One meal a day? I must be out of my mind?

It turns out that for me, getting the mindset right is crucial. I mentioned yesterday that while I’m eating just one meal a day I tell myself I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want, and that’s true. There’s nothing stopping me.

And that’s exactly what I did yesterday, but I feel no guilt or regret because it’s all part of the plan!!

Stats & Stuff

Wednesday 9th June 2010 179.6 lbs

Diet:

Several mugs of hot, milky sweet tea throughout the day.

10.30 – Banana (A banana, again!? Because there are still a ton of them in my house and besides they’re sweet and delicious!. I wouldn’t normally eat at 10.30 if I can avoid it because a big mug of tea usually sees me through, but today I got up much earlier at 4.30 am and I walked an extra ten minutes with the dogs in the morning.

Midday – I couldn’t help but finish off the few strands of grated cheese, a small piece of breadstick and a carrot stick left on my daughter’s lunch plate. It’s tough to throw food away, and bizarrely it’s harder if it’s only a few morsels.

Main meal at 5pm – Beef and Ale pie, with baked potatoes, peas, sweetcorn, and onion gravy. This was the biggest meal I’ve eaten this week.

It was followed by – Strawberry jelly and cream with 2 scoops of ice cream sprinkled with hundreds and thousands. Followed by a thick slice of home made banana bread (got to use those bananas up) and a 3 small squares of chocolate (the fruit and nut variety)!!

That was a brilliant meal. In all honesty it was more than I might ordinarily have eaten but the occasion called for it.

We have a little family tradition of “Jelly Wednesdays”. As a (loose) rule the children don’t eat desert on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday or Friday, which makes weekends and Jelly Wednesday a big deal!

I love Jelly Wednesday!!

Exercise:

40 minute morning walk with the dogs in the woods. Added ten minutes to the walk just to vary what I’ve been doing lately. I wasn’t under any time pressures and it seemed like a good opportunity to do a little extra.

50 minute afternoon walk with the dogs at a challenging pace. I have no idea how far I went but I felt fit and happy so I put in the extra twenty minutes. The opportunity was there so I took it.

In total I walked for an extra 30 minutes!

-

Thursday 10th June 2010 179.2 lbs

-

Having got three good days under my belt, I feel good about the rest of the week.

The weight has dropped everyday this week. But I have to tell you I don’t trust the scale and I’m not hung up on what it says. Had it registered an increase in weight this morning I still would have been pleased about the first three days.

Right now I’m in a very positive frame of mind about my weight loss. I’m not depriving myself of the things I want, I’m eating fruit and veg and wholesome home-cooked meals, I’ve eaten desert every day and I’m still losing weight.

If losing weight is your goal too… I hope you have a fantastic day today.

Dave

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I should point out that this is not my first blog. No, you see I wasn’t always a selfish blogger.

I had another blog before this but it went a bit wrong.

It started well enough but I just lost my way.

After I left work to become a stay at home dad I convinced my wife that I’d create a blog, write a few ‘stories’ and we’d be able to make up my lost wage after about six months. Hah! Needless to say it didn’t happen.

The learning curve was steep. I spent a lot of time researching and building and I ended up spending less time with the very people I’d left work to be with. Not good.

Unfortunately the site was hit by a technical problem and I didn’t handle it too well.

I lost my nerve and became anxious and panicky about it. This transferred over into home life and I became intolerable to live with.

It’s not that I’m a jerk, it’s just that I desperately wanted it to work.

I love being at home with the kids, but when things started going wrong online, they went wrong offline too.

I stopped blogging for a while but couldn’t stay away because somehow I believed I could remain a stay at home dad if only I could find the breakthrough.

I went back to the other blog to try again but sadly another family member ratted me out to my wife.

That’s why I started this blog.

I know it sounds like I’m being deceitful, but it’s one of those where I know I’ll be forgiven when it all works out.

Why selfish? Well, for starters I was going to be blogging whether my wife wanted me to or not – that’s pretty selfish (even though I did it with the best of intentions).

But also because I was going to be writing here but not allowing comments. Instead I wanted people to talk to me on Twitter. As it turned out I was too far ahead of my time. Leo Babauta stole the idea and it stuck for him. To be fair… Maybe he thought of it independently of me?

It didn’t work. By the time I switched the comments back on I’d annoyed everyone to the point where there was no need to have a comment section at all.

I lost interest again and my blogging became sporadic.

The irony is, I’d wanted to be anything but selfish. What I really wanted to do was celebrate all the good people in my circle of friends while dabbling in a bit of social blogging.

I was way out of it by this time though. I wasn’t commenting on other sites and wasn’t producing the sort of content that would attract readers, or I dare I say it… search engine traffic.

Still needing (or at least desperately wanting) to make a living online, I went off to research it properly.

I used this site along with my first site to experiment with what I’d learnt and in the process, found a way to make the interent work for me.

Mister Good Guy was born and I’m going to use what I learnt to build a business from it.

That’s a bold claim, I know, but my face is so egg covered you wouldn’t notice if more were added. I’m kidding, I’m not that insecure!

I can also see now that there’s scope for this site too and whilst I make no rash promises I feel I’ll be posting here more often.

There’s more to this little story but I’ll cover it on another occasion.

Dave

I’ve been eating like a pig even though I’m trying to lose weight.

Am I disheartened?

Not at all. It’s all part of the plan.

Since Friday I haven’t taken too much care over what I’ve eaten and when I’ve eaten it. I’ve eaten whatever I want whenever I want.

That includes, pizza, chocolate and beer – and that’s just for breakfast.

I’m kidding of course. I would never eat chocolate for breakfast, that’s just silly.

With previous attempts at dieting I would have panicked by now feeling I’d fallen off the wagon, but this time I’ve taken it all in my stride.

The reason I’m not bothered is because the arrival of Monday morning is like hitting the reset button.

I got out of bed and got straight into my ‘one meal a day’ mindset.

Having gone through this a few times now I know that I can happily survive on one meal a day. I also know that there are some positive benefits to having only one meal day.

I know that by the end of the week I’ll have lost more weight than I put back on over the three day food fest.

The piggery was deliberate and planned for. I decided ahead of time that I was going to ease off for a few days and picked Friday as the day.

I probably won’t blow out again for another two weeks which means I’ll be able to make another serious dent in my fat loss.

That’s not to say I’ll only eat once a day for the entire two weeks. On the weekends I relax a little and have two meals. Sounds grim I know, but really it’s not.

This has been the best period of weight loss in my life and that’s probably because for the first time ever I feel I’ve got the right mental attitude.

So what else did I eat over the weekend? A Chinese meal, an Indian meal, ice cream, ice lollies, toast and marmalade, chicken nuggets and chips, fish in batter, popcorn, more chocolate all washed down with more beer.

So what did you eat over the weekend?

Dave

Photo Credit

It’s Christmas Eve and in our house it’s tradition to get drunk on Vodka first thing. Of course it goes without saying, only the adults get drunk, not the children. We’re not that irresponsible!

No, the children are all given cigars to smoke and the eldest child (eight years old) is put in charge for the day. It’s a responsibility he really enjoys, because it’s the one day a year he gets to drive the car without a parent sitting in with him.

OK, so all of that was just a big fat lie. But what follows is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

I’m finally finishing my reply to a meme foisted upon me in May 2009(!!) by Mrs Sticky Fingers Tara Cain. Can you believe how lazy I am? May ’09!!

This meme became known as the Blame Tara Meme for reasons I can’t remember, as it was soooo long ago.

Thinking I was being clever, I turned my reply to the ten questions into a multi-parter. Little did I know I’d abandon blogging several times before I ever got to complete it.

The first two questions:

1. Who is the hottest movie star?

2. Apart from your house and your car, what’s the most expensive item you’ve ever bought?

are answered in a post entitled Hot Movie Actresses.

The next three questions:

3. What’s your most treasured memory?

4. What was the best gift you ever received as a child?

5. What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made?

are answered in a post that sounds like a jail sentence Three To Five.

And here are the final five questions and their answers:

6. 4 words to describe yourself.
mischievous, quiet, resourceful, helpful

7. What was your highlight or lowlight of 2008?
Highlight: Being home as a stay at home dad and enjoying family life. Not too many men get to do that.

8. Favourite film?
Matrix. I don’t want to be a battery.

9. Tell me one thing I don’t know about you.
I crash landed a MD-82 flight simulator at DFW Airport. I bounced it 50ft off the runway. Needless to say, I wasn’t offered the job of chief pilot.

10. If you were a comic book/strip or cartoon character, who would you be?
Superman. I like to keep a secret identity and I have my own very disabling kryptonite.

I’m not going to pass this one on as that notion is even sillier than children smoking cigars, and besides, there’s no one left in the world who hasn’t done this one.

Wishing you a Very Merry Christmas!

Dave

The title, “Santa Leaves An Unwelcome Gift”, was very nearly:
Santa deliberately misunderstood his wife when she asked him to put another log on the fire.

I may have a few more alternative titles as the day progresses, and if I do I’ll leave them in the comments.

I thought I’d keep it festive this week so for those of you hoping to see a picture of a woman with a moustache (as promised last week), I can only apologise.

Santa Leaves An Unwelcome Gift

If any of you get an unwelcome Christmas gift, I hope it’s nothing like this one!

Selfish Blogger

I bought It’s Not What You Think
by Chris Evans not because I was particularly interested in the life of the man, although I’m not disinterested in it either – that would just be rude! And rude I am not! No, the reason I bought it, is love him or hate him, the man is incredibly successful and I wanted to discover why.

Chris Evans, for anyone living outside the UK, is a very high profile broadcaster on both radio and TV. He is without doubt an key innovator and has had a hand in changing the face of modern broadcasting, but such genius comes at a cost. He has his good days and his bad days like everyone else… When he’s at his best he’s charming and funny, at his worst he’s an annoying tosspot. But frankly I can forgive him that.

It’s tempting to write him off as a big-headed gobshite but there’s more to the man and the book gives an insight into the person behind the larger than life public persona.

I was expecting him to carry this persona through to the pages of the book but was pleasantly surprised to find that Chris Evans actually comes across as a humble man, grateful for what he has in life. He acknowledges he’s made some mistakes and appears to have done what he can to make amends.

It took me a while to get into the book and I had to force myself to read the first few chapters without skipping over bits of it, but I’m glad that I did. The story of his early life is written well enough but his writing style doesn’t really come alive until he starts to tell us about his love for radio – after which point I couldn’t put the book down.

One thing I hadn’t realised is how successful he’s been with women. I was somewhat irked by this because it’s not like he even tries that hard. To be fair though, he doesn’t boast that he can’t beat them off with a shitty stick or paint himself as God’s gift, in fact he suggests that his success is something of a surprise to him.

Another thing I hadn’t realised is how hard he worked to get to where he is today. Until I read the book I had no idea how driven he was from a very early age. I’d always believed he was a face plucked from a crowd of young thrusters to be the next big thing – when the truth of the matter is he worked his backside off, took personal and professional risks and made personal and professional sacrifices.

As I said earlier, I bought the book to find out what makes him the man he is and I came to the conclusion that it was his winning mindset. A mindset that he cultivated right from his early days.

Here are just some of the things I picked up on (but there were many more):

• Do what you love.

• Be the best.

• Play to your strengths.

• The money is nice – but it’s not everything.

• Being grumpy is a waste of time.

• We’re only here or a short time – wring every last drop out of life.

This is only the first part of his autobiography so when I reached the end I was left wanting more, but then I suppose that was the aim. I’m definitely looking forward to the next installment.

It’s Not What You Think by Chris Evans is an amusing, enlightening and enjoyable read. He comes across as honest and sincere and as a result I have a new respect for the man as both a fellow human being and a broadcaster.

He’s still a gobshite though.

Selfish Blogger

For months while I played gooseberry to Tara Cain and David Wright over at Blog To Fit, I enjoyed a certain degree of success with my weight loss and fitness goals, but I hit a frustrating plateau.

I lost a pound, I gained a pound, I lost a pound, I gained a pound and then I stayed at the same weight for 3 weeks before continuing the cycle. It’s fairly disheartening and writing about it made it seem somehow farcical.

My departure from Blog To Fit was more to do with my personal circumstances than my inability to bust the plateau, but whatever the reason, it resulted in me putting the pounds back on again. No surprise there.

Eventually I got back into the exercise habit and did really well in losing the weight. I did a lot of running and built up the miles. I was really getting into it when unfortunately I started to experience pain in my left knee.

I stopped exercising and started eating too much. The weight gradually returned until I found myself 30lbs overweight again. I was tempted to entertain thoughts that somehow I’m destined to be 30lbs overweight for the rest of my life. It would have been easy to allow myself to think that my body wants or needs me to be 30lbs overweight but I refused to go there.

A couple of months ago I set about changing my attitude and my approach to losing weight and I’ve enjoyed the most successful period of sustained weight loss I’ve experienced in years.

I’ve lost over half the 30lbs of excess weight and I’m well on my way to losing the rest.

To be precise I’ve got another 12lbs to lose and feel that my goal is now well within my reach.

At some point I’ll write more about my weight loss, my motivations and my methods but for now I’m just enjoying the feeling of a loose waistband.

Selfish Blogger

Maybe slightly on the morose side but the sentiment is just lovely for those who can’t be together at Christmas. I’m not a big fan of the Carpenters but I can’t deny that Karen Carpenter had an exquisite voice.






Greeting cards have all been sent
The Christmas rush is through
But I still have one wish to make
A special one for you

Merry Christmas, darling
We’re apart, that’s true
But I can dream
And in my dreams
I’m Christmasing with you
Holidays are joyful
There’s always something new
But every day’s a holiday
When I’m near to you
The lights on my tree
I wish you could see
I wish it every day
The logs on the fire
Fill me with desire
To see you and to say
That I wish you Merry Christmas
Happy New Year too
I’ve just one wish
On this Christmas Eve
I wish I were with you
I wish I were with you
Merry Christmas, darling

Selfish Blogger

It’s the Saturday before Christmas so I feel obliged to share a seasonal tune. This isn’t my favorite Christmas tune but I love it all the same.












When it comes to sublime music at Christmas this one must surely be head and shoulders above the rest. What else needs to be said?

Bing Crosby
I’m Dreaming Of A White Christmas

Selfish Blogger

Over the last week I’ve been posting here on a daily basis, partly to prove to myself that I can do it if I try, and partly to reawaken the site after laying dormant for so long. I need it to be active and alive if it’s going to help people with their own projects.

I’m trying to purpose each day and give a structure to what I’m doing here on Selfish Blogger. This method holds some promise and has focused my attention. I should point out that this is another trial that I’m running to see what happens. I’d like to think I’ll keep this going but as I can’t predict the future I won’t make any rash promises.

The Friday Fenzy is just a mixed up and messy way to point out a few things that interested me over the week and share a few thoughts, irrelevancies and randomness just for the sake of it. Feel free to ignore any or all of it.

Cartoon:

Fitness:

I enjoyed this article about fitness standards and thought the standards expected of the Utah Police Officers fairly pitiful. Even in the worst shape I’ve ever been I could exceed that standard, not that I’m being judgemental or big headed you understand.

Food For Thought:

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it’s yours to keep for the entire period.

An Insult:

“He has a face like a Saint – A Saint Bernard.”

Graffiti:

Shocking News:

James Chartrand is not James Chartrand!

Books:

With all the quotes that float about the Internet it’s no wonder some things get lost in translation (or even transmission). This book looks intriguing and might make for good toilet reading?

US They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions

UK They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions

10 Ways To:

10 Ways to Pull More From Each of Your Days

A Crap Joke:

Only Slightly Rude:

Needs a Caption:

This picture is begging to be used in a caption competition LMAO – but I’m not going to make any suggestions.

Because I Can:

Tara is a music snob.

Tim has been leaving his curtains open and decking his halls.

Pippa has been swapping Christmas ornaments.

Patricia has a Harvest Potluck book for download.

Selfish Blogger

I’ve been experimenting with different types of posts this week, including a review of a Dyson Ball Vacuum (which I enjoyed writing) to see whether I can sustain Selfish Blogger as a personal blog in the long run. The problem I’ve had in the past is having a very fluid remit. That’s not a medical condition, it just means I had no specific direction other than to get a post out. Funnily enough, having such a wide remit seems to stunt my creativity and also my productivity.

You’ll notice from some of my posts already that I’ve applied catchy (or cheesy) names like, Sublime Music, Sunday Love Songs and Midweek Madness. I’m discovering that purposing my output is helping me to focus and get some content written.

Monday’s unofficial title is, “All About Me Mondays“. I have a range of subject matter in mind but usually it will relate to me and my life. You might even say I’m being Selfish. (BTW I’ll never get tired of the selfish gags, so don’t go wasting your time hoping that I will.)

Tuesday’s unofficial title is, “Test Drive Tuesdays“. This will be me writing informal reviews or opinions about whatever takes my interest at the time. It could be a book, an electrical appliance, a service or another website.

Friday is going to be called, “Friday Frenzy“. It’ll be a mixed up, muddled up collection of all sorts of interesting (and possibly uninteresting) stuff.

Thursday’s unofficial title is, “Thoughtful Thursdays“.

Thoughtful Thursdays is about me interacting with other bloggers. This could be a guest post from a friend, it could be a reply to a meme, it could be highlighting another blogger’s efforts.

In the New Year I’m going to send out a list of questions to some of the bloggers I used to know to find out what they’re up to. When I dropped out of blogging a while ago and I lost touch it was something I came to regret. I still can never be the the guy who flits between hundreds of blogs dropping comments the way I used to but I can find a way to stay in the loop and keep the friendships going.

As for today’s post I’m just going to drop a straight link to a webpage where the authors have unwittingly gifted me with a summary of what they’re doing these days. I’ve followed them from the start of my own blogging career and I’ve kept in contact with them behind the scenes. The name of their game is Creative Productivity and the question answered is Where are we going? . I’ve you’ve got a second, pop over and see what Sean Platt and Dadvi Wright have been up to. It’s very impressive.

Selfish Blogger

For Wednesdays I had planned just to doctor a picture of somebody famous by drawing facial hair on them, like a great big handle bar moustache or maybe some sideburns. It was going to be called Midweek Moustache, but I reasoned that after a while pictures of women with badly drawn goatees might wear a bit thin.

I know! It sounds crazy! I mean, how could that ever loose its appeal? But I still decided against doing it EVERY week.

I’m still going to do it but I’m going to mix in it up a bit and show off some of my terrible photoshop skills. But I don’t want anyone thinking it’s just space filler. This stuff has real artistic merit. Honest.

So then I was going to call it Midweek Makeover to reflect the idea that I’d draw more than just facial hair but  decided I’d run out of ideas within three weeks.

In the end I figured I’d broaden the remit for Wednesday’s content to include whatever my juvenile mind registers as fun and humour. No shortage of ideas there!

I’m branding Wednesdays:

Midweek Madness

My first submission is a mixture of Midweek Moustache, Midweek Makeover and Midweek Madness. How’s that for adding value?

After I saw the original picture I imagined that at least one of these men would want to wear a disguise. It was originally going to be Tiger but I thought it would be funnier if the President went to such a ridiculous extreme to protect his own reputation.

See. I told you it has artistic merit!

Feel free to tease me.

Selfish Blogger

ps Next week it’ll just be a picture of a chick with a moustache. 

Just in case you’re a man looking to buy the woman in your life a nice thoughtful gift like a steam iron, a washing machine, or a rolling pin so she can bash you round the head with it for being such a sexist pig – Don’t! Buy her something she’ll really treasure… A Dyson Ball Vacuum Cleaner! More specifically a:

Dyson DC25 Animal Lightweight Dyson Ball Upright Vacuum Cleaner for Pet Owners

Of course I’m joking about the sexist pig thing. Men just aren’t like that anymore. Misogyny belongs to another era. Besides men are too frightened to be overtly sexist these days in case the PC brigade come smashing the door down and threatening to tweak their nipples.

The solution? Buy the vacuum cleaner for yourself!

I’m serious, it’s brilliant. And here’s my first ever vacuum cleaner review.

Owing to my stay at home dad status I get to do the vast majority of everything, and quite right too – my wife goes out and works hard to bring home the bacon while I have it easy at home. I wish.

Fortunately my role reversal has given me a new perspective on how the other half live and opened my eyes to the delights of such things as quality vacuum cleaners.

Prior to the Dyson Ball Vacuum we had the DC04 and lovely as it was – this one is even better.

I’m 41 years old so I hail from a time when the phrase, “It beats as it sweeps as it cleans” was in common use, and ever since then that’s been my expectation of vacuum cleaners. Obviously some do it better than others, but my feeling of the 04 is it didn’t do it as well as it should. It’s not that I want to see a heavy groove mown into my carpet but I do want to see that it’s been touched by the brush. The 04 was disappointing in that respect. On the other hand the Dyson Ball fulfils that expectation nicely. As I run it across the carpet I can see where it’s been, and where it’s been is clean. (They should use that as a slogan!)

The absolute best thing about this machine compared to the 04 is that it gets further under the furniture. I’m especially thinking about under the beds. The 04 didn’t make it far under before you’d and up smashing the dirt collection cylinder thing into the bed frame. But the slimline cylinder on the DC25 combined with design allowing for a better angle, allows you get much further under.

And. The slimline ‘nose’, for want of a better term – you know, the bit at the front where the brush is housed and all the sucking takes place – is much more slimline and so it gets under sideboards and Shackleton’s high seat chairs (lovely) much better than the 04.

I like the ball. It makes for speedier manoeuvring and it makes it much, much easier to get in to the corners. It’s a bit heavier than I was expecting but actually that gives it a better feel in my opinion. My wife says it feels light but then she’s of Amazonian proportions. Even so, the ball makes the weight almost an irrelevance.

The waste collection tank, or whatever it’s called is slimmer and doesn’t have the capacity of the old cleaner but actually it doesn’t matter. One trip around the house won’t fill it (unless you’re total slobs and living like absolute savages), and emptying it on a regular basis somehow makes it more reassuring what with not having a ton of dirt stored in it.

Doing the stairs is easier with this model because new smaller dimensions of the hand held brush. The 04 had a lumbering great brush the size and weight of a house brick but the DC25 has a daintier version. It’s a big improvement.

We’ve got two stinky dogs in our house both of which moult. My wife loves the dogs but I think they’d be nicer as rugs. That would be a fabulous irony, don’t you think? Anyway, we have a two storey semi with a mixture of hard floors (wood/vinyl/tile), carpets and rugs. The Dyson DC25 works well on all surfaces. And even with the brush turned off (which is a really nice feature), this thing has a great pick up. The suction is much better than the 04.

I’ve got two problems with it.
1. The power cord isn’t long enough, but then the power cords on Dysons have never been long enough. It’ll do a room of average proportions quite nicely but if you want to move to another room you’ll have to unplug it. My wife tells me not to worry about the length of the cord. She’s says that length doesn’t matter and assures me I’ll learn to live with it, just like she has.
2. It’s a bit noisy. More than I was expecting and more than I’d like, to he honest. That is until you turn the brush off when you’re doing the hard floors and then it’s much quieter.

…As for looks, it’s butt ugly in my opinion. It’s a cross between a football (soccer) and a Cyberman but frankly who cares? It’s a bloody vacuum cleaner, not a work of art. It’s there to do a job of work, and a good job it does too.

Does the DC25 Dyson Ball Vacuum suck? Oh yeah baby! But in a good way.

The price tag is a little hefty but you really do get a lot of suck for your buck!

We’ve had the Dyson Ball for two months and we’re really happy with it. You could do a lot worse than this, but I doubt you could do any better. Highly recommended.

Selfish Blogger

Virtually nothing that happens in my house is private. People are in and out of each others business (oo actually ‘business’ is a bad word given the context but we’ll press on regardless). There are 7 of us living in the house and the activity barely stops.

Image: swpave

Over the years I’ve become used to going to the loo with the door open so that I can listen to the children trying kill each other downstairs and remain confident that I could hear them well enough to intervene if ever they started to actually kill each other.

So no one really thinks anything of seeing another family member sitting on the throne with the door open.

A few days ago my eldest boy (8) was sitting upon the Armitage Shanks as his Grandma walked by to put laundry away. As she did so he asked her to get him a newspaper. She questioned him as to why and he said it’s because real men read the newspaper on the toilet. Grandma asked him whether that was something he’d seen on TV and he replied, “No, but daddy does it all the time, and I want to be like daddy”.

What a good lad. Clearly I’m an excellent role model.

Selfish Blogger

The idea for this one came from a radio show I listen to every week on BBC Radio 2. It’s hosted by an incredibly talented and famous broadcaster by the name of Steve Wright and has been the way millions of people have started their Sundays for years.

The show is just brilliant if you are or ever have been in love. Click through to the site and have a listen. It’s superb.

I’m not stealing Steve’s idea, I’m just borrowing it for a while, and I hope I’m not breaking any rules by borrowing the name, “Sunday Love Songs” – it just seems like the natural thing to call it.

Incidentally, the man introducing the song is in fact Steve Wright! How’s that for picking a perfect first song?

Anyway, if I could sing at all, this is one I’d sing to my wife.

It’s absolutely beautiful.

Roberta Flack:

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

Selfish people share their music with others whether they want to hear it or not, so on Saturdays I’m going to share with you some of the music that I like – and I don’t care whether you like it or whether you don’t. You’ll simply have to learn to ignore it (which I suspect will be the case) or endure it.

OK, so the real reason is I can’t afford and ipod and I want somewhere to store free music.

This is Israel Kamakawiwo’Ole singing Somewhere Over The Rainbow / What a Wonderful World, which in my humble opinion is an absolutely sublime piece of music. It sends the goose bumps into overdrive!

One day I fully intend to edit together video clips of my children growing up and have this as the soundtrack.

One of the reasons I’m back here with another change of direction and sharing cyberspace with you is that I’ve found a new capacity within myself that’s lain dormant for quite some time. I’ve started to adopt a new way of thinking and it’s working out really well for me.

I’ve been building other websites, losing weight, getting fit, being happy at home and I’ve even managed to start earning a trickle of income through my presence online. It’s all a work in progress but I feel like I’m starting to get there.

I’d like to pretend that I’d stumbled into this by myself but the truth is, the real turning point came when I read Tim Brownson’s book, How to be Rich and Happy (for which there’s an affiliate link in the sidebar).

I’m not saying I’m a new man and getting all evangelical about it, but I have enjoyed some real benefits in a very short space of time.

The relevance of the book to my return to this site is to be found in one of the chapters relating to failing often. I’ve forgotten the title and I could look it up, but I’m too busy typing and I don’t want to break the flow.

The point is that somewhere, somehow, having a blog feels like the right thing for me and I’m going to keep trying until I found out to make it work.

The fact that I may annoy a few people with my constant changes of direction shouldn’t filter into the equation. I have to do what’s right for me even if that means failing and failing often.

So if you want to blame anyone for my return, blame the best life coach in the whole of his house, Timothy F-bomb Brownson.

Selfish Blogger

Hi, I’m back (yet again) to try something new (yet again) now that I’m not selfish anymore.

You’ll note from the header image that I’m sharing my cyberspace with you! I really wanted to put in an oo-er missus but thought no one would understand the reference.

Anyway, here’s why I’m back:

When I started Selfish Blogger one of my intentions was to write posts linking out to all my bloggy friends to highlight whatever piece of genius content they’d published.

I never really got round to it because, to be honest, it’s a lot of work.

It’s not that I’m lazy, I’m not, despite what any other lying swine tells you. No, it’s more that it’s very time consuming and frankly I don’t have that sort of time.

Well, I still want to do something along those lines but with a twist.

What I want to do is offer my friends (and you must be a genuine friend and not some sleazy Multi Level Marketing butt faced moron touting for a link to your acai laced Viagra cut with brick dust and bullshit site) a place to drop a guest post.

Why you would want to post here is anyone’s guess but it might be you want to try something that doesn’t fit with your own site. You might want to try humor, fiction, a top ten list, a picture of your old horse wearing a tutu, a rant, some blatant and shameless self promotion, or even the promotion of a friend’s work. Whatever the reason it doesn’t matter too much to me.

I will openly encourage you to put in a couple of links back to your own site – because really, that’s the true value in doing this. Let’s be honest, you’re not exactly going to get spotted by the blogging elite here. In fact I’d go as far as to say I don’t necessarily see a thriving community being built around a busy comments section – that’s totally not the point of doing this!

If a little community grows up around the idea then all well and good, if it doesn’t, that’s OK.

I know I stand to get used and abused by hey, I probably deserve it having been so selfish for so long.

I’m not expecting to be inundated with requests, but the important thing for me, is to make the offer - and if there are no takers, I won’t be mortally wounded, I’ll just plod on.

If this sounds like something you might be interested in doing then drop me a line and I’ll try to give you a less vague explanation.

selfishblogger {at}

gmail [dot] com

So, just in case you’re wondering whether you’re my friend (and I don’t mean to sound condecsending like I’m some big cheese and you’re all lucky to be my friends. Trust me, I know I’m the lucky one here! ):

Well, you’re my friend if you are one of those people who supported over at TMCW.

Likewise, if you’ve teased me here at Selfish Blogger.

If you cheered me on while I was the third wheel at the fitness blog, (you know, the one with Tara and Dave), you are my friend.

And if you used to chat to me on Twitter before I deleted my account to stop me wasting my life away with smutty innuendo, then you are also my friend.

Anyone else can ask to be my friend, including A-List bloggers, but there will be a small fee involved. Haha. Only kidding. Because that would be just wrong! Wouldn’t it?

I’ve also invited a whole host of new friends to post on the site through project I’ve been running with for a few months now. Don’t be surprised to see a whole load of posts about kitchen sinks and earlobe warmers, ferret sweaters and nose-hair clippers. Like I said, I’m not selfish anymore and people really need to know about these things!

Even if this isn’t your bag baby, why don’t you just drop in from time to time to see how my latest mad plan is working out?

Yours unselfishly,

Selfish Blogger

Here’s the thing, I’ve dipped my toe back into blogging after being absent for a while, and now that I’m back I want to try a new approach.

One of the reasons I keep drifting away from blogging is the amount of time that it takes me to write a post and make replies – so now, I’m trying to speed up the process using speech recognition software.

After I decided to go down the route of Internet Marketing (don’t laugh), I knew I’d have to be able to get content out quickly, so I bought Dragon Naturally Speaking.

I’ve got to say it’s working out really well for me. It took me a little while to get used to speaking aloud at the computer, and a little while to train the software, but now it’s pretty accurate – in fact, it was fairly accurate straight out of the box. I can speak much quicker than I can type and I make fewer spelling mistakes so it’s turning into a solid investment.

The basic idea is, I want to be able to write and publish posts within 20 minutes.

Writing shorter posts and cutting down on my excessive proofreading should mean that I can achieve this. In addition, I’ve decided that if I can’t find a suitable picture for the post at the first time of looking on the Creative Commons License page of Flickr, I’m just going to pick a random picture from the page – or not bother at all.

The reason I mention this now is twofold. Firstly, I wanted to explain what I was doing so that you’d be more inclined to accept any mistakes I make while I practice this method of blogging. Secondly, I found a link to the product: Dragon Naturally Speaking $29.99 – BUT you have to ponce about claiming a rebate. Now I ‘m not from the US and I have no idea how easy it is to do.

This is not an affiliate link and I can’t vouch for the company, but if you’re in the market to buy this software you’re probably not going to find it at a better price.

The next best price I could find is at buy.com Dragon Naturally Speaking $31.99 with free shipping. likewise, this is not an affiliate link – just public service unselfish blogging.

Just make sure your computer is modern enough to run it.

That’s it! Time’s up!

While I was away from mainstream blogging (again) I built a few sites intended to give me a better potential for creating some online income. I suppose you could call it Internet Marketing if you wanted to, or you could just call it Niche Blogging.

I’m not talking about becoming some sort of sleazebag Internet Marketer who would sell his own granny* to turn a quick buck,  but I am talking about the deliberate use of keywords and search engine optimisation to draw in search traffic i.e. regular members of the public. After all, these are the people spending money online.

As I’ve found to my cost, it’s not the bloggers who are spending the money. Many bloggers are often in it to sell the stuff in their sidebars, whether that be a subscription link of some sort, or an adsense banner. That’s right, they too are internet marketers whether they know it not,  and there’s nothing wrong with it. But, my experience has been that bloggers just don’t buy from other bloggers (very often).

I guess I came to the internet wanting to be an Internet Marketer, except I didn’t know such a thing existed or how to make it work. I honestly believed that it was a case of sticking some good content on the page with an adsense block in the sidebar and waiting to be stumbled.

This is pretty much what the A-listers advocated, and who was I to argue?

Well, my content was only good enough to get one Stumble and that drew some massive traffic (massive by my humble standards) around 10,000 page views, but the Stumblers came and went, and never came back again. Over the two days that all that traffic was filing through, I think I had 3 clicks on the adsense. Three!

One year later and twenty dollars richer (lauging out loud at the idea I made a profit of any sort (my losses ran into the hundreds)) I’ve come to realise that I can’t make this model of blogging work for me. I can’t be the guy who writes fresh material for content hungry readers every single day without fail. It’s too much of a burden. With the way my life runs at the moment, I certainly can’t continually recreate the quality of content required to get Stumbled.

So to cut a long story short, I’ve abandoned the A-listers and I’m cutting loose with the Internet Marketers! I feel like such a renegade!

Just over a month ago I took a gamble and signed up for an online program designed to teach me how to build sites and get traffic – the sort of traffic that buys, not the social traffic that comes and goes.

It’s great. I love the program and I like the way they do it.

Before I signed up I was worried that it was yet another one of these scam sites promising the world and delivering nothing, but it’s not. On the contrary it’s opened my eyes to the real possibility of making a living online.

It’s definitely not a get rich quick scheme and you do have to put in some real effort.

It’s early days yet, but I’m quite pleased with the results. The sites are bringing in pennies but that’s largely because I decided to target the low hanging fruit, you know, the fruit that is low enough for the dog to cock his leg and piss on. But nevertheless, I’ve been able to harvest some fruit and prove the methodology works.

The next stage will be developing sites with a higher potential, and naturally this will mean having to work harder and perhaps wait longer for the return. But I don’t mind that, because I get to do it on my terms.

I’m happy to share the details of the course with anyone who wants to know, and I dare say I’ll be writing about this again failry soon anyway.

As far as blogging is concerned I feel a bizarre freedom that I haven’t felt before. Knowing that my future doesn’t hinge on a personal blog I feel less concerned about what I write and what I say.

It’s very liberating.

BTW, did I mention I’m an Internet Marketer?

See, I told you.

Bwaaaahahahahahahahaha

Dave

* I already sold my granny back in the eighties to buy a subcription to PlayBoy magazine (for the informative articles).

Photo: Richard0