Minimalism for maximum living

I have been giving a lot of thought lately on changes in my life to make it more manageable. Here are some of the ideas I have come up with.

I.                   Since I have had to downsize on living space I am getting rid of stuff that I never use or look at. Storage seems to such a waste. I am a bit of a hoarder when it comes to memory stuff.

II.                 I would love to live in a beautiful setting by the beach or up in a forest type setting somewhere. So to afford this without having to be a slave to debt, I am looking at smaller house plans.

III.              I am making plans and searching out how to build a career on line.

 

So much has been happening as of late and I have had a lot of thinking to do. See about one year ago now I hurt my back at work and was down for about three months. This forced me to quit my job. I was able to go back to the same company later on once my back healed. This caused me to start revaluating what I want to do for a career so I will not ever go through that again. I had to go through the cortisone shot thing and that was not fun at all.

This year April 1^st my Mother passed away. Now we have a Father who is not taking that well at all to try to help get through this while we maintain ourselves. By we, I mean my siblings and spouses ect…

This has caused me to rethink the whole work until you retire bit and putting off life now so you will have something later. My father is and has always worked full time and he is in his 70’s.

This does not mean that I want to stop working or saving for the future. It means I am looking at how I want to spend my life and how I can make money while enjoying life with those I love.

I want to be able to travel and see things and not be stuck to having to stay in one location to make money that only gives us two weeks a year vacation if we are lucky.

I started looking into going back to school and am finding colleges cost way too much for the kinds of salaries you can start out with. Taking on that much more debt seems like a very bad idea indeed.

In my frustration I have been on line searching and taking some for fee courses that I could pay for with cash.

I am coming up with some ideas on how to get a business going on line and stumbled across videos on Youtube about minimalist living and living in small places, houses ect…

My ideas now are to get rid of unnecessary stuff and I am looking at furniture that converts rooms from offices to bedrooms and using small rooms in multiple ways. I have found furniture for instance where you can take a small window table and convert it into a long dining table when you want to throw a dinner party.

The goal for me is to get rid of all unnecessary things. This means actual physical stuff and cleaning out emails and downsizing what I am signed up for so my email folder does not get unmanageable. Anything I can do which I can use to simplify my life so it is easier to get up and go. I do not want to need to be in a place where I am a slave to anything that keeps me working in a job that is not fulfilling my life’s dreams.

It seems to me we get bogged down with all this clutter in our lives trying to fulfill some need that really turns out to be imaginary. Possibly we want to impress someone else with the car we drive or whatever. As I get older I realize that I do not care what most other people think of me and that most people do not think about me at all. Not to sound down on myself or anything at all. It is just that those that I care about love me no matter what I drive or own and are just impressed with me being me. Other people are so caught up in their own lives they really do not think about you at all. They might make fun about something at work but do I really care? They do not pay my bills or have to live with my stress of working just to pay bills.

For now I want to pay off debt, not accumulate any more debt, get rid of clutter of all kinds in my life and live simply. That way I can travel more and spend more time with my spouse.

I will write on this more as I go showing changes made.

Spirituality and growth

I have been learning new things and of course one of those things is blogging. 

Sometimes life can put pressure on you and you can either give up or try something new.  

I am choosing trying something new. I want to learn to be a writer on the internet and grow in new business ideas so I can eventually work from home, wherever that turns out to be as I progress through the rest of my life. 

My spiritual beliefs require me to always grow and move forward never backwards. With this in mind I am trying out ways to move my business experience in sales to online sales in different ways. I would love to work my travels into a travel writer career later as I plan on starting to visit many new places and some I've been too in the past.  

It seems to me that there are those that want to always complain about their lot in life and also those that just ask for a higher power to take care of it all and then never work on making it better.  I find both to be fruitless. 

I believe no matter what religion or lack of one that you follow, that your life is your responsibility. It comes down to whatever you put into life is what you get out of life. I want to always strive to give my best whatever that best for that given day is. Life is just so much better whenever you are striving to make it better and feel that you are making a difference. It makes no sense to complain about your plot and then do nothing to fix it. You are the master of your own reality.  

I also have written in my blog about my reptiles I own. This is because it gives me joy in life to work with these creatures and learn from them. I have recently learned how much time goes into preparing the vegetarian dishes for my iguana. This in turn makes me want to eat healthier though and reflects back into taking better care of myself.  

I have found that eating more vegetables and less meat makes me feel better and then I have a more positive outlook for my workday world and my free time as well. 

I am finding out that I need to have a well-rounded life and that things need to be ordered and focused. I need to make sure that time is spent on my religious studies and my education as well as being positive at work and my family life. I am working toward having more family time and thus the reason for wanting to move my work life on line. I have done a lot of work on my education to get from where I am at now to where I want to be and just have to keep on working at it. 

More to come later,

Dave

 

I

New life changes

I have been off here for awhile and now am back. I started this blog as a project to learn how to write on the internet to start new business ideas. I am interested in starting  a career with me being my own boss at some time in the future. I have been doing alot of research and starting new things. This is why my posts have been far and few between. I stated before that I want to start a blog talking about my snakes and how this pertains to my growth in life with my original post on midlife changes. I am searching out all kinds of ways to make  a career on line. I want to help people find ideas for their own growth in ways that will be different than mine but can use my example on what I am writing about if it helps them. I do not want to make a mistake and write too much before my writing is suitable.

I just bought a new lizard this weekend. I bought an Iguana and am starting to learn how to live with it. He will take up a large part of my life trying to get him trained and keeping him healthy. I bought him and got the basic supplies recomended by the pet store for initial setup. In two days of learning I already have a used cage which saved me lots of money. I found there are others with larger iguanas that have outgrown cages that are willing to sell them cheaper to afford more for their growing pets.


This also opens dialogue in my case with another reptile owner that can educate me in their past adventures and mistakes with this Pet.

I love all animals and think that you need to know what you are getting into before making a purchase.

I have made mistakes on the way already and am willing to admit that and talk about it so someone else does not have to make the same mistakes I have already.

Iguanas take a very special all vegetarian diet. This is not the idea I received from videos on line.

There are plants and store bought vegetables that are poisonous to them.

I am not claiming to know all the facts and am not to be relied on at this point as and expert in any means. I do not claim to know all the facts of keeping an iguana healthy. I am just learning myself now.

I am saying that I have read some information and found that some fruits or vegies out there that will not hurt us humans in small amounts may be very bad for the iguana.

I am stating that I am not at this point and any point to be an expert but am willing to share info that I find from others that might be good advise to help a new iguana owner.

I just bought mine this weekend and started studiing and received a great cage through Craigslist in my city and found a resource on the way that has adult iguanas.

Not only did I get a great deal on a cage for my new Lizard, I found a knoweldgeable Iguana handler.

Like I stated in my earlier blog about my snakes I hope to learn soon how to post youtube videos and hook them to this blog.

Bear with me as I am learning how to blog and hope to grow with my list of readers if I happen to be lucky enough to get a list.

Please always keep coming back and checking my blog as I grow I might just be able to offer you some insightful tips.

SNAKES ARE SOME OF THE THINGS I LOVE.

I will be posting in the future about my snakes that I have in my household. I hope to show what it is like to have snakes and to allow all to watch them grow and how I interact with them.

It is my goal to show that snakes make good pets and educate people so they will not be afraid of them. I also want to show that they need to be respected but not feared. They take responsibility as they can be dangerous if not handled correctly. I want to show that it takes a very responsible owner to keep our rights

Some of the things I will discuss are how to house them and keep them healthy. I saw a post from a friend post on a social site that someone was feeding stray dogs and cats to their snake. I believe this to be a fake ad as the dog was way to large for the snake they were showing eating the dog. I do know my friend that posted to be a loving pet advocate and she thought she was spreading good info. I would definitely be against feeding a snake in this way. This is why I want to start a blog showing how to keep snakes and the responsibilities it entails.

People who have no knowledge of snakes should not handle them, especially out in the wild. They do bite and there is of course poisonous snakes out there.

I currently have a Ball Python and a New Red tail Boa. She is growing rapidly and I would love to start to post videos of her on Youtube in the future and show how I interact with her as she grows from a baby to a large snake and post on this blog.

That is my goal among others of this blog so please check out my future stories on this.

Always keep growing never give up.

I started this blog as a way to grow and hopefully get a new business started later down the road. I am in the process of totally revamping my life as I am nearing the half century mark. I recently dumped paying for a mortgage on a farm that was breaking the bank. I moved to a place that allows me to leave a smaller imprint on the world while maximizing my own life for the better. Less going out and more coming in. I see a lot of stress out there in the world lately all over the place and in my personal friends life. I see their posts on other sites and see them going through changes of their own that they are not always happy with life. I have never been one to hide my feelings very well and wanted to start this blog as a place to communicate ways that I am changing my life hopefully for the better. Time will tell they say. As I get older I am finding that some things need changing for no better reason than to get out of a rut. I got a new computer a few months ago and got hooked on social sites and started displaying some of my feelings there and it just seemed to get out of hand. This blog is a way to share feelings and accomplishments and people can read it or not. It is up to them instead of me bombarding them on a social site. I also am doing an experiment to see if I can get ads on this site for healthy things as I try them out. I just bought a juicer and started to eat way more healthy as I was tired of feeling bogged down all the time. I also desire to start some form of excercise, hopefully in the martial arts movements. More for health than fighting. I am a mechanic by day or nights in my case and get beat up enough with that.

As part of my new life I am also checking out new ways to make money and get more free time as the old fashioned dreams of working hard and retiring seem to be outdated. I am searching new ways to make my life better all the time. I am looking into more vacations and searching for a future in Paradise. Hopefully a tropical island somewhere.

So this blog or I might change to another one, will grow as my ideas of my new life expand. That is why I titled it Mid Life Crisis. I am getting closer to that half a century mark sooner than later and am not ready to get old yet. Some might think of me as immature, but I am not ready to grow up yet. I am very professional and grown up when it comes to working for others or myself but when fun time comes it needs to be all out.

This is just a beggining and my first blog. As I grow and find new ways to have fun I will post or change my blog to something else as I grow. Who knows? Not I.

For now good night.