It's been a while. Over the last few months, I've been stretched very thin, trying my best to manage the selling of T-shirts and other fundraising goods. The late hours, multiple spreadsheets, and (rare) irate customer has been worth it as we've helped facilitate over $100,000 in flood relief. All from a simple T-shirt.
I've also been working on the next big thing - another book. This fall, I'll be publishing 50 Things Your Life Doesn't Need as part of Turner's "Good Things to Know" series. The outline is done and the writing is afoot. Here's a small taste of what's to come. I'm really going to enjoy this one:
This isn’t a book about stuff. It’s a book about passion. It’s a book about priorities. It’s a book about you and the kind of life you want to live and the kind of person you want to be.
Very few of us have dared to think about the types of lives we really want to live. We claim we can’t find time for quiet reflection or deep introspection. Daily responsibilities and routines demand our attention, leaving no time for self-discovery. Modern technology, countless forms of entertainment, and many other distractions also combine to keep us from figuring out what the point of all this is.
As a result, we fill our house with things, buying whatever it is that’s new on the shelves or carries a promise of self-improvement or a glimmer of hope that we can be a better, happier person. Before too long, however, our homes are filled with things and our hearts are empty of passion. In a brief moment of inspiration, we find empty boxes and fill them with things we no longer want or use, thinking the extra space will give us room to breathe and think and that maybe tomorrow will be different.
But it isn’t. The motivation is temporary and before long, new things will replace the old things and we’ll clean out again and then press repeat. The solution isn’t less stuff. It’s more passion.