Take Back Your Life!

I’ve been an oil painter for about 8 years. And while I don’t consider myself someone who can draw, I am able to use paint to create the shapes needed to make a painting come alive.

Yet, I’ve always longed to be able to sit down and sketch something from my own mind. My natural love for sketching got squelched in third grade when my science teacher sent me into the corner as punishment for laughing. I’d drawn some bold, bodacious, bawdy pictures of three movie stars in my art class and brought them with me into Science. The boys gathered around me and we were all laughing. That’s when the teacher’s need to control us hit the fan and I ended up languishing in the corner on a stool my paintings rolled up on her desk. (more…)

I got an idea a few weeks ago for the US to create companies where folks are paid to embrace their strengths. Whatever it is that makes them feel alive, that’s their job mission. It’s what I refer to as your Fearless Why.

We subsidize farmers, pharmaceutical companies, oil companies and others. Why not subsidize people’s strengths? Why not take our soul crushing economic model of forcing folks into pre-existing job categories and change it up?

Yes, I know what the skeptics will say. It won’t make a profit. (more…)

So many of us feel powerless over the economy because we’ve given that power away without fully realizing it. Without a Main Street economy we become the pawns of giant corporations and the governments that make them possible.

The start of the economic demise appears to have started back in the late 70’s with the advent of discount stores. Prior to that, they were few and far between. My mother refused to set foot in those stores. Then we got suckered into buying things for less and it became a part of our societal makeup. (I know folks that drive two hours to NH to save $10.)  (more…)