Hey there! Welcome back to Focus on You! A podcast dedicated to the individual with something to say but not quite sure how to say it. And maybe doesn’t really know what they want to say, yet. I’m Dachia.

I’m a soon to be stay at home dog mom. I’m … 3 months or so into my 24 month plan.

Some time ago I likely told you about some software. Or apps I’m using. And there was a time when I was very happy with them. So, I likely told you good things about them.

Well, I wanted to tell you of a couple apps I’m not happy with anymore.

One of them is Scrivener. When I first bought the license and started using it, I was pretty happy. I should preface this by saying that when I bought this software, I thought it was now mine and I could continue to use.

I understood that if I wanted the newer whistles and bells as they came out, that I would likely have to pay for them.

I did not give much thought to the company eventually no longer servicing the app. I didn’t think about It because it just sat on my laptop.

What could go wrong?

Aha… a few things did sort of go wrong over some time. One thing was that I moved from a PC to a Mac and so there fore had to move that app… and find my license key etc.

The folks there at Literature and Latte were nice and I eventually got it done.

A little more time passes and I am having trouble with my laptop and it is suggested that I reformat from factory specs. So I back up everything on external hard drives, including my Scrivener app, at least I thought so… and I reboot my Mac.

Then I go to put most of my stuff back on and I can’t get scrivener open. It is suggested by the company to just delete that app and redownload it from the site.

So, I do. But I can’t find my license key now and email them to help me look it up. They can’t find it. 

I do eventually find mine… but it doesn’t work.

So I email them again and aha… I had downloaded the newer version which I do not have a license for. So, I have to uninstall that one and go get the older version. 

The older version has a warning that states it is not guaranteed to work on my version of the Mac. And… they are no longer servicing my version of this app.. so basically, threes no help.

I have several projects, that are only on Scrivener… live and learn… and one of them is a completed book. And I can’t access it.

It’s basically dead to me. It’s right there… in a program I cannot open. I haven’t deleted it yet, because I’m hoping that I’ll meet somebody who has a working version of Scrivener and they can open my file and send me the text.

But Scrivener?.. Now that is dead to me. I can’t suggest anybody buy a program that basically you need to keep buying in order to use.

I think this is what Photoshop has figured out. They can’t keep all the old stuff going so they don’t sell the software anymore… at least this is what I think I’ve seen… they simply have a subscription. It’s cloud based. So, whatever you are doing with them is on their latest platform. I’m not a photoshop user, yet.. but given my experience with Scrivener, I can see the benefits.

Another program I bough a couple years ago is Screenflow, for video editing. In the beginning, I was happy with it. I think I had decided that I needed a program that could be used on both PC and Mac because I was using both.

Anyway, I compared Screenfow and Camtasia and asked around in my creative groups and settled on Screenflow.

Again, was happy, mostly… fo over a year.

However, one of the reasons I wanted a single editing platform was to do both videos and my podcasts. And Screenflow does not export in Mp3. So, you have to export in mp4, so basically a movie.. and then there is an online free service that will convert it to a true mp3 and then THAT you can upload to your host.

It took me a couple weeks to learn this though because my messages were just kind of moved around. In fact, I think I actually got that answer from a guy in one of my groups.

So, for a year now, I’ve been recording my audio, editing it… the interface is ok, but honestly I just didn’t know any better, and now that I’m using something else, I kind of see how Screenfow is not vert intuitive.

So, recording the audio, editing, saving and exporting and then taking each exported file and converting it one by one on that free online service, then download it back to my laptop and then uploading it to my podcast host.

Over a year I’ve been doing this.

During that year, it would crash from time to time and sometimes so badly thatI would have restart the computer.

And last week, as I went to get back into to batch recording edit my podcast, it crashed again… and I couldn’t get it open. So, the day that I had planned to record, a nice quietly at home, is lost because I’m trying to find a workaround, restarting my computer and then finally going online to my creative groups and asking what simple and FREE software is available.

I had deleted both iMovie and GarageBand from Mac some time ago. So, both were suggested and I decided I’d try iMovie.. downloaded and watched a couple tutorials on youtube and ready to record.

And iMovie exports in mp3. I am just… so looking forward to NOT picking around with that conversion process.

I also want to mention that Screenflow also had an update that I was pressured to buy. A whole bunch… or maybe it was just a few, upgrades that I don’t care about. And since that upgrade was released every single time I would open Screenflow, I would get this friggin popup box pushing me to upgrade.

And there was no opt out. I had to close that pop u every single time.

So, while I’m sure I have some projects locked away in my locked up Screenflow, I’m gonna walk away from it.

And it will be a long time before I buy something that can hold my work hostage. I may not get access to that book again. Whatever video projects I had that were never rendered on Screenflow are also gone.

A few years ago, I was also using Evernote. Again, in the beginning I was happy. I upgraded to a paid version so that I would have my work available to me on all my devices.

And one day, the Evernote wouldn’t open on my Mac. So, I went online to troubleshoot, and logged into my online Evernote account… and … there was nothing there.

I went into Evernote on my phone and my iPad… nothing. Blank apps.

Never again.

While I recognize that I’m still being held hostage in this ecosystem of Apple… so far… knock on wood, because of the cloud and all my devices are attached, I’ve not lost anything big.

We are building desktop computer with a 6 terabyte storage and I will back up everything there. And still… something could happen and It could all be gone.

Here is why I am not going to lose any more than necessary sleep over this. There is only so much you can do. Our work and information has always been and will likely always be in danger of being lost.

Back in the precomputer days, we could lose it to a fire or a flood. Things happen.

But I have to learn from my own experience with apps that are not solid and are not backed up and with companies that are selling upgrades and have no interest in supporting the product that was sold.

I get it.. it’s business. And I recognize that Apple does this too. I’m just trying to reduce this situation in my life as much as I can.

I’ll be back next week.

Bye for now.

Hey there! Welcome back to Focus on You! A podcast dedicated to the individual with something to say but not quite sure how to say it. And maybe doesn’t really know what they want to say, yet. I’m Dachia.

I am a soon to be work from home, full time dog mom. You can follow that journey and join me if you want, at dogmom.me

Now, last week, I ended the episode with a mention of happiness and said I’d get more into on this episode.

And here we are. The topic of happiness is definitely worthy of an episode of its own, because ultimately it is the goal, the priority… the reward we are all looking for.

Everything we do, is ultimately to reach a level of happiness. The goal of happiness is why I have my 24 month plan to be a full time stay at home dog mom.

Last week I mentioned Maslow and the hierarchy of needs. The top of that hierarchy is self-actualization. In my own personal research I’ve seen people correlate that tier with happiness.

Like that is when a person is finally at peace with himself and happy. And I think even Maslow made a comment about that achievement culminating in a person’s greatest and long-lasting happiness. To say that once you are self-actualized and living life fully at that level, you are generally a happy person.

But I think we can also take from his work that he felt that there was a lot of glossed over territory in those 4 tiers below it.

And Maslow’s hierarchy pyramid has been tweaked and completely redone by many psychologist and just thoughtful people trying to make sense of their own lives and the lives of the around them.

My feeling here is that a person can be living at 100% at each of the levels. No matter where a person is on the hierarchy, they can be living completely. Doing and expressing themselves completely, within the confines of that particular life cycle.

How about an analogy? You know how I love analogies. Long drawn out hard to follow analogies. But in my mind, perfect sense.

If we were to assume that real happiness and peace can only come after reaching that top tier of self-actualization, then we would not see happy and peaceful homeless people. Im not talking about the loons or the people that have simply given up. I’ talking about people who are truly at peace with their lives.

They are kind and joyful. And the biggest difference between these people and the stock broker with a mansion and 6 cars and drinking problem, is the homeless person is living his life more fully than the stock broker.

I’m not saying that all homeless people are blissfully happy… nor am I saying that rich stockbrokers are depressed. I’m paying that both have as much opportunity to be Happy and both can be living fully.

It’s not our circumstances or material possessions that dictate our happiness.

Imagine a person living in some sort of tribal community deep in an uncharted land… I think they are more likely to be truly happy than many of the people you would find on Rodeo Dr.

We’ve allowed ourselves to be indoctrinated into line of thinking where material possessions and status dictates our level of happiness… but that is a facade. We think we’ll finally have happiness when we achieve that mark. That goal.

And like that stockbroker previously mentioned, we aren’t happy because we’ve missed the point. It was never the reward for achieving a goal, it was the choice of living fully in pursuit of that goal.

When I decided to make my happiness my priority, end of last year, I took a little time and determined that hands down, when I’m at my happiest, is when I’m with my dogs.

I love my horses and cats and brother and neighbors and friends too… but I don’t have that same level of happiness with anybody but my dogs.

I live most fully in their presence.

I often feel a bit held back by people I spend time with, particularly in a work environment. Co workers who are not comfortable with my … whatever it is. And so to get along, I would be a bit smaller, not as smart, not as fast… and not as happy.

Work environments are not natural. They are created for groups. Colors that don’t offend. No offensive noises, or smells, or gestures… really anything because anything could be offensive ro somebody… so nothing except this little environment is acceptable.

And you can’t be a 100% in an artificial environment.

While I’ve believed this for quite some time, I still thought I needed to just do it because that’s what people did. Get a job, and try to save so that you could eventually leave that job.

And while I was generally happy, because outside that job, water it was, through the years or decades, I always had something else that I was doing and doing at 100%. I was writing, blogging, advising, speaking… building a website. 

Last year, Gary Vaynerchuk made some posts concerning happiness and I perked up. But he didn’t say anything I didn’t already know or feel… he did however say it… and in that, I started to think that it wasn’t just me. It wasn’t some silly idea I had, Gary had it too. There was something here.

So, throughout most of last year, I started making notes about who I was and who I wanted to be and what I really wanted to do with my life. And for the longest time, I would not just write down ”I want to be a stay at home dog mom.” That was just silly talk.

And I would listen to podcasts discussing side hustles or building a small business and heard so often someone say that what they were was a stay at home mom or dad. And that being at home with their children was when they were happiest.

I finally stopped dismissing this desire of mine to just be a stay at home dog mom.

There was nothing wrong with it. That’s when I was happiest. Thats when I was living my fullest.

I want to ask you to determine where you live your fullest and where you don’t. Where are you living your 100%? How can you live at 100% more and more and more?

And understand that, like me, you can still be pretty happy in life working for somebody else dream, as long as when you are on your own time you are living fully.

I’ll be back next week.

Oh, also, sorry.. one more thing… if you get something useful out of this podcast, I’d be grateful for a review wherever you listen to podcasts. If you don’t get anything out of this… why are you here? 

Bye for now.

Hey there! Welcome back to Focus on You! A podcast dedicated to the individual with something to say but not quite sure how to say it. I’m Dachia.

I am a soon to be work from home, full time dog mom.

I mentioned last week that I have a growing opinion concerning the work from home industry and I was going to talk about it today.

So, here it is.

Some years ago… many years, in fact, I heard the term “cottage industry.” And when I say some years… I think it was about 30.

My parents had started a magazine publishing business in the living room. We called it a magazine, because that was the goal, but it was currently a hefty newsletter with ads.

It was published for people who were selling their homes on their own. A place to advertise it for sale. For FIZBOs… For Sale By Owners. They place an ad for their home for sale and my dad wrote articles about how to make your home appealing and take care of the sale on your own, and my mom offered a service of photographing the home, and then the newsletter/magazine was placed at grocery stores at checkout counters etc.

I should probably put this in context. This was about 1980 something. There was no internet… at least not like it is… we had a computer. I think. Actually, I’m not sure we did.

But my point is that magazines were physical and there were often racks of freebie newspapers and fliers outside the door or just inside the door of lots of places like grocery stores, convenience stores and restaurants and gas stations.

So, even back then, people were do it yourselfers and trying to save or make as much money as they could by selling or buying a property without the help of a realtor. But that’s a whole other episode.

At that time, there was a quiet movement to become work from home. To have a home business.

First.. just a little history. Before the start of the Industrial Revolution, which began in the 1700s, the production of goods was done on a very small scale. Historians refer to this method of production as the ‘cottage industry’. That’s from Historycrunch.com

For a long long time, people made stuff at their homes. They wove or made pots.. I don’t know what they did, but as demand would build for a product, it would expand into a bigger place and need more people to make it happen. And there were lots of people who were struggling with whatever they were trying to do and the people who needed bodies to help them run their machines etc, were all too happy to convince them that whatever they were doing was not gong to work but they could work in the factory and make cogs and there was no gamble. It was easier.

And they were right. It was easier to just go work for someone else. Let them take care of the sales and marketing and making sure the lights stayed on.

Now, here is where my theory has a a brush with Maslow.

I think that people have an innate need to be all that they can be. That’s why it is such a great slogan for the Army. I don’t say that with any sarcasm. It is.

Back in the day, centuries ago, we had to rely on ourselves and our families to make something work. We had to come up with an idea and develop it and find a way to market it.

Even if we had a farm and supplied our own food and lived by candlelight and made our own clothes, we still had to pay taxes… which meant that we had to sell something of ours to get the money. Maybe a cow or a few chicken. Or maybe something throughout the year like eggs and milk.

So, even if we were completely self-sufficient, we needed to make a little money for taxes.

Don’t get me started on taxes. I’m a Libertarian.

So, back in the day, we took care of ourselves. Our effort had a direct impact on our livelihood and lives. We had a lot to do. We were busy but in a good way. Our brains were active.

When we started to leave our personal projects and start working on someone elses personal projects, we started to be less than we can be.

The slippery slope. Not only did we start being less than we could be… we slowly began to forget how much we were and could be again.

On Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the bottom two tiers are physical needs.

Bottom tier is physiological, meaning air and water and food, shelter, clothing and sex… of course only for reproduction…

The next tier up is safety needs, which includes personal security, health, property… and now has come to include employment.

It is my contention that that second level has only COME to include employment. I think in a more healthy and natural state, it would have been more like ‘occupation’… as in something to do. A project. Something to work on that is bigger than ourselves.

And again, companies need workers. They need people to flip switches and watch the line.

That’s what THEY need. It’s not what we need.

While many people are becoming very stressed about the automation of businesses because they feel unemployment will go up, I feel differently.

I think this is a great time to reclaim our lives.

It’s my belief that we are at a point in our history, our evolution… our cultural evolution, that many of us are trapped in those first two… bottom tiers of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. We are working for someone else, and so therefore our efforts are not a direct correlation to our lives anymore.

It’s a circle. We work, get a paycheck, go home… maybe do something of interest, but likely not, and then go to work.

And then, we buy some stuff… but as we are working for someone else and are not completely involved in whatever it is… we never see beyond those first two tiers.

And we are therefore, by definition, not being all we can be.

I’m glad to see automation in factories. It means we are going to have to start thinking again and living at 100%.

Bringing this back to cottage industry, I think we are moving into another era. We will still have large companies making stuff at scale… but we, individuals, will be employed in fewer and fewer numbers by them.

We will become more self-sufficient. We will come up with an idea and create and brand and market and maybe fail and then come up with another idea. We will collaborate with a few other people.

We’ve been slowly indoctrinated to believe that our ideas are not as good as the companies we see all around us. Coke, Microsoft, Amazon, Perkins.

And… that we are here to keep those businesses going.

But our ideas are as good. Often better. And needed.

There is no reason to think that your idea is not as good and marketable as anything else out there.

AND… it has the added benefit of encouraging us.. motivating us/… inspiring us… maybe demanding… that we live at 100%. That we become all that we can be.

I’m embracing this age of technology and automation because it will cause us to be more as individuals. I think this is a new age of the cottage industry. More of us will be creating and thinking and developing… and more than a few of us are going to come up with something that will affect so many people in amazing ways.

The cell phone, desktop computer… drop shipping for convenience. All these life changing devices or services and countless others were the idea of one person or small group of people who got together and gave it 100%.

That’s what we are designed for. To live at 100%. To live the full range of the hierarchy of needs. And it’s my opinion that creating something, perhaps a side hustle, something where we can express ourselves and have a direct impact on our lives and livelihood, is where we must be going. To be more self-sufficient.

I believe that is the key, the path to our happiness.

I’m gonna go into that more next week. I think it is worthy of an episode of its own.

Till then, have a great day, a great week, it’s al up to you and I hope that if you are employed by someone else, that you are giving some thought as to how you can be all you can be and live life at 100%.

Bye for now.

Hey there! Welcome back to Focus on You! A podcast dedicated to the individual with something to say but not quite sure how to say it. I’m Dachia. I am a soon to be work from home, full time dog mom.

I’ve been busy since last I batched these podcasts. On Dec 25, I decided I needed to do something more with my websites.

A brief backstory. I promise, it will be brief… for me.

I started blogging in like 2003. I was on the blogger or blogspot platform. At that time, I saw that bloggers were making money with ads and as affiliates.

As a writer who has never had writers block and always with something to say, I was excited.

But I shared this idea with somebody who had no knowledge of blogging or really anything about the internet… my dad. And he proceeded to logic and rationalize me out of this dream.

So, many years later, I stumble upon several people who are offering education and courses in doing the same thing but the current iteration.

This time, I’m not talking to anybody about it. Except you.

If you happen to be taking notes on life experiences that can save you a great deal of pain and suffering in your future, please take note of this.. be careful who you share your ideas with. And be more careful from whom you take advice. If they are not in the arena, spilling their blood along with you, their advice is likely not useful.

That’s the back story. I told you I’d be brief.

I’ve been slowly buying up a small portfolio of domain names. … it’s a sickness…And because it costs me nothing extra, I throw up a website for them. I enjoy building and poking around and changing websites. I like creating images and posting content.

I’ve been doing it for years as a hobby, with no real strategy in mind.

I currently have about 20 sites up. I don’t worry about some of them being ‘under construction’ should a visitor stumble upon it.

Each one is unique and interesting to me and I have ideas on what I want it to be. And to be honest… I have ideas for 2 more domains and sites…

On Dec 26, I created a plan. I would work on one site in particular for a couple or 3 months and then get another one going, with the big picture goal of having 3 sites going in about 6 months.

Now, when I first came up with this plan, which was and still is based on several plans and courses and suggestions I found online and made some Changs for me. But when I first came up with this plan, I was thinking that the other two websites that would be part of this phase one would be two of the newer site ideas. I didn’t recognize that I already had a couple other sites already going with some traffic and some history.

So, my focus will be on the new site and two other ones that are not so new.

But rather than take the other 18 or so down in the meantime, I’ll continue to use those as my creative fodder. I like to tinker on my sites. I get ideas. It gets my creative juices flowing.

Another big picture goal is that I would not be keeping ALL of these sites forever and ever. I’m paying attention to other business owners with podcasts and sites etc and I’m noticing how much work their particular niche involves. For some, involved in recent news and events, they are busy every day. People go to their site or youtube channel to get the latest news.

I respect that… but I don’t want to be that tied to one thing so much so that I can’t take a break without it being noticed.

Or a niche where the information changes.

Out of these 20 or so sites, at least 5 of them are sites that I would consider work intensive. And ultimately my goal is what people refer to as Evergreen.

Evergreen is a topic that basically just is. It doesn’t really change much if at all.

I just checked Google for a god definition of this and ahrefs.com had this little snippet. ‘What is evergreen content? Evergreen content is content that doesn’t go out of date. It revolves around a topic that’s always relevant to readers, regardless of the current news cycle or season. Its name comes from the evergreen—a plant that retains its green leaves all year round.’

So, those 5 non-evergreen topics will be interesting to build, but then I’ll sell those sites.

Of the about 15 that will be left, a few of them are also not evergreen, but the topic is very personal to me and I want to keep it alive.

Now, how do I create an income with this plan?

Well… affiliate links, ads on the page, and a few digital products that I have in mind.

The plan, for me, is very visual. I don’t think I could really describe how I hope it will flow. But I’m planing for the first 3 sites to take about a year before there is any decent income from them, and the income from 2 of them, again, hopefully, will allow me to come home and be a stay at home dog mom and put more time into the plan. The income from that third site, would be reinvested into the other sites, as they come up on my plan, so that I can outsource the content creation as much as possible.

I’ll be hiring outside writers to write the content and then I’ll be formatting and adding subheadings etc, and posting it and then promoting it on other channels.

This will not be easy. And it will take 1 year to have any income, possibly two years, which is what I have planned for, and then a total of 4 years for all to be built and start offering a handful for sale.

In the meantime, I’m not really doing much differently than I was, except now, instead of just creating content and doing research and poking around in a site for a while, I have a strategy.

My goal is to become a full-time stay at home dog mom. And I created another site to document that journey and I’m hoping it will encourage other would-be dog moms and dads to make a change in their life and make a plan.

If I can help you do that, I’m happy to.

I have an opinion that has been growing over the many years about just what it takes to work from home and just what we can offer as individuals. I’m gonna get more into that next week.

In the meantime, if you want to follow the journey and maybe make some notes to help you create your own, go to dogmom.me . And if you have any questions or want to share a story about your own path, drop me a voicemail, the button is on the side of that sites pages.

I’ll be back next week. Hope you are too. Bye for now.

Oh, also, sorry.. one more thing… if you get something useful out of this podcast, I’d be grateful for a review wherever you listen to podcasts. If you don’t get anything out of this… why are you here? 

See ya next week.