Hitting the Books...

Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book. ~AuthorUnknown (Photo credit: Nick Kenrick .)

Last time I talked about goals and mentioned that about a goal that I originally didn't start off with but was influenced by an acquaintance. That person is Rich Hopkins who is an outstanding public speaker and motivator who set a goal of reading one book per week for the whole year and gave a list of some of the books he was thinking of reading.

At first I didn't think that I could even come close to reading a book a week but I decided to put my one hour back and forth to school on TriMet Route 44 to good use. While we still have a couple of days till the half way point of the year, I have actually read 28 books so far this year and am currently working on one although I don't know if I will have it done by Monday.

The Year is Half Over...How are You Doing?

nanowrimo, day 16 goal (Photo credit: paloetic)

Hard as it is to think about, Monday will mark the half way point in 2014. While many people let it pass by without even thinking about it, I consider it a good time to look at what has been accomplished so far and what goals are you lagging behind in.

At the beginning of the year like every year I wrote down a set of goals. These are not New Years resolutions they are goals because the have the necessary qualities of a goal: specific, have a time limit, written down, achievable, and challenging.

I started the year with 18 major goals which all work toward my life goals. Then every month I set goals that work toward the yearly goals, weekly goals that work toward the monthly goals, and finally daily goals that work toward accomplishing those weekly goals. I will often end up with about 30 to 35 goals every week and will accomplish anywhere from at least 20 to often more than 30 of them.

Dump the stuff

Clutter (Photo credit: spykster)

     In this months NW Examiner newspaper which covers the northwest section of Portland, my friend Kate Washington has a great article on how she and her husband had to downsize their stuff when they moved from a house in Washington State to a apartment in Portland's Pearl District. The newspaper is in PDF format and the article itself can be found on page 16.

June NW Examiner 

     I have to be honest and tell you that for many years I was a major extreme pack rat. I would keep every scarp of paper because I knew that I would need it some day or it might be valuable some day. Of course all those papers, magazines, books, souvenirs, post cards all started to pile up. Now this wouldn't be so bad if you lived in the same place for your whole life but I moved 5 times as a child and have moved 15 times as an adult so all that stuff can really add up.

     My first big change came in 2004 when my father passed away when stuff just didn't seem to be that important anymore. Then the week before Thanksgiving in 2005 my mother suffered a stroke and ended up in a nursing home where she passed away in May, 2007. My brother and I had to make a trip up to Spokane where my mother lived and clean out her apartment. While we put much of it in storage we still ended up taking a couple of truckloads of assorted stuff to Spokane's Waste to Energy plant to dispose of it.

     After she passed away it fell to me to give take care of what was left. When it came down to it none of the family wanted what they were giving in the will because it meant nothing to them. All that stuff that my parents had saved over the years had was of no value or meaning to anyone in the family. It was eye opening to see how stuff we treasured as being so special ends up being nothing but something that someone else will get stuck hauling away some day. While there might be a treasure or two to be found in someone's life collection, most of it is pretty worthless.

    It was also about this time that TLC's show Clean Sweep came on the air along with a similar show on HGTV which really brought to life for me how much crap I had. While shows like Clean Sweep were dramatized, it did show what can happen with the stuff has control of you instead of you having control over your stuff.

    Over the next few years I cleaned out a large amount of my stuff but some of it still lingered because I was going to sell it online and make some money off of it. Then a couple of years ago we rented a house that was the biggest house I have ever lived in and of course you have to fill it up so it doesn't look so empty right? While that may be fine if your planning to stay in a place for 20 years and even then it can be a dangerous trend, we very well could be moving by next June which will probably be into a much smaller space. Therefore we have started purging in order to get the amount of stuff down by the time June rolls around next year.

     If your one of those people that is drowning in stuff, get help now. It has been proven that clutter can have detrimental affects on your health and productivity. Don't leave it for someone else to clean up after your gone, take care of it now and make life more enjoyable.
  
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Your Never Too Old...

Images of custom amirugami, an amirugami graduate in cap and gown. Self-made. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Three years ago I made the decision to return to school which is never easy for someone that is not the typical college age. In fact during a three month period my wife and I adopted a sibling group of 4 children out of foster care, moved to Portland, Oregon and then I started back to school.

Being older than the average college student I was nervous that I would stand up but as it turned out for the first two years I was only the oldest person in a class one time, other times there was always at least one and usually more than one person older than me. This year as I pursue my Master's degree I am now the oldest in my co-hort and there is a person in the same program that started last year who is one year younger than I am so it is not too bad.

However, despite the difficulties of going back to school might be, I have my father to look for inspiration and the knowledge that you are never too old to head back to school.

My father grew up during the Great Depression. After the 8th grade he was forced to leave school in order to help the family earn money. He then served in the Army during WWII in New Guinea and most of his friends did not come back. After the war he started a family and became a carpenter. He went to work at F.W. Woolworth stores where his hard work paid off and he eventually became a superintendent overseeing opening, remodeling and closing of their stores in the western United States. It always bothered him that he did not graduate but it never stopped him from working hard and doing what he felt was best for his family.

He also dealt well with the unexpected. Just as he thought he was done raising kids as my siblings were adults or close to it, my mother ended up pregnant with me and he ended up going through it all over again, but we both survived.  

In 1999 he was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer but after radiation treatments it went into remission. During the period of remission he (with some convincing from my mother) decided at age 81 to fill that void that had been there for so many years and get his GED. It took a lot of studying over a few month period but in 2001 my father officially became a high school graduate. Once he was done with the high school diploma he was ready to take on college! However, in 2003 the cancer returned and this time it was Bone cancer which can be one of the most painful forms of cancer but he wouldn't suffer long as he passed away on January 4th, 2004.

Its been more than 10 years since he passed away but he will always be an inspiration for never being too old to accomplish something you dream of.