Gregory Paul Johnson – Personal Update 200906 | 3 June 2009 | Wednesday
Summary. This is the monthly personal update for Gregory Johnson. Life categories are now listed alphabetically rather than in order of increasing interdependence described on the map page. Changes since last month are found under Activism, Effective Living and Finance.
New Format. Beginning this month, these personal updates will have a new format. New content will appear as bullet items under their relevant category heading.
Early Posting. For many months now, I’ve been posting these personal updates at the end of the month, sometimes withing minutes before month’s end (in my time zone). This June 2009 update comes only a few days into the month because I’m hoping to shift my schedule around to deliver on my writing projects well in advance of the deadlines.
- Activism. The ResourcesForLife.com website continues to be my primary means of activism. Major updates to the site were reported in the April and May RFL newsletters, so I won’t repeat that here. My book, Put Your Life on a Diet, continues to do well, and I’ve added an online community area for discussions about it as well as a place for positive feedback. I see the most effective use of my time is through my online presence through the ResourcesForLife.com website. With regard to activism, I believe that the answer is to live the answer. As such, lifestyle activism and becoming the media are the most powerful methods for impacting the world.
- Content. Each time I add new content (pages) to the ResourcesForLife.com website the daily visits to the site increase. This is because every page on the site usually gets a few visits per day, and some pages get as many as 100 visits a day. Content is in the form of Articles, Documents, Music, Photos, and Video. In the past, my philosophy was to have my content exclusively on my website to bring traffic to the site and boost name recognition. I’m now syndicating my content and pushing it out to various relevant websites. For example, I can use Apple iPhoto for a collection of my photos and have the iPhoto software automatically upload that collection of photos to Google Picasaweb, Facebook, Flickr, my Apple website, and my Apple Photo Gallery. With Articles and documents, I use the AddThis button on my site (found under Subscribe and Share in the right column). This allows me to announce the articles to various social networks including Facebook. You can read more about this practice in my Curbly article.
- Facebook. I’m getting more active on Facebook, and getting some good feedback regarding articles, videos, photos, and music. I’m able to share content with people who might not otherwise find these items on my website.
- Career. I’m thankful that my work at the University of Iowa is going well and my consulting business continues to be busy. My current clients continue to be wonderful to work with, and I’m also gaining some new ones. I’m very grateful.
- Effective Living. My inbox currently has over 5,000 emails needing a reply. I have inbound paper mail, receipts, invoices, and other documents that are accumulating at a rate faster than they can be processed and scanned. So, given this trend, I’m looking for more effective ways to manage the increasing backlog of pending tasks. I’ve been deepening my understanding and practice of effectiveness principles, tools, and techniques. The website conversion is part of this effort. I have a renewed commitment to the Schedule for Life and the Holistic Living System which help to provide maximum effectiveness and efficiency.
- Music. Music has always been a big part of my life, and I consider it an important part of living effectively. I recently setup a dedicated Grooveshark account for managing, hosting, and streaming music and other audio content via widget plug-in players that can be easily added to blogs or webpages. Learn more on the Grooveshark page found under Free Music Resources. There are now some music playlists to choose from at the bottom of the right navigation column.
- Finance. I continue to look for ways to decrease my regular expenses and increase my income. I continue investing in Kiva, an organization that loans money to the working poor of the world. I’ve also begun seeing some revenue come in from Google AdSense ads that I’ve placed at the bottom of a few pages on the website. Using Google AdSense ads allowed me to conduct a study of website advertising.
- Investing and Saving. Yesterday I created an Investment and Savings – Tools and Resources page. Having a diversified and holistic life (in all areas), including redundancy, is central to my belief system. So, I want to ensure that in the area of savings and investing I’m following these principles.
- Mobile Hermitage for Sale. My house is for sale since I’ll be transitioning to a slightly larger space this fall. Please feel free to let others know about the home sale. There will be an open house with Jay Shafer on 4 June 2009 at 12:30 PM. More information is on the Mobile Hermitage Web Page.
- Health. My weight continues to be stable. I suppose that’s better than gaining weight. However, I really want to get my weight down. I’ve slowly been putting on weight over the past year. As a result, I’m now looking for ways to take my weight management system to the next level. I’m thankful to have seen some progress with my percent body fat declining. I’m using the Nike+ and Apple iPod to keep track of my workouts and publish this information to a new personal fitness page.
- Lifeways. After many years of having a fairly elaborate religious belief system, I’m now pursuing the development and practice of a way of life that would be founded entirely on “a life of action” based on principles of humanism, science, right action, and best practices. This new practice is called the Holistic Unification Lifeway Practice. My goal is for this new life system to be in harmony with many existing religions and philosophies. For example, I will continue to abstain from eating pork (and other meats for that matter). However, my basis for this won’t be in observance to the Torah, Bible, or Qur’an, but for health benefits, better agricultural land usage, and out of compassion for animal life. I’ll continue to be fond of and supportive of Judaism and Buddhism, my two favorite religions. (I view Christianity as a form of Judaism).
- Relationships. I continue to be grateful for the relationships I have with family, friends, colleagues, and clients. I’m keeping in regular touch with Makur (BPGL, Facebook) and am thankful to have her in my life.
Many thanks to all of you who are continuing to keep me in your thoughts, prayers, and meditation time. ~ Gregory
About the Personal Update
For about nine years, the first and most important communication I would send out each month would be a personal update covering seven areas of life described on the Map Page of the Resources for Life.com website. I reference this monthly practice in my Schedule for Life. Over the years, my personal updates went out each month to about 10 family members and friends who I consider to be my “advisory board” – a group of people with several hundred years of collective wisdom. As well as looking for feedback and guidance, I also saw these updates as a way of making a regular personal life assessment. As of September 2007, I began publishing these monthly updates here in my online Journal. The seven areas of my personal life have solidified in recent years, so there’s not much “news” to report, but as there is, I’ll report it here in these updates.