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.

Since I wrote that last post, we’ve been busy, busy, busy with work, school, family, and everything else that seems to happen these days. We’ve continued to put away a few things here and there, not always hitting our goal of emptying one box per day, but sometimes exceeding that.

One thing that I’m trying to conquer is that it’s really difficult to sustain that motivation from day to day. After working all day and fighting through 30 miles of traffic each way while answering emails and taking calls on the Blackberry, all I want to do when I get home is kick back and have a cold beer. Unfortunately, I’ll never make any progress on anything other than work if I let myself do that.

While it’s a good thing to be successful in your job, it’s also vitally important to spend time on your home life. Just as a healthy body is key to a healthy mind, a healthy home life is key to a healthy work life. Everything we do is connected in some way.

It’s important to keep motivating yourself in order to keep moving toward the goals you’ve set for yourself. I’m thinking about motivation a lot lately as there are areas in my life I’d like to improve, but I’m finding it hard to get started (like exercise!). I have a few ideas on this that I’m going to put together into a new post in the next few days.

So, here we are again. After another job change, another move, numerous large expected and unexpected expenses, I’m finding myself in a state of disorganization. Life has certainly been hectic over the past few months. I’ve found a fantastic young lady and remarried and also upgraded my employment to a job that suits my lifestyle and career goals much better than the last one. On top of this, we’ve moved to a new place, not far from the last one, but moving is one of those disruptive events that has the potential for disrupting routines and budgets and, worst of all, starting bad habits of spending and non-productivity.

I’m not writing to express my sense of self-pity, but to take the first step in dealing with the issue at hand: Yes, I admit it: I’m completely disorganized right now. I know that I need to take a few steps to get out of the rut I’m falling into. Based on past experiences, here is what I’ve come up:

1) Just admit it, you’re a mess! OK, we’re done with this step. My budget is in the red and my house is full of boxes. Too much eating out and not enough unpacking are the main culprits. Sure, I can use the excuse that my wife and I both work full time and we have kids to take care of, etc, etc, but those are the realities of most people’s lives these days.

2) Get the clutter of your head first. This is all about one of David Allen’s most powerful techniques. If you haven’t heard of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, then you must have been living under a rock. Go check it out now. This is the idea of getting all of those little (and big) things that are cluttering your mind, out of your head and into some place where they can be organized, acted on, or filed away as necessary.

This can take the form of just opening up a text file on your pc and typing line by line all of the things that are worrying you, writing it all down on paper, or even just gathering up all those bills, receipts, and notes to self and putting them in one box or pile to be gone through. When you think of or come across something else that should go in this list or pile, get it there as soon as possible. There’s no need to be handicapped by carrying all of those anxieties around with you.

3) Make a plan. This is another important step. Now that you have all these things in a pile of some sort, figure out what you have to do with each thing. Obviously, I can’t put all of the boxes in my house into one big pile, but I know I have to do something about it. How about my wife and I commit to clearing out one room today. This is, in fact, what we have talked about. Today is Sunday and we’re both off of work and the kids are out of the house until tomorrow. Our goal is to clear out our family room first.

I’m making this a much more concrete goal by committing to it to writing and publishing it on my blog, so I’ll have to keep that in mind as I work through the day.

We’ve also taken steps to reign in our nasty little habit of dining out. We’ve purchased the makings of cheap lunches and taken them to our jobs so that we always have a quick, inexpensive option that we can take advantage of right in the office rather than having to leave work and spend money. We’re also working on doing the same thing at home. After working all day, no one wants to come home and spend an hour cooking a meal. We’re going to shop for some quick and cheap meals for home, too.

4) Execute. This is the tough part. We’ve already started working on some of the things that we need to do to reign in our budget and our clutter, but this is definitely a mountain to climb. It’s really difficult to stick with a plan that involves climbing a mountain every day, though. The solution to this dilemma is to break up these tasks into small pieces. For instance, if we can commit to unpacking one box each night, we will continually be making progress towards our goal of having a clutter-free home. This is a doable task, even after working all day and fighting through traffic for an hour to get home.

Also, we can allow ourselves to have a lunch out once a week instead of every day. We can do the same with dinners, too, but on a more limited basis since those can easily get way too expensive. If we can commit to eating out only once or twice a month instead of two or three times a week, then we can make some real progress.

In the end, it’s necessary to start taking some action in a positive way in order to overcome the stresses induced by too much clutter, whether it be a box-filled home, piles of unpaid bills, or a mind filled with anxieties about all of the above and more. Feel free to leave a comment and share your ideas.

I have plenty of ideas for new posts, but I’ve been busy with… Hell, I really have no excuses! I just haven’t been as motivated to post to this blog as I have been to do other, higher priority tasks in my life.

I’ve had a lot going on in the last few months, as I’m sure everyone else has. There have been a few changes in my life, but things are still getting better and better.

Some of the things I’m thinking about blogging about are employment (this is big with me now, for a number of reasons), self-improvement (because I’m fighting my way out of another rut), and motivation (which is really integral to improving yourself, but is still a separate issue).

With the recession currently big in the news (which I still try to stay away from!), I’m thinking more and more about ways of generating income on the side, so you can expect some future posts addressing this topic, too.

If you have any ideas for me or would just like to say hello, feel free to leave a comment or contact me via my contact page.

Near the bottom of the article, though, it struck me that the same advice he gives in the article works well for dealing with disappointment:

If any of this makes you mad, that’s a step in the right direction. Anger is a higher level of consciousness than apathy, so it’s a lot better than being numb all the time. Any emotion — even confusion — is better than apathy. If you work through your feelings instead of repressing them, you’ll soon emerge on the doorstep of courage. And when that happens, you’ll have the will to actually do something about your situation and start living like the powerful human being you were meant to be instead of the domesticated pet you’ve been trained to be.

This is great advice. Instead of just letting the disappointments and stresses of life kick our butts, we need to use them as motivation to move forward. Yes, it’s incredibly difficult to change the habits that have gotten us entrenched in bad situations, but if we’re able to channel that emotion, that discontent, that extreme discomfort, into something useful, there are tremendous strides to be made in success, satisfaction, and happiness.

Actually, I just moved to a new apartment in the last few weeks and, as many of you know from experience, the moving process doesn’t end when everything has been moved to the new place. In fact, much of the work still remains to be done after the ‘move’ has been done.

So, we spent the weekend unpacking, organizing, and getting rid of many things that no longer have value or no longer have a use for us (Yes, I said ‘us’ – I have a new girlfriend and we’re living in sin. Shhhhhh…).

While going through all this stuff, it really struck me as to how much we accumulate over the years. There were a number of things of my own that I no longer used or needed. This is after just moving about a year and a half ago and throwing away a mountain of stuff at that time, too. My girlfriend was no exception. We ended up taking boxes and boxes to a consignment store for children’s clothing and toys and also to charity.

The funny thing is that the apartment still isn’t all the way cleared out. Most of the boxes are gone, but many still remain. I still have to go through a lot of old clothing of my own (did I really ever wear that shirt? UGH!) and boxes of papers and, well, just junk.

All of this stuff is weighing on me, though. The clutter becomes an awful burden that lingers in the corner of my mind when I’m away at work as well as the corner of my eye when I’m at home. I need to get organized.

I wrote an article last year around this time about how to deal with lack of motivation. One of the points that I made in that article was that getting rid of useless junk in our immediate environment is cathartic and helps to not only clear our living spaces, but also to clear our minds.

This idea still holds just as true today, if not even more. I feel better after having gotten rid of so much that I no longer need, but much remains to be accomplished. There are boxes to be unpacked still, papers to be gone through and filed or disposed of, and decisions to be made about whose stuff we’re going to keep.

This is a lot of work and exhausting, to say the least. Honestly, I would love to take the whole week off of work and finish the job. Yes, the whole week because I think it will take that long to really get the job done the way I’d like to.

Ultimately, I realize that it’s vitally important to clean house on a regular basis. It’s important to refresh out surroundings as well as our minds and spirits. In my mind, both are intimately connected. Just as a healthy body is key to a healthy mind, an uncluttered space is key to an uncluttered mind.

Sometimes when you open your eyes and look around you, all you can see are the mountains that surround you. The many little foothills and gentle ridges that are far closer are beneath the level of your vision and thus, out of your field of view. All you are seeing are those towering, threatening mountains. Every once in a while you get a flash of those sharp, lofty peaks as the clean white teeth in the jaws of life, about to snap shut and devour you completely.

I know I’m not alone in getting these feelings occasionally. People I talk to often admit in private that they feel overwhelmed and paralyzed by all the pressures of life. This paralysis is the most dangerous thing. It allows your fears and doubts to rule your life. It can sap your motivation until your confidence and optimism are on life support, barely breathing.

Here are a few brief tips that help me and I think will help you to get back that spark that’s been so dim lately:

• Take a time out. A little breather away from the pressures of work and life can help you to restore some sense of balance. Take a mental health day from work and make a concerted effort to not even think about work or other pressing concerns. Don’t take too long, though, as things will pile up in your absence.
• Organize. Clear out some of the clutter in your life. Yes, I mean the physical crap that piles up around you. While you’re taking your mental health day, clean up your house or apartment. Just pick up a few things or do the dishes or throw out those old magazines and newspapers you’ll never read. When you get back to work, start clearing the papers off your desk.
• Deal with one thing at a time. If you have trouble with it already, you’ll have to learn to just say no. For your sanity’s sake, focus on one thing at a time. Ignore the phone and email until you’ve completed at least one task. You’ll feel better that you’ve accomplished something. You may want to break down larger projects into microtasks.
• Change. Make some changes in your daily routine for starters. Even small changes will inject some much-needed variety into your life. Small changes can lead to big changes after they become habits.
• Develop a personal mission statement. This step is important. I posted recently about the importance of having a personal mission statement and my own work on developing one for myself. Take your time with this one, though. You’ll want to really think about what’s important to you and how you want to live your life.

I hope you’ll find these ideas useful. That lack of motivation you’re feeling isn’t a good feeling, is it? Remember that your discomfort is a call to action. There’s no better time than right now to start building a better future.

My first encounter with personal mission statements was in reading Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The concept was very simple: define who I am, what I value, and how I should live my life in light of these realizations. I began immediately trying to put together a list of roles and values. I quickly found that the task was going to be more difficult than I’d initially believed, though.

After taking a good, hard look at myself, it occurred to me that many of us don’t know ourselves very well at all and that, even if we do, we rarely live our lives in accordance with that knowledge. For example, how many of us work at jobs that we profess to hate? And, yet, we still continue to spend the majority of our lives in these places without looking for something better. Or, if we do look for another job, we take the approach that anything is better, just as long as it’s different. This is a dangerous trap caused by either not knowing ourselves or ignoring our own values, needs, and desires.

Chuck’s tag comes at an interesting time for me because I was already working on my personal mission statement. I had started writing one a few years ago and my efforts dwindled away over time as other concerns took priority. A couple of months ago, though, I decided to read 7 Habits again and really work on defining my core roles and values and ultimately, a personal mission statement. When Chuck emailed me, I was in the middle of writing a first draft of this mission statement.

I think Stephen Covey’s approach to this is a good one. He suggests that you define your roles in life first. Think about it. You are one person, but you’re many things to many people, a father to your children, a spouse or significant other to your partner, an employee or employer, a writer or blogger, a member of a church or other group, and, most importantly, an individual. I say that your role as an individual is most important because it is the deepest layer, the most inner part of yourself that defines who you are. Without having an idea of what’s important to you, it’s almost impossible to develop a proper perspective on your other roles in life.

I have a lot more to say on this topic, but I’m going to save it for another post. I’ll be including some of my own personal mission statement, too, so check back soon.