in defense of self help books...

Well, I really should just come out with it. I'm trying to generate money with my mind. Or, to be more specific, my perception of reality. It's a long story, one that can be explained in this book.

I'm a book person, and it's never been a big leap to self-helpy books. Maybe I should be ashamed, embarassed, for having a long list of self-helpy books under my belt. (Saying "self help-y" seems to take the edge off, somehow.) Only one, this one, actually brought me to tears and was banned from the house. (I broke down when thinking I'd never even manage to develop the first habit, let alone the other six...) I've read a bunch of them ranging from a book that encouraged me to view my negative thoughts as gremlins to the ever-eye-roll-eliciting "The Artist's Way". And, you know what? If any one approaches me with a new way of thinking or looking at the world, well, I'll listen to that too. Anyways. There. I've outed myself as an occasional self help book reader.

So I'm trying to generate money with my mind. Not all the time. I'm not sitting around obsessing about it. But I'm putting some energy in to it. About as much energy as it takes to keep my teeth clean.

About a week after I started I recieved a $50.00 check in the mail from someone with whom I have not spoken in, probably 10 years. (It's not a long story, but I won't tell it anyway.) I immediately decided not to cash the check, because it seemed weird. This person was, more or less, paying me for doing something any decent person would've done. But then a friend pointed out that I'd been working on generating money. And to say no to it, once generated, made zero sense. And that made a lot of sense. A tremendous amount of sense.

So started saying yes to a lot of things, recently, that I would usually say no to. Stupid things. Silly things. Like "Want a candy bar?" or "Can I do that for you?" And it's interesting. Because life gets a little easier when you start taking people up on their offers. And then I found out about this website. It's a blog by a woman who is asking for something every day for 365 days. I like that. I like it a lot. I'm gonna ride the offer train for a while. Then I'm gonna start asking.