Escape From Pianosa

Well I’ve been running this blog for about a little over a year now. It started as a real estate blog called Carter’s Adventure and then moved to its present domain. I’m shutting it down. I’ll leave the site up, but no more posting for the foreseeable future.

I’ve been thinking a lot this past week about “what is this blog about.” Because that’s really a central question to any successful blog. Is this a blog about my daily life? Funny things going on? My real estate misadventures? Improv? Marketing? Liberty and being a libertarian? All of those things? That’s way too many topics for a successful blog.

And so I think it’s a good exercise for anyone to go through, to try and create a blog. So they can think about what their brand is and what they want their identity to be and what they can offer to the citizens of the internets.

The irony is that I’m never short on things to write about. I have about 50 draft topics waiting in the queue. But every time I go to write one of them, something comes up. A little mental resistance. I’m not really sure where that comes from but I’m going to listen to it now. I may start up again in a month or a year from now. As I get more involved in online marketing I may choose to start another website that deals with those specific topics. In the meantime, if you’re a friend or just interested in what I have to say, you can stay subscribed to the RSS feed.

So Dwight has overcome his struggles with the self-aware computer and focused his energies on ‘agrotourism’? Really, agrotourism? Ok. Tell me more Dwight.. Agrotourism is a lot more than you think… “it consists of tourist coming to a farm, showing them around, giving them a bed, giving them breakfast.”

And Hey, Micheal is doing improv! Back to his roots. “You can do a scene where you pretend you have a car” like when I used to do scenes where I pretended I had a job. Or that I didn’t live with my parents.

“In the Shrute family, we have a tradition where when the male has sex with another woman, he is awarded with a bag of wild oats.” I’m so on board with you Dwight.

Ok and what’s with the squirrelly Amish type running around?

And no…not telemarketing Micheal. You sell out. I so wanted to see him doing improv, or nonimprov. An improviser pretending to be a nonimproviser, improvising. If that makes any sense. Seriously, how much will it take to see this? I’m pledging $50.

Apparently the squirrelly Amish type likes to throw shit around! Mose!

Dwight’s reading Harry Potter to Jim and Pam. Mose likes the hobittses, they have his ring, yes?

Poor Dwight, moaning in the night. Can we get him his oats already?

I see Ryan is now actively attempting to be a complete douche bag. “Hey guys, how’s my favorite branch!?”

And up pops the toolbar. That’s what she said.

If I had money problems, would I do this? Hm, not a credible signal Michael.

“But you need to access your uncrazy side.” God he’s so smooth. “Slow down. Think it over.” So smooth.

“Lord Rupert Everton. A shipping merchant who raises fancy dogs. That’s the life.” Indeed!

Runaway train never coming back… and it ends a bit slowly but good to see Dwight refinds himself. And I just found his blog…

These are the contents of 1985 Dwight’s Time Capsule:

1. A dehydrated beet sculpture of myself holding a very small metal box meant to represent a miniature version of the time capsule. I was very much into beet miniatures when I was teenager. I did not, however, know my “BeetDwight” would shrivel into dehydration. That occurred because of science, not intention.

I had dinner tonight with my friend from college, Dave Ford. He’s got a really amazing travel story going, not to mention a powerful message: you can quit your job, travel the world for a year, and change your life forever if you put your mind to it. In his own words:

I worked my ass off for 6 years, put some cash in the bank, and set off to see what else was out there in the world. What I am finding is completely rocking my world. Life has never been better. I have walked through Penguin colonies in Antarctica, climbed mountains, layed on some of the best beaches in the world in Brazil, and have stood in front of wonders of the world. I am just getting started…. Currently less than 20% of Americans hold Passports. If you do not have one, go get one and see what else is out there. I promise you will not regret it.

After tackling South America, he’s headed off to Africa in January for another six months of amazing travel stories and videos. I’m going to help him take his current blog, which is now hosted at Blogspot, and set him up with his own domain, a clean and powerful WordPress blog, and some effective ways to get his message out and build up an audience.

As I work through the improvements in his blog and his online marketing, I’ll post updates here and hopefully this will serve as a guide to moving from blog hosted by a third-party to a more serious and professional blog, hosted on your own site.

In the meantime, I definitely encourage you to check out what’s going on in his life at his old blog, soon to be new and improved. For some intense reading, check out his adventure with the hallucinogen Ayahuasca.

I agree with Jackie. Meetings with agendas and objectives suck.

I’m very thankful that my current work situation doesn’t involve endless meetings. It does involve a lot of creative collaboration and ad hoc discussions, but nothing of the “sit in the conference room with 15 other people and watch PowerPoint” variety.

When I worked for the government I sometimes spent hours a day in long, boring, and mostly pointless meetings where two people would take up 90% of the conversation while everyone else sat around trying to stave off sleep. Some days I would be in meetings for four hours out of the day.

I used to think of a girl I had a class with in college. On the first day of class she told the professor that she was narcoleptic, so hey if I fall asleep, it’s just my condition. She never fell asleep in class and I don’t know if she was really narcoleptic but it seemed like a brilliant ploy at the time. And I would sit there at the one-hour mark of some status meeting thinking oh God why didn’t I use that narcolepsy bit when I started working here.

So why not unmeetings? Just send off an email and say “hey, a few of us are going to talk about the marketing strategy for the client at 10am. Stop by if you have something you’d like to share.”

I love these Seinfeld commercials. I don’t understand why advertisers don’t use these story commercials more often… stories that are three short episodes shown during a TV show. People love stories. Maybe they’re worried about channel-flipping? I don’t know who could tune in to The Office and turn off the TV before it’s over.

Dwight vs. the self-aware computer. I love it. The singularity will not be televised, it will be IM’d to your desk.  God this show is great.

Good news and bad. The good news is that I won my fantasy baseball league (finally!) and there are sweet sweet prizes involved.

Congratulations! Your outstanding performance in this season’s Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Baseball PLUS competition has made you the potential recipient of one of our League Winner Prizes — a championship bobblehead or t-shirt commemorating your achievement.

The bad news is that Maryland state law prevents me from claiming my prize…

As stated in the Official Contest Rules, to be eligible to receive a prize in this contest you must be…a U.S. resident NOT living in a jurisdiction where the contest is void (Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Vermont, Montana, Louisiana, New Jersey, Arkansas, Tennessee, overseas U.S. territories, possessions, commonwealths and military installations, and where otherwise prohibited by law…

If I wasn’t a libertarian before, this would’ve convinced me. I want my bobblehead!

Being in a high-paying but miserable job is a nasty combination. Really really nasty. It’s easy to leave a bad job that pays poorly. What do you have to lose? Worst-case scenario, you’re back in another miserable job.

But being in a miserable job that pays well; that’s really tough. Because every day your mind is wondering why you are here, in this boring office, surrounded by people you can’t stand, doing meaningless work. Why would you, logical you, subject yourself to such torture? Because the money’s good, your mind thinks..it must be. It must be amazing and magical if you’re willing to sacrifice your happiness for it, right?

So you become obsessed with the money and start to place irrational value on it.  And it gets really hard to leave because your mind’s convinced that the pain is worth it. And you start looking around for something new, and oh doesn’t that look interesting!

But you’re entry level and you’re not going to make as much. And what if the new job is even worse? What if you’re just as miserable, except now you’re only making half of what you made before. Wouldn’t that make me look like a big idiot?

Yeah, it’s a vicious cycle. So be careful what job you take for the money. Unless of course it’s “fuck you” money. You should probably take the fuck you money.

I did an improv workshop for Aaron’s Intro to Entrepreneurship class at the local college. It was my first time on the teaching end of improv and it really brought home for me just how much improv has changed my life, and I am still very much a novice.

A year ago, I would’ve been extremely uncomfortable getting up in front of an audience like that. I still get nervous in public speaking situations but I find that it’s an excitement energy instead of a fear energy.

I love improv’s power to change people in positive ways–in just a two hour workshop, everyone was noticeably more open in their body language and more comfortable being the center of attention. From shyness and fear to comfort and confidence–it’s a beautiful thing to see and feel in a human being.

I just started watching The Office and I’m kicking myself for missing the past three seasons. Michael is a brilliant character and he’s already taught me something about online marketing:

Michael: “Business to business. The old fashion way. No blackberries. No websites. I would like to see a website deliver baskets of food to people.”

Indeed!

Thank you Nora, you said some very nice things about me. My run as a freelancer (which included a lot of real estate and some dabbling in writing among other things) has come to an end, at least for the foreseeable future. My first job is at a small online marketing firm in Baltimore and I’ll be working on Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which is something I enjoy immensely–although I didn’t really realize it until about a month ago.

I’d fallen into the habit of taking my friends’ websites and finding a dozen or so things that they could be doing better. Like, hey you need to have a blog so you can interact with your customers and you need to be building links to your site and you need to improve your layout so it’s more user friendly, and all sorts of other ideas for building up traffic–things that I’ve learned and implemented with my various web properties over the last few years. Well lo and behold, you can get paid to do that! It’s a natural fit for me.

My other job is more of an internship with a nonprofit in the DC area, where I’ll be working part-time for the next few months. That allows me to pursue one of my other passions in life, which is spreading the message of freedom; a brand evangelist for liberty if you will.

And don’t worry Nora, I plan to keep my entrepreneurial approach to life and work.