Good morning Crickets. Here we go with day number forty-eight of Operation Achieve Anything, where today I’m in a much better mood… well… actually, I wasn’t really in a bad mood for the past two posts, the subject of the lessons just led to some depressing updates. Then again, even though I wasn’t necessarily feeling blue, my energy might be more uplifted today because I just landed some paid work just in time to replenish my stash of medical marijuana!!!

Hopefully, this new job will last more than just a couple days so that I can earn enough pay to purchase a few frivolous toys since it’s been a while since I’ve treated myself with something special. For the most part, other than the pot, which I really need for sleep, all of my income goes to survival since I’m living the life of a starving artist, but I can’t really complain since this is the life I chose to live.

Though I struggle to get by, this, somewhat new, minimalist way of life allows me to live with the highest sense of freedom than I’ve felt since entering the work field. Minus the car, rent, and work-related expenses, there’s barely a difference between the spending money I have now that I randomly work from home and when I was working the nine to five. Now, I also have way more time to work on earning a living by doing what I love which is a trade-off I’m willing to make no matter how it’s seen by the rest of the world.

This intro is kind of encroaching on today’s assignment so I’m going to hold off on delving deeper into the topic and shift gears to discuss yesterday’s assignment where I was supposed to practice communicating with others using the list of techniques from yesterday’s quote of the day which I’m about to share below.

• Principle 1: Become genuinely interested in other people.
• Principle 2: Smile.
• Principle 3: Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
• Principle 4: Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
• Principle 5: Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
• Principle 6: Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely.

At first, I thought I was going to struggle with this task since, between my shut-in ways and the fact that I had work yesterday, I wasn’t quite sure if I’d be communicating with anyone at all in order to test the task at hand. Then I got a visit from my little nephew who dropped by to see what I was doing. After our quick conversation, I realized that I do use these techniques when we talk.

I think this is why the kid loves his uncle because I do try to get him to talk about his interests instead of just humoring him while half-listening, like most people do when it comes to talking with kids. I think this is due to the fact that I learned my communication skills through talk radio and podcasts. Though I can be extremely shy, when I do feel comfortable and am not in silly sidekick mode, I can often keep people talking by treating the conversation like a radio interview.

Though I don’t think that I’ve ever specifically had the above list of principles in my mind while having a conversation but when I’m in interviewer mode, I do tend to implement them all. Back to my nephew as an example, I always try to at least sound interested and make sure that he knows I’m listening by asking him to clarify any crazy kid concepts or scrambled words instead of just humoring him until his rambling’s over.

I always smile to encourage him to talk and use his name when I say hi. Every day when I see him, I ask him about his day at school and what his plans for the rest of the day and even though he usually says, “Nothing,” with a little prodding he usually opens up about what he’s up to. Of course, I also remember that I’m talking to a four-years-old so and do speak in his terms, going over his head from time to time in order to challenge while at the same time encouraging him to figure it out. I think the way I interact with him helps him feel important because I feel I needed more of that when I was around his age.

For today’s assignment, I’m supposed to analyze my life choices and determine their value to me. For example, as I pointed out above, my choice to move home and telecommute to work on random, undependable jobs in exchange for more free time to hone my writing skills and hopefully turn my love into a job is well worth it to me since, at least at this point in my life, my writing is the only thing that I’m living for and though I’m not quite where I want to be, I need the time to focus in order to get there, even if it seems selfish to the rest of the world.

As always, I’ll delve more into this topic when I check in with tomorrow’s update. Until then, it’s now that time for me finish this post of with my usual sign off by saying, good day and good luck to you and all of your projects.

Talk to you soon.

Sincerely,

The Wicker Breaker

P.S. Below are links to my novel, which I plan to promote as part of Operation Achieve Anything, as well as a link to where you can buy the book that is providing the structure to this project in case you would like to purchase it in order to play along.