I know how lucky I am to be paid to write. I know how lucky I am to live in a beautiful, peaceful, modern country. I know how lucky I am to enjoy the friends and family I do. I know it. And yet it’s one of those days when everything I want feels a million miles away.

What do you do when you don’t want to do the work you love anymore? When what you should be doing feels like what you shouldn’t be doing. When you look back at all you’ve done and ask “so what?” What now?

I wish I had an answer for you. All I know is that even this is part and parcel of living the creative life, that some days you will feel really bad about the work you do or don’t do, and there doesn’t seem any way forward except to get on the treadmill and trudge on, again and again, one weary step at a time.

1. To Write Like Nobody But Yourself
2. A Bookstore Flirt
3. What Does ’21 Dragons’ Mean?

My girlfriend was looking for a new place to stay, but instead of having her rent a room, I convinced her to come stay with me (yeah I know, big life change right?). It meant I had to completely re-design my room, which was really set up for just one to stay and work, not two.

I had two main goals for the re-design, which informed everything:

1. It had to comfortably accommodate the living and working spaces for two.

2. It had to be as simple as possible, in form and function.

The Old Room

This is what my room looked like prior to the re-design.

The wardrobe and single bed were really set up for only one.

The main anchor of the room was this bookshelf which took up the most space and attention. Unfortunately, I realized from the beginning that it had to go, it was taking up way too much room and I couldn’t maneuver anything new around it.

I also realized that no matter how much I tried, the new room wasn’t going to fit everything I already had and still have space left for hers. That meant I had to go through a heavy, nuclear-level de-clutter.

De-cluttering my books took the longest time. I pared down my collection to the ones I absolutely wanted to keep, and these were transferred to a temporary shelf in the living room (it was interesting how few books were really essential and how obvious which ones they were).

The books I chose to let go totaled up to four large bags, which brought me to a dilemma: for a book-lover like me, throwing books away is a heart-breaking waste. Luckily for me I read about a book swap going on in the papers. My girlfriend gamely helped me truck down the heavy bags to the swap, and since the goal was to de-clutter not re-clutter, I didn’t bother getting any new books in return.

The New Room

This is what the new room looks like now.

It’s a pretty big change, isn’t it?

My girlfriend and I looked into doing minor tweaks to the room at first, like simply adding a new single mattress, but we realized early on that approach wasn’t going to work. To make the room work for the both of us was going to require a major overhaul.

Our favorite bit of the new room is this open space in front of the desk where nothing exists but a carpet and a bean bag. I was hesitant to leave this space empty when planning out the new look, but when the furniture came and I actually experienced it, I fell in love with it instantly.

The entrance to the room is a little cramp, and there’s something refreshing about going through a tight space into a wide, empty opening. It makes me feel free, light and relaxed – I didn’t know it at the time, but my girlfriend and I had created a physical pause, a space for us to sit, relax, do nothing, do something, wait, be still, reflect. She’s done some handicraft there, we’ve both read there, and have already enjoyed some movies on the iMac while lounging on the bean bag. The empty space invites us to fill whatever it is we need to fill into it, or to fill nothing into it. And that’s as Zen as I’m going to get now.

Lessons Learned

Setting out the design goals right from the start proved invaluable when making decisions, as was focusing on the essential big pieces first and weaving other choices around them.

I knew that the wardrobe and bed were the two most important pieces for the both of us to live comfortably together, and so we fit them in first. That meant much less space for my books and the work table, but those were compromises that just had to be made.

Even though I de-clutter at least once a year, it was still quite surprising how much stuff I kept that I didn’t need anymore, and how much I could actually live without when forced to make a choice. The 3 De-Cluttering Boxes strategy still proved useful, and Peter Walsh’s quote was a big help whenever I had to decide between keeping something or not (and I had to not keep a lot of things during this re-design):

It’s not about the stuff – it’s about the life you wish to live…It’s important to remember that what you own and where and how you live is a reflection of the person you are. A clutter-free, organized life is about living in a way that helps create your best possible life – happy, stress-free, creative, motivated and enriching. Happiness can’t be found in the quantity of stuff we own, it’s in the quality of relationships that we form. What we own should foster that life, not be a hurdle to it.

1. The Benefits of Low-Fi Holidays
2. The Digital Clutter
3. The 3 Decluttering Boxes

Imagine having the power to traverse the multiverse, alighting onto any planet, stepping into any reality, becoming any person you want.

That’s what books are to me. For a moment in time, you are transported into another person’s mind, you see the world through their eyes, step on roads you’ve never seen, tasted foods you’ve never eaten, feel like you’ve never felt.

That’s why I love bookstores.

I can’t fly to the stars and step on alien worlds. But every book in every store is a whole new world in itself, just waiting to be explored. It is delicious flirting, the almost having of ideas, right at your fingertips, with the promise of wisdom’s love in the air; of becoming something more at the end of a book than before it.

I can’t live more than one life. But there are scores of books that, for a brief moment in time, let me get as close as I can get to doing that.

1. Burger Bench & Bar
2. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
3. First Visit to LivinGreens Restaurant

I’m in my car as Alicia Keys sings. It’s cold. Raindrops fall on my windscreen, my eyes defocus as I wait out the jam. It’s dark, but not late enough in the evening for the streetlamps to come on, and even gloomier than usual.

I have no idea what to say as I head to the hospital.

It was just a simple visit to my girlfriend’s home, a week after returning from 14 days in Japan. Her dad turns around and they speak in Cantonese, I don’t understand a word. She looks shocked. She says an old family friend, whom she met the week before flying to Tokyo, has just passed away. In his sleep, of his first and last heart attack. No chance to say goodbye.

3 weeks ago, alive, jovial and joking. 3 weeks later, gone.

She texts me out of the blue last week, hadn’t seen her in months and didn’t think she’d be back from overseas so soon. Her mom has cancer, she says. They just found out the night she got back, and the morning I call, the doctor tells them she has two to three months left.

I’m in my car as Alicia Keys sings. It’s cold. I step on the accelerator bit by bit, inching closer to my destination. Take these material things, they don’t mean nothing, it’s you that I want. All at once, I had it all, but it doesn’t mean anything
, now that you’re gone…

1. 9 Keys to Building a Blog You Can Make Trillions From
2. The Curious Case of the Missing Dragons

There are three things I know about that title.

One, I don’t think there are a lot of people curious. Two, real dragons don’t exist, so they couldn’t possibly be missing. Three, I love that title so much I decided to go ahead and write a ‘sorry for not blogging’ type of post even though I really dislike them.

The main reason I’ve been away is that I’ve been literally away. Due to foreseen and unforeseen reasons, I spent nearly the entire month of March in Japan. Never in a thousand years did I ever imagine this would happen, and I feel a profound sense of gratitude that it did, even now.

The foreseen reason was due to a 2-week holiday with my girlfriend, long planned and awaited for. The unforeseen reason was for work, a last-minute 1-week photography workshop with Magnum photographer Abbas, and event visit, both arranged by Sony. Both were incredibly fun, enriching and full of landmark, once-in-a-lifetime moments for me, for which, I’m not afraid to repeat myself, I still feel immensely grateful for.

And now that I’m back, I’m determined to spend more time parked in front of my keyboard, and continuing writing. Contrary to what my absence might have suggested, I couldn’t give this up, not for the world. I love writing too much.

Checking out these grand old ladies in Arashiyama, Japan.

1. Vignettes
2. Why 21 Dragons Exists
3. Why I Love Writing

2009 was interesting.

Got to know 2 large German Shepards up close and personal. Very protective, vicious to strangers, but loving and lovable to family. Flew up and down in a speed-boat in the open sea early in the morning, slept too little the night before but wide awake with adrenalin in the moment. Got to shoot more, and with more cameras. Shot real handguns for the first time, didn’t aim as well as I’d imagined. Donned full body armor and went at it full speed, full force with a resisting opponent, threw out most of my ideas about martial arts training. Wrote thousands of words, sitting at a desk, sometimes bored to death, sometimes jazzed beyond words. Certified first aider, at least on paper. Joined Crossfit Singapore for a few sessions and never moved so hard in my entire life. Cooked a few new dishes. Ate more organic food than ever before. Shot over 6000 photos during 6 days in Tokyo, autumn. Drank coffee in the afternoon sun at the edge of a Japanese cemetery. Made beautiful things. Did yoga by the sea in the late evening and watched two shooting stars go by. Grew and deepened a relationship, the best gift in my year and life. Incredibly, incredibly grateful.

Looking forward to doing better in 2010.

1. Photographing Tokyo, Autumn: Part 5
2. Photographing Tokyo, Autumn: Lessons Learned
3. Photographing Tokyo, Autumn: Part 4

Something I need to get off my chest.

A year ago, I made the announcement to give all profits from Life Coaches Blog away to Conservation International. It’s not millions – LCB makes pocket change, especially after I closed it. But still, pretty cool right? Make money, give it away, save the Earth, be an awesome human being.

Well, things changed. I’m keeping the cash, planet Earth.

This issue of being deserving is something I’ve wrestled with for a long, long time. Do I deserve to have the things I want? Do I deserve to profit handsomely from my contributions? Do I deserve to look good, get awards, be praised? You’d think the answer is an easy fuck, yeah to all these questions, but it hasn’t always been easy for me. Years of undervaluing my work and overworking myself. The very fact that I have to think about whether or not I should get paid for stuff I did is, well.

So. Long way of saying: I deserve to keep the money I make from the work I did. I want it. It’ll help me make my life better and happier. It feels right. It feels good. So I’m doing it. I’m keeping the profits I make from LCB for myself.

What About the Pandas?

Yes, but what about the pandas?

After making this decision, I finally understood what someone tried to tell me years ago about contribution.

I told him about my monthly donations to Heroes Against Hunger. I expected a clap on the back, but he essentially told me that it wasn’t good enough; giving money wasn’t the same as giving my own time and effort to actually help someone in the world.

I was confused. Hey, these people are out saving people from starvation, and my money’s helping. How’s that a bad thing?

It’s not necessarily a bad thing.

But there’s a point beyond which little gestures given behind a screen become an excuse for not really going out there and doing something.

What difference does joining a Facebook page to end violence against women really make? Or adding a banner about forest conservation on your blog? Or buying that Red t-shirt? Really? In comparison to going out there, and doing something real in the world for one other person.

I realized that with my donations I was using the easy act of donating as an excuse for not doing the difficult act of actually making a difference in the world.

I’m not getting on a soapbox and judging, nor am I saying don’t give, or that everyone who does uses it as an excuse. All I’m saying is that I needed to be more aware and more honest to myself about what I was doing, and why. And when I saw that what I was doing wasn’t aligned with what I wanted, I had to make a change.

Update: What a coincidence. The morning after I posted this, Merlin Mann wrote a post that summarizes succinctly what I tried to say clumsily.

1. Unleashing Your Creative Monster: Be Afraid
2. More Million-Dollar Questions than Answers
3. Unleashing Your Creative Monster: Be Proud

I keep forgetting this is my personal blog, and keep writing long-form articles that I slave and slave over. Part of this is because I enjoy crafting something good, the other part is because I know how bad my spur of the moment, unedited posts can be. As a writer who wants to get better, it’s embarrassing to see rubbish I write posted on the World Wide Web for all eternity.

But I’ll try this. Because I know my friends read this, and I’d like to share what’s in my life from time to time and maybe get some advice. And I also know how much I enjoy catching up with them on their own blogs, so hopefully they’ll enjoy reading my blog too.

Work, Fulfillment & the Big Bucks

I love my job at Hardware Zone – a great mix of technology (a love) and writing (a big, big love). Or at least, I used to, until the great pile of nonsensical projects came raining down and took time and effort away from writing a few things really well to writing a lot of things really bad.

Plus, a couple of big bills got me down lately, and brought home again the hard point that I’m not making enough of the bucks, and that no matter how much I love what I do at HWZ, it will never get me to where I want to go financially. And I want to change that, not just for me, but for my family, and especially my dad, who’s going through his own tough times.

Sometimes, I just feel like Jerry Maguire, you know?

It feels like this is the one area in my life where I experience lack. I love what I do, I love my family, I love my relationship, I love my car, I love love love. But this is one area that just hasn’t happened for me.

But. No blame. While I believe in the haphazard slings and sorrows of outrageous fortune (some people seem to have all the luck, while some just don’t), I also believe in taking personal responsibility – I may not be able to do everything, but let me do what I can. A friend told me long ago that the secret to her success was just that she made it a priority, I realized then and I realize now that making the big bucks just hasn’t been a priority for me, and if I don’t change that nothing will change.

Money or Value?

Here’s another point of view. Mega-rich blogger Steve Pavlina writes that his secret to making the big bucks isn’t a focus on money, which is in fact a mistake. His secret has been to focus on creating and delivering value. The more value you create, and the easier you get it out there to the masses, the more value – a.k.a. money – you’ll get in return.

Makes sense to me.

But if I believe that and I apply it to my own life, the results I’m getting would mean that I haven’t been creating and delivering enough value. Not for lack of trying, I’ve been doing my best to create more value at work, but maybe my problem isn’t in the creation bit, but the delivery part. After all, no matter how much value I create, my delivery system is botched: the return part is bottle-necked by salary classes and oh-too-small bonuses.

Turns out full-time magazine writing in Singapore isn’t the pathway to millions.

So what do I change? What do I do? Any ideas that don’t involve MLM, selling my soul or body (hur hur)?

Some days I feel like changing the title of this blog to ‘more questions than answers.’

1. 9 Keys to Building a Blog You Can Make Trillions From
2. Unleashing Your Creative Monster: Be Proud
3. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller