When you do web design for a living you start to realize that it is ALWAYS feast or famine. There never seems to be a comfortable steady stream of work. Projects fly in all at once and before long you have this list of “To-Do’s” that is almost crippling. The problem is that you are afraid to say “No” to any project that has a dollar amount affixed to it because you don’t know when projects will just suddenly stop coming in – which does happen, if only momentarily.
After 3 years of being self-employed I’ve started to get used to this roller coaster but I’d like to get into a rhythm where I learn to ride the coaster and it becomes a joy instead of a nightmare.
Right now I’m working on 3 websites, one that has a logo project attached to it. Two PowerPoint projects. A mega tour launch for one client which requires a boat load of graphics and a plethora of new page designs. In total I have booked around 250 hours of work this month. But, around 50 hours of that will be unpaid hours going to and from clients offices, phone calls to take initial requests for projects and back and forth emails from prospective clients as well as day-to-day maintenance of running two businesses. Booking clients for DJ events and making out invoices and doing taxes.
Being self-employed is not easy – but I’m really not complaining. I don’t have to set an alarm in the mornings. I get to set my own hours – which translates to me working all the time – and I don’t have a boss, I have clients and that is much different than having a boss – even though I always had great bosses when I worked in the corporate world.
Anywho, I better get back to work, I just thought I’d make a quick post while waiting for some files to upload.
Cheers!
A couple friends of mine and I started a 30 day Paleo Diet Challenge on January 2nd. The diet will run through the 31st of this month and requires you to give up processed food and caffeine. So what can you eat? Most fruit, but they say eat mostly berries. Lean Meats, so no bacon or pork products – and nuts. So that leaves you with no bread, no dairy, and no sweets. Today is day 6 of this diet and I don’t feel any lighter. I sleep really well at night, but I can’t see any weight loss – which I think is why it’s so hard to spot weight gain!
My friend Jes asked me to post my daily menu which has proved harder than I expected cause I’ve been so busy, but, my days consist mostly of this:
Breakfast:
3-4 Eggs scrambled with onions
Snack – Cashews and Pineapple
Lunch:
Grilled chicken breast
Avocado
Mixed veggies – squash and zucchini
Dinner:
Fajita meat, brisket or some type of beef. I love beef. It’s what’s for dinner.
Vegetables – broccoli and cauliflower
I have not been weighing every day. In the past I have found that to be detrimental. If I see no progress I get very discouraged instead of just digging in and realizing that it is going to take time. I plan to weigh once a week and be happy with whatever weight loss I have. Loss is loss.
What do I miss most? McAlister’s Sweet Tea. I used to drink 4-5 glasses a week. I would order it half sweet half unsweet and I plan to get some on Superbowl Sunday. That will be my first “cheat” day after this 30 day challenge is up.
But… this “diet” is supposed to become a lifestyle. I’m still trying to mentally wrap my head around never having dairy or sugar or bread or anything artificial again for the rest of my life, but maybe I can cut those things back to like 10% of what I used to eat. So the occasional half-and-half and cup of coffee instead of 2-3 cups every morning. I’ve spent 36 years learning how to eat poorly, it’s going to take some time for me to figure out how to enjoy eating like this. Variety is the spice of life and right now mine is lacking variety for sure – but part of that has been because I have been really watching my carb intake as well. The fruits that I have eaten have been in moderation just so that I don’t get too many carbs and I burn the fat a little faster.
For now, wish me luck, I need to get below 300 pounds this year. It’s been too long that I’ve put this off… too, too long.
You could almost feel the seconds tick by. Every scene seemed to be a still frame that drew you in. A momentary clip of art that was created to elucidate some feeling. This is Drive.
The movie itself seems to have very little to do with the actual act of driving. When I left the theater I really only remember one thing: Ryan Gosling’s smirk that seemed to hide something dark and sinister.
The soundtrack to the movie is haunting and brilliant. It moves you along as if you are floating weightlessly on a primordial ooze. It is sort of an aural marijuana the way it detaches you from reality and sets you adrift on a parallel universe.
Each step of this movie seemed so intentional. The pacing was achingly slow at times, but instead of feeling cumbersome, it drew you in, it pulled at you like a vortex or a black hole leaving your heart pounding and senses heightened.
Drive wasn’t so much a movie, but an experience.
This film was directed by Nicolas Winding Refn.
Most of my life I did not understand the importance of community. To me I never labeled by group of friends that I served alongside of at church. I didn’t realize that my Ultimate Frisbee team was it’s own community group and the people that I worked with at work, as well as the guys and girls I worked out with at the gym were all community groups that I was a part of.
What makes community important? It is our community that shapes and defines us. We have this desperate need to belong to a part of something and if that something brings us joy and excitement, well, then all the better. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Stumbleupon, and a host of other online groups are all communities that people want to be a part of, but within those communities we place ourselves in much more granular communities.
Why is this important? Because we will go – and stay – wherever we find the most acceptance and comfort with who we are. If you are fat, you will often surround yourself with other fat people. If you are gay, then you might be in a gay community where you find acceptance and if you are pervert then there are a host of communities online that will accept you. Once you find that acceptance then you start to feel that you are “okay” with how you are because people love and accept you no inspite of your inadequacies, but because of your inadequacies. If you are fat and you suddenly slim down, you lose your fat friends. If you smoke and you stop smoking, your friends literally disappear in a puff of smoke. If you are single and you get married, well, more than likely you’ll see those single friends less and less.
That is why it is so important as believers that we “consider how to spur one another on toward love and good deeps, let us not give up of meeting together as some are in the habit of doing…” – as Christians we need to find acceptance in our church body inspire of our faults. We accept each other because our commonality is the love of Christ, not our muscle size, bank account size, the fancy shoes we wear or the type of sports that we watch or play.
Unfortunately, in many of our church communities we don’t spend time with each other on a real level. When we are at church or around our church friends we become a forced perfect version of ourselves. We don’t share our struggles. We don’t listen and we lack grace. But on an up note, I’ve noticed a big change in that in recent months and a new understanding of the importance of mentors, counseling, and community.
So go, join a small group, a sports team, or something positive where someone challenges you to be a better version of yourself. Don’t just fall into a groove of acceptance in a mediocre community that allows you to just exist and won’t accept you for who you are if you chance.
Recently I’ve been contacted by two clients who want to improve their ranking on Google. “How do we get on the first page of Google results?!” they asked. After taking a quick peek at their sites source code it was clear to see that they didn’t even have the foundational information for a high ranking on Google. As a matter of fact, they hadn’t even registered their URL’s, created a site map, or made sure that their site descriptions and meta data conveyed the right key word search information.
Did you know that:
1. Google has a lit of Webmaster Tools that will help you get your site indexed correctly?
2. You can register your site manually with most major search engines.
3. Social Networking does work wonders – Facebook, Linkedin, Google+, Twitter, Youtube, Vimeo, etc.
4. Using other sites to embed links for your site and keywords is very powerful.
5. Register your site with online services and directories like Linkedin and Yelp.
6. Once your site is setup correctly it still takes time for your site to move up in Google.
7. Updating your site with a blog is a good way to keep your rankings current and to increase your embedded key words.
8. Google actually has an adwords certification program to help you understand how to setup your adwords correctly.
9. Don’t just focus on 1 or 2 search engines. You may overlook valuable customers who don’t use Google and Yahoo.
10. You can use keyword phrasing in your pictures to increase keywords on your site.
11. Google Analytics are awesome, but so is Woopra: http://www.woopra.com/ Something I learned in accounting – you can only manage what you can measure.
These are just a few tips that will help get your site linked higher. When http://www.reiblaw.com, an attorney who specializes in family and divorce law in Denton, Texas asked me to look at his site I was so surprised at how little his site was setup correctly. Then another client, http://www.aaronstreeandfence.com asked me to setup his website and then later asked me to improve the SEO ranking. I told him that it takes about 10 hours to do the basic setup for a site SEO and then it is best to keep maintaining your site’s SEO by posting blogs, adding specials on Facebook and Twitter and embedding links.
Hopefully you find this information helpful and feel free to share your own tips and let me know if you are interested in link sharing: info at eddie renz dot com
