When google took over blogger, it ruined all pretense of anonymity. Blech.
i’m a geek
so,
I have this really elaborate task list. Google hasn’t come through with googletasks, so I had to create my own.
I think I’m onto something here. I think I could sell this. It’s Get Rich Quick Scheme #352, are you ready?
This task list will get you soooo organized. It has a table of contents at the top, and all items are hyperlinked to a more detailed section below. There’s a link to the top from every subsection. View it in normal view if you’re using Word. OpenOffice…use the web view.
Items that need action are blue; items in need of immediate action are red; items are larger in size the more urgent they are. Of course, that’s just the schema that I find relevant. You can choose any style or color of text to represent what ever is salient in your life! For awhile I was underlining sections that required me to consult with someone else. It’s a word document after all. Or html. Whatever you like.
I have one of these for work, and one for real life. I tell you, I’ve never been more organized.
The real life one, titled andthentherewas, is filled with all sorts of detail… I have subsections for each Get Rich Quick Scheme (only one main one currently–it’s a doosie!! (Oh man. I can’t wait for my new car. First thing I’m buying. And then I’m going to start a collection of prints by little-known artists from the Benelux region. Totally.)).
Update: I just added a to buy category. Divided it into immediate and longer term for increased usability. And added Ernst and Tanguy (not from the Benelux region, duh))). My subsection for textiles is now divided into maintenance, immediate, Queso (my knitting machine…just named him?! What do you think?), to felt, and other. I’m looking forward to those felted wool chokers. They’re going to be hotttt.
But my main problem isn’t really how to market this… I actually realize that it’s probably not going to make me any money. It requires waaaay too much work on the part of the user. And it’s just a digital document. Anyone could make one. I should write a book, and we know that books don’t make any money. (Which makes this more accurately Never Going To Happen Scheme #31,984.)
But that’s not my problem. My problem is the damn task list. See, I just started this one for my home life–I keep a lot of shit in my head, and I need to dump it into some document or system somewhere if I’m ever to get any rest.
That’s my reasoning. And here’s my problem (at long last):
If I turn off my laptop, I’m more likely to not open it up again while I try to go to sleep. But if I can’t update andthentherewas, then how do I ever purge all the fantastic ideas I get while I go to sleep?!! Like last night, it was the vision of a fish tank of guppies and philodendrons sprawling out across the shelf and up the wall that kept me awake. Such a natural combination of plant and amphibians*, I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do this. And my cat will love it. I used to have a fish when I had him back in Cloyne Court**, and his favorite activity was getting to the fish. He’d stick his paw in the tank, take it out, give it a perplexed look, and repeat. So funny!! How can you sleep with memories like these?!***
So my falling to sleep hours are filled with fantastic ideas, but their onset requires me to turn off the computer.
Newsflash: I just added a songs to karaoke subsection to andthentherewas. Safety Dance. Oooh baby. I think I can actually sing this one.
This list is getting longer and longer. I suppose I’ll just always keep my laptop on. And carry the document around on (in?) one of those little keychain memory devices. I have two. And I’ll accept that in actuality, most of what makes it on there Never Going to Happen Schemes.
*What are fish anyway?
**Name-dropped Cloyne here so my blog will set off my google alert for Cloyne Court, FYI. I’m totally that much of a nerd.
***Dude, my cat just moved in, and I am soooo happy. I’ve never been so happy, seriously. He’s asleep on my knee right now as I spend way too much time on a way too detailed blog entry that no one will have the patience (or humor, admittedly) for. And he’s purring!! I had been so afraid that he wouldn’t like it here cause he can’t go in the back yard like he used to, but he adjusted after like an hour, and he’s purred ever since. He’s the most wonderful and loving cat before, and I am the luckiest girl in the world.
Dear Google,
I’m a big fan.
- Google Maps satellite view enabled me to take a screenshot of my new apartment building. It’s a dome!! Seriously. It’s our dome sweet dome.
- I recently put the code for Google Analytics in the company website, allowing me to track the usage of every link in a totally revolutionary and unique way!! And those graphs you provide are really easy to read and informative if I’m only looking for a quick overview.
- Google Calendar changed my life. I now have thirteen different calendars–all different colors! Many are shared with my coworkers, friends and family. The important dates for my workplace are publicized on the web via a USCA Google Calendar. (Search for it! I keep it nicely up to date.) It’s the most effective and efficient way to share a schedule that’s ever been created. That might be quite a statement, but I’ll stand by it.
- Gtalk has brought instand messaging back in my life! I forgot how much faster I type than talk. And I can IM multiple gmail users at once, making it even easier to keep in touch!
- And gmail…with its infinite storage and easy search engine. You’ve got a great spam filter, and I really like and utilize the labels. I have a label for every money-making scheme I’m working on! Though I have to say, it is a little too difficult to get to everything you’ve ever labled a certain label if you don’t have something from that label right in front of you. You should look into doing something about that.
Now google, it’s my birthday today, and you know what I’d really like for my birthday? Not a pony or even a set of kitchen knives (which I really do need). For my birthday, I’d really like a Google Tasks. Each task would be a bubble on a blank page. They’ll resemble the appointments on Google Calendar, but you’ll be able to move them around and change their size and color to organize them in whatever way is intuitive and relevant to the tasks at the time! Like mutable magnets on a refridgerator, you can put the important ones on top–or in the middle–I’m going to use bright red to represent IMPERATIVE. And when you double-click on a task, it will open up a fresh refridgerator for decorating with all that task’s subtasks. And let’s also be able to put in pictures and websites as subtasks. Some of my tasks are websites. Like www.comcast.com is a subset of the Bills task. My Bills Google Calendar is brown too.
I’d really appreciate your immediate attention to this matter. Google Tasks will be the last major tool I need to live my life powerfully and efficiently–in this, my twenty-sixth year and for each year thereafter. You see, I’d program it myself but it’d take me sooo long–even though I’m sure it’s just a bit of object oriented programming and a slick interface. Not that y’all aren’t geniuses, but you totally haven’t thought of this yet. Oooh, I know! I’ll throw in a discount on some tupperware? How about a chip bowl with a little salsa container that hangs on the side?
And you don’t even have to give me a precentage for using my idea. Just the convenience will be enough. And a share or two, of course.
Cooperatively yours,
Susie J.
P.S. Can you also help me create that my new dome-icile is available a week earlier? That’d be great.
Meet Goldie
Last year, I almost owned a beauty salon. How great would that have been, to have a beauty salon by the age of twenty-four?! A real live beauty salon with real live hair dressers. I’d get to fix it up and decorate it the way I wanted to and it would sell world-friendly products. Or at least those marketed that way. I was going to call it Annie Bert’s after my great-great-grandmother who owned three salons and made money even during the Great Depression until she trusted a scoundrel of a bookkeeper and lost two of ’em.
This whole money-making bullshit began last September when I moved in with my aunt and uncle in Anderson, South Carolina. Though the entire stay is the source of infinite hilarity, today’s subject matter is limited to the Inner C.E.O., as it relates to my failed beauty parlor. One’s Inner C.E.O. has access to the Invisible Network, the likes of which your conscious mind cannot comprehend. The likes of which would likely prove indispensible to the running of a beauty parlor.
During my sojourn in the South, I was a freeloader by trade, but not agreement. I was therefore provided with all sorts of projects to keep myself busy, and–should I apply myself–transform us all into millionaires. I was the source of all labor, and I would earn 25% of the profits. I was just labor, not a human being, and my aunt and uncle were the source of our funding (not to mention my food, wine, and shelter). One of these projects was to “Get in touch with my Inner C.E.O.” according to The Eleventh Element. My aunt assured me that if I did establish communication with my Inner C.E.O., we’d be sure to be millionaires.
Now, the premise, as I understood the audio series–and bear in mind that I do zone out from time to time, and also that the author’s voice was unbearable (you can’t blame the guy for wanting to read his own book)–was that flashes of brilliance come to those in touch with the Invisible Network, which is sort of a greater dimension of information (somewhat similar to Jung’s collective unconscious). In support of such a strange hypothesis, I like to cite those studies where people do crosswords faster a day after they were published because they have been solved. One might choose to conclude that they can complete said crossword faster because the answers are all over the Invisible Network the next day. The author, we’ll call him Bob, cites all sorts of ridiculous examples like Dave from Wendy’s who thought of having a franchised hamburger restaurant. I gotta say, I think it’s totally possible that he came up with that one on his own.
Anyway, you access the Invisible Network through your Inner C.E.O.. So, if you can find a way to get in touch with your Inner C.E.O. and let them know what you want and what your desires are, you’ll be better at achieving wealth and happiness. Of course, your Inner C.E.O. might actually know better than you what’s best for you, and this explains why your Inner C.E.O. might not always deliver what you ask. One certainly shouldn’t conclude from such evidence that the entire concept of an Inner C.E.O. is silly. I never minded the concept itself, but I would have appreciated an argument for its (dubious) ontological necessity.
Once you’ve accepted that you have an Inner C.E.O. and that you’re going to start communicating with them, you give them a name. I named mine Goldie, after Goldie Hawn. I like her a lot.
Goldie Hawn, my Inner C.E.O.’s namesake
Then you decide how you’re going to communicate with them. Bob suggests that you set up a physical mailbox where you put the letters when you’re ready for your Inner C.E.O. to read them. The first letter should explain the location and shape of this mailbox, and offer a sample format for how the letters should be. You also ask them to give you a “hit me over the head so I can’t miss it” sign of how they’re going to communicate with you. Bob claims that if you ask for such a sign, you’re sure not to miss it.
Being a modern girl, and likewise having a modern Inner C.E.O., I got Goldie an email address, goldieceo@hotmail.com. I probably should have gotten her a gmail account. I emailed Goldie the initial letter explaining how she has this email account, and that I was going to contact her there. I followed with letters delineating the amount of leisure time, money, emotional stability, et cetera, that I want in life. Top priority was the letter asking for help establishing passive income for my aunt, thereby validating my presence in her house. This was important right then.
It’s not like I wanted an email in response. But I wanted a sign of some sort, and I’d asked for one so glaringly obvious it would “hit me over the head so I can’t miss it.” My aunt suggested that perhaps the email account wasn’t working out for her, and that I get a binder like hers, and keep the letters chronologically in plastic sleeves for easy reference.
So finally we get to the Beauty Parlor Money Making Scheme portion of my stay in the South, and my aunt says to me, “Have you written a letter to Goldie about the beauty parlor?”
I’d been drinking red wine and watching T.V. all day. “Ooooh, that’s a great idea!!”
Once she’d passed out on the couch and I was alone, I wrote Goldie a heart felt plea for help. Was the beauty parlor the answer to our pocketbook’s prayers?!
Days later–when conducting market research–I found myself inside a beauty parlor that was being remodeled in the Atlanta Hyatt. I’d convinced the owner I was a licensed esthician looking for work, and he was eager to show me around. At the time I sincerely believed in our plan to set up beauty parlors throughout the nation and rent out stations to stylists much like tenants in an apartment building. And, here I am, witnessing the birth of a salon! It’s a sign! Goldie wants a beauty parlor, too! But not one like this. No, definitely one more funky, as I dislike their choice of paint color. Right then! What happens? I kick over a can of paint and splatter it all over my jeans.
What could it all mean? I wondered if hairdressing was not to be my business.
I went home and suggested this interpretation to my aunt. She was skeptical. I think she was still hung up on the email thing.
At her bidding, I pursued the Beauty Parlor Money Making Scheme. I punched some numbers. I looked at retail spaces to rent. I spent hours looking at the various options for sinks, chairs, driers, yadda yadda. It was fun. But it wasn’t going to work out.
The beauty parlor wasn’t going to build itself–I was. I was going to decorate it. I was going to find a crew of helpers, and advertise in supermarkets and on the nearest college campus. It was going to be a month of work, and then some. It was illogical to assume that I could just skip town after opening a salon. I was going to be stuck in South Carolina forever. Not that it all didn’t sound like a good time. It did. But it came down to money. Money changes everything.
My share was to be 25% of $300 a month for as long as the place was open, and making money. That’s $75 a month following a solid month of unpaid labor. It would be 20 months before my investment paid off.
So I suggested that they pay me for my trouble setting up the salon. Otherwise, I say, I’m not going to be able to afford not working for the couple weeks or month to set up the salon. (I hadn’t worked in months.) I could be a contractor, and they could pay me like $10/hour, and we could accomodate for it in the size of our loan. I thought it was a pretty solid plan.
And she says to me, “If you want to get paid, get a job.” I wanted to cry. And I knew that Goldie was totally right. Not only was the paint can an obvious sign, but so was my depression. I had to get out.
