Having come from an abusive background I spent most of my life not recognizing unsafe people. I don’t mean the ones who will rob, beat, steal and rape you - but the ones who say they’re your friend, then betray, use or abandon you. They’re generally charming, funny, intelligent or have some great first glance personality gold going for them. Then you need them, or trust them or interact with them and they disappear, withdraw or leave. You know the ones. We’ve ALL encountered them. Some of them have been …

I spent most of the day yesterday troubleshooting and then wiping my hard drive clean and reinstalling about a zillion pieces of software and resetting preferences on my MacBook. As most of you know, my Mac is on its third hard drive, third power cord and third battery in four years. Thank God for Apple Care or I could have paid the equivilent cost of five new computers by now. Apple, for future reference, does not replace its lemons. It replaces the parts in them. So factor in the time …

I bid on freelance projects on several websites - including elance.com. I’m also invited to bid on projects or submit proposals for projects or am flat out hired hourly.
Today I received several emails telling me, “Your rates are too high.” What they meant to say was, “I can’t afford you,” and what they really, really, really meant was, “I don’t want to pay that much.”
There’s a difference between saying “Your rates are too high,” and saying “I can’t afford that.” And that difference is VALUE. One …

Back when I had time to burn, I did. I never paid that much attention to how long something took, or the cost of doing one thing over another. I have some regrets about those days, but I don’t dwell on them. Recently however I’ve been paying more attention to my time - what it’s worth, who values it, how I spend or if I invest it. So I’ve started noticing some things - Like how little other people will value our time if we let them. It’s part …

I love serendipity. It gifts me with the most amazing people when I pay attention. I write for Airstream Life Magazine on occasion. And I recently got an email from the editor about a possible story after a photographer sent him some photos. Nice photos. Nice photographer. Great story. But then serendipity stepped in. Being insanely curious I started talking to the photographer (Alison Turner) because, well, I like to hear people’s stories. Turns out Alison likes to live out of her car just like me. She has a house, …