Dear A-Hole: Someone stole my shit. I must be famous.

| Published 21 March, 2011 | 13 Comments

A little while ago I wrote a book about freelancing. It has been downloaded a few thousand times and is still, despite being a couple years old (update coming soon), earning me nice comments and being spread around amongst friends. And possibly enemies. I like that.

What I don’t like so much is that someone ripped it off.

And what I really don’t like is the way I found out.

Most of you know I run an ebook and web design business. Well the other week, someone wrote and said, “Hey, here’s my new manuscript. Do me up a good book design!”

As I looked his book over to get an idea for design, I saw my own words staring back at me. It was my writing, my book, not so carefully camouflaged with a replaced word here and there. Either he’d forgotten he’d stolen it from me or he’s wicked ballsy. Because that’s like stealing a car from someone, then bringing it back later and asking the owner to vacuum it out.

Now I’m not here to complain about it. K, maybe a little, but I’m done now. Truth is there’s much more writing where that came from and no damage has been done. After all, my original book is a freebie.

Plus, I think people are basically good, even though that goodness may at times hide underneath a thick candy shell with the word “idiot” stamped on it. When I confronted him on the thievery he admitted it straight out and apologized profusely, thus proving my point.

But I’m not going to happily stand there while someone punches me in the chops either.

So what can I say?

First, thanks for coming clean. You could have lied about it when I asked …

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Posted in Business Essentials, Happy Living, The Lighter Side | 13 Comments

Forget what you want to be. What do you want to have?

| Published 16 March, 2011 | 7 Comments

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

You’ve maybe been asked that question a few dozen times. For parents and teachers and career counsellors, this is a pretty standard question. Too bad we so often can’t answer it.

These well-intentioned folks ask you what you want to BE so you can figure out what to DO in life so you can HAVE what you want. It’s supposed to be an easy formula that will get you on the right track.

BE → DO → HAVE

It makes sense and it seems like it should work just fine, but what usually happens is this:

Them: “What do you want to be?”

You: “I don’t know. I guess maybe a writer.”

Them: “Great. So what do you need to do?”

You: “Write, I guess.”

Them: “Sweet. And what will be the result that you have?”

You: “Uh…money?”

Them: “Yay!”

But not so yay. Nothing has been defined here. All the writer knows from this is that he can call himself a writer and should probably write.

Now, I know this little BE → DO → HAVE formula has been around a while; I’m definitely not the first to bring it up.

Nor am I the first to remark that this formula is built backwards. And it’s because it’s built backwards that talking to people about what they want to BE often goes exactly nowhere.

It goes nowhere because, at best, it produces a vague generality like “I want to be a _.” And at worst, it produces “I don’t know what I want to be, get off my back” as an answer.

Knowing what you want to have can clarify your life

What it means for a musician

“I want to be a musician,” dude says.

All well and good, …

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Posted in Business Essentials, Getting Traffic, Happy Living | 7 Comments

Ignite Living is Updated

| Published 16 February, 2011 | 4 Comments


After a long break, Ignite Living is back and sporting a new look.

Why a new look? Well, I’m a tinkerer and I just wasn’t happy with the look of the site for a while. It wasn’t “Ignited” enough to suit the name and subject matter here. And as a result of that, I’ve spent far too much time piecing together a little update here, a little update there, all in hopes it would eventually arrive at ZING! And what I really want to be doing here is writing. A lot.

So what was really needed was for me to stop polishing little nuts and bolts and just rip the whole thing down.

Which I did, and here we are. I hope you like the look of the site because it’s going to be like this at least throughout 2011.

Now I get to write. A lot. And I’m very very very happy about this.

Been missing the writing. Been missing the emails and comments from Ye Olde Readers.

Looking forward to spending the year with you all.

Cheers,

Charlie

Posted in The Lighter Side | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Aesthetics – Because People Do Judge by the Cover

| Published 10 November, 2010 | 2 Comments

Dude comes to pick up your daughter for the prom in a rusty old jalopy. When he opens the car door a noxious plume of smoke pours out. When the smoke clears you see he’s wearing cut-off jean shorts and a plaid shirt with no arms.

Dude may be the next Einstein or Newton, but he sure as shit ain’t taking your daughter anywhere.

Aesthetics matter.

You go to a coffee shop and order a drink. It comes in a raggedy styrofoam cup with bite marks around the rim and what appears to be a faint lipstick smear. Could be the best coffee in the universe, but with a treatment like that, you’ll never even try it.

Aesthetics matter.

Your physics teacher comes in on the first day of class. (True story, this one.) He’s hugely fat, and wearing what appears to be a circus tent for pants. On his head is a massive nest of grey hair shooting in every direction. He’s got on a plain white t-shirt, on the front of which is an entire plate of spilled spaghetti. He paces the floor as he speaks, alternately teasing knots from his hair and rubbing his temples as if he’s about to die of headache.

And he was an amazing physics teacher. He was, really. But it took us all about a week to realize he wasn’t just some random insane dude who’d murdered our professor and taken his job.

Aesthetics matter.

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Posted in Business Essentials, Making money | Tagged , | 2 Comments

5 Reasons Your To-do Lists Might not be Helping Very Much

| Published 3 November, 2010 | Leave a comment

To-do lists are all about saving time. And time, as they say, is money. So here’s a quick analogy to start this whole thing off:

When you put money into an investment, it’s with the promise that you’ll get more money out later. Banking, real-estate, commodities…each is built on the idea of letting your cash grow while you try to forget that it’s there tempting you.

Generally, this works out quite well, until a WorldCom or Enron comes around. In which case you might as well just burn your house down. I don’t know why that would help, but at least you’ll be able to find some red-hot coins lying around in the cinders. Then you can buy some PopTarts.

To-do lists are built on the same philosophy. You put in a little time up front to make the list, thereby saving more time that would have been spent twiddling your thumbs and walking around in circles.

But like Enron in the financial world, some people should probably go to jail for the way they abuse their to-do lists. With that in mind let’s look at how to-do lists get abused:

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Posted in Business Essentials, Happy Living | Tagged , , | Leave a comment