"The ends justify the means..."

So it's been awhile. I think I am going to use that as my opening phrase for the rest of these blogs lol. The past three weeks have been quite interesting. The challenges have revolved around some interesting issues in my life. The challenges from the past three weeks were:

-Negotiating
-Politics
-Economics

I know, not terribly exciting. But for whatever reason, the past few weeks started off with me reading about John Adams and Benjamin Franklin and then that became an off shoot of reading about the aforementioned topics.

The most interesting book of the bunch I read was "Winning at Office Politics" by Marie G McIntyre. What a great read. I also read Freakonomics  and a few books on Negotiating and Economics. A good one being "The Little Book of Economics" by Greg Ip.

Now I'm the type of guy who kind of just deals with life in a "go with the flow fashion". I never really paid attention to how the interplay and dynamics of people come together. I learned that I dealt with life from a small bubble of my consciousness and instead of dealing with life as it really was. Now I don't want to come off like I've become all paranoid and I really feel that I've only scratched the surface of what is possible with this newfound revelation. But like I've mentioned before, 7 days is not a long time.

Anyhow a few things inspiring me lately:

Latest Update

I am writing this on my iPhone at a Barnes and Nobles enjoying a green tea and almonds. I am currently listening to the film scores channel on Pandora. I had a couple of free hours to kill before work and I figured I really need to update the blog more often so I am trying my best to try different ways to do that.

First off some updates. Last weeks challenge for me was to take time and actually do some chores. Yes, like when I was 12 and had chores to do. Tasks such as everyday cleaning and scrubbing to paying bills and finishing projects around the house that needed tomget done. Tell you the truth, I found it kind of relaxing. In a sense it was almost grounding. From doing laundry to scrubbing my bathroom (which I realized I should do more often). I put on my headphones and pretty much got everything I wanted to get done. If I could only keep this up lol.

This weeks challenge is gonna lead to he next few challenges. I would consider myself a relatively creatI've person (lol), but with that comes certain tasks that I do not enjoy. Activities that are more left brained in theory. These are areas I have avoided in one way or another my whole life. The specific tasks being in no particular order:

-negotiating
-networking
-dealing with difficult people or situations
-social and political awareness

I realize this specific objectives and challenges are gonna be harder to quantify by I realized that these area will definitely help me out in some major areas of life. This week I have been reading negotiating books and hopefully in my line of work I will be able to practice some of these things. Otherwise I'm gonna have to get creative in how I approach these specific "arts". Anyhow my hands are cramping up. So for now i say adieu...