Quit Being Comfortable!

Life treating you nicely? Everything going well at work? Having fun on the weekends? Feeling, comfy? Watch out! Sooner or later that warm blanket sense of security you get from your daily grind will start grinding on your happiness. If you’re not careful you’ll slip into a dip of comfort and satisfaction, risking little, gaining little.

If you’re heading towards that dip, or feel like you’ve been stuck there for a while, fear not, it’s easy to shake yourself out of it. Put yourself on the line and increase your expectations.

It’s easy to fall into comfortable relationships, comfortable careers, comfortable routines and lead a comfortable lifestyle. However, once you’re in that position you start to wonder where the magic went. You can recall a time when you were excited and things sparked your interest, now, they’re just boring old routines.

Imagine those exciting times. That time you spent dating, forging that good friendship, interviewing for jobs, meeting the new team, notice a pattern? They were all challenging times when you had to push yourself and risk something.

Risk being ignored, risked be disliked, risked being rejected, risked failing. You had to work hard and make things happen. Look where you are now, no risk, no challenge, no real effort.

Do yourself a favor:

  • Join a local industry group
  • Give a public presentation
  • Attend a local lunch gathering
  • Update your resume
  • Start a new project
  • Learn a new skill
  • Make a new friend

Put yourself on the line, risk something, challenge yourself, flirt with the possibility of failure. The feeling you’ll get from all of this will tear that comfy blanket to shreds.

Blog Improvements and Updates

Tonight was the night of much needed updates and improvements to this here blog. It’s been a while since I spent a considerable amount of time doing anything major, but I did make some kinda-sorta-major updates, but those were mainly to the back end system. Hope everyone who’s visiting keeps enjoying it (or starts?)!

Thumbs Up!

Thumbs Up!

What’s New

  • Added comment display to post preview
  • Added post photo credit url field
  • Added post preview field
  • Added view all method to posts controller
  • Added view all link to post index
  • Added E-Mail link to sidebar

What’s Improved

  • Improved comment formatting display on post show
  • Improved photo display on post preview and show
  • Upgraded to Rails 2.1

What’s Changed

  • Changed popular post list display
  • Changed Photo re-size options

What’s Fixed

  • Fixed a problem with my paperclip plugin not being in my git repo correctly

In The Future

  • Add an AJAXy post-preview for the admin area
  • Add some styles so that the comment’s display better (damn reset.css)
  • Automatically post my git commit messages (_that_ should keep me honest)
  • Automatically tweet new posts via Twitter API (fun exercise)

Acting on Ideas

I’ve got a lot of ideas for various web applications, online communities and business opportunities. When I started writing these all down about a year ago I figured it would be something I’d stick with temporarily, but lose track of. Luckily I haven’t and I’ve managed to grow my list from a few concepts to about a dozen very well thought out ideas.

I really enjoy going through my list every once and a while improving, changing and evaluating my ideas, but I’ve recently been trying to actually act on them. I’ve found that implementing these ideas is by far the most challenging part.

Maybe I’m wrong but I think a lot of people feel like they’re particularly talented in some respect, but they just don’t have any good ideas. They’re great at wood working, but they can’t come up with an interesting design, so they don’t start. My advice to this person would be to come up with some design and build that table. Chances are they’ll find out that they’re not as talented as they thought, and they’ll learn things along the way. Add the benefit of the sense of accomplishment and it’s a great experience.

My whole point is, if you feel like you’re in a rut, or you’re unhappy with your job or you’re just feeling like you’re floating through life not really doing anything, grab onto an idea you’ve got and see it through to the end. You’ll be motivated to do it all over again, you’ll learn something and you will feel good about yourself.