Does Life Really Start When You’re 30?

Hey everyone – today is Veronica’s 30th birthday! YAAAAYYY! I’m leaving in an hour to go meet her for dinner, but before I leave I wanted to share my thoughts on getting older (I’m 30 in September) and the whole concept of “my 30’s were the best years of my life” – which I’ve been hearing more and more from people around me.

In my personal opinion – YES!  I totally agree and have always been excited for my 30’s.  I don’t know if it’s because being in your 20’s is still considered “young” or if 30 years is what it takes to really understand what’s necessary to succeed in life, but I definitely think turning 30 is where the party is at.

Here’s why:

  • My 20’s was primarily occupied by self discovery, confusion, experimentation and laziness.
  • Being a 20-something sucks, and society considers someone who is 30 to be more experienced than a person who is 29.
  • The best stories anyone older than you tells are about something that happened when they were in their 20’s. Turning 30 automatically makes you an awesome storyteller!  Well, it hasn’t been scientifically proven yet, but this is what I believe!

(20 minutes later)

Anyways – I have to go hit the subway!  I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Cheers,

Elijah

Swimming Upstream Is The Hardest Part

Hi All!

Here I am . . .  resurfacing again!

I’ve been working my (now littler) butt off.  I know it’s not over yet, but this year has been especially grueling.  I’ve immersed myself in a career and I’m afraid that I’ve lost sight of my goals.  In fact, I’m in a place right now where they are changing on a daily basis.  I am pulled between what I want and what I have been taught to want.  Teetering between creating my rules and following already set ones.  Don’t get me wrong, I really like my job and I feel extremely fortunate to be working directly in my field, pretty much on the front lines.  And it’s not like the rules I have to follow now are as restrictive as others I’ve encountered.  It’s because of this that I struggle with what to do next.  I feel like decisions are going to be thrown at me in the near future and they are going to be life changing.  You know, the ones that fork the road and require the “what if” reminiscing later on in life.

And then, in a weird twist of life, I came across a manifesto and movement today on one of my favourite blogs, princesslasertron.com.

Chris Guillebeau is the author of The Art of Non Conformity. A book for “for unconventional people who want to do remarkable things.” He is living his dream and has made a commitment to visit every country in the world and so far, has been very successful.  In addition to making your passion your work, he emphasizes helping people and giving back.  So simple.  Pretty impressive.

After reading his manifesto, A Brief Guide to World Domination, I feel better.  Even though going against the grain of the mainstream and doing things a little differently is harder and takes longer to reveal success, it is necessary for change.  If you think about it, our entire world consists of products and services that were created by people who had the cahones to do things differently and succeed.   I think this book  is just what I need to re-strategize where I want to take my life, what I want to be doing and how I want to be doing it.

I’ll let you know how it goes.   ü

Cheers,

Veronica

Followers, Fans, Bloggerhood, Lend Me Your Fears

Everyday I run into to family and friends – on and off line – and everyday I give the same answer, “Business is good. Absolutely insane, but good.” I’m sure you can guess the question or something close enough.  Then it dawned on me as I was having a smoke break (I know, I know) that this daily interaction would be much more interesting and beneficial with the veil of common chatter removed.

Imagine if we lived in a world where instead of asking…

“How’s business?”

we asked each other…

“What are you afraid of today?”

Right now I’m afraid of my own potential.  As confusing as that sounds, the possibility of immense success terrifies me sometimes.  I even think that it directly hinders my progress in some sort of unconscious way.

I’m afraid of death and the possibility that once my time has come there will be nothing but nothingness.  I’ve had quite a few close friends and family pass away in the last 10 years and I hate it.  Cancer sucks.  Fuck cancer (as I smoke a cigarette).

When was the last time you actually sat down, without distractions, and conversed with your inner self about fear?  Up until 5 minutes ago, it has been a few weeks for me.  And though I don’t feel much better emotionally, it’s nice know I just typed it out for the world to see.

Your fears is what I want to see below in the comment box.  I don’t care if you’ve never commented on a blog before, put in a name and spit it out.  Don’t think about it too much, just go with the first thoughts that enter your head.

Do it.

Cheers,

Elijah

(Shakespeare anyone?)

The At Home Life: Time Management Challenges

Twenty ten!  This year is going to be huge in so many ways – and one of our first goals as a business is to spend time each week working on increasing our passive income.  After some consideration, we concluded that the only way to reach our goal is to put aside an entire day where all we do is work on our passive sites, link building, traffic etc…

We also concluded that to make this work we would need to regroup and come up with an efficient time management system for the office, as well as our personal “home” tasks.  Considering we don’t have kids or a mortgage, we still tend to bounce of the walls every now and then – and having better time management will prevent that from happening!

The video was spontaneous – and Veronica wasn’t prepared for my intrusion.

Cheers,

Elijah

Attracting the Laws of Attraction

law of attraction

Post Internet drama, Elijah and I have been struggling a bit with thinking positively about our current financial situation.  We do have work coming in, but trying to catch up with all the bill payments we have missed is a daunting task.  Focusing on a plan of action is hard, because we’re trying to do so many things at once.  The chaos is terrifying and exhilarating all at the same time.  Elijah came to me the other night with a potential movie to watch for the evening, “Beyond the Secret“, a motivational film outlining the steps to benefiting from the Laws of Attraction.

The movie itself was kind of corny, but the concept intrigues me.  I’ve heard about the Laws of Attraction before, but never really delved too deeply into the topic.  Eli and I are very big believers in the mind/body/spirit connection, so we’ve decided to make a conscious effort to employ the Laws of Attraction.  We’ve starting meditating twice a day and focusing on positive outcomes.  It hasn’t been easy for me, since I have a tendency to worry and fret.  But I must say that I have been pretty good for the past couple of days.

For anyone else (I’m probably the last.) unaware of the theory, it is that the Laws of Attraction are Universal Laws that are based on the energy of the earth and of us as human beings.  Basically, by focusing your energy on your desires or dreams, you are manifesting them into reality.  But it goes both ways; focusing your energy on negative outcomes or scenarios can attract those as well. By simply knowing what you want, asking the universe for it, visualizing your self with it and allowing change, we can achieve any goal or dream.  In terms of science, there are those who don’t believe it is possible for one to transmit their energies,  yet others argue the laws of Quantum Physics, which teaches that nothing is fixed, we and everything on this planet are vibrating balls of energy have limitless possibilities.

(This is my basic understanding of Quantum Physics and the Laws of Attraction.)

I figure that because we have a lot to turn around, it is easier to focus on smaller, more attainable goals.  Obviously I want to get caught up with our payments, so I envision myself paying the bills and having money left over.  Simple and yet such a happy thought . . . sigh.  We haven’t noticed any dramatic change so far, but that can be expected since we only started talking about this a couple days ago.  (Although Eli did receive a random $25 out of the blue tonight.)

I’m really excited to get my mind and body on the same page, they’ve been at odds with each other for a while now.

There really can’t be any negative outcomes . . .

because I won’t be thinking about them.

Stay Classy,

Veronica

They Thought Killing Us Would Be Easy

elijah-mug-shotDo you see this face?  This is the face of a man who will not go quietly.  This is the face of a man who will not give up on his dreams of financial freedom and mini retirements; all because the system refuses to cooperate.  Technology tried to crush our focus.  The corporations tried to give us the runaround.

They tried to kill TheAtHomeCouple.

They tried to kill Elijah and Veronica.

They tried to kill us and they failed.

For those of you who’ve been wondering if we’re doing ok, here is a brief, but graphic summary of the last 8 weeks:

The light bulb in my desk lamp blew out.  At first it didn’t seem like a big deal, but later I would realize that it was a symbolic gesture foreshadowing the mind-numbing course of events to follow.  A few days after that our Internet stopped working.  It had been 3 years, with the same service provider, without a bump.

No internet equals no money.  Funny how the guru’s never mention that one.  Note to self.

With the obvious sense of impending urgency, we decided to give them 2 weeks to fix it.  3 technicians and 2 weeks later the problem was still occurring, so we made the executive decision to cancel services (broadband cable internet and digital cable television) and call up our voip provider and get some DSL web service bundled-up and running.

If it were only that simple.  There is no “option” in “monopoly”.

6 weeks, 40 phone calls and 7 support tickets later, we have no high speed internet, our credit cards are maxed out and we’re 2 months behind on all of our utility bills with $20 in the bank.  There is no bail out for ambitious home business owners.  Help was not on its way.  We were 1 click away from checking out the cubicle-job market on Craigslist.

Apparently hitting rock bottom is required and we were fulfilling our obligation.

Today is Wednesday, and today we have high speed.  We’ve come full circle to our original service provider, but discovered along the way that they have business internet and phone solutions that offer a more robust support package, with a considerable increase in service speed and features.  Where was this 6 weeks and $3000 ago?

Please listen to what I’m about to tell you…

If you have or are planning to quit your job and work online full time – make sure you have a solid,  back up resource for high speed internet.  Whether it’s your grandmothers place, a Starbucks downtown or a 4G usb internet stick – know exactly where you are going and what you will do if you suddenly have no internet access.

I realize that in this day and age we completely abuse and take advantage of our dependency on technology.  Money spends the majority of our lives in a virtual state.  Our banking, businesses and social black books rely on technology.

If you’re chasing this money making dream – please take at least 30 minutes to think about what I’ve just shared with you.  Yes, we can all make money online.  Yes, we can quit our jobs and cash Adsense checks once a month.  Yes, we can visit each others blogs and make little jokes about things we’ll do when we’re “at the top”.

But what will you do if all these great things were coming into fruition and your internet connection fails?  Simple, yet deadly.

Cheers,

Elijah