So this week I started taking a landscaping design course in the evenings. Nothing too hardcore, just an intro to the general principles; I learned how to draft out the area I’m going to landscape and a few general principles about Florida greenery. Why am I doing this? I’m not a particularly outdoorsy person (although I enjoy being outdoors, just not working hard outdoors). I’m not a green thumb kind of guy. But as a personal development type of thing, I was looking at taking some finance/accounting classes and suddenly decided (with a little prompting from Bubelah) to try something completely unexpected.
To give a little background: the house we bought in north Florida has a beautiful backyard which is a large square, fenced in, with nothing but grass. No trees, no flowers, no shrubbery – a blank canvas. I decided I could put something in like a Japanese garden (or whatever) and call that my hobby du jour. Blogging’s lost it’s sheen as a hobby, to be honest – something new needs to take its place.
So wish me luck trying something completely out of my normal wheelhouse like landscape design. There’s a little tingle you get when you learn something completely new – maybe next I’ll sign up for a class in pottery or something!
On to the links:
- How to Give Your Kids $25,000 at Graduation: Some great ideas.
- Multi-Generational Households Offer Many Benefits: I like the idea, although I’ve never lived with anyone outside my nuclear family. I think it would be stressful, but I loved all four of my grandparents and I wouldn’t have minded any of them being around.
- Coffee and Raindrops : (a) I love French press coffee, and for some reason I’ve never moved to owning a French press; and (b) correct – coffee’s gotten a bum rap – as have many small pleasures in life – in the name of frugality. Simple pleasures are OK…right?
- Work From Home? 8 Ways to Keep Focused: I’d love to be in this pajama-clad (or not) predicament.
- Tracking Your Personal Net Worth: I wrote about net worth recently; I noticed that NY Times article too. People worry far too much about that number.
- Setting Your Financial Goals With a Goal Worksheet:
- Save Money with VoIP (Voice over IP)
- Sell Your House Faster By Fixing These Problems
- Goodbye Microsoft Money, Hello Quicken
- Banks in Schools Are a Great Way to Teach Financial Literacy
- Is Outsourcing Worth the Effort?
“Blogging’s lost it’s sheen as a hobby, to be honest – something new needs to take its place.”
Aw, I feel that way sometimes too! I try to switch it up with lots of product creation. I've particularly gotten into video creation…I have 10 (!) videos scheduled to create next week, and last week I did 4 videos in 2 days.
I'm using the videos to get opt-ins…you can see one series of them at guestpostsecrets.com. I plan to set up more mini-sites like this. Back end is an autoresponder with 3-4 free videos, then an upsell to a product.
Doing something different like this helps me a lot. If I was just blogging all the time and not creating products, putting on webinars, and speaking at seminars, I would get pretty bored!
-Erica
The course sounds like one I'd enjoy too. We are trying to work on our outdoor space and while we don't have a blank slate (lots of trees and we've planted stuff too) I still feel like there is so much more we could do with what we have.
Thanks for the link