Postcards From Myself

OK, that is a somewhat high and mighty title for what I want to talk about. This past week one of my best friends got her home broken into and a number of items stolen. Additionally, that home invasion shook her sense of security and safety. This is probably the greatest loss of any even such as this.

When I was just a kid of around nine or ten, my house was broken into also. The two biggest things I remember are the anger that whoever it was ate the last of my birthday cake, and that I had the feeling that our home was no longer secure. Actually, taking something as personal to me as my birthday came made that insecurity even worse. Here was someone coming in and taking something that was very personal to me but which most others wouldn’t even care about. It really shook me.

Unfortunately there is not much I can do to help my friend with her feelings of invasion. Other than listening and being there for her, this is pretty much out of my reach. What I can help her with, and hopefully you, is the other item they took. You see, they took her laptop with all her work on it.

Once your laptop or computer is gone, there really isn’t much you can do other than give the authorities the serial number and then watch the pawnshops and classifieds. But before you lose it there is a good deal you can do. First, from the strictly mechanical standpoint, make sure it is covered by your homeowners or renters insurance. If you are like many folks, that machine is vital to your cash flow, so make sure you are going to be able to replace it.

Second, and this can be aggravating on a daily basis, make sure that your accounts are password protected. At the very least there should be a password required to get into your account on boot up and to get back to the desktop from screensaver. Yes, it is annoying that you have to type in those seven or eight letters and number, remember your password should be secure, every time you want to access stuff, but that is far better than having a thief make off with all your bank records, emails, client lists, web search history, and so on. Think of it is locking your front door or putting on your seatbelt. It quickly becomes a habit and when you really need it, you will be glad you did.

Third, stop me if you have heard this before, do some backups. On second thought, don’t stop me but listen. We all hear about backups, but most of us never do them. What are you going to do if your hard drive suddenly goes away? Where are all your contacts? Where are you emails? Where is that important project you are working on? At the very least set yourself up a GMail or Hotmail or Yahoo web based email account and send a copy of these items to it every once in a while. Working on a big project every day this week? Then at the end of every work session just email the files to your web based account and let them sit there.

Additionally, once a week or month you should back up your important stuff to CD or DVD and store it off site. The easiest way to do this is to have coffee or lunch with a friend. Seriously! Make a regular standing date with a friend where the two of you will exchange disks. You will store their stuff and they will store yours. And by having that regular appointment set up it will remind you to do the back up. And by having a backup partner, you are both more likely to actually get it done. The key is not how you do the backups, but that you at least do them.

Again, sadly I cannot help you with the feelings of personal loss that come from having your home invaded and your stuff stolen – although if you need a hug just let me know. But, if you take some simple precautions, you can minimize the economic effects of that loss.

We are all motivated by different things and we are sidetracked for different reasons. There are times though when you can use those things to serve a real purpose. By this I mean that when you are bothered or distracted by something you can often reward yourself with its elimination.

What the heck am I talking about? Here is my example. I am trying to blog and write more. I am using that in attempt to build up my freelance skills and credibility. As odd as it sounds though I am distracted by home office setup. I have a nice desk, but I had no desk chair. Since I didn’t have a chair for the desk I would use a large armchair with the laptop either in my lap or on a board I lay between the arms of the chair. Of course by doing that my posture was horrible and my hands would start hurting. Seriously, I could be driving down the road and if I thought about writing my hands would spontaneously ache.

Solution? I have rewarded myself with a new chair. I finally broke down and spent some money (I am really cheap when it comes to things like chairs, shoes, and other boring necessities), and bought a nice chair. No, I didn’t spend a gazillion dollars, but I found a good sale at Office Depot and bought a quality piece of office equipment. So, not only was I able to provide myself a reward for my work but I was also able to hopefully eliminate a distraction.

The key here is to look at where our pluses, our rewards, and our minus, our distractions, intersect. Sometimes you can put some pressure on that point and come out ahead all the way around.

This is really more me giving some credit where credit is due and some pointers to a few interesting sites.

If you are a freelancer at all, you should check out http://www.freelancewritinggigs.com. While really aimed at writers, Deborah Ng has created an interesting and entertaining home for all sorts of freelancing information. One of the must reads is the regular “We Get Letters” entry. Here she posts and answers email from readers of varying mental stability. Really good stuff.

Another source for inspiration on those cold dark nights of entrepreneurship or freelancing is http://ittybiz.com. Naomi, the site’s author, creator, and all around mom runs a business helping very small business learn how to do marketing right. Too that end her site is a fount of useful information and pointed tips. Your would do well to listen to what she has to say.

Finally, http://www.dumblittleman.com is hard to describe. They say that each week they provide a handful of tips that will save you money, increase your productivity, or simply keep you sane. There is no way to pigeon hole this blog. Some tips are about computers, some are about cars. Some are about shopping, while others are simply opinions about better ways to live your life. The common thread though is that they are all interesting and most will get you thinking. Give it a try. Even if you only find about ten percent of the tips applicable to you, it is still more than worth it.

Got any more than I need to know about? Let me hear it!

My wife noticed something interesting about the costumes of the trick-or-treaters last night, and I would like to know your thoughts. After having all of the the little sugar fiends come visit we were talking about the different outfits we saw. It was then that she made the observation that they were almost all cute or friendly. There were only one or two gross or “horror” apparitions.

Now, I don’t know if it was just our cross section, but this is a radical change from past years. As far back as I can remember we have been getting a good number of horrible ghouls, bloody ax murder victims, and ghastly vampires, werewolves, and mummies. But this year was mostly princesses, NASCAR racers, pirates, and kitty cats. We did have one little girl dressed as a devil, but it was one of those cutesy little sparkling costumes. Not scary at all.

In fact, the only two real horror outfits I can remember were my son as the Grim Reaper, and the boy next door a some sort of ghoul. So, did we just not get the dead and dying crowd? Is Halloween changing? Or am I just, as is often the case, off my rocker?

Oh, and for the record, my son brought home over four pounds of candy. Good grief.