What is the Destination? Am I on the Right Path? The Mysteries of My Life.

It's one of those weekends with nothing scheduled, the weather is crappy and my mind wonders. Yea, you've read these wondering thoughts before: minimalism or simplify my life, change direction, boost readership here, how to make money doing something else, live on a boat, live without a home, join the Peace Corp and etc.

I went to Barnes and Noble yesterday and just wondered around for 4 hours. Up and down the aisles. I didn't have any particular objective or thing I was looking for, was just letting the titles jump out at me and see what happened. Well, that isn't completely true, I was curious if there were any books about purging your life of everything. There wasn't, or none that obvious.

I don't know why this theme intrigues me, but I partly think it stems from the realization from backpacking that I can survive with very little, and I'm surrounded by stuff I've accumulated over nearly 50 years (yea I've got stuff stuck away from early childhood). Not that any room or area of my home is cluttered looking, quite to the contrary. I do have a large home (6 bedrooms, 4.5 baths and 9 TVs) and we use them all regularly accept the spare bedroom which is only there for guest, normally family, and then only my wife's family.

The thought crosses my mind occasionally, when I'm away from the house, if the house burned down is there anything I'd really miss or not be able to replace. As long as nothing living was killed, I can't think of anything. There seem to be all sorts of blogs (Becoming Minimalist) on the subject of minimizing your life, jumping ship, pursuing your "passion", so I guess I'm not alone in this regard. Just no books it seems.  The blogs get huge traffic though.

Blog traffic..now I did pick up a few books on blogging to see what they had to say about increasing traffic.
If you've been a reader of this blog prior to today you might notice some changes. Mostly accidental as I changed the layout and lost my last layout cause I didn't think to save it. But now I've added some "gadgets" suggested to improve your ability to follow me. Also going forward I will create better file names for the images I upload. I didn't realize the search engine spiders see those and I've always named files so I know what they are on my computer. Not so you can find what you are looking for. Stupid me.

An idea did cross my mind that I may add another section to this blog. My working image of the idea is "Sidebars". Discussion about things that I specifically enjoy. Things other people of the same ilk may enjoy reading. Things that are not so much about my mindless dribble and doodles but more niche in nature.  I have some seedling ideas of subjects: backpacking, scotch/bourbon/beer, cigars, being cheap, and personal financial planning.

The financial planning thing may throw you, but that (shhh, keep this on the low down) is what I do during the day.  I enjoy the helping people part of it, and have often said I'd do it for free but my life won't let me, but I hate the aspect of it that I have to worry about making a buck from doing it.  I've considered writing a book on the subject, mostly because what I've realized is all the currently high profile talking heads (Susie Orman, Dave Ramsey, Clark Howard, Terry Savage) on the subject don't say anything different than what I say, but they get paid huge amounts and I just spout the gospel for peanuts.  Over and over and over again.  Rather than doing a repeat performance all my life, put it into words and just pass it out and consider it done.

So you can see I'm once again all over the board.  It is only by looking back that you can realize how far you've come, and yet it is today that you so badly want to know how it will look from the future.