New books, new ideas:
I recently found an audiobook, No Excuses; by Brian Tracy, and it spurred me to finish the update, proofreading, editing, and cover artwork for my own book.
This is pretty much done; I still need to run the whole
thing past other eyes to catch glaring and not so glaring errors.
And add this essay.
First off, and credit where it is due, The above mentioned book by Mr. Tracy reminded me of this basic essential: I need to do the work. I am responsible. So are you.
The whole point of my book, of course is to affirm your ability. But, even more importantly, to get you off the dime and moving. So.
For on example, if you are in the artillery, you get your orders from your commander, and your sighting information from your forward observer. Then you aim, fire, evaluate, adjust your aim, fire again, repeat as necessary until the target is hit & destroyed.
Achieving your own aims is just like that: choose the goal, make the plan, work the plan, focus on the objective or outcome. Correct as needed, evaluate the progress, re-evaluate the goal. Ready, Aim, Fire! Evaluate, Make ready again, Aim, Fire! Repeat as necessary to achieve your goal.
No matter what, you are responsible. No matter if the cause of failure was at someone else’s hands, no matter if it was a (so-called) Act of God, you are responsible. If nothing else, you are responsible for your reaction to the circumstance. No excuses!
That said, I AM a good one for excuses. Even if I have ‘good’ excuses, they only get in my way. Too bad, so sad. I should pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again!
I lost my job some months ago, and ultimately deserved to. Never mind the reason; I was not performing to specifications. Anyone from the old shop who reads this, please understand, I do not blame my former work place. They did their best to keep me on, as the things I was doing right and well, I was doing very well indeed. However, I couldn’t keep my call times short.
I am slowing down, and that contributed to the loss of my former position. Again, not their fault. I was unable to find a strategy that allowed me to complete my call tasks on average in the time limit required of me.
I am responsible for that.
So, when I found Mr. Tracy’s book, and listened to it, it resonated. Maybe I didn’t like to hear the message, but the message was important, and I was open to it.
And here we are.
I will give you a glimpse of my most recent vision:
In my immediate area we have a food desert. A thrift grocery that had been the source of food for the area closed, and the building razed (as well as the buildings around it). Now, someone is setting to build a McDonald’s in a corner of the block. Considering the location, it should be a success. However …
What I wanted to do, and still want to do, is create a destination business, something that people not from the immediate area would want to visit. A business that, in and of itself, draws people (and their dollars) to it. Tentative project name: Nate’s Bistro and Dinner Theater.
Nearby, there would be a grocery store that would provide foodstuffs a notch above what the dollar store carries, but not so expensive as to be a hardship for the folks around to purchase. It would be good for it to have a specialty of some sort, like (for instance) a specialty bakery. This would be one more draw to bring people from outside the immediate area to our corner of the world.
And just for the fun of it, a bookstore and newsstand.
The bistro could have open mike ‘sing for your supper’ event, the theater would provide real world opportunities for the school of music and school of theater of the local university. The theater would also provide future sound and light designers opportunities to get real-world experience, and the back-stage scene shop would give makers of all sorts opportunities to make something big, as well as craft ‘show-specific’ mementos as one-of-a-kind keepsakes for whatever show being presented; these items could be sold at Nate’s or as point-of-sale items at the bookstore.
The theater would become the primary destination, providing traffic to the bistro, and vice versa, giving exposure to the nifty little grocery, as well as an interesting brick-and-mortar bookstore for things you cannot get at the A-to-Z store online.
The nearby motels would benefit from the extra traffic, as would as the other businesses in the immediate area. As visualized, the convenience store would generally keep their clientele for the kinds of things the dollar store does best, the Gas & Go place would be the same. The in-coming Mickey Dee would not see the restaurant cut into the fast-food flow, or perhaps a little, as some would just want to sit down and take a load off their feet and dine comfortably instead of being in a rush.
All in all, making a destination dinner theater/bistro (with associated businesses) would be a good thing.
But, to achieve this, I need to have some financial resources to build on.
Hence, I need to get off the dime and be responsible. No Excuses!
Yes I Can!
So Can You!
