OK, here’s something new.  If you know me, you know that I am not a big fan of driving.  For one thing, I consider myself a below average driver, so if a competent driver would volunteer to tote me around I would be overjoyed.

But since that doesn’t seem to be happening any time soon, I try to find things to keep myself awake and engage while driving.  Long drives are a different animal, but the daily commute is a, well, daily challenge.

No, this isn’t the beginning of a series on my critical need for some kind of physical fitness routine. This is about conflicting priorities.

I have to write an article for our church’s magazine. The deadline is looming and I have to determine if I should be pumping out words here or there? This goes back to what I just posted the other day. There are times when you make a conscious choice to skip, to take a break, to be inconsistent. As long as you are consistent about your reasoning, right? Am I wrong on this? Make up your own mind.

So now the weekend is here. I have family visiting, this is a busy, packed day ahead. All good reasons to take a break - or set a standard for a periodic Sabbatical.

The rules are - there are no rules. Hmm, that seems scary or intimidating to me.

In trying to develop foundational habits, when do you make an exception? I can think of two times. 1) When you must and 2)When you decide it’s OK to.

A few questions for myself. If asked:

Do you pray? Answer: Yes, I pray often. Do you study the Bible? Answer: Yes, yes I do.

Oh, that sounds wonderful. But let’s go a little deeper…

Do you pray and study the Bible consistently??  Oh, well, uh, er.  Easier said than done.

I mean, I go on weekend retreats where I’m expending tons of mental energy.  I have visits with family that make a normal routine impossible.  With meetings and activities that I’ve signed up to participate in, life gets very busy.  And I have a personality that tends to be easily distracted.

This site has been left to it’s own devices since I was in the hospital a year and a half ago. I’m thinking about re-branding this place, adding some curtains and changing the direction.

I need a place on the web to just splatter random thoughts. A public-private partnership (that just sounds so good… I think every endeavor should have a public-private partnership. It just would be so integrated) between hopes and dreams and actions and plans. The name is snappy, the URL is short. It definitely doesn’t roll off the tongue. It’s also not something you could give a shout out to on radio or in a podcast (hint, hint). But that’s not the intention. This is a place that you either “run into” by searching for all kinds of weirdness - or I let it slip to you that it even exists.

Time to try something new. Time to see about making things stick. Time to inaugurate a new ritual. Time to make the power of habits work for me instead of against me. Time to get going. It would seem that 2009 was a bad year for writing to this blog. I stopped at the end of ‘08 and now it’s late February in 2010! I haven’t decided if it matters much that I have older posts on here from my attempts at getting started as an Internet marketer. I think it’s quaint and if you see the history there - then you know I haven’t decided to nuke them. Those old posts will stay for now mainly because I want this site to be a bit messy. I don’t want to get all up tight because it isn’t perfect, because I’m not perfect and I don’t want any of my internally voiced excuses to pull me down. It is what it is and I’m going to make incremental changes and improvements instead of trying to “unveil a masterpiece.” I have created a blogging schedule and we’ll see how it maps out. Basically I’ll be writing something to publish on Thurs - Sun. So Mon - Wed is idea generation time and preparation time. It may be too big of a bite to handle. Maybe I should start small and master just one post a week for a while. Maybe I should get some momentum going. Or maybe it’s just time to take action, to get started, maybe it is time to try something new.
Posted via email from Mykl Kelsey’s posterous

I’m trying to get a web site up and going. It has the potential to have definite social networking component to it. It’s running under Joomla! 1.5.7 (for now) and I’m looking for some extensions to really allow for interactivity.

Everyone recommends Community Builder. I guess I never figured that thing out. It just looks like a really fancy way to enhance user profiles. And without giving you extended group and private groups and all the things I wish Joomla! gave you out of the box. Maybe it does and I am a neophyte in the ways of CB. Then on top of that I guess I need to add FireBoard, something for media sharing, and something like GroupJive I guess for teams and such.

These next 3-4 weeks will be pretty stressful for me. I’m in the process of having some software tested and released. Why is this stressful? It’s not complete to my satisfaction!

Here is a thought about projects. I’ve used it in the software arena, but it may be helpful to you in other areas of your life.

There are only three things you can change to get a project completed. You can change the due date and give yourself more time to reach completion (the most sane option in my opinion).You can get help!  Have people join in.  For complicated projects, there will be a ramp up cost.  Don’t forget that.You can sacrifice quality and just “deliver something.“It has been the story of my life that I am rarely brave enough to use #1, I’ve never been wise enough to try #2 (although I’m eying that option very carefully), and I find myself time and again facing #3.

I was encouraged by a little nudge from Aaron over at Personal Development Partners to report on my progress from a committed goal of getting back to regular exercise in November.  Although the topic over there is very interesting, I would like to say a few words about the value of web communities.

People might wonder, “Why would I sit online and type short messages to people I may have never even met?”  Ok, for most other people they would be short messages - I don’t seem able to do that.  That’s neither here nor there; it’s not my point.  My point is that many people don’t see the point.  Get my point?

Andrew was a veteran at the Thirty Day Challenge. And he has decided to pursue an online career. He gave this video as a rationalization for why. This is really something to think about.

I added this article thinking that you’d be able to see the video here, but I guess you would have to leave the site by clicking on “read more” below…  I would like a better solution.

I was in the first grade at Brier Crest Elementary school.  Our school had three stories and the stair wells were in the center of the building with sky lights letting the bright sunshine to diffuse down and reflect off the white tiles.  I was headed back to my class after lunch and from the top floor one of the 6th graders looked down the stairs and saw me.

“Hey kid!” he shouted, “you wanna learn something to make you real smart?”

Here is some good copy - nothing to sell, but it draws you in.  I used Mike Mindel’s flickr tricks to do this article.  The copy came in junk mail from family - (if it’s from family, can you really call it junk?).  But I pulled the images into flickr and used them for linking…  That and ScribeFire made it pretty easy to pull together.

So does this copy effect you?  For what purpose?  Does it bring with it a call to action?  To have a better day?  To forward it to all your friends and family?  What do you think?  Comment and let me know your thoughts.

I am convinced that books are the key to success. They have no power in themselves. Even the great holy books from antiquity are merely ink and paper of some sort. Their power lies in the fact that books are vessels. Vessels of knowledge. Through books we can talk with predecessors long after they’re gone. We can interact and learn from those who would be far too busy to take the time to teach us these same lessons.

Everything that does start has to start some time. And so this is the beginning of a journey. It is my intention that if you come along with me, you’ll learn, grow, and change. It may be together with me, or it may be in opposition to me - but that you aren’t the same for having spent time here with me, that’s my goal.

So let’s see what happens!