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The cool thing about these pieces is that I never know where I will end up when I start them. I just pour some coffee, sit down, and start typing. I surprise myself with some of things I end up writing. My journal has a bunch of this type of stuff, and I am finding things in there that are springboards to other topics to write about.

Is the c-blog getting stale? I think it is because I keep revisiting the same basic topics concerning personal development, being blue collar, the higher ed bubble, McMansions, etc. Part of this comes from the fact that when I write about deeper topics such as the derivatives market, the nature of sports, politics, and the rest, this stuff is largely ignored. I've also developed an interest in Asian and Eastern philosophies as a sort of balance to my Greco-Roman studies. I'm reading up on Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, martial arts, the code of Bushido, and an entire area of understanding that I have only skimmed over during the past two decades. My head is swimming with all sorts of new thoughts and perspectives.

If you want to know what has been dominating my thoughts lately, it is the economy and the recession. I think this is why those familiar topics resonate so much. People feel as if they are waking from a massive deception, and I feel that I am showing the way out of it. I deal more with the political and economic aspects on Facebook, and I deal with the social and psychological aspects here on the blog. People are trying to rethink their lives in the light of the new reality. This is where the minimalist thing comes into play.

95% of personal development is a load of shit. Now, what does this have to do with economics? As Barabara Ehrenreich pointed out, leading up to the collapse of the bubble, people were steeped in this cult of positive thinking. I think this shit goes hand-in-glove with bubble economics. When the good times are rolling, people believe the bullshit. When the bad times hit, they want some reality.

A couple of years ago, I started reading these blogs on personal development. New terms were emerging like "lifestyle design" and "lifehack." Some of the advice was basic and practical such as how to get stains out of a favorite shirt. Other advice was the standard New Thought that gives the industry the flavor of bullshit. The two guys that emerged with the biggest presence on my radar screen were Tim Ferriss and Leo Babauta. These two guys could not be more different from each other.

Tim Ferriss has useful advice. But you have to use a filter with that guy. I was watching a vid with him one day, and he was talking about ways to drive traffic to your blog. He recommended using Google search times in crafting the titles to your blog posts. This is excellent advice. So, I googled "Tim Ferriss scam artist," and this lead to one of the most popular posts on this blog. I deliberately wrote that piece for no other reason than to test his idea. It worked. I would like to say I have done this with other pieces, but I haven't. The thing about this trick is that it doesn't turn one time readers into devoted readers. You aren't build a tribe like Seth Godin talks about.

Tim Ferriss is a slick marketer, and that is it. He is the king of self-promotion, but this is not a sustainable strategy. You need something more, and this is where Leo Babauta comes into the picture. That guy's success is totally different from Tim's success because it was unplanned, unexpected, and surprising. But if all marketing is telling a story, Leo told a story which is what inspired people. People love true stories. But Leo also had something different. He had good advice. Google "leo babauta scam artist" and see what you get.

It would be very easy for me to go totally negative and just go around trashing people. Or as I like to put it, "If you can't join them, beat them repeatedly." But I'm not wired like that. It goes against the empirical. You have to look at people as they are which means giving credit where it is due but also laying blame. Both Ferriss and Babauta have gotten both praise and scorn from me depending upon their viewpoints on different subjects, styles, etc. I aim to be fair. I also take my own medicine.

I am a fan of Leo. I admit it. I have bought at least three of his books and read all the other stuff he has for free on the internet. He inspired me to change my thinking even more on the issue of copyright. His lifestyle advice is stone simple, but it simply works. I am not perfect, but I find when things go crappy for me now it is because I have gotten away from those simple things. I come back to them, and it is all good again.

Before Babauta, my whole thing was TME--time, money, and energy. I just never had enough of these things. I would try things like seeing if I could get by on less than four hours per sleep nightly. I would multitask constantly with pretty shitty results. It was like having a bunch of plates spinning in the air until they would just crash. Then, there was the Ferriss advice I started reading as some way to make this chaos work. Tim was saying that letting those plates fall and smash might actually be a good thing. It isn't. When you overpromise and underdeliver, you come across as a complete ass. This would be Tim Ferriss. I'm sorry, but that guy is a total bubble machine. What I mean is that he seems imbued with that pre-bubble crash entusiasm and lack of sincerity. It is no coincidence that he got into angel investing and tech investing. If you wonder where the next bubble is, it is wherever Tim Ferriss is at the moment.

The Ferriss/Babauta thing got me thinking about the issue of authenticity which is where my blue collar theme comes from. I work a blue collar job earning a wage, but this is by choice. I have had many opportunities to go work in an office somewhere or do something requiring a suit and tie. During the height of the housing bubble, I had a real estate guy beg me to come work for him. He didn't have enough people to capture the momentum in that market. I declined his offer. I also declined to become a mortgage broker during this time. I've also declined three offers for promotion on my job. I choose this blue collar lifestyle. This is because it feels honest and authentic. I have watched those same real estate people without work, mortgage brokers facing criminal prosecution for shady dealings, and three bosses demoted or fired. It is a world of bullshit, and I don't want to be in it. I like my dirty job, and I like earning my living.

The thing I have learned is that there are limits in life. This doesn't mean that you can't do amazing and wonderful things. But all these things are constrained by what is real. This is the time, money, and energy thing again. I only have 24 hours in a day. I need 6 hours of sleep to function. I can only work so many hours in a week. I only have so much money to spend on activities, so sailing yachts is not ever going to be a hobby for me. You have to be realistic about these things. This is where Leo came into the picture.

Leo's answer to everything is to make it simple. He simply applied to self-development the same principles writers apply to their craft, designers apply to their products, and architects apply to their buildings. They all had a style, and that style was minimalism. With minimalism, you turn liabilities into assets. By learning to limit yourself, the limits of time, money, and energy disappear. You find you have plenty of all three again. This is what happened for me.

The biggest effect of this was on my leisure activities. I am a single guy with virtually no responsibilities. This results in a surplus of time and money. Now, I'm not rich. But my particular situation does allow me certain freedoms that other people don't have. I can go out and party all night. I can take a weekend trip to places on a whim. I can indulge many various hobbies with the full knowledge that my kids are not going to starve because I don't have any money. I have friends who have varities of hobbies from golfing to riding motorcycles to hunting to rock climbing to what have you. They don't even have the time or money that I have to spend on such things. So, I decided to give it some thought and think about the things I wanted to do and spend money on. Then, I flipped somewhere. I started seeing the nonsense in all of this stuff. This is where the triathlete bashing comes from because those folks represent for me the absolute pinnacle of a world of vanity. This is because it is a contrived sport that consumes the maximum of time, money, and energy.

I started to really look at the things people spend their time and money on for the sake of leisure. I found it mindblowing. You have people that own $30,000 boats that spend hardly 20 hours a year on the water. You have people that buy Harley-Davidson motorcycles that they hardly ever ride. I know these people. They buy all this shit on credit and make payments on it all. I would consider it money well spent if it resulted in greater enjoyment and satisfaction in life. But it doesn't. This is because this shit is virtually unused. If you doubt this, peruse the ads on Craigslist and eBay for all this equipment being sold slightly used.

I tell people they should go spend $300 on an XBox or PS3 system. This is because those things are relatively cheap compared to a boat or a motorcycle, and they get used heavily. For me, it would be my computer, my iPod, and my Kindle. I encourage people to do things they enjoy. I am not against the enjoyment. I just think spending money on high priced items you virtually never use is dumb. People scream at spending more for gas which is something they need but don't seem to mind making payments on that Jet Ski that collects dust in the garage.

The reason people buy this shit is for the sake of vanity and status. I regularly make fun of the Friday Parade of Weekend Warriors. These are the people with their gear strapped to the roofs of their cars or on a trailer behind their vehicle. Just the other day, I pointed out a car with a mountain bike and a kayak on the roof rack. I asked my friend if he thought the guy would do both the cycling or the kayaking. Or would he do one while someone stole the boat or the bike he left on the car.

The real reason that guy put his gear up there is to show off. I know this. The pleasure comes from parading it around town. I doubt he did either of those things. This is because South Carolina is a really shitty state for both mountain biking and kayaking. It's like having a snowmobile in Florida. Here, you can do any sporting activity you like so long as it is hunting and fishing.

I deal with this weekend warrior bullshit every Friday when I have to navigate a highway of boats and campers. Then, I have to deal with it on Monday when everyone asks me about my weekend. Now, don't get me wrong. I have a lot of fun in my free time. You just can't brag about it. This is because I spend the time writing on this blog, making smart ass remarks on Facebook, and reading books. We call this "goofing off." It would be way more glamorous to tell about a fishing adventure or rock climbing. But unless something goes wrong, these things are not that exciting which is why people end up with a bunch of expensive shit they don't use.

I have to give some credit to triathletes. They do tend to use the shit they buy. But a triathlete is simply a runner who wanted to buy shit. You don't see runners with their shoes on a roof rack on their car. You can't even tell if people run unless they wear a T-shirt from a race. This lead me to realize that there is an entire world of activities out there that are very fun, low cost, and require little to no equipment. Running is one. Bowling is another. Then, there is chess, billiards, bridge, board games, ultimate frisbee, and on and on. Yet, I hardly meet anyone who does these things. I meet way more golfers than bowlers. Why is this? Marketing.

You can't market bodyweight exercises. The best you can do is market the DVD. But you can market all sorts of exercise equipment. When there is something to buy, the marketing comes into the picture. Activities that require gear get promoted over those that don't. The result is that the non-gear activities are enriching while the gear activities are impoverishing. Essentially, all these weekend warrior types are a bunch of goddamn sheep.

The difference between people in my peer group and myself is that I am not making payments on anything. That's it. I have one friend who does a lot of weekend warrior shit, but he actually does those things. And he does it all on the cheap. He doesn't have any payments either. He's the guy who ends up buying your used stuff off of eBay for a fraction of the cost. If he ever grows tired of an activity, he turns around and sells the stuff to the next guy.

All of these things are related for me. I see all these topics as a comprehensive whole. I see the relationship between the Fed pumping out cheap money and the expensive unused boat in the garage of the McMansion and the bullshit jobs in corporations. These things are counterfeit. They are vanity. They are only made possible by bubble economics. It is not wealth but the illusion of wealth. As you understand these things, you see the divide in the entire economy between the real and the fake. It is the difference between an ugly uncut diamond and some cubic zirconia shit you buy off some TV shopping channel. You have to look beyond the surface and see what it is that you really have.

When people talk about downshifting, you get this idea that it means some sort of diminishment in the way you live. This isn't true. It is simply the difference between drinking a cup of coffee from Starbucks versus the cup of coffee from Dunkin' Donuts. I'm going to tell you that I have had both, and the Dunkin' Donuts coffee is much better. It isn't about being poor. It is about having things and experiences that are real.

People need to hear this message. The world is waking up from a bullshit delusion, and they are screaming at a reality they consider hell in comparison to the delusion. It is like getting that expensive boat repossessed. It is mortifying and humiliating. Your credit is trashed. Your fake status is gone. But you don't have that damn monthly payment anymore, and you didn't use the thing anyway. You find the freedom from it is more satisfying than the slavery to it. But a lot of people have yet to hear the message, and I am laughing at them. I'm not fooled. Other people can be fooled but not me. Debt does not inspire envy but pity.

So, I will end back with Leo Babauta. That guy is totally different from all the other people out there. He is real, and you can do the same things he did. I know because this is what I am doing. I came to this mindset kicking and screaming, but here I am. Less is more. Clear out the clutter and the bullshit. Simplify and enjoy the freedom it brings.

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