good sign that it’s not good for you. Build good, guilt-free habits. Start exercising each day and drop that soda and bag of chips you’re having at your desk every afternoon.

It may feel strange at first, but after some practice you’ll get used to it and really enjoy experiencing new things. The changes you want to see in your life have to come from the inside first and then move outward. Some of these things you’ll have to do alone at first, but over time others will notice your positive and exciting outlook on life and want to spend time with you.

Note: This post has been entered into ProBlogger’s latest Group Writing Project.