rianjs.net

There's a metafilter thread that asks what book everyone should read. There are some good suggestions, but they are all temporal recommendations. There's nothing timeless about any of them, really. And they miss one thing that is essential to being a human being.

All humans are social. We're born that way, we cooperate to live. Every aspect of life is built upon cooporation. Economics, the study of the interconnectedness of every aspect of life in particular. Because we are all inherently social, and will always be social — until there is no more human race — it stands to reason that we should read something that will all further our understand of the relationships we form with one another.

To that end, I offer up the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It's message is timeless, and once you've got the foundation down, you can build off of it in any direction you like: science, business, healthcare… anything, really.

I mean honestly… some of the suggestions are just out there:

QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman, for a gentle math-free introduction to the theory that appears to most accurately describe what really happens when charged particles interact.

I mean really. WTF? That's not useful to me at all. I frankly couldn't care less about what happens when charged particles interact. I don't think a starving person in Africa would care either. (A book like Carnegie's is actually useful to anyone on any level of Maslow's heirarchy of needs because it can help one move up on the ladder.)

The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins.

The theory of evolution is incredibly beautiful in its ability to give a simple explanation for the complexity of the biological world, yet few people understand it well. In his books, Dawkins shows how evolution can produce altruism, and various other complex organs and behaviors, but most of all, he explains its basic principles and shows why evolution is the only possible explanation - even in theory - for complex living organisms.

These are not timeless suggestions. While they may be great books, our understanding of physics will change, our understanding of the origins will evolve (har har). However you take a book like How to Win Friends and Influence People and its advice is timeless. The fundamentals outlined therein will be relevant from now until the demise of humanity.

(And yes, I completely ignored the fiction genre because fictional books wouldn't be especially relevant to someone trying only to survive.)

I don't think you're a materialistic person who isn't interested or concerned with anything except clothes and parties and hot dog dogs. After all, you don't like President Bush, which means you certainly aren't apathetic about what goes on around you.

I think anyone who actually thinks that after interacting with you for more than 5 seconds can figure out that you've got a brain rather than sawdust between your ears.

I do think you've got some bad habits, but who doesn't?

Starting out

Last month I began writing again in earnest for myself. Not science this time, but medicine — specifically pharmacy. Those of you who have been reading my blog since last spring might remember me looking for a dedicated server with certain specifications. At first I thought I would be doing something related to webhosting. Later that morphed into creating my own science website.

In any event, I thought I was going to make it big, and so I planned to have a dedicated box to grow into. Because of course I was going to be utilizing it within a month or two.

Haha. Right.

Shedding excess baggage

Anyway, my one year contract is up so I have shed the dead weight that was the box at iweb.ca. (Who I heartily recommend, as always, to anyone looking for a dedicated provider.) No more $120/month. Now it's more like $10/month, and I have more than enough disk space and bandwidth for the time being. I learned a lot in the last 12 months about writing on the Internet (for both fun and profit), and I applied many of the skills that I learned there to what I'm doing now. Lots of absorption through immersing myself in the writings of people who know more than I do.

I have resisted learning anything about SEO. That seems wrong to me, somehow, but I've slowly begun incorporating some of the basic principles. I rank fairly well for some phrases, but nothing that's a blockbuster.

Anyway, onto my earnings.

Earnings

I should get my first check from Google sometime this month. I will photograph (or scan) it when I arrives. In the first full month of writing for fun (and profit) I pulled in a drumroll please…

$28.

(*cue crickets chirping*)

Yes that doesn't sound like much, but my hosting costs are only $10/month at Dreamhost, and it's the first full month of "blogging" with the intent to profit from it. (I had about 2 weeks in May that I blogged as well, but not a full month.) My earnings in May were $8.

Let me tell you something. That $36 I've made in the last 6 weeks is some of the best money I've ever made in terms of being proud of my accomplishments.

Exceeding my goals

I'm not getting rich from writing by any means. My niche is small, but it's also relatively unpopulated. Or it's populated by those with an agenda. My only agenda is cutting through the BS. I'm fairly middle-of-the-road in just about every aspect of my life, and I see huge quantities of BS from both sides of the tracks.

I started out the month of June wanting to get 1 click per day. I didn't have a good idea of how much each click would be worth on average, so I settled for something more concrete: 30 clicks in 30 days between my old science website, this blog here, and my (hopefully profitable) pharmacy blog.

How many clicks did I get?

111.

111 clicks on 13,606 page impressions between all 3 sites. For comparison, May was 28 clicks on 14,576 impressions. Fewer impressions, more clicks. Lots more money.

Specifically, my pharmacy blog got 1,902 impressions in May, with 13 clicks. (First post went up on May 11.) In June, impressions were 2,436 with 61 clicks.

I think I've started off well. Shedding dead weight (dedicated server), basic SEO, and minor blog promotion has served me quite well. I will continue these things this month and on into the future. I hope to eventually have a story that has wide enough appeal to make it to the front page of Digg (as happened with this Nobel Intent post on Tylenol and liver failure). In the meantime, submitting links to places like Digg and Reddit — only my best stuff so as not to be a spammer — will help with PageRank here and there.

And when the time comes, I won't hesitate to move to a dedicated server again. But when that time comes, I have no doubts that my income from my writing will more than cover the associated costs.

What are my goals for July?

I like to set achievable goals. Last month I accomplished what I set out to do. In fact, had I thought about it, and looked at May more closely, I'd have In short, I'd like to increase my earnings by $7 — to a total of $35 for the month. I'd also like to hit 3,000 page impressions.

I'd also like to hit 28 readers on my RSS feed consistently. Some days it reads as high as 32, some days it's in the low 20s. (It's at 21 right now — a low point.)

These goals may seem like only an incremental increase, and bound to occur naturally as the long tail of content grows, but my time spent at work has nearly doubled in the last week, and next Monday I start classes for 3 hours a day, 4 days a week. (Classes I actually want to take what what!)

I look forward to seeing how well I can juggle less free time and posting consistency. I don't think it will be a problem. Like many others, I find that the less free time I have, the more I get done. (Provided negative, life-sucking stress remains out of the picture, which it should.) As I wrote the other day, I look forward to these new challenges. I am thinking exciting things are in store, and I can't wait to see what they will be.

Long-term planning

I'd like to get myself a better blog template. Maybe something professionally-designed. Unfortunately, such templates are quite expensive, so it will likely have to wait. But well-designed templates with places for AdSense (and other monetization techniques) built in are just so lovely.

Too bad they're out of reach at the moment. I think the main theme on my pharmacy blog looks a little gaudy, and I think the theme here is somewhat unreadable.

Over the last few days, I've had almost no time at all to do basic things like keep my room neat, write, do whatever. Between work and social commitments, I've just not had the time.

I was looking forward to today to being able to clean my room (a disaster area), get some writing done, plan out a few things for classes next week, etc. I got all of it done in the space of 2 hours. I even mowed the lawn. Typically, this makes for a good day, but really, doing all that stuff has been ordinary. Even commonplace. A typical day for me is 1) work 2) home-cooked food 3) 2 hours of insane, uninterrupted productivity and 4) relaxing for an hour or two. In general, my "average" days are days most people I know would kill to have with any regularity.

Of course it wasn't always like that for me. Instead, I had to work at it for about 2 months before I got the hang of it. (See my productivity series.

I have nothing to sink my teeth into

Yet I am unhappy tonight. It's early, and I spent most of the evening relaxing. But relaxing is only nice when you've been particularly busy, stressed out, or need a break from XYZ. In my case, I have nothing that I need to escape from: there's nothing I *should* be doing that I haven't already done, or put things in motion to get accomplished.

Motion keeps me happy. Interacting with other people keeps me happy. My default emotion is happiness and contentment. I'm not hurried or stressed or otherwise feeling any negative emotion that I need to overcome and/or escape from by relaxing. I don't need or want a vacation. I want more activity. I am happiest when I am being with people doing something, or working on something challenging. For a while, the challenge was learning how to be a productive, happy human being, as I was discovering as I wrote in my productivity series. Learning those things was my challenge for a little while. Now I am better equipped to conquer something new, and I have nothing to conquer. I feel a bit like Alexander the Great perhaps did — "what now?" I feel like something is right around the corner, and I learned these skills to better be able to tackle these future challenges. So they wouldn't trip me up and cause me to fail. Maybe it will be classes in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, I yearn to build something or create something or learn something. (Preferably something interesting. ;))

My social contacts are few

I've largely broken off contact with quite a few people for various reasons. Others are somewhat more difficult to keep in contact with because they are busier than me. (Or they just don't manage their time wisely so they consequently have less meaningful free time.)

I am also lacking in the relationship department. For a long time I didn't want a ball-and-chaingirlfriend. Until about 3 months ago, I've been perfectly happy being single since Kim and I parted ways. Now I feel like something is missing.

I've been told my standards are too high by more than one person. Perhaps they are. I prefer to think of it as not settling. I realize there's a fine line, but is wanting someone open-minded, eager to learn and experience new things such a terrible thing? Probably not. I do have a disadvantage, and that is my age. "Most people" don't learn what I've learned in the last 12 months until they're much older. (According to both of my parents and older mentors.) Woopty-do. Most women that I'm interested in dismiss me out-of-hand once they learn how old I am. I guess that's okay, but it sort of sucks for now.

Difficulty relating to others

I have some difficulty relating to others also. I tend to think in shades of gray and try to consider all possible scenarios before forming an opinion. I don't do this consciously, or to feel "superior" to others in some way, it's just something I do. I can't help it, and even if I could, I wouldn't change it.

As such, I find it difficult to have conversations with "most" people. By and large, people like to complain about whatever, and that's just not me. (I realize this post could be considered complaining, and there might be some irony in that, but really I'm just exploring my own thoughts through the written word which is the best way for me to do my best thinking. In general, you won't really find someone happier than me. I often find myself grinning like an idiot for no conscious reason… perhaps it's the madness. :scared: :p)

I find the more I know about something, the less likely I am to complain about it, because I understand why that perceived antagonist is the way it is. It's usually not The Man trying to screw me, you, or anyone else. It's that way because of 13654 reasons that can be elucidated if one were but to ask.

I also don't tend to remain upset or angry about things. I like to let things go, and as such gossip doesn't much interest me. In fact, I find it tiresome and petty. It aggravates some people that I don't participate, and so they are less likely to talk to me. (Which is a good thing, I suppose.)

Strange. This post is so negative, yet I am not discontent. Sure I feel down sometimes, like I did when I first started writing this post, but I'm not particularly down at the moment. I guess I feel like I'm slowly going 'round a corner, waiting for the next surprise in store for me, and that whatever that surprise is, it's going to be big and wonderful, and will have been totally worth the wait when it comes.