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!

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.

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.

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.

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

It’s 2011 and this year I started with a personal trainer for 3 months. Twice a week I killed my muscles and while I felt like it was good for me to go to a personal trainer, I hate that it took up time and was a fixed time. I like flexibility in my schedule… and in my body for that matter, though I have very little.

In April I started a low-carb diet for the 1000th time. It worked well for the first 10 days or so and then I started to get tired of it. The great thing about low-carb diets is that you do lose weight fast. Unfortunately, I like to eat carbs and I love variety and so this was a problem for me. Today I plan to start Weight Watchers for Men. I’ve got to keep after my weight-loss goals. It has been a life-long battle and I don’t like to count or measure. I don’t like to budget. I abhor having to limit myself and to say “No”, but I’ve got to start.

I’m still single. No dating prospects right now. I met a cool girl a couple of weeks ago, unfortunately she lives in Georgia.

I have been working on my second book. It’s autobiographical and it’s finished for the most part. I need to do a lot of editing and then I want to see about getting it published this summer.

I love my apartment. I currently live in Krum, TX and I never thought I would enjoy just a simple apartment with minimal furnishings. I keep it very tidy. This is new for me. When I had my house I was unorganized and there would be times my house would be a mess for days. I watched a movie called “The Mechanic” and I loved how organized and orderly Jason Statham was in that movie. I thought, “I should be like that”. The recurring theme throughout the movie was VICTORY LOVES PREPARATION. I love that. It is now the theme on my business cards.

Business has been booming lately. So much so that I can’t keep up with it. But that is a good thing.

I’m still working at Denton Bible Church and it is challenging. I’ve been there for a year and 4 months. It’s hard to believe. Time has flown by. Teaching 5th and 6th grade is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’d like to say, “But it’s also very rewarding!” but it isn’t. I don’t really see a lot of change in the students – nor do I expect to at this age. My goal is to teach them Christ and him crucified. To teach them how to share the gospel with others and how to glorify God in all that they do. I’m not sure how successful I am, but each week I pray that God uses me in spite of my inadequacies. I just make myself available and do the best I can.

In the youth ministry and in the church as a whole we are going through a rough patch right now. Thankfully the new sanctuary will be paid off this year and maybe when that burden is lifted we can focus on ministry more. It seems that everytime a new program is mentioned it is preceded by the phrase, “Once we get the building paid off”. I understand that this is a priority and I pray that it gets paid off soon and that we can move forward and grow and do more outreach.

Personal goals as always are to get on a budget and stick to it. To work on my health and physical fitness. And most importantly to grow in my relationship with Christ and to not grow weary in doing good. (Mark 6:9)

God Bless.

No I won’t ask you to just desert me…

This song Turning Tables is one of the best pieces of music I have heard in a long time. The haunting melody sticks with you and coveys the words perfectly. The overall package is an auditory gift.

But what good are these memories? They clutter up my mind and take up space. If my mental hard drive is only say, 1 terabyte, does it make sense that at some point it will get full? And if so, why can’t I pick and choose what I want to keep the way I sort through old clothes and send some off to Goodwill?

These are the things I think of when I can’t get thoughts out of my head. My brain is probably not that different than most, but I think most people like to think that they are something special. Like they have a unique way of thinking or organizing their thoughts. Or perhaps that they are more or less ADD than the next person. Whatever our uniqueness, I’m sure that we all are so much more alike than we’d like to admit.

So today while perusing the labyrinth of my mind I couldn’t help but think of all the waste. The hours I’ve spent in classrooms learning about statistics, algebra, geometry, and even calculus. If I’d spent the same amount of time on economics and accounting how much better off would I be? And what about other basic life skills? Cooking, cleaning, organization, responsibility – these are things that you should be taught in school – but instead we are forced to sit through hours of Geography and history and while I realize it is nice to know where Russia is, that knowledge has never once helped me balance my checkbook, pay my taxes, nor has it been asked in a job interview.

I feel the same way about church. Gasp! What actual life application have I done with all these countless hours I have spent listening to sermon after sermon? I feel guilty for not doing more with this information, sharing it more often, telling others about Christ. Could I be more beneficial if I got out of the Sunday School Classroom and started actually putting into practice some of what I’ve learned? I sit passively week after week listening to sermons, but do I ever share them with anyone other than other Christians? Do I take notes and if I do, do I ever bother to re-read them?

I will say the benefit of that painful memory, where I zipped my penis up in my zipper, well, that is a memory I’ll keep. It reminds me to always wear underwear and to not get in a hurry, ever, when zipping up. But for the other questions this post stirs up, I not have any answers. As I do spring cleaning on my brain, I can’t help but wonder what I need to put in the discard pile and what I need to keep.

In an effort to protect my family and friends – not that anything I did was really illegal, it is stuff that I’d like to remain somewhat disconnected from – unless I find that it hinders me from being able to use what my life has been about to help others. That is my goal in life, to help people be real. To allow men to be vulnerable with sharing their struggles. We all have them.

So yeah, that’s what’s new with me other than reading a lot with school.

Eddie

I miss the idea of LOST. But like a bad break-up, it ended poorly. I wish that they had made sense of those sideways flashes and a myriad of other things that never added up. They tried to wrap it all up with a tidy purgatory ending, but I would have preferred them to go back to their own lives at the exact moment that they were about to get on the plane and then they could have made different choices with their lives… or end them with an actual plane crash.

Through the whole season I couldn’t understand why Hurley didn’t lose some weight and there were a number of other loopholes that I may elaborate on later. All in all, I wish that it had a more satisfying ending.

What are your thoughts?