.25(Life+Crisis)=1/4LifeCrisis

So now that I’ve done this:

With the excuse that I simply needed to add some character to my recently-rendered hairless visage, I think it’s now impossible not to make some larger, more encompassing statement about the recent events in my life, which, yes, has reached its Quarter-mark. If you haven’t been playing along with the home edition of our show, I’ve quit my job, lost my faith, shaved my head, pierced my ears and started challenging myself along various personal development veins all over the last month or two. You might think this all adds up to one big, dishonest, emotional attempt to grab hold of my youth or capture some fading opportunities, but you’d be wrong.

Deconstructing…Hair (I shaved my head), (with pics!)

6 Observations on Shaving Your (my) Head

1. One should use clippers instead of scissors for the initial shortening, unless one wants to be writing a post about head shaving at 2:30am, two hours after one picked up the scissors.

Two Good-Morning Multiple Choice Questions

Two challenging multiple choice questions.

Guess what woke me up this morning:

a) The sun

b) Noise from the street

c) Delusions of grandeur

d) A piano tuner doing his business downstairs at 8am

e) A recorded message from Hannah Montana coming from the phone number of a sleep-jealous co-worker

(Answers: d&e)

The best time to schedule a piano tuning appointment is:

a) When 4/4 people that live with you are awake

b) When 1/4 people that live with you are awake

(Answer: a)

Re: Your Thoughts On Deconstructing My Spirituality

Thanks for all the feedback to my earlier post about my re-examination of faith. I appreciate the emails and phone calls and free coffee I’ve gotten out of it too =)

I started to respond to some comments in the comments section but figured I’d copy them here and respond to everyone in a post instead.

In order…

Day 1 as a Livebeat

A deadbeat, by my own definition is someone living a Beat life (not like Kerouac actually did, but the negative connotation of not being tied into the standard social systems of responsibility) and is, to culture, Dead – ie non-productive.

So, someone outside of the common social systems of responsibility but who is responsible to himself and productive for himself could be called a livebeat. 

Deconstructing My Spirituality

I’m very nervous about writing this post (so nervous, in fact, that I’ve been sitting on this finished post for over 3 weeks). I know what it means to many people I love, and I know It will be met by a variety of reactions. Not to mention, as you can tell by the title, I’m re-examining something that has been a big part of my life for seven years. Be sure, it’s not the nervousness that’s inspiring me to take a closer look at things. Yes, I think it’s important to question everything – especially those things that tell us how to live, things that our heart questions, to make sure we’re being rational and ensure that we’re not caught up in culture.

Investing in Action over Object

I’m lucky to be 25, in a secure job and able to shop for a condo or house at discount prices in our current economy. In fact, I’ve seen close to twenty places over the last 10 weeks or so and a couple of have impressed me enough to reach for the check book. For better or worse however, those places had other offers and apart from one low-ball back-up offer I made, I wasn’t willing to get into a bidding war. The plan from the get go was either buy under what I could afford, or just at my comfort zone and rent a room or two so my lifestyle of never cooking* and fancy eating needn’t be limited.

Shopping around, the idea if settling down always made me nervous (I know, a big shocker if you know me). I chalked this up to cold feet for a while. “Of course I’m nervous, it’s a big commitment, a big step in life. One of the big three: house, wife, kids” etc. But in this personal era of deconstruction and self-analyzing, I’m led to question all the standards and anytime I’m thinking about doing something that I potentially don’t want to do, old culture and tradition is getting the Jake Bales microscope treatment.

Deconstructing Empoyment

About six weeks ago I came across the Authors@Google presentation featuring Tim Ferriss and Marci Alboher, where they discussed their lives and respective books The Four Hour Work Week and One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success, and promptly devoured Ferriss’s book. It focuses on two major points: Lifestyle Design (building a life with intent rather than deferring happiness to retirement) and strategies to build a business that supports you, but doesn’t take 60 hours a week to run. Cutting out the advice he gives that, rather than making everyone happy, is instead more a path to become like him, and achieve those things that he finds satisfaction in, there are still buckets of great perspective, inspiration and strategy.

I took a few weeks to experiment with the 80/20 Principle (or the “Pareto Principle“) at the core of Ferriss’s business and personal success/satisfaction.

“About Topthot” Updated

Tossed a quick update to the about section. Obviously this will change as the focus of the blog becomes clearer.