Lose Weight...Now?

So during this wonderful little journey, there were some things I looked back on in my younger days and thought...am I too old now? Of course the list is endless on what I cannot do for obvious reasons. I can no longer skate board up the side of a vertical swimming pool, experience my first kiss or catch a pass over the middle, get drilled by a linebacker and keep going for another twenty yards. But what about others? As I laid in my couch like a blow up doll that had just had the air let out of it, I flipped through the channels, landing on a show called The Biggest Loser. I'm sure everyone knows by now the show follows a group of dangerously overweight contestants as they battle to lose as much weight as possible and more importantly, get healthy. And I as I watched, I was inspired by young and old alike, all competing on a level playing field in their quest to become the Biggest Loser.

Now, I am in no way obese and will never know if I have anywhere near what it takes to accomplish what these people do but as I looked at my somewhat doughy body I thought, 'I want to do that. I want to feel a little of the accomplishment they are feeling.' Over the years, I have tried to exercise occasionally, especially after seeing what twenty years had done to some of my high school buddies. But never the less I had become soft. My dinners were starting to resemble death row inmates last meals and my clothes were shrinking. And I can't tell you how many resolutions contained the phrase: Get in the best shape of my life.

So the next day I went down to the gym and weighed myself. Result? Two hundred three pounds on my 5'11" frame. That's an increase of almost forty pounds since high school. And while I know that's an unreasonable weight for me to get back to, I decided right there that this will be the year. If I am serious about this Forty Nine and Counting, than what better time to start. And so I have begun. After skimming through every known program out there, P90X, Weight Watchers, Weight Busters, LMNOP, and any other of the hundreds of thousands of programs, I settled on one. The reason was simple. It wasn't a magic plan but teaches how to eat right and exercise. AND every week you have a day you can eat whatever the hell you want! I'm in! Even better was the fact I didn't have to spend a dime and checked the book out at the library.

And so...week one I find myself down three pounds and the tape around my waist actually showed improvement! But, as I thought what would help motivate me I decided, why not post the result? And so we begin. Week one is behind me and up goes the first picture. I have decided to post one a week to keep me going. Why no face? To borrow a quote from Whitney Houston, "Hell to the no!" I have children and I'd like to keep it that way.

It's Never Too Late to Write

For all of you who think it might be too late to make a life as a writer (or as anything else you have your heart set on), let me direct your attention to this great article by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker.

In particular, you’re going to want to read the opening story about a writer named Ben Fountain.

Seriously, you guys. Becoming a professional writer is more possible than you know. You just have to get over your fears and excuses and START RIGHT NOW.

How Not to Act Old

Dan Kadlec is co-author of The Power Years, a guide for boomers. E-mail him at boom_years@moneymail.com.
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(Money Magazine) -- So you've discovered how to network on Facebook and LinkedIn and you've even been known to forward the occasional YouTube video to colleagues. Well, don't go congratulating yourself on how au courant you are just yet.

Professional networking sites and online videos are, like, so last year, compared with blogging, twittering and other new techniques that are rapidly emerging as useful, even necessary, workplace skills.

If you don't know how to integrate these latest communication technologies into your workday - or worse, you resist them altogether - you run the risk of appearing old and hopelessly out of touch.

That isn't good anytime, but it's especially perilous in a weak economy when, as a mature worker with a relatively big salary, you're most vulnerable to cutbacks.

Want to be seen as vital and youthful (in spirit if not in years) in today's workplace?Here are four tech skills that folks under 35 know almost intuitively and that I'm trying to master now to avoid being seen as old ahead of my time.

Texting
Odds are, you already send the occasional text message from your cell phone to your child or spouse or to vote for your favorite contestant on "American Idol."

Yet texting in a business setting is different, a way of imparting vital information without the distraction of conversation. It's particularly useful in situations where staff members work in disparate locations, are on the road a lot or keep irregular hours.

In those circumstances, boomers tend to favor phone calls and e-mail - technologies that are practically Jurassic to younger coworkers, who will check their phone log but hardly ever listen to voice mail. Meanwhile, e-mail lacks immediacy; by the time it's read, it's old news and, if written by a boomer, likely rambles on too long.

Just make sure you adhere to the unspoken rules of business texting. First, reserve your texts for communications that are brief, factual and important.

"Texting is great for information someone needs right away," says John Challenger, CEO of the outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas. "It's about giving someone a number fast, not the analysis of that number." Learn and use common shorthand like "YT?" (You there?).

And forgo proper punctuation, which can make you look stiff (caps are entirely optional). But don't get cute with any shorthand you know from your kids - OMG! - which will make you look like you're trying too hard.

Wikis
A wiki is a Web page where team members can post information that relates to a certain project. Other team members can see the information instantly and comment on it, add to it or correct it.

It works a lot like Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, only with office wikis, access is restricted to people with info you trust, not open to the general public. Boomers have always relied on the big meeting or conference call. But wikis render them practically obsolete, with updates that are instant and transparent.

Want to set up your own wiki? Get the ball rolling at wetpaint.com or socialtext.com. It's easy. Honest. But at commoncraft there's an explanation.

Twittering
This is the newest of the new. "Six months ago I thought it was useless, a waste of time," says Josh Levy, 28, a Web entrepreneur. "Today I can see how much more productive it makes me."

How so? At twitter.com more than a million people around the world write short, frequent diary entries about what they are doing or thinking right now (similar to status updates on Facebook).

Much of it is garbage. But the site lets you choose which twitterers you want to follow, and some are serious people grappling with serious issues. Through twitter you can essentially hear them think out loud.

For example, when Levy and his partner Ross Cohen, 27, were raising money for their Web site BeenVerified.com, an online background-checking service, they learned about the process by following the twittering of a prominent venture capitalist.

Says Cohen: "We had access to his reasoning and could really learn from it." Through Twitter.com they found and hired one of their first employees and discovered Crowdspring.com, where they were able to outsource their logo design work and get 153 proposals for a sliver of the price they would have paid a designer offline.

Knowing how to mine the Web for cost-efficient hiring and resources is an increasingly important skill, and twitterers share this stuff all the time.

Blogging
A smart, entertaining blog that pulls in Web links, photos and video clips can help build your professional profile and shape you as a thought leader. It can also create previously unforeseen business opportunities.

Pamela Redmond Satran is a writer who noticed that her boomer friends spent a lot of time talking about what their children were doing - not what they were doing. "They sounded so old," she said.

So just for fun, last June she launched a blog at hownottoactold.com. It got some notice, and within months she had landed a book deal (due out in August 2009).

It's easy to start a blog at wordpress.com. Whether you want to make the effort is another question. Blogs are worth your time only if you have a noteworthy topic to explore and are willing to work at putting forth interesting views and to stick with it.

Not your thing? Be a regular reader of blogs instead. Surfing the blogosphere, like reading twitterers, can expand your views and lead you to online resources you'd never find on your own.

Search for interesting blogs at technorati.com; then open a free Google Reader account and have new postings from your top blogs automatically sent to your inbox.

"People may take the attitude, 'Who needs this stuff?'" says Satran. "Well, there was a time when people asked, 'Who needs indoor plumbing?'"

Will mastering these technologies guarantee that you'll keep your job? Of course not. But it may help. And you might as well get used to them because this stuff isn't going away - that is, until something even more baffling comes along.

How layoff-proof are you? We want to know what moves you're making now or have made in past downturns to keep your job. Did you step up and take on additional responsibilities? Or agree to a pay cut? Solve a critical problem for your boss? Or make yourself indispensable in some way? Send us your photos and videos and share your strategies that are keeping you off the unemployment line.  

The biggest raise you'll ever get

I Never Liked Clowns

What Makes the Man in Your Story

So I came across a study performed by a group of university psychology professors. In the study they "proved what car-dealers have boasted for generations. The car one drives is key when it comes to turning a woman's head." But is it that simple? Could my protagonist land the leading lady because he drives a two hundred thousand dollar car?

The university team showed women pictures of the same man sitting in two cars - a silver Bentley Continental and a battered Ford Fiesta.

The women, who were aged between 21 to 40, picked the man sitting in the Bentley ahead of the same man in the Ford. The researchers say the men tested in the same way are not impressed by whatever car a woman drives because they judge purely on her face and figure.

The article got me to thinking about how readers, if not given all of the information, can jump to conclusion and why it is the responsibility of us, the writers, to really know and understand our characters. Take the above study for example. What is it about the men that made them attractive to the women of the study? Was it really just the car they were in? Or is there more to the story that we, the reader, should understand?

I raised this topic at a recent dinner party (it sounds much more elegant and high brow when I call it a dinner party when in reality it was a few of the neighbors over for burgers)and was fascinated by what I learned. I was able to get deeper inside the female mind and learn more about this phenomenon. To finally get real answers to how the short, doughy bald guy was able to land the leggy, beautiful blond.

You see, when women see a man in an expensive car there is something that comes along with it that is what attracts women to them. Yes, the car will get the women to look but why? In a woman's mind they see drive and ambition. A man driving the expensive car more than likely worked hard for it and that is what's attractive to women. And also, there is security. Women more often than not associate money with security and not always shopping. Women are not as visually stimulated as men are and therefor do not need the eye candy men so desire. They want a man with drive and confidence. That's what's sexy to them. Believe me. You introduce a woman to an attractive man who drives a Porsche but has the personality of a car wreck and the ambition of sidewalk slug and see how long it lasts. Don't get me wrong. The car will get the womans attention but not keep it.

And so I thought about how to bring this to my writing and challenged myself. Can I make a character desirable to women without making him six two with perfect hair and a movie star smile? Can I put together someone who has the traits that truly make him the affection of all women?

This is a challenge all writers face. Understanding the psychology of people and developing characters that draw people in and make them more real. Focus on the short doughy mans ambition, his drive, his passion for success and you'll have a character that women are attracted to and men envy. Show us and don't tell us what makes him attractive to women. It's easy to come up with a handsome leading man who has the world at his finger tips but challenge yourself to paint a picture using human traits. And give him a few flaws! People empathize more readily with a strong protagonist with realistic flaws.

However, as much as I hate to admit it, the women in my story for the most part drive nice cars. But they have pretty faces and big boobs.

Creative and Amazing Artwork

Canon Pixma: Bringing colour to life from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

I write...and say goodbye to friend

As I head into the weekend and reflect, it's those six hundred words a day I type out into my laptop that give me a feeling of accomplishment. I have seen characters develop attitudes I didn't see coming and out of no where, a nice little subplot appeared. And I'm beginning to understand the "just write" mantra. In the past, I would wait until something came to me and then write it out. The only problem was, if I wasn't sitting at my computer, the ideas just weren't there and that led to frustration. I was thinking there just wasn't any hope of coming up with an entire story that would be worth reading.

I have no idea why we sometimes don't listen to people who have been there and done that and instead choose to keep doing things the way we've always done them and getting the same results. Is it laziness? Or possibly arrogance? One author whose work I enjoy, Harlan Coben, happened to be on the cover of Writers Digest and in the article he talked about finding time to write, making yourself write and eventually quantity leads to quality. Coincidentally, this past summer I picked up his first book he ever wrote, Play Dead. He wrote in the jacket that he didn't want to re-write and publish it but instead wanted to put it out the way it was written over twenty years ago. And as a fan of his it was honestly refreshing to see something that in no way resembled his books of today. Plots were weak, characters didn't jump off the page and the dialogue was lacking. But what this allowed me to do was see how much he has grown as a writer by nothing more than keeping at it with a passion to do what he does now. And in the article he, like any writer I ever see interviewed, said you have to find time to write and if you don't you're just making excuses. And with that I continue to plug along, six hundred words a day, and watch my little novel grow.

On a sad note, Borders declared bankruptcy this past week. And living in a city where less than two years ago a Borders sprung up within walking distance from my house, I waited anxiously as they announced which stores would be closing. And as I perused the list, hoping to not see our little city on that death list...it was. And for over a day now, a sadness has followed me and this morning it hit even harder as I opened my e-mail, only to find an announcement to come on down and buy everything from 40%-60% off. I hung my head, feeling I just couldn't do it. It would be like a vulture picking the meat of a dead carcass until only the skeleton remains.

And so I say goodbye Borders. I will miss you. You have been there when I needed to get away and just read while enjoying a cup of coffee. You have provided me countless books which now line my shelves as well as books for my children. And while I know there are decisions in business that have to be made, this is one I wish never happened.