Dude, what were you thinking?

A really long time ago I knew Dana Giachetto. It was during the early days of The Cassandra Group. That was several years before he went to prison for stealing a lot of money from a lot of people. Most notably he took money from a few celebrities but there were everyday people who lost their life savings owing to Dana’s mismanagement of their money.

This post is not meant to bash Dana. It’s just that this morning I caught a Page Six headline and my thoughts have been on Dana this morning. I’m wondering if people can be rehabilitated or if we just change our actions. Are there things essential to our character and who we are that remains unchanged and unchangeable? I’m thinking about myself as an alcoholic. I’ve stopped binge drinking but I’d still love to. I’ve altered my behavior because I know that I can’t drink like that and expect to have a life worth living. I’d only end up destroying everything. (And I know that because I did it a couple of times before I realized that it wasn’t fair to the people around me.) Deep down I know I want those drinks. 

I wonder if there is something compulsive about con men (con artists, to include women). And it’s interesting that Leonardo DiCaprio starred in the Wolf of Wall Street since Dana stole a lot of Leo’s money back in the day. I boycotted the Wolf of Wall Street. More or less because my time is valuable to me and I don’t need to see a movie that glamorizes drug use and that sort of excess. I did the drug use part on my own and I’m not sure I want to head into the excess.

                What these con men do amounts to nothing more than theft. In the end it’s depressing. It’s like the world’s oldest recipe for getting screwed: a person who is not financially literate couples his/her greed with the con-man’s scheme and it’s bye-bye to ALL the money. The con man (usually) does NOT pay restitution, serves his time, and eventually he’s joins the rest of us in polite society. I guess biding his time until his impulse kicks in and he starts another scam. And if he can, the con man sells his story to a magazine, book publisher, movie maker, etc etc.

The nice part of this day, including the melancholy, is that it’s forcing me to reconsider my value system. What do I really want? How do I want to spend my days? How can I get the most out of life without putting myself through the ringer?

This past weekend I saw the ex. We talked for a while, trying to figure out how to move forward. It turns out there is no moving forward – together. There is acknowledging the past and moving on. For the first time I was able to hear a few things she had to say. Okay so she was shouting and in that moment a few things fell into place. I could really see things from her perspective. It was nice for me to finally “get it.” I’ve realized that even though I say I’m flexible and I want to negotiate, most of the time I want everything my way.

I’ve heard people talk about “closure” although I’m not entirely sure what that is. I don’t want to be closed off. I definitely take an holistic approach which can be excrutiating. I want to sit in the ocean of my totality. That means that all the experiences, good and the bad, are swirling around my head at all times. But in that chaos I seek, and sometimes locate, stability. This might be sort of what a Zen master would refer to as riding the wave. (Ok so I’m not a Zen master and don’t know any, I’m guessing that’s what it means to ride the existential wave.) I want to possess the skills to be in the present with enough talent and ability to maintain my composure and even be “okay.”

Luckily there’s plenty of good news: I’ve got my health and realized that I haven’t had a cold in at least a year, so my immune system must be in pretty good shape. I’ve still got a job and a place to live. And going on three years of being clean. All of this leads me to sum up life as “no complaints.” But man I’ve got a case of cabin fever. I never used to be the sort of person who longed for warm, sunny days but right about now I’d be stoked if it were Springtime or one of those perfect summer days in mid-June.

In the meantime it looks like Dana owes his octogenarian mother $150,000 for bail. The money can be re-couped if he’s found not guilty of the current charges.

When a Giant Gain Causes Pain

This is such an interesting article at the Wall Street Journal. read here.

I have no way of knowing how many of you who read this blog are male or female. And I can totally see how most men reading this article, would've been like, "Lady. Sell the stock and move on." This is not to say that the men who lose spouses are heartless, I just think that men and women have been raised to deal with things so differently that a man would see the loss of his wife as the loss of his wife and a gain in the stock market as a gain in the stock market.

I for one have a huge tolerance for risk. I have money in the market. I watch the market go up and down and I watch the price of my stocks go up (and a little down). Yeah, I'm one of those boring "buy and hold" investors. And I only invest what I can stand to lose. Thus far this strategy has worked for me.

In some ways I think that women could benefit from learning to compartmentalize when it comes to money. It's this simple: money is money. Don't attach any emotional significance to it.

For me, money gives me the ability to pay my bills, buy food and clothes, and support a few business ventures (until such time as they support me).

In general I think that women do themselves a huge disservice when it comes to managing money. And sadly, they have no one to blame but themselves. They don't pay attention and then they make really stupid choices. Here's a true story: I know a widow who inherited everything once her husband died. This included a woodlot with a temporary conservation restriction. A guy shows up and offers to buy the timber on the land. She says (without consulting anyone), "Okay." She pays the back taxes and sells the timber and does so at a loss.

People. Don't end up like that widow. If she'd maybe waited a bit, no longer been grieving, and then asked a couple of reputable foresters what they thought and made a wise decision. (If she were feeling adventurous, she could've started a cord wood business). At the very least she could've just done nothing and come out ahead. That's right. By doing NOTHING she would've benefited. Instead she made an ill-informed choice and lost the money and her trees. (Don't even get me started on carbon sequestration.)

I suppose if you were one of my clients (yeah I have a life coaching business on the side) the homework I would assign would be this: take a week (or as long as you like) and identify where in your life you would make the most gains by doing nothing.

How's that grab you?

I'll let Stan's arm do the talking

Ok, I'll let Beckett do the talking on Stan's arm

read here

Fail better people. Starting right now.

And in the words of someone else: fail fast.

Fail fast means that when you fail, admit it and move on, pronto. Don't sit around pitying yourself for your loss; go out there and figure out what it is you are supposed to do. We only fail at the things we ARE NOT MEANT to do.

You always get what you choose.

“You won’t always get what you want but you always get what you choose.” John C. Maxwell, The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth          

This past weekend I went for a couple of mini-walkabouts. While my version of walk-about bears little resemblance to the Aboriginal Rite of Passage, I’m sticking with the nickname.

Along the way I made a pit stop at a B & N Bookstore and grabbed The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth. I grabbed a seat and read a couple of chapters. After years of attending self-help workshops and reading numerous books on just about everything, there wasn’t a lot of new information in this book and this dude loves to quote other people (which always irks me a little bit) but I like what’s going on with “you always get what you choose.” I’ve often thought I was living the life I chose but, and this is big (for me), I haven’t recently gone into mantra mode on this particular topic. So. I’ve spent the last few days taking stock of every single aspect of my present circumstances and asking myself, why do I choose this?

Okay so if you’re not obsessive and not really into self-improvement, don’t try this. But if you’ve got a hankering to roll up your sleeves and get dirty, try it. In each and every situation you find yourself in ask, why am I choosing this?

Thus far I’ve got a lot of boring reasons. Mostly it’s about maintaining the status quo (read: paying my bills, eating, etc). BORING.

Why would I choose to be bored?

I’m going to worry the risk-taking gene and see if I can figure out if there aren’t a couple of things that can be changed. Okay, I’m actually contemplating an entire life-overhaul. I don’t need to add a hobby. I need to get rid of all the things that are getting in the way of me achieving my highest good.

What I know is this. While I’m not that young, I’m not old. And I’ve packed it all in and started anew a couple of times. Perhaps it’s time to do it again.

The only answer I can come up with: I’m not being creative enough to come up with the way to live a more exciting life.

By exciting I don’t mean that I have to go sky diving every day, rather I’m more interested in being fulfilled. Luckily I’m grateful so I’m not complaining while I figure things out. Instead my attitude is: I’ve got my health, I’ve got a job, I have a place to live. How can I add another few layers of texture?

In writing this and thinking about it I’m getting that nervous/excited feeling. (Totally gives me the shivers.)

Read here: about the dude who quit his job, earns a little less, and is more happy.

Onward!

I've been sort of quiet on the blog front. Basically I've been pretty quiet on the personal front.

My manuscript was rejected a couple more times. But. I have it out for a blurb and I think it'll be funny to get a blurb before I get published. (Which is so ass-backwards it fits me to a tee.) And I've got the book with 3 more editors.

And I am really and truly not fazed by the rejections at all. I need only one publisher to fall in love with my book. Until she shows up, let the rejections keep rolling in.

Otherwise, I've been holed up in my apartment. Very much isolating and very much enjoying it.

Onward!

oh. and Happy New Year!

If you're not a hater, check out this movie

Not sure if you've heard about The Short Game. And I'm not going to write a review of it here.

I will say this: it was fascinating to watch how each kid was so molded by his or her parents and/or Daddy Caddy. It was cool to watch these kids perform at this elite level. I will be watching for the next 20 years to see where they end up. In particular, Allan Kournikova.

If you've got Netflix, you can watch here.

Oh yeah. All these kids are total outliers.

start shucking

You can read the entire article or just skip to the last few paragraphs.