Let me share a personal anecdote. Recently, I was presented with an offer to relocate to a city that I am planning on living in at some point in my life. 3 or 4 months ago, had I seen this offer, I would’ve accepted it in a heartbeat, and dealt with the minor issues that it would’ve brought up at the point. Now, however, the responsibilities didn’t seem in line with what I’m looking for, I recently got involved in a new venture that I wanted to put some time into, and it just didn’t seem right to leave the community here, and the social capital (or “social capital”) that I’ve built up. It took some thinking about, but in the end, I feel I made the right decision – at least, for now.

However, I had the decision to make. While I made the “it’s not the right time” argument, it was completely under my control, and I could’ve chosen to do it if I wanted to. It’s important to recognize that timing won’t always be ideal, but that alone shouldn’t rule out making a decision one way or the other. Whether it’s with your business or with your personal life, it’s important that you make what you perceive to be the best decision in your life. I suppose it’s all part of the “live in the moment” philosophy that I like to preach.

Sometimes that means making decisions that hurt those around you. Sometimes that means being selfish. Those questions, though, are what you need to answer, not “is it the right time?” – if you wait around for the right time, it’ll never come. It’s such a subjective concept that I think you can always come up with reasons why it’s not the right time – or why it is.

Food for thought, anyway. What are your thoughts on timing, and how it works in life?

This week, I’m trying an experiment. Due to long hours and a general sense of apathy, probably 95% of my meals consist of some sort of pasta or bread-based products. Subway is a mainstay of my diet, and I don’t do a lot of cooking past pasta (hah, wordplay) in my place. Eating out while trying not to break the bank for every meal does present itself with limiting options. In addition, I snack a ton on top of that – I have an insatiable sweet tooth that probably corresponds to the fact that my elementary school in Grade 7 and 8 was directly beside a then-Becker’s, and it corresponded with my first source of income from a paper route. The snacking is bad enough for my diet without all the heavy carbs on top of it.

In addition, this is my least active summer thus far. That may change without much effort due to some sports leagues I have coming up, but being stuck at my desk for 10+ hours a day has caused my ordinarily skinny body to start to round out. (At this point, I realize that I’m seriously impacting my dating prospects, but hey, work’s doing that well enough as is by taking up most of my time. I swear it’s not me.) So, I wanted to try something. Not only was I going to make an effort to eat healthier this week and exercise more, I also wanted to cut out all bread and pasta from my diet this week. I started this Sunday afternoon, and have had 4 days of it under my belt.

So, what’s the result? While there aren’t likely any noticeable physical results yet (let’s face it, I am still fairly skinny), I’m feeling a LOT better. Salads and parfaits are surprisingly more satisfying than I remember, and I have more energy than I should, given that I’ve been up at 5:45 every day this week. I’ve also avoided the mid-afternoon lull, where I normally have to resort to heavily caffeinated drinks to avoid QWERTY-face. (Commonly caused by falling asleep at my desk.) I’ve rediscovered my love for the formerly-named Lettuce Eatery (now Freshii), discovered an awesome salad as Fusaro’s, and rekindled my enjoyment of chicken and fish. Although I haven’t quite stayed away from all snacks (thanks, Satish), I’m doing a ton better, and it’s made a noticeable difference in my demeanor, at least.

If you’re feeling a little slow in the afternoon, or in general, examine the heavy carbs that you’re eating. I do find that it makes a big difference in these warm months.

It may even be enough to keep me away from Subway – a bold statement, given that I once ate at Subway 14 days in a row, and 25 days out of 30. (yes, I kept track.)

I’ll be frank; this $10 fee that TTT is charging will ensure that unless the speaker is someone absolutely spectacular, I likely will not attend any future TTT events. This isn’t a bad thing; I’m not the direct target market for these events, so maybe by not attending I’ll help them get who they’d like.

However, if the purpose of your events are to bring a community together while helping to promote the individuals involved in it, I’m not sure that the nominal fee is the way to go. One of the commentors on Joe’s post said that the industry standard is to open it up to 2.5 times your capacity to account for no-shows. That seems pretty smart by me; opening up for just your level of capacity will never allow you to have a full venue, as something always comes up.

If you’re implementing a fee just to reduce no-shows, I’m not sure that fits with the community building aspect. There’s enough going on in town right now that I don’t need to pay to network with the current Refresh Events crowd, for example. (I still will, but that’s beside the point) Adding a fee to recurring events will certainly help distinguish you from the other events going on, but perhaps not in a good way. If you are planning on adding a fee, at the very least you need to do it at an event that can be perceived as having a higher value of the events in the past. That way, you reduce the shell-shock from having to pay for events which you previously attended for free, and can help ease your crowd into the new system. If you’re still developing your events, your target audience, or the logistics surrounding them, it may not be the best idea to charge a fee. (If, like Third Tuesday, you can’t get your event on the date it’s supposed to be on because that’s what you’re named after, you also might want to think about that – but that’s a personal quibble I have with the Third Tuesday events.)

Just my two cents. What do you think?

7. Do you have any advice for someone starting out with trying to move their blog to a full-time employment opportunity?

Work hard and don’t expect success to come overnight. So many people start blogging because they think it’s a “get rich quick” thing, and nothing could be further from the truth! To be honest, I think blogging is one of the LEAST easy/quick ways to make money online. You have to work really hard, write well, motivate yourself, stay creative, and update as often as you can to see success, and even then success isn’t guaranteed. It’s definitely not for everyone – you have to be willing to work hard for next to nothing for a few years before you’ll see real income.

Interesting thoughts from a full-time blogger. One of the things that I’ve always thought you’d have to be able to pull off as a full-time blogger would be living on a reduced budget, because Zephyr definitely has a point regarding it being incredibly difficult to make money blogging. If any of you have been thinking about writing or blogging as a career, this post is a good read for some of the pitfalls or issues to expect.

Emma’s certainly winning the creativity portion of this content – in her 7 days of posts, she has a picture, a video, and an interview among her content, where I just have myself blathering on. Go check her posts out if you haven’t yet already!

I’ll be honest, before Jason messaged me last week asking if I wanted to participate in the event, I hadn’t ever heard of it. However, I had nothing planned for today, and said “sure, why not.” As the week unfolded and I got more details, I was both intimidated and excited for today. So how did it go?

Holy awesome.

It strongly exceeded anything I had ever thought of the event, and we bettered what our personal goal was, it being our first CityChase and all. I think it also helped us bond a little more; perhaps for better or worse. Figured I’d share what our personal experience was and how the day unfolded.

The day kicked off when I rolled into Metro Hall (the event start/finish line) shortly after 8:00 to meet Jason, operating on 1 Red Bull (sugar-free, natch) and about 4 hours of sleep, due to the decision I made last night to watch the first Transformers movie. Jay was already energetic and ready to go; I’m not sure that I was quite at the same level yet. After a quick Tim Horton’s breakfast and some strategizing, we gathered with the rest of the racers for the kickoff meeting. We were team 2312, Awesome Sauce, thanks to Jason’s creativity. At the kickoff, we ran into my buddy Andrew and his friend Geoff, who were a team, and their friends Diane and Michela (whose name I’m sure I’ve butchered), and got a little friendly competition going. After a speech from the event founder, we were told how to get our clue sheets – it was a scavenger hunt, to the chagrin of a few in the crowd. (The groans could be easily heard.) After pairing up with another team, as per the rules of the hunt, we managed to gather 6 of the 9 required items within about 15 minutes. We got: 1 penny from each of the 70s, 80s and 90s, the time of the next Air Canada flight to Quebec City (the location of national finals this year), a picture of two team members with their clothes completely backwards, a Molson bottle label, a page of news from a newspaper from Thursday, and the bible chapter and verse that the founder quoted during his opening speech. (Things we didn’t do? Recite the first verse and chorus of Nickelback’s “If Today Was Your Last Day,” take a picture with at least two people mooning, one of whom must be a non-participant, and apply a red Mitsubishi mark somewhere on a participant’s body.)

Clue sheet in hand, we headed off to the Rees Street Slip for our first challenge. Jason and I had raised $50 in donations beforehand for Right to Play, the event charity, so we already got our first ChasePoint credited to us without having to do anything. Awesome! The first task we had to do was to get into a pair of kayaks tied together, and maneuver our way through a short slalom course in the water. Other than getting soaked when I first got into my kayak – I thought it was going to tip – and Jason’s occasional overexuberant paddling, we managed to get through it with pretty much no problem. ChasePoint #2 in the bag!

Following this, we returned back to Metro Hall to do an event called Eight Legs or None, but they weren’t ready for us – even though we were there right when that station was supposed to open. After arguing to try to get the free ChasePoint, we settled for a 10 minute time deduction instead. From there it was to the Boxing Loft, for what was easily our most strenuous physical activity of the day: 5 two-minute workouts based around boxing. We paddled imaginary bicycles and did pushups; skipped rope and did burpees, bobbed and weaved under a suspended rope, shadow-boxed with dumbbells (where I’m sure Jason got tired of hearing me say “Keep those hands up,” due to the fact that if either dropped our hands, we both had to do 10 pushups. I was already about 45 or 50 pushups in at that point, I had no desire to do any more), and finally, spent our last 2 minutes taking our frustrations out on punching bags. Exhausted, we collected our stamp, and had ChasePoint #3 in the bag. I was worn out enough that I was struggling to drink from my water bottle, but we persevered on to our next task.

Arriving back at Eight Legs or None, we were pleasantly surprised to see no line-up – and less pleasantly surprised to learn that we were dealing with a tarantula and a snake – hence the name. A flip of the coin determined which we had to put on our bodies. Jason flipped first and got tails – which meant that he had to have the tarantula on his bare stomach for 30 seconds. I wanted nothing to do with that tarantula, so I was pleased when I flipped heads, and had to put an 8-foot snake on my shoulders for 30 seconds. I’ve had a 30-foot boa constrictor on my shoulders before, so this badboy was nothing. Completing our tasks concurrently, we successfully reached ChasePoint #4, after about an hour and a half involved in the contest thus far.

At this point, our lovely operators Becky and Dave, who were helping us scout out locations, e-mailed us with our remaining route, so we went right to it. ChasePoint #5 was located at Canyon Creek on Front Street. We discovered that one of us – me – would be blindfolded and have to smell 6 items and taste 6 items and correctly identify all 12 of them. For each one I got wrong, Jason had to eat a live cricket. After joking that I’d get them all wrong, much to Jason’s dismay, I set to work. I got 5 out of 6 on the taste test – nailing the balsamic vinaigrette but missing garlic, of all things, but only ended up with 3 of 6 on the smell test. I identified all of the alcoholic scents – red wine, white wine and tequila – but totally whiffed on the other three. Not a huge surprise, but it meant Jason would have to eat 4 crickets. I felt a little sheepish until I saw that the two groups that went in front of me had to eat 7 and 8 respectively. After a quick ingenious thought – to drop the crickets in a glass of water and chug the mixture – we successfully completed our challenge and got our 5th ChasePoint. Jason complained of feeling a little queasy for the remainder of the day; I suppose I can’t blame him. We were just under 2 hours in, and we had 5 ChasePoints, including a bonus. Not bad, but little did we know our best was yet to come.

ChasePoint #6 found us taking the subway up to Trinity Square, which is connected to the Eaton Centre. Hat-tip to the lovely Aussie lady on the subway who confirmed the location of it for us. There, we had to construct a wearable balloon piece of clothing using 3 different balloons. Jason’s old summer camp days came right back to him and I pumped the balloons up while he fashioned a hat in about 30 seconds. He then had to wear it for the rest of the day, which was amazing. 6 ChasePoints down, and we did this one in record time!

ChasePoint #7 was just up the Yonge line at Church and Wellesley, where we had to do a quick photo/video scavenger hunt within a 30 minute timeframe. We checked in at 12:15, got our Blackberry Curve to take pictures/video with, and were off to work. This was honestly one of my favourite moments of the day. I’m not sure whether it was the hot dog vendor we convinced to do the actions to “I’m a Little Teapot” while Jason sang it – she was more into it than he was! – the picture of a temporary tattoo underneath a garbage can, because there was a typo on our clue sheet of taking a picture of a tattoo “below the waste,” or the man that we had Jason share a powerbar with, Lady and the Tramp style, and he ate more than his fair share of the bar. We checked back in at 12:22, a mere 7 minutes after we left; 2 of which were taken up by the SickKids canvasser we did a random act of kindness for. We were one of the quickest groups to finish, and by the fact that we had a lot of amazement over the 7 ChasePoints we had, we knew we were doing well.

ChasePoint #8 found us at the Rogers store on Yorkville Ave, where we found ourselves signing out another Blackberry – a Bold this time – to take shots of pieces of QR code posted in the area. After a bit of struggling with the BeeTagg program – which wasn’t very intuitive – we got our 6 snapshots in and collected ChasePoint #8 – only two to go!

There’s not really a lot I can say that would do ChasePoint #9 justice. After finishing up in Yorkville, we hopped the Bloor subway line to Bathurst, and took the streetcar down to Queen to do our last mandatory ChasePoint, simply entitled Pole Position. That’s right, our team of guys needed to do pole dancing. My back still being a little tender from the poor weather and the boxing workouts, Jason stepped up to learn a quick routine from the pole dance instructor, while I coached. She demonstrated it to him once, and then did so a second time while I filmed her – in the interest of getting the routine so we could review it, of course – while he mimicked his way along. He then said he’d try to get through it right then, without any video review. We only had three chances to get this right, but we didn’t need them; Jason got the dance bang-on the first time. Seeing him do the squat and spread, the Fireman’s Spin, or smack his ass at the end of the routine… well, it was almost too much to handle. Regardless, we had ChasePoint #9 in the books, and only had one left to go – and it was only 1:15 or so, meaning that we had only been out there for 3:15! We were excited, since we had seen past winning scores near 3:30, and we knew that we’d likely exceed our expectations.

ChasePoint #10 was just around the corner – and directly across the street from my office – at the Toronto School of Art. Prior to arriving at this challenge, we had to collect 3 recyclable items, so we arrived with 3 bottles. Perfect choice, as it turned out that we had to create a replica of a famous tower in the world. We randomly drew a model – the name of which I honestly forget; it was P-something Twin Towers – and went to work with our bottles and the supplies that they provided us. After a mash of bottles, glue-dispensers, tape, popsicle sticks and my trusty knife later, we managed to create a reasonable replica of this tower. While I’m not sure our judge totally approved – she kept calling it the “black towers of death” due to the black masking tape we’d used – we were permitted to go through, and collected our 10th ChasePoint. Now, just a quick 2 block sprint to the finish!

… Or not quite a sprint. We were pretty worn out, and half-jogged, half-walked until we arrived back at Metro Hall. A final push – including Jason running through the fountain out front – and we crossed the finish line as the 76th team to finish the race. However, because of our delay earlier in the day at the Eight Legs or None challenge, we had our 10 minute time deduction, leaving us officially at 54th place, with an overall adjusted time of 3:35:45. We were ecstatic to place in the top 10% of all entrants, especially looking around at those who finished near us; a sea of fit, toned bodies, something which Jason and I are not. We travelled roughly 20km today, based on my GPS Tracker – a pretty good jaunt.

We hung around the finish line and recouped, waiting from Andrew and Geoff to come in (they finished a very respectable 137th, without collecting the donation ChasePoint), and then headed over to Montana for a much needed complimentary beverage and some chow. Diane and Michela joined us later; I’m not sure where they finished, but they completed the course in roughly 5 hours. It was a great way to wrap up the event, and what was a very fun day.

So what tips do I have?

• Train for the event! Jason and I both struggled with long-distance cardio, costing ourselves precious minutes. If we were in better shape, we would’ve been in the top 50 easily.
• Get great support. Our two operators, Becky and Dave, helped us whittle down our clue sheet of 40 into a solid route of 10. This definitely saved us time, and we had backup plans in place just in case anything went wrong.
• Get past your fears. Jason had to do a few nasty things today – mostly the luck of the draw – but he fought past them and helped get us ahead of a lot of other groups. Don’t let your fears stop you once you’re at a challenge; just get past it and you’ll be more successful. Competitiveness hides fear, after all.
• Have fun! Regardless of the mediocre weather, or the physical exertion, Jason and I both had an absolute blast today, and would do it again in a heartbeat. It’s a great bonding experience – although Jason suggested it as a first date opportunity for people; something my competitive nature would never let me do if I wanted to see the girl again.

The second Toronto CityChase qualifier is on August 15th – I encourage you to check it out and give it a shot! I know I’m thinking about it, although Jason’s already in it with his sister, so I may be looking for a partner…

Before you lynch me for that statement – which, trust me, is an informed one – hear me out. Every experience I’ve had during the course of my life has surrounded me with smart, sensible people, in addition to everyone else in the general populace. I learn a lot every day from those who I interact with – both online and off – and am better for it. Part of being connected, however, is being able to see what the popular trending is. While ordinarily the flood of awful memes and banal event/celebrity/reality TV news is easy enough to tune out, it’s when the conversation turns to more serious issues that I get irritated. The utter lack of knowledge behind many people’s impassioned support is easily questioned, but when it becomes the popular thing to do, questioning it leads to detrimental effects for the questioner. If you’re observant enough, you can also identify hypocrisy between different viewpoints. Perhaps it’s just me that does that, I don’t know.

Creating this strong movement of uninformed opinions and groupthink really leads to some interesting interactions. It also acts to turn me off of social media. I’m not really interested to listen to the same message over and over again; let alone the same incorrect message.

While I’m not specifically referring to the current situation in Iran, it is a good case study for this. There is a sea of green avatars being shown by people on Twitter. It’s being pitched as the colour of freedom and democracy, but green is the colour of Mousavi, the leader of the losing party in the election, and the lesser of two evils. The lesser of two evils is an important point here; if you examine Mousavi’s history, he’s certainly not without fault, and will not bring our concept of democracy to the Iranian people. Bring that up now, however, and see what sort of response you get.

The Sri Lankan protests in Toronto brought a lot of the same issues to the forefront here – and offered a lot of the same problems. People were taking sides or making statements on situations without making an effort to educate themselves of both sides. It was painful to watch, although it did at least bring up some true conflict.

The only victims in these situations are the people themselves, and not the leaders of either party. This means that stepping in and getting involved into these situations from a government level is NOT the thing to do – unless you want to start another Taliban.

What do you think? Are you facing a significant number of ill-informed people in your social media interactions? Am I one of those? Would love to know your thoughts.

It is a kind of business that touches many people’s lives (whether they want it to or not!). With advertising, you can actually point to a campaign on the street or while watching TV with a friend and say, “See that? I worked on that” and they can instantly relate to what you do. It is the kind of industry that you could be minding your own business on the bus and overhear someone talking about the campaign you’ve just spent a couple months pulling together. You can get instant feedback on whether someone liked the strategy you went with or didn’t at all.

I can’t say that’s the way I feel about the advertising business – perhaps ironic, given the type of work I do. When I look at clients that are trying to put together advertising pieces, I want to work with the ones that are either a) willing to try to do something different and creative or b) products that I truly identify with. With the amount of advertising that I’ve been subjected to since birth, I’ve mostly tuned out the “sell campaigns” that 95% (or more) of advertising is. I certainly don’t LOVE it like Emma does. Just my two cents, anyway. Still a good post, and a cool ad at the end of it.

Photo by Will Pate

Welcome to the first piece in what will be my weekly how-to series here on DanHocking.com. My aim is to provide some (arguably) practical advise on things both technology-related and not, based on my life experiences and general skill-set. As I continue to write these pieces, any and all feedback is welcome.

Today’s article covers something that I see members of my generation struggle with: the art of casually drinking. As we progress from our irresponsible late-teens and early-twenties, the role that drinking plays in our lives undergoes a significant change. This is partially out of necessity, as our bodies can’t handle the debauchery as much as they used to, especially in combination with the stressors of a full-time job. However, casual drinking also becomes a regular habit for many, for their professional and personal lives put them in situations where that is the “socially” acceptable thing to do. Think about it; is it appropriate to over-imbibe in a meeting with clients, an after-work gathering of co-workers, or on a first date? As I’ve watched friends and peers struggle with making the move back to drinking casually, and subsequently show up to work bleary-eyed and hungover, I figured that I’d share a few tips that have helped me really get past the “drinking to get drunk” phase of my life.

Don’t Drink Your “Trusted Favourite”
Okay, you’ve arrived at a venue that you’ve never been at before, you’re presented with a drink list that has a bunch of specialties, so you just figure that you’d order your old standby – the drink that you grew up with, the one that you still order during your nights out on the town. Stop. If you’re looking to put your casual drinking situation in jeopardy, consuming the drink that you’re used to drinking en masse is the perfect way to do that. You’re already used to drinking a large portion of your favourite, so it’s easy to fall back into that trap. Casual drinking gives you the opportunity to try something new and different, and it also gives you the option to consume something that may not be possible to drink a lot of them. Often, I’ll grab a Caesar when I’m casually drinking; the strong flavour of the clamato, plus the saltiness of the rim and the beverage itself ensures both that I won’t consume it quickly, and that you simply can’t drink that much.

Let the Situation Dictate Your Drink
Like I said, casual drinking gives you the opportunity to try something new, but your drink choice is dependant on the situation around this drink – both who you’re with, and where you’re at. A good example? If you’re out for a date at a nice, classy restaurant, ordering the cheapest beer on tap probably isn’t your best option. Your choice of beverage helps dictate the tone of your evening in a lot of ways, including how your company looks at you. A smart drink order will go a long way in making a good impression. In doubt? At a restaurant, order a glass of wine that’s at least in the middle of the price list, a standard martini, or a liquor on the rocks. (Beer can be ordered if you’re at a venue where craft beer is the focus, but should be avoided otherwise. The Beer Bistro in Toronto is a good example of where ordering a beer is encouraged.) At a bar or pub, a draft beer, cocktail (in a tall glass; see below) or liquor on the rocks works well with the casual atmosphere around you. And there’s no real choice but a beer if you’re on a patio – although you can occasionally get away with a frozen beverage as well.

Pick an Appropriate Venue
The venue ends up setting a lot of the mood for a casual drink. Because you’re not overindulging – and thus will remember every moment of the night – the venue choice will have an impact on your experience for the night. If you want to have a one-on-one conversation, you should probably avoid a loud venue. Patios are perfect for the after-work connection, but don’t exactly have that first date feeling to them. (Full disclosure: I’ve had a few first dates on patios, some of which have even worked, so take a read on your situation.) Be conscious of the venue, as well as the desires of what your company will be looking for. Again, like not drinking your trusted going-out drink, it’s likely best to avoid venues where you regularly go for night-time social activities, lest you get caught in that trap. If you’re from Toronto like I am, you have a lot of different choices for venues; take advantage of that fact, and try something new.

Have a Purpose and a Time Limit for the Drink – and Stick to It
This is where you may be making the argument about losing the “casual” feel of a casual drink – and you might be right. I’m not saying that you have to go into a casual drink with someone with the same rigorous goals that many of us approach a business meeting, but knowing WHY you’re going to meet up with someone is a useful way to avoid falling into the trap of drinking too much. Give yourself a reason besides the drink itself, as that on its lonesome is a slippery slope towards overindulging. If you have a goal as to what you’d like to accomplish, you can reach it and part ways. The longer you hang around the venue – especially a bar versus a restaurant – the more you will be pressured into the upsell.

Ordering a Cocktail? Get it in a Tall Glass
Okay, so you’ve decided that you feel like ordering a gin and tonic as your drink of choice for the evening. Do yourself a favour, and get it in a tall glass, especially if it’s still during the summer months – the heat makes you consume liquid faster. The tall glass will result in more liquid, which will give you more time with that single drink. This is an easy trick to stretch out the time you have with one drink, and is an old standby of mine in these situations.

Getting a Beer? Get a Stout
Sometimes pub food with a good friend is what is called for, and there can be no real choice than a beer at these venues. There’s nothing wrong with that; pubs are my favourite non-summer venue, and there are plenty of good beer options. If you want to make a solid casual drink choice – and likely gain the respect of the bartender – order a stout beer on draft, such as a Guinness. Stout beers are thicker and more bitter due to the brewing process they undergo, so it takes longer to finish them than your standard lager or ale. This process also involves less preservatives, which means that these drinks are actually healthier for you – probably for the best to balance out the caloric intake from the pub grub itself.

Avoid the Drink Specials
We all know the allure of $3.00 pints, or $4.50 2oz martinis, and can likely name a few venues that offer deals like that on a day of the week. If you’re looking to casually drink, avoid these venues like the plague. Why? You’re likely going to be surrounded by people that aren’t there to have just one or two drinks – it’s amazing how specials can bring people out – and that’s going to create an atmosphere of rowdiness and debauchery, which is only too easy to get swept up in. Before you know it, you’ll have spent more than if you had gone to a full-price venue, and you’ll be drunk – leading to a total fail of an evening.

The casual drink is a great way to socialize in both the personal and professional worlds. For the 20-something, by being aware of your situation, and ordering your drink smartly, you can convey a sense of maturity and worldly knowledge, which is bound to impress your company – or, if you’re having a drink with me, at least allow me to not lose respect for you… Kidding, of course. Feel free to leave your thoughts and tips in the comments.

So. Deal breakers. They’re totally individual, may make absolutely no sense at all, and are a pretty strong motivator. And until recently, I had not given much thought to them at all.

Emma goes on to list her dealbreakers of smoking and snoring. I have to admit that I share the smoking dealbreaker – sorry, any of you smokers reading this – and would include hard drug usage with that as well. If you’re destroying your body like that, I want no part of it. Loud-talkers are also a dealbreaker for me. I have fairly sensitive hearing – perhaps a byproduct of my lousy eyes – and loud, irritating voices just drive me nuts.

Past those, I can’t think of any others that are sure dealbreakers right away, although I’m sure there are some. What about you; any dealbreakers in your lives?

That’s me on a boat, in case you couldn’t figure it out. Well played, Emma.

Figured that a Sunday evening wasn’t the best time to share my highest caliber content, so I’m going to take the chance to wrap up what I’ve learned from the 6 days of participation so far. It’s not exactly pretty from my end, as you will soon see.

• Emma has clearly provided the higher-value content so far. Her first post showed significant personal depth, her second offers some professional insights on job searching, and her third post was hilariously random. Conversely, my first and second posts were written in a very short period of time, and didn’t quite generate the conversations that I was hoping.
• It’s hard to pick up and suddenly write a blog post! I haven’t done enough ideating as part of this process; having my notebook and nothing else this weekend at the cottage helped a little bit with that process, but I will need to continue to work on things to write about.
• It’s fun to be challenged like this – I have some mutual friends who remind me constantly how much better Emma is doing than I; this means that I am trying to step up my game. It’s helped me move forward the plans that I’ve had for my blog and my site as well; otherwise I’m not sure when I would’ve worked on some of these things.

So, how am I could to improve things? I’m pleased to annouce that I’m launching a weekly How-To series; these will cover some of life’s challenges that I feel like I’ve got some insight into. It’ll start on Tuesday, when I talk about mastering the art of the casual drink. Check back then!