If you’ve known me personally for a while, you’ll notice that I tend to get very interested in certain topics for 4-6 month periods. During such a period, I’ll focus nearly all of my energy in learning everything I can about that particular topic. I don’t choose these periods, it just kind of happens that way.
This blog was started when my interest was focused on Spirituality. During the time this blog was broken, I became interested in, and later became bored with three to five months later:
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Board Games – I played classic games like Mille Bornes, Othello, Cribbage and Dominoes as well as newer “German style” board games like Lost Cities. Julia (my wife) shared this interest with me. In February we went to Genghis Con, a big Gaming Convention here in Colorado and had a lot of fun. Julia was disappointed when I lost interest in board games, but I suspect I’ll come back to this one soon.
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Entrepreneurship – If I could be paid to read about running a business, I’d be a happy man. (That isn’t to say I’m not happy as it is). Unfortunately, I tend to get really lazy when it comes to actually running a business. However, I went through a period this year where I read a ton of business books, fully intent on starting my own (non-Consulting) business. I read classics, as well as books and blogs on “Information Marketing”, running a software business etc. I had several ideas, but none of them really panned out. Looking back, its clear I was looking for a “get rich quick” plan, which I now realize can’t really work. The last book I read in this vein was “The Millionaire Next Door” which totally changed my perspective on the whole “get rich” issue and led to my next topic of interest …
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Personal Financial Management – After reading Thomas Stanley’s “The Millionaire Mind” I realized that I could get ‘rich’, without taking a bunch of risk, and without even doing a bunch of extra work. The key is this: Live on less than you make. Simply by going out to eat less, and visiting libraries instead of bookstores etc. I realized we could become wealthy, by Tom Stanley’s definition in about four years, much sooner than I’d ever thought possible before. Around the same time, I found Dave Ramsey, the host of a radio talk show on personal finance. In line with Stanley he advocates a detailed plan that involves paying off all consumer debt, building up a big emergency fund, then putting 15% of ones income to-wards retirement, then paying off one’s house ASAP. We are essentially on this plan. Using it, we’ve paid off our car, some credit card debt, and raised an emergency fund that will cover me being unemployed for up to 6 months should I lose my job. Although I’ve stopped reading on this topic, we still live on a budget. We still plan on having our house paid off in a little over 3 years from now!
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Programming – This is a recurring obsession that I’ve based my career on. This time I’m most interested in Artificial Intellegence related stuff.
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Mathematics and Movies – I’m now interested in these two topics. I’ll write more on these in future posts.
So, this blog will be a bit disjointed. Its probably not a good idea from a marketing standpoint, but I’m not trying to make money from this anyway