Month: December 2011

Poetry Night 007

Garth Beyer

Tonight I want to share a poem that I read in Tim Ferriss’s “4 Hour Work Week”. I can say nothing more, this young girl who wrote the poem says it all. This poem was written by a terminally ill young girl in a New York Hospital. It was sent by a medical doctor – Dr. Yeou Cheng Ma. Please do what you can to help fulfill this young girl’s dreams.

SLOW DANCE

Have you ever watched kids
On a merry-go-round?
Or listened to the rain
Slapping on the ground?
Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight?
Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?
You’d better slow down.
Don’t dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won’t last.

Do you run through each day
On the fly?
When you ask “How are you?”
Do you hear the reply?
When the day is done
Do you lie in your bed
With the next hundred chores
Running through your head?
You’d better slow down
Don’t dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won’t last.

Ever told your child,
We’ll do it tomorrow?
And in your haste,
Not see his sorrow?
Ever lost touch,
Let a good friendship die
Cause you never had time
To call and say “Hi”?
You’d better slow down.
Don’t dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won’t last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere
You miss half the fun of getting there.
When you worry and hurry through your day,
It is like an unopened gift….
Thrown away.
Life is not a race.
Do take it slower
Hear the music
Before the song is over.

Stay Positive and Slow Dance

Garth E. Beyer

Discovering What LIFE Truly Is

Discovering What LIFE Truly Is

Garth Beyer

A girl once told me at the beginning of our relationship how she was not a gift to be had, or a reward to be won. It is the same with life — it is not a problem that needs solving, a game to be won, although it has challenges, it is not a challenge itself to be completed. There is not a completion to it and no rewards because there is no winning. In order to find out what life is, consider defining what life is not.

Although, your life CAN have an advantage, and there are benefits to that.

 

Stay Positive and Understanding of YOUR life

Garth E. Beyer

The Budget: A Priority Expense and Out-Of-The-Box Methods to Saving Money for it

The Budget: A Priority Expense and Out-Of-The-Box Methods to Saving Money for it

Garth Beyer

Hopefully you caught my post the other day about not being able to save money. In summary I inspired you to take the energy you use at focusing how to make your budget work and direct it at making more money. Now that you’re caught up, answer me this..

What  could happen today that would reap your budget meaningless? (Besides death, for you sarcastic followers)

Most Common Answers: Broken bone or hospitalization, House Fire, Broken down car

For the last 19 years of my life my mother has told me that “nothing lasts forever”. Yet this is true, can you pick one of the common answers that is the least likely to last a lifetime? Just by asking my friends, I found out the majority have yet to break a bone. Even older family members have told me they have never broken a bone. Next, I say that hospitalization happens maybe once every 25 years for a person and more likely to occur later in age. A house fire might happen once in your neighborhood of 20,000 people over the span of 10 years. I am sure you could agree with these estimates, its common sense that none of them occur too often.

Did I miss one? Oh right, the car

The number of occurrences of a broken down car is too many to count and far too many to give a number anywhere accurate to the truth.

So why is it that people still do not save money for it? To often people put the car as a separate category in their budget but they don’t prioritize it until “after the fact”. After something happens to it they end up going into their savings account, taking a loan, or begging parents and friends to help out. People rarely have money saved up specifically for their car, and if so, it is only enough for a car wash.

Why do we sacrifice our working budget and saved up funds for a car repair? Because we NEED our vehicles to get us places.

With the cold season upon us, I am certain you can agree with me that the most car breakdowns occur in the winter. Are you putting money aside to fund the unexpected need for a car repair?

Some quick out-of-the-box tips to lowering budgets in other categories so you prioritize your vehicle

  • Generic brands just started tasting better. A box of honey bunches of oats $4.45. Hyvee generic brand, $2.43
  • Instead of buying a new block building set for your kids, find something in the house to be creative with. For example
  • They call it junkfood, I call it junkfoold. Again, if you read my earlier post on saving money, you know that  I had to cut way back. I would not share this tip if it wasn’t effective enough to share.
  • Pull out that winter clothes bin and use it in the house. The average electricity bill in our apartment complex is 40-60 dollars. Typically 60 in the winter cold and 60 in the summer heat. I have spent as little as 20 dollars and as high as 46 dollars on our electricity bill. I am currently wearing her old black, white, and pink striped gloves to keep my hands warm instead of putting the heater on. *See above pic*
  • Cash for gold. I don’t mean just gold (Although my Dad and his lady got over 600 dollars from her grandma’s bracelet and a couple of earrings. They were creative with how to pay for their wedding) It’s time to let go of those items that you keep but never use. The sentimental value it may hold does not counter the terrible feeling of owing money and diving into your savings funds and having a budget you can’t keep up with.
  • Internet is not necessary at the home any longer (unless that is where your office is). I can bet that you can walk no more than 5 blocks from your house to get free wi-fi, as long as you don’t live in the country. I spent 16 dollars on a Droid application on my phone to get internet to my computer from my phone. That’s $16 dollars paid once compared to 40+ dollars paid each month for internet.
  • Stay following for a post on more out-of-the-box ways to save money.

Stay Positive and For those with a bike and not an automobile. Brownie points right to you. (Generic brand of course, but it’ll do)

Garth E. Beyer

Poetry Night 006

Poetry Night 006

Garth Beyer

Lifetime, No More

If there was one law that could be created with my mind,

It would be that of one without consequential design.

As for all before have threatened to define,

That the most invaluable factor of life is time.

Time is not money, it is life – that’s why we call it lifetime —

All time is lost when our unconscious remain confined.

We cannot know what would be best after all,

Until we make mistakes and thus refine.

So I beg of you to put this one law to all of mankind —

That we may never swing with our mistakes and bind;

To have the ability to rewind.

After all, rewinding to not have to live the experience does not mean that we leave the lesson behind

– Everett

As I said, I would share my transition from the original poem I began writing to the final one that I published at the beginning of this post. If I have learned one thing from poetry or all writing, when we write we are on a constant search to find ourselves. But we rarely find our true selves because writing allows us to recreate ourselves, destroy ourselves, erase the past, embrace the future, and above all else, change ourselves. When we do find ourselves, we cease to be writers.

If you wish to see the first thing I wrote down before I truly thought about the poem and myself, continue reading. (All feedback always appreciated!)

One law can change everything, but everything cannot change one law.

Fray to the one who to this remains unseen

Three cheers to our imagination that doesn’t see what we saw

For when we are down it is up a bendable bond by law

Aw, what a shame we cannot control the borders around us

For fear that a man without a cage will be nothing less then a lion in a rage

But there are people on earth that must

Explore the connection of the world

For what they belive and trust

Only then can you realize the one  law you could create

That no laws could be created in the first place

I encourage you as well to write a poem based off the prompt of “If you could create one law, what would it be and why?” and share it with me.

Stay Positive and Lawsed

Garth E. Beyer

3 Ways To Going Green and Your Uncontrollable Office Space

Garth Beyer

Of course you know various ways to make your workplace Eco-friendly. Recycle, purchase Eco-friendly products, shut all electronics off before you leave, use both sides of paper, etc. These are all simple minded. When you Googled ways to become more environmentally friendly, these actions were just reminders, they were nothing new.

With my experience in working in an office, I began thinking outside of the box. Can you guess what is outside your box? Everything you cannot control.

I noticed that each morning my trash basket would be emptied and a new plastic bag would be placed in it. Everrry morning. All I tossed in it the other day was a tissue and piece of chewed gum. It is ridiculous that whoever cleans the office at the end of the day puts a new bag in. What a waste of plastic!

Here are a few un-thought-of actions you can take to make your office more environmentally friendly.

1. Hide or place a note on the garbage requesting that they do not take the garbage until it is full or if there is no note on it.

2. Snoop in other offices or cubicles and find items that other people are tossing instead of recycling. If you do not think confronting them about making the change to recycling will do anything, stick a recycling bin in their area and make it an effortless action for them.

3. Paper towel diver. If the bathroom at your workplace still uses paper towels, check to make sure all the ones in the garbage are wet and used up. I can’t tell you how much paper towels I have saved by using the dry parts of the ones in the waste basket.

4. Bring plants into the office space. This makes a perfect co-worker gift as well. Not only will the greenery be another step to giving co-workers and clients a gentle reminder of the environment, it also calms the mood of the office. Aesthetics in the office make it a peaceful environment.

Do you have a few tactics to making your workplace environmentally conscious?

Stay Positive and Take A Green Initiative

Garth E. Beyer

Read This If You Feel That You Can’t Save Money

Garth Beyer

I have experience with a budget. I know various formats that can be used for a variety of people. I am 19 years old and have written at least 10 different budgets for myself alone and 20 with someone else. In addition I have reviewed others’ budgets and studied the art of budgeting intensely. When a person passes the point of giving themselves excuses to not write a budget, the next thing I hear is that they are not saving any money.

They write a budget and at the end it shows that they will be saving at least 200 dollars. Yet at the end of the month they are negative 20 dollars. Of course there were life changes during the month and as I always say about budgets, they are not constant, but they are a constant process. No budget will work two months in a row perfectly unless you do absolutely nothing with your life, make no income, and no expenses. Not the most sought after life.

After another attempt at adjusting the budget for the following month, the same results occur. They just can’t save any money.

As I corrected budgets, for a long time I would find ways to lower expenses and cut back. A little about my story, I moved to Madison WI with someone in Aug 2011. Being young and in love, you can guess that we did not have much money. We had saved enough to last seven months living at the lowest amount of expenses possible. We quickly got jobs. (Check my LinkedIn and you can know why, but don’t judge a book by its cover. I actually got the jobs I have because of what is NOT on my résumé) Now that we were set with employment, our goal was to keep saved what we had and save more from our paychecks. Hell no it’s not easy! Can you imagine spending 55 dollars a week on groceries for two people? We do it. We minimize every other expense as much as we can as well. Yet at the end of each month, we only save about 50-250 dollars a month.

Last month we sat down with the budget and tried to make more adjustments so we could save more. It just couldn’t be done unless we wanted to sacrifice all of our happiness. Then it hit me, kinda like a master craftsmen would slap his apprentice over his head once he figured out how to accomplish something he thought could not be done. It was almost as if the slap had a voice and said “You idiot, of course that’s the only way. Why are you spending all of your time on limiting yourself to save money!”

What I learned — If you can’t save money, EARN MORE

I and so many others are doing the right thing with creating a budget but were so focused on making the current monthly income we have work properly. If we could just take all that energy and focus on making more money… You can only imagine how much life would change and the money you would save.

We are a perfect example, we now save 300-450 a month and have only just began our approach at earning more since we couldn’t save more.

Stay Positive and Know Where Your Energy Is Going

Garth E. Beyer

Relationship Improvement Method

Relationship Improvement Method

Garth Beyer

Every guy and lady have been victim to their own accidental voicing of an opinion or failure to complete a task in a relationship. In other words, everyone in a relationship ends up digging themselves a hole by not thinking before speaking or taking action. One will say something that is meant to be a friendly remark and it will come out wrong. Then they will try and clarify it and end up making things worse, digging themselves deeper into a hole.

It’s quite clear, even in my relationship, that men dig themselves holes more often then women and I am sure you would agree.

Though, digging yourself a hole is not always the problem since you usually end up laughing at the ridiculous statement you made. The real problem occurs when you can’t recover and clarify yourself. especially if your loved one takes real offense, which often they can.

One day I was recklessly offensive to someone and dug myself a deep hole. Sadly it was on a topic related to her family — a big no-no. At first she laughed but then the subtle honesty in my joke set in and I began digging myself deeper from there. Proceeding the after-noon that was spent in a state of emotional dysfunction, we recovered from my mistake. After we were on the same page again I joked that men should get a “Get Out Of The Hole Free” card. Damn I’m brilliant.

She laughed at the idea but then considered that we (men) do make mistakes. So instead of trying to recover from a comment which results in a deeper hole, the card is a way to just shut-up and start over or forget it. That day we decided that we would both get ONE “Get Out Of The Hole Free” card each month. Why not? It saves us from having an accidental emotional disaster. At the same time it forces us to be more aware of our thoughts and actions, especially if you use your card in the first week of the month.

Share the idea with your loved one and let me know how it works for you!

If you are feeling lucky, you can tell your partner that the card’s rollover each month.

Stay Positive and Out Of The Hole

Garth E. Beyer