Your New Year’s Resolution

Don't Work too Much

There was a recent thread on Twitter by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson of Basecamp concerning a 40 hour work week. The gist is simply that working more than 40 hours a week, whether for a startup or an established business, is both unnecessary and not productive for living.

If you make only one New Year’s resolution this year, resolve not to die working at your desk. Get out there and live!

Thanks for stopping by! Keep being awesome and inspired!

(Picture is from a Halloween prank at work. I laughed. Laughed a lot.)

Get the pictures via your favorite socials!
Follow Inspire My Awesome on:
Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

End The Year With…

End the Year With a Smile

As 2019 comes to a close, it probably had its share of ups and downs for your life. Don’t focus on the downs, focus on the ups.

And in case you wondered about the rest of this balloon, my nephew hung this for me when I was staying in his room while I was visiting them a few years ago.

End the year with a smile!

Thanks for stopping by! Keep being awesome and inspired!

(Picture is from my nephew’s bedroom, greeting me while I was coming to visit!)

Get the pictures via your favorite socials!
Follow Inspire My Awesome on:
Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

Level Ground

Level Ground

At The Vatican in Rome, Italy, you can walk up to the top of the dome. Most of the way it’s just a lot of stairs, but there is a point where the dome slopes. You have to walk down the path. It’s like walking in a funhouse, and your senses get all twisted, but the path is level and if you keep going you end up at your destination – the top.

Thanks for stopping by! Keep being awesome and inspired!

(Picture is from The Vatican, Rome, Italy.)

Get the pictures via your favorite socials!
Follow Inspire My Awesome on:
Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

Just Hang On

Just Hang On

You might be in a situation where it looks like there is a quick escape, but the quick may be fraught with peril. Maybe just hang on a little longer until you can see the better way out.

Thanks for stopping by! Keep being awesome and inspired!

(I do wish the picture was better, but the I did worry about the squirrel.)

Get the pictures via your favorite socials!
Follow Inspire My Awesome on:
Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

Let Others Hold You Up

Let Others Hold You Up

We all have days when we are weak, when we can’t reach the heights we want to get to by ourselves. That’s okay, sometimes it’s okay to let others hold you up.

Thanks for stopping by! Keep being awesome and inspired!

(Picture is from Coheed and Cambria, The House of Blues Chicago, April 30, 2011)

Get the pictures via your favorite socials!
Follow Inspire My Awesome on:
Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

The Sun is Still Up There!

The Sun is Still Up There

When I started learning meditation one of the lessons was that you will always have a “cloudy” day. Basically this means not every day is great, sometimes they will suck. To get through them, however, remember the sun is always up there. It might take a few days, but the clouds will part and there will be the sun again!

Thanks for stopping by! Keep being awesome and inspired!

(Picture is from an early flight.)

Get the pictures via your favorite socials!
Follow Inspire My Awesome on:
Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

Easy Dreams & Hard Dreams: Giant Checks, Pete Townshend, & Elton John

The other night, in my dreams, I was at a Costco. That’s simple enough, I suppose I needed big things. Weirdly, though, it appeared they were getting ready for a concert at said Costco. There were lights, a stage, and speakers in the area people are usually eating pizza. I asked the employee about the setup, and he seemed surprised. The situation was weird.

Upon closer investigation they were filming a commercial.

That seemed more weird.

An Old Pete Townsend and a Young Elton John

Up rolled Pete Townshend of The Who. I write, “rolled,” because he arrived in a wheelchair, and Pete is still able-bodied as of this writing. Why he was in a wheelchair, I have no idea.

Elton John in Concert
Elton John, getting to be an elder back in 1998. Photo by me, Andy Labis.

Next came Elton John. It was not Elton John the elder, but Elton John the younger, looking, well, like Elton John from the days of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”

Mind you I don’t recall thinking about either of these two fellows in the weeks leading up to this dream.

As the rock stars show up I tried to sneak pictures with my phone. It seemed like the phone was taking pictures, but every time I looked the pictures looked blurry, distorted, and generally messed up. Then, weirdly, my phone “squished” itself into a phone about half the size of my current phone, and I had to make it full size by stretching it.

And then I woke up.

Day Dreams and Night Dreams

Now, day dreams are easy to figure out. “I dream of winning the lottery!” That one has a pretty simple explanation, you want to hold a giant check in front of TV cameras. Or maybe, “I dream of having a big house!” Yup, you like vacuuming.

The tough dreams to figure out are the dreams you have at night.

Sure, there are a myriad of Internet places to analyze and interpret dreams. If you do the Google of “Interpret your dreams,” you might find a place called PsychCentral and an article by Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S. on how to analyze your dreams. At oprah.com you can learn about why your teeth are falling out, why you are cheating on your partner, and what an upcoming invasion by aliens might mean. There is something in The Huffington Post, of course, and someone named Laurie will tell you about your dreams at www.whatyourdreammeans.com, but only if you “share/like/follow or tweet my site on social media.”

Sadly none of the sites could explain an old, Pete Townshend in a wheelchair filming a commercial with a younger Elton John, at a Costco in the area where you might find yourself eating a slice of pizza. Well, Laurie might have been able to, but I didn’t feel like sharing her site on my social media.

Usually I can piece together something about a dream, but for this one I’ve got nothing. I suppose my mind is trying to figure something out about rock and roll and Costco, which is cool, but I maybe I should just get back to my dream of holding a giant check in front of TV cameras.

Thanks for stopping by! Keep being awesome and inspired!