What’s Up??? (Plus: Killer announcement about my next book)

Hey, sorry I’ve been gone for a while… over a week!   Here’s what I’ve been doing:

A few weeks ago my wife asked if I would help with my oldest daughter in a week-long school program.  Some of you know we homeschool… which means they are busy with lots of programs outside of the home.

This one is a week-long “government” simulation with kids age 12 – 18ish.  It’s kind of a long story, but in a nutshell, there is a group of people who left plane earth about 300 years ago to find a new planet, only to be stuck there.  In the last 300 years they grew from 1,000 to 500,000, and live in five countries.  Each of the countries is ruled differently (theocracy, monarchy, dictatorship, etc.).  The kids are split up into one of the five countries and have spent the last four days working within their own government system, understanding it, and also working with other countries.

It has been a BLAST.  This is my first time doing something like this.  I’m the King over the monarchy.  It was fun to figure out what kind of king I would be… nice or mean, eccentric or laid back, etc.  Yesterday I was asked to do something different because all my kids love me and my kingdom too much… doing something eccentric might jar them a bit.  So we basically declared war on a country during peace treaties.

Anyway, that’s where I’ve been from morning to night.  My brain is doing totally different stuff, so it’s like the first week on the job where you come home exhausted!  I love getting to know these kids better, especially since I’ve heard about them for so long. Today it ends, so I should be back in the work saddle pretty soon.

Speaking of which, I had an epiphany related to my next book, 101 Alternatives to a Real Job.

For various reasons, I’ve decided to call it 51 Alternatives to a Real Job.

Ugh, just writing that makes me feel like, in a sense, I’m quitting 🙁

Actually, there are some good reasons to take it down to 51:

• With 51, I’m pretty much done writing them all up.  What was supposed to be done about 7 months ago can now get done in the next few weeks.  Yippee!!  Gotta get “to market!”  It was killing me thinking this project was going way too long!
• With 51 ideas I’ll have room for more tips and actionable takeaways.  I was getting worried the amount of pages needed for 101 would be too big AND not leave much room for actionable stuff.
• If I ever want to do a second edition, or a Part II, I realized finding 51 more would be A LOT easier than finding 101 more!

Those are the main ideas.  I’m meeting with the editor tomorrow to see what the next steps are, and I hope to have the 51 to a Real Job book out SOON!

Thanks for all your support!