Don Kowalewski
Writer. Ad Sales and Marketing. Social Media Content Creator. Aeropress Coffee. Makes the best salsa in the world.
Things I’m Doing: Resolving
One of my resolutions this new year is to blog daily? Why? Ya know, I’m not really sure, but I know one thing …when I’m writing and creating, I’m happier. 2013 was supposed to be a great year for me. I was leaving a career of 16 years, and a company I’d been with for 10 years, to take a chance on a young company and it’s start-up, niche division, to build out its sales strategy, sales, and seek my fortune.
I didn’t make a fortune. I left that job. And I’m back in radio, selling advertising, and even managed to be hired back by the company I left. More on both those things in future blog posts.
The point is, 2013 started and I did all the things that self-help books, blogs, and sales gurus tell you to do. I wrote down goals. I created a vision. I showed up every day, with enthusiasm (for a while), and on and on.
It didn’t work. What happened? I guess I wouldn’t be the first person who tried something and it didn’t work, right? Heck, it wouldn’t even be the first thing I tried, personally, that didn’t work.
I’m committed to making 2014 better. But how?
One word: Resolve.
I’m going to have “resolve” instead of a long list of resolutions.
Sure, I have the standard list …get back into running, slowly, avoid snacks after dinner, write daily, show up early to work, read a book every month (I’m going to start with the complete works of Elmore Leonard), call one friend every day, floss daily, write letters, start my salsa business again, and …you get the drift.
But more than all of this, as Jeff Goins recommends, is have resolve. I’ve approached New Year Resolutions like I approach sales, I guess. I maybe thought if I make 100 resolutions and actually stick with 8 of them, well, hey …I changed my life in 8 ways, right? The problem would always be, then, that I’d think about the 92 failures.
Jeff says…
Here’s the bottom line: Without a stronger resolve, you have no hope of accomplishing your resolutions.
In other words, you need to commit. To choose into an intentional process that will make you better. Not a set of audacious goals you’ll never meet.
So that’s my number one, and maybe only, resolution …learn to have resolve. To define what that means and to apply it to my life. Like today …despite the fact I maybe don’t have “writing time” and I had a bad nights sleep and because I don’t feel like I have anything worthwhile to say or write about, I used that as a basis for this entry. And when I hit “Publish”, as trivial as it may seem, I’ll feel like I had a little of that “resolve” to start the day, I won’t be thinking about the “writing I didn’t do” and my guess is it will carry me through the rest of the day.
Follow me on Twitter at @donkowalewski.
Oh, and when I hear the word “resolve” I think of The Police’s “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” and Sting pining …
“I resolved to call her up, a thousand times a day. And ask if she’ll marry me, in some old fashioned way.”
But, his “silent fears” stop him. Now that’s another blog topic for another day.
Things I Will Do: Have Faith
As I mentioned yesterday, this past weekend I decided to pick-up Scott Westerman‘s The Spartan Life 2 and read it again. But this time …really read it. And then blog about it. Why? It goes back to that old adage that you should think about a thing, then write it down, and then revisit it again and again. There’s some crazy high percentage that says people who write things down, their goals, dreams, etc …are much more likely to achieve those things.
Another favorite of mine is anything written by Roy Williams, aka The Wizard of Ads. His Monday Morning Memo “blog entry” (even though I think he shuns the idea of a ‘blog’) from this week mentioned “faith.” It’s like someone is trying to tell me something.
Have faith. Be faithful. Trust in faith.
This probably breaks some sort of blogging law, but I could’ve truly copied/pasted Roy Williams’s entire Monday Morning Memo, from yesterday.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for. Happy endings are made of it.
Faith is the evidence of things not seen. It is proof of the invisible.
Hope is optimistic expectation.
Faith is hope with its sleeves rolled up.
Faith is hope wearing working gloves.
Faith is hope yanking the ripcord of a chainsaw.
Faith is hope with a hammer in its hand.
Faith speaks of that which is not yet as though it already were.
Faith requires commitment.
Faith requires commitment and commitment is a choice. It’s not something that arises within you like courage. It’s not something that comes upon you like fear. Commitment is simply a choice.
Isn’t that beautiful?
That word …”faith” was also a main theme in the opening chapters of Scott’s book. And he was quick to point out, “faith” doesn’t necessarily mean religion, but he says “faith” is the most powerful version of belief – I’m paraphrasing him a bit, or maybe I’m telling you how I interpreted his words.
Belief in self. Belief in ones gifts. Belief in ones own voice. Belief, as Seth Godin often calls it, in ones “art” – that thing we do and we love doing it.
I had faith 2013 was going to be an adventure – and it was. Now, I have faith, with the lessons learned in 2013, I will make 2014 a great year. The best year of my life.
I’ll tweet about my best year, and I hope you’ll Tweet at me and mention me as you create your best year ever and I have faith that you will. Oh, I’m on Twitter at @donkowalewski.
Hit it, Mr. Joel!!!
Things I Do: Experiment with Writing Apps
In my never ending quest to find the prefect writing app for the iPad, my journey has led me to Textkraft. It q me of a word processor from the late ’80s or early ’90s. I recall two of my friends got word processors for graudation presents and I remember being a tad bit envious. These looked just like typewriters, but they showed one or two lines of text. Or maybe they showed about 20 words at a time. Anyway, it sounds ridiculous that you’d have to type into a small display and then read back your entire essay or paper in this little window, but when the alternative was typing an entire page and then messing up spelling or grammar on the very last sentence and, thereby making that entire page useless and needing to be retyped, this was a good thing.
Yes, there were computers at the time, but they cost ten times what a typewriter cost, and quadruple what a computer would cost – plus the printer. And those dot matrix things that printed on a spool and were prone to misreading …again. Word processors were awesome.
And, yes, I’m sure every single one of of my high school friends, by their sophomore year (1993 or 1994) had already ditched their word processors, but …what was my point? Oh, yes, this editor and interface reminds me of those word processors because Textkraft kinda has that simple feel.
Yet, when I was done typing this, it was easy to take this text and do something else with it. Blog it, send it to document. Hey, I could’ve sent it to Facebook.
I’ll use it for text only. I like it better than Pages, I think.
Things I Will Do: Balance My 2014
The worst thing about having a blog, which I’ve had now for about 10 years, is you can’t hide from anything you’ve said or boldly proclaimed. I’m lucky, for the most part, only about a dozen people read my blog, so it’s not like I’m letting too many people down.So Long, Shelf Elf, er, I mean, Elf on the Shelf.
I never thought I would be saying this, but I’m going to miss our little Elf on the Shelf. My whole life I’ve been a little fearful of elves, but turns out, they’re people, just like you and me. Except smaller. And magical. And mischievous by nature.
But, hey …I was born in the 70s and raised in the 80s …it’s just my generation. We don’t trust elves. In fact, I didn’t realize that when I was calling her “Shelf Elf” that I was actually being very insensitive. Getting to know an Elf on the Shelf made me realize “shelf Elf” is quite demeaning. They aren’t simply “elves” …there are many different types and origins – who knew?
Keebler Elves make cookies and live in trees. Elves on Shelves, well, they spy on kids and correct behavior. Santa’s Elves make toys. Then there’s Tolkien’s elves. It goes on and on. Oh, and just because I meet a creature that’s small and magical, I guess I need to realize sometimes it could be a Sprite or Fairy, and some Fairies look exactly like elves.
In 24 nights of hiding, only once did I have to run down after I went to bed and quick hide the elf.
Below is her farewell message, and before that, you can see she brought back a copy of Elf, starring Will Ferrell, back from the North Pole and had a little movie night with stuffed animals. So that answers the question …yes, Santa’s Elves and Elves on the Shelves like Will Ferrell and that movie. They do not, however, like Bob Newhart’s cold and non-joyous interpretation of elvin behavior.
We look forward to her visit next year.
Shelf Elf Stretch Run
You’d think it would be easy to blog a little more often with piping hot, fresh material every morning, but for Pete’s sake, it’s all I can do to keep hiding and posing the elf – blogging just adds another layer I can’t keep up with.
Here’s some recent places she’s hid. Or am I supposed to write “here’s some places she’s ‘hidden.”
Our Elf on the Shelf is a girl. So she grabbed a skirt while on her overnight adventure back to the North Pole. And then she played with some make-up, and I would yell at her, but for all I know, she’s old enough and her elf parents really gotta make that call.
The night before, Sugar Cookie, our Elf on the Shelf, got into a mini box of Fruit Loops.
Seriously, we were running out of funny ideas. Something.
Who’s Ready for More Shelf Elf
Well, last night was nearly a Elf on the Shelf disaster and it wasn’t until this morning while making coffee I was like, “oh, no …Elf on the Shelf didn’t move!”
It was a mad dash and desperate attempt to make things right, so I just threw him onto a counter top and wrote “yum” with M&Ms. Luckily, the previous two nights, as you’ll see below, were a little better. On Friday night, we hid candy canes and you can see Sugar Cookie (if I haven’t mentioned that’s our elf’s name) wrote a poem (using the King’s English) and then the night before that, he made “pancakes” in the kitchen play set. I put “pancakes” in quotes because I couldn’t find a pancake and what you see cooking up in the pan is actually the bottom of a fake hamburger bun. Interestingly enough, when my son found it, he said, “Sugar Cookie is cooking some kinda bread in a pan.”
Ten more days until Elf on the Shelf races back to the North Pole.
Holiday Lights
I had bigger plans for this year’s Kowalewski Christmas light display but I got lazy. I have about 1,000 lights still packed away.
Once again, the roofline is all retro bulbs, as is the wreath, and then the bushes have little white lights. If you pull down my street after sunset, it looks obnoxious. Not totally Griswold (the main character in Natuonal Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation), but closer than anyone else in the neighborhood.
Snow is great. It doesn’t matter to me that I had to shovel 3 times, today. I only wish I had one more chance to clear the entire driveway and keep building the quinzy pile. Currently, it stands 5 feet tall and has about a 10 foot diameter. Tomorrow? We build some tunnels.
More Shelf Elf
I think a really good Shelf Elf idea would be for the kids to wake up and find their elf was running a cock fighting racket in our basement. But have you priced roosters, lately? And while I find nothing morally wrong about staging a fake cock fighting event, stealing roosters isn’t something I’m willing to do.
I’d steal guinea pigs and wouldn’t bat an eye, and possibly I’d steal a cow or two as part of a fraternity prank, but not roosters.
I’m uncomfortable with the amount of times I’ve used the word “cock” on my blog, now, and I apologize to the regular readers for having to endure any salty comments from readers who were here expecting something different.
We went with a classic, tried and true “Elf fishing for goldfish crackers” gag because, we’ll, my kids don’t have Pinterest and haven’t seen this, yet. I feel bad for the guy who first thought up the “elf fishing for goldfish cracker” pose …I’ll bet 95% of all Shelf Elves have done this one. He’d be a rich man if you could patent something like that.
Next up, on Saturday night after the Spartan football team won the Big Ten Championship, my wife fashioned a elvin (or is it “elfish”?) sleeping bag from a wine skin and took a Pom Pom from the American Girl corner. In hindsight, we should’ve taken a couch from the Barbie corner and burned it and flipped a Barbie car over. The kids wouldn’t have gotten the joke, but our friends on Facebook would’ve laughed.
And finally, last night, Shelf Elf was playing some piano. What the kids can’t see going on here is that our Shelf Elf, known as Sugar Cookie, used to be a great song writer at the North Pole and he once wrote the most popular song on the elvin pop charts! but despite a rather eclectic and indie style, he’ll always be known as a one hit wonder and he’s been trying forever to write his next big chart topper.
Only 15 more days of this madness. Stay tuned.
Yoga
Had an odd weekend recently. I turned down a night out drinking and grilling with some old buddies and, instead, went to a hot yoga class on Sunday morning with some lady friends.
Makes sense I’d blog about this, right?
Granted, it wasn’t a one for one … I could’ve done both, I suppose, but opted on Saturday night for a “night in” that I spent watching Matilda with my 7-year-old because we’d just finished the book. This was her “special night” because I’m always doing “boy nights” with my son …case in point, we watched the original Thor on Friday night in the basement home theater in preparation for seeing Thor 2: The Dark World on Sunday.
So, if you’re keeping score, I technically replaced “grilling and drinking” with Matilda, snuggle time, a Thor double feature, and yoga. And, by avoiding a massive ingestion of meat and beer on Saturday night, I was much better prepared for an early Sunday yoga session.
So …Yoga. I could see myself getting into it. A co-worker and client invited me (they were probably just being polite, but I’ve been told I’d probably really enjoy hot yoga and it would be good for my lungs, so I politely accepted and met up with them). Yoga is supposed to be relaxing, and I’m guessing someday it will be, but when your first yoga experience is in a room full of seasoned yoga folks and the yoga instructor is barking out positions and philosophy, and I’m trying to learn the routines and the proper form while not falling down and making a fool of myself, this time wasn’t “relaxing” as it could’ve been. But I’ll get there. Oh, and a big sorry to the lady on the mat next to me …I didn’t mean to fall over onto your mat, grab your arm to keep my balance, or have my butt that close to your face.
Also eventually, I’ll figure out how to free my mind of negative thoughts and energy. In two yoga sessions, so far, I was able to forget the outside world because I was trying to remember all the moves …Downward Dog. Fierce Warrior. Airplane. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Wax On. Kung Fu Panda. And then I didn’t realize we were actually doing a “routine” and not a random sequence of moves, so I spent most of the class trying to copy some other people in the class who were at my skill level …I wasn’t about to copy the ladies doing handstands blindfolded and lifting an X Wing fighter out of the Degoba swamp. And there was one old dude who just sat there cross-legged for the whole hour… not sure why he paid money for that, but I could’ve kept up with his yoga pace. I was gonna make fun of him, but turns out yoga really frowns on bullying.
When all was said and done, after an hour in a room they kept at 101-degrees, I can proudly say I will be back. I like yoga. And I have a coupon.
Hopefully by Christmas my body will look like Adam Levine’s – who also does yoga.
If you care about my yoga adventures in real time, I’ll Tweet them at @donkowalewski.
