A Midwest Journal

It’s really just too easy to get hope into your life, making everything around you make sense. Life can be a calm, rewarding experience.

Really, there are only two steps:

1. Find out what makes you really happy and narrow your focus to these points.
2. Gradually get rid of those things which irritate you.

Now, along this line, you are adjusting your world view and your belief system to the one you’ve always wanted.

The only reason you don’t have this all settled by now is that you accepted (more or less) the people and instances around you which told you that you couldn’t be in control of your life and that things didn’t always happen for the better.

Your life is and has always been exactly what you make it.  So you can simply start re-making it by deciding what you want to improve in it and then move in that direction. For some, this means work. For others, they realize it’s just changing your attitude toward things.

At no time in our past has it been easier to change your mind than it is now. You can have access to the world’s religions and philosophies through the Internet and through all these massive amounts of books that are published each year. It’s just too easy to get all this data.

The next thing is to do something with it.

Just start tracking what make you happy, makes your life more pleasant – and then learn more about how to get this sort of material into your life on a regular basis. At the same time, make room for all this by simply getting all the noise and critical people and random effects out of your life. Do whatever actions you have to.

For critical people, this can be simply being pleasant to them – just not set them off. Don’t talk about subjects which you know irritate them. Be supportive and make all your own criticism constructive. If you have to live with these, then as you change your own actions, this will then help them adjust theirs. Don’t think for a moment they like to be critical – it’s just that they don’t know a better way to live life. So help educate them by your own example.

For example: you may want to get rich…

Now, it’s easier than ever to get rich. Lots of books on this subject:

• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
• Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles
• How to Turn Your Abilities into Cash by Earl Prevette

I even compiled a lot of self help authors’ essays on money into a single book called Money: How to Get It, How to Keep It.

And you can get all of this data online for free if you want – just find it and download it from the Internet (I work to find and republish these after I clean up their formatting – and publish them as hardcopy versions if you want.)

But these books are the time-proven classics which tell you everything you could possibly want to know about the subject. Now, modernly, you can get Robert Kiyosaki or Dolf De Roos if you want to know about real estate. And others tell of other routes to getting rich.

The trick with all this is to follow your intuition and not your habits of “Get Rich Quick”. (I’ve been that route with the Utah Internet scammers and know that it just leads you into more debt – until you can force them to pay you back.)

Even that is its own example – you don’t have to be effect of anything out there. Just research it, apply what you learn, and change your life into what you want it.

Lots of hope for change in the future – and it’ isn’t tied to some politician. It’s up to you and what you want to do with your life.

Always has been.

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Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”

(photo credit: Ricardo Galli)

Just to update you on my farming – and how I’m not so worried about today’s downturned economy and all those Beltway knuckleheads we elected.

Mostly, by figuring out how not to do commodity farming, I’ve been cutting my expenses over the last few years. By about two-thirds. Essentially, I’ve learned to start raising grass-fed beef instead of trying to compete with the corn-fed crowd.

I’ve gone from two plots of 30 acres each down to 3 plots of 15 acres each – with three rotated crops instead of two. And the result is that I’m only paying to have two of them custom planted and harvested (as well as sprayed) in any given year. So I’ve cut my off-site investments in half.

Then, I went and bought me an old square baler, so I can put up my own hay and not pay for this as well. And learned to stretch out my haying season so I’m not rushing around to put it up all at once. I’ve got a neighbor last year to put it up on shares (he took half), which worked out pretty well. If I cut and rake it ahead of him, I get 2/3′ds. I don’t pay for his repairs or fuel.

This year I learned from my failed crop. The corn got drowned out. So I turned the cows in on it and let them finish it off. Did a nice job. Saved me four weeks of feeding hay. Now, if I’d been just raising grass for cattle, I’d not have lost anything. Just turn them in after the ground was firm enough to walk on, and they’d grow pounds of beef of whatever was out there. Put that low ground into pasture and take my high ground back for row crops. And the cattle clean up between the trees and such – where I can’t realistically grow row crops because it’s too steep.

Instead of giving up half my calf crop to pay my feed bill, I’ve been raising them up as stocker cattle (about 3/4′s the weight of a fat steer) and selling them for slightly less than I would as fat cattle. Means I make nearly twice as much off the same calf crop. And I’ve cut my inputs by feeding them out on pastures instead of corn rations. They stay healthier and I have fewer vet bills. No implants, hormones, or antibiotics – just grass and water.

Now, you don’t see above that we are actually making money off this farm, yet. Costs are still above what it takes to run it. The cows pay for themselves, as do the row crops – but equipment costs, electricity, all the main house costs are funded elseways. And I don’t get a dime from farming, just my room and board.

So I need to keep another job for my spending money (and to pay for this Internet connection).

I was working at a local warehouse, but finally quit this and got a freelance job doing web design. About time, since I actually talked about this in a 2003 paper on rural economics – written when I was going to school and only working warehouse part-time. Five years later, I’m putting my actual theory to work.

And since online spending continues to grow overall, I’m in the right area.

That’s how I’m surviving this silly economic downturn. Recession/Depression – just a bunch of Beltway nonsense. Those of us who can’t simply print more money are a bit more close-pursed about what goes in and out.

So quit listening to your news and vote out of office any politician who has been there more than two terms. That’s my policy on politics. Keeps me on an even keel.

Luck to you, too.

(PS. no that’s not my laptop. I’m running only desktops here – most of them a few years old and doing just fine, thank you.)

Thanks for visiting my blog and reading this entry.
If you’ve found it valuable, please consider donating via PayPal to enable my continuing research.

Our latest upcoming release, “Freedom Is — (period.)”