Just a bit over a year ago, Glen Allsopp was an 18-year old guy from England, working in a job he hated, doing college courses that bored him to death, and running his own business part-time. In my books, that’s already quite an achievement for someone that young.

But it wasn’t enough for Glen, who wanted to plug into his real identity and live his life to the max. So, he took a job in South Africa, left his old life behind and moved to a whole new country far away from everything he knew.

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This morning, the grass on our front yard was covered with frost. People were scrubbing ice off their windshields. The last signs of summer were long gone. While I still miss summer, in a bitter sweet way, I love the crisp, fresh air, the bright colors, and seeing the nature change into something new again.

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(…or “How When You Think You Have Made It, You Are Just Getting Started.”)

Whoever said “ignorance is bliss” must have been longing for an easy life without knowing that things could be better. Most definitely, he (or she) didn’t want to be punched in the face by hearing uncomfortable truths about his path in life.

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Summer is a hard time for maintaining habits. It’s hard to stay on a strict diet on a barbecue weather. It’s hard to keep waking up early when you don’t have to get to work in the morning. There are other times like this too (Christmas for example), but none of them can quite compete at the same level of habit-destructiveness with summer.

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One way to define someone insanely interested in everything is to say that he keeps getting new ideas all the time. It’s a great place to be, sitting there in the middle of a flow of new ideas, but it has a downside too: If you keep hopping from one idea to the next as ideas keep popping to your mind, you will never finish a thing.

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The process of focusing to your big picture starts a pile of small tasks, ideas, books you have read, hobbies you love, hobbies you haven’t even started yet and all kinds of other activities that at first don’t seem to have anything in common.

It’s the one happy mess that most of have learned to call life.

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In my dreams, I wake up when it’s still dark. I grab a cup of coffee and a fresh bagel and start changing the world. Then, as the sun rises, I put down my keyboard and gently wake up the rest of my family. We spend hours having fun together, but also get some work done. Not too much – just enough to keep the business rolling.

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Some of my most popular posts so far date all the way back to August, when I wrote a five article series on securing your finances with a side business. It was an amazing coincidence that just when I was planning to start my second series looking at the same topic from a different angle, both Naomi from IttyBiz and Skellie from Anywired linked to one of the posts in the original series: The Seven Deadly Sins of a Side Business Entrepreneur.

The new series starts today.

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Everyone needs to be inspired every now and then.

What inspires me the most is when I see people doing what they enjoy and believe in. It doesn’t have to be through business, but more often than not the truly inspiring actions are happening in that context. Today I’m listing the top 20 businesses that inspire me at this very moment.

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Why is it that the lives of people in movies seem to be so much more interesting than ours? There are many reasons: people in movies don’t watch TV, movies don’t show them doing their everyday chores such as cleaning the house or washing dishes, and in general, the boring parts are removed at the cutting board.

But none of these is the real reason.

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