This episode was all about how it all began for Tony. If you’re not familiar with this show or the story, Tony Bourdain was a career chef, working in the business for nearly 30 years until writing a book called Kitchen Confidential that propelled him into notoriety and henceforth into popular culture. This book, which I haven’t read yet, but is definitely on my reading list, is sort of a tell-all expose of the culinary culture of New York City. It garnered much praise and not a little criticism for it’s straight-talking illustrations of the places and names behind some of the Big Apple’s finest eateries.

What I found striking about this episode, though, was the transition from professional chef to professional author, and, ultimately, to professional cable television personality. Tony found himself the subject of a documentary that was filmed over the course of several months in 2000. This was the year that his book was published and he went through this enormous life-change.

Before publishing his book, he appears as a younger, skinnier, less gray (and less tan than now!), version of his current self. What’s interesting is his comfort with where he is in life, with his role as head chef at Les Halles. He is clearly at home in the kitchen, making sure that all the components necessary to a fine meal are in the right place at the right time and prepared to perfection. He is in his element as the person in charge of this kitchen and it’s ragtag staff. He’s downright cocky in his confidence.

Then comes publishing Kitchen Confidential. Then the book tour. Then an invitation to lunch from a local, but world-renowned chef. After his meeting, Tony looks shell-shocked. He’s evidently experiencing some sort of inner crisis as he comes to grips with a life that is quickly changing, not for the worse, but undeniably for the better. He describes with some surprise how he is able to pay his rent on time for the just about the first time in his life. Some exaggeration can be expected, but the sense of seeing a man who believes he has seen a miracle is palpable. His life is forever changed in a positive way.

Fast forward ten years. Tony interjects his own commentary from time to time throughout, but it’s most poignant near the end of the program where he still shakes his head in disbelief that he’s made it. He’s comfortable with his new celebrity, even though it hasn’t gone to his head. He’s less arrogant and firmly grounded in his new reality of traveling, talking, writing celebrity. It’s plain to see that he’s humbled by his successes.

The lessons that I take away from this story are several: Work hard, don’t give up, do what you are passionate about, and accept the changes that come with life. When you follow your passions to their natural conclusions, going with the natural current of your life, there will most definitely be great changes. As in Tony’s case, these changes clearly unsettled him and, I’m certain, simply scared the hell out of him. Ultimately, though, he persevered and grew with his passion and with his life and reached this point of balance where it just works.

I’m reminded of that line from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, where the wise old adventurer advises that the title character should be encouraged to “immerse himself in the destructive element.” This was an admonition for the perenially unhappy character, who had failed in his one big chance live up to the heroic ideal he had always dreamed of, to dive into this role regardless of consequence. The alternative would have been drugs or alcohol or wasting away the potential of his life in some menial, ignoble job.

In Jim’s case, he embraced his passionate desire and ended up paying for it with his life, for better or worse. Tony Bourdain shows us another side of the coin. He definitely embraced his passion for cooking, for creating something wonderful out of a list of ingredients and a mob of unruly misfits. But, he continued on to the next step, transitioning from chef to author to television star, never letting the passion consume him, but rolling with the punches and accepting his journey.

The overarching lesson is one of pursuing your own passion while accepting the twists and turns of the currents of life. Don’t shy away from change, but embrace it and realize that it’s part of the journey to personal fulfillment and satisfaction in life.

P.S. For a great interview from one of my hometown papers check out Anthony Bourdain’s Irresistible Impulses.

Maybe you had a fight with that person lying next to you in bed (or sleeping on the couch!) or one of your children. Maybe your mother or father was critical of your life choices last night on the phone and you reacted angrily. Maybe your neighbor’s dog kept you up through the night. Maybe you feel like you’re going nowhere and not making any progress at all on your goals. Maybe…

Isn’t that enough, though? Enough of those nasty little maybes that are ruining your life day by day? There is so much crap that piles up in our minds that makes us feel bad. I’ve written about the topic of mental clutter, dropping bad habits, and, more recently, about the fact that there will be no change in your life if you don’t change.

This idea bears repeating at least once a day. When things aren’t going right, when you’re not feeling right, remember that your discomfort is really a call to action.

Your subconscious will alert you when it feels that you’re on the wrong track. This is where the nagging doubts come in, the sneaking suspicions that you’re making a mistake.

I’m not suggesting that you give in impulsively to these feelings and dump everything in your life (midlife crisis, anyone?). What I’m saying is that these are signs that you should be examining the parts of your life for things that don’t fit, for those little inconsistencies that throw off your sense of self and your feeling of balance.

The problem really is you. I don’t mean that you’re hopelessly messed up, even though you might be. What I mean is once again that the change has to come from you.

Examine your thoughts for a moment and figure out what’s bugging you. What are the little things in your life that are driving you nuts? These are the things to focus on first and make some changes.

Face the facts: No one is going to rescue you.

It’s scary, but empowering to realize that you really are in control of your own life. You are the star of your own show. You are in charge!

So, when I say that it bears repeating every day that the problem is you, I’m really saying that you should remind yourself every day that you are the one in charge of your own destiny. You can make any changes you want to make. There will always be consequences for making these changes, but you can get motivated and do things that will improve your life.

Just about everyone knows the feeling of having too many choices or too much information to process. So many sources of information are bombarding us from one moment to the next that we are immersed in a constant flow of data of all kinds. Think about it: radio, television, internet, from the moment you wake in the morning. Even the signs along the road on your commute to work are animated now so that far more information can be packed into that fleeting few moments of attention as you’re rushing past.

I’ve written before about ways of tuning out the information overload and how to focus through the deluge of data. Those techniques are valid, but there is one simple idea that shines through: act now.

I don’t mean to say that you should blindly make a decision, but that you should take the inputs that you have and act on them or choose not to act. Regardless, the idea is to take some sort of action to clear the mental clutter, to flush all that extraneous data out of the buffer of your mind so that you have room to move on to the next task, but, more importantly, so that you have peace.

Yes, peace. This sense of harmony and balance seems to be missing from today’s world. We all rush from one thing to another, rarely completing, really completing and putting an end to each task, before moving on to something else. Do you remember that feeling from long ago in your childhood? That sense of waking up with nothing to do? Nothing you have to do. Wonderful.

I’m not talking about being bored. I’m talking about the freedom to choose whatever you want to do today because yesterday you cleared your plate. You dealt with all of the myriad of inputs and decisively put each in its proper place or appropriately discarded it. This is harmony. This is peace.

Think about this today. How can I complete this task and just be done with it? How can I remove this nagging from my mental space? Make some decisions about the things that are bugging you and move on. You’ll feel peaceful.

Today as I left the office for lunch, I noticed a lot of people walking around outside. I work in a suburban area that is filled with office parks. I wouldn’t really describe them as parks, but that’s the term you hear most often. Anyway, many people who work in these office buildings spend part of their lunch time walking around in the parking lots for exercise, sunlight, fresh air, etc.

What I was noticing today was how many people wander about alone in these parking lots. Sure, there are a number who walk in groups, but so many are out there alone. There’s nothing wrong with that, but many of them were walking like zombies. They seemed to stagger alone grimly with furrowed brows and tense shoulders. They didn’t look happy at all.

So, when am I going to talk about change? Now. What occurred to me was that these people were dying for change. I would bet that they would have given a lot to get out of their current employment situation. It could be that they were having other problems in their lives, but my first thought was that they hated their jobs.

Making a change would save them, right? It would change their lives, their sense of happiness and self-worth. Everything would be better, wouldn’t it? No.

At first, everything probably would be better for them. They would wake up each day with the thrill of starting something new and go through the workday with the passion and energy of a new lease on life. How is this bad? It’s not bad. It’s just an illusion.

This is the grass is greener mentality that keeps most of us shuffling from one unhappy situation to another throughout our lives. I don’t mean that the grass isn’t greener. It most certainly is greener in some places than in others.

The real problem is that when most of us make a change in our lives, it’s quite often just a matter of degree of difference. We leave one crappy job with a boss we don’t like for another one in the same industry requiring the same skills and where we do something very similar while reporting to someone who, after a while, we come to dislike as much as the last one. WTF?

Really, there’s something to be said for changing jobs and staying the same field, moving up in responsibility and advancing your career. That’s a great idea if that’s your plan. However, if you’re going from one dead end job to another because you’re dying for a change, why are you repeating the same mistake over and over again?

Of course, the same can be said of other changes in life. You could be talking about relationships, houses, social clubs, hair stylists. You name it.

The bottom line is this: if you’re going to make a change, make it count! Make this change one that really changes your life for the better. Take a risk and go for something that really excites you. Don’t turn into another parking lot zombie.

The problem with all of this is that a number of commenters leave a comment just for the backlink. These comments range from the “Me, Too’s and Way To Go Dudes” to ridiculous nonsense. I’ve noticed a trend over time toward more and more spammy comments on FreshBlogger as well as a number of highly irrelevant comments (followable links to something that has nothing to do with the content of the actual post).

I’m also concerned that the search engine rankings of this blog have suffered due to having a large number of irrelevant links, as well. I’m not going to pretend that the affects on revenue aren’t also influencing this decision. At one point, FreshBlogger had a PageRank of 5 and has since gone down to PR2. I realize that this isn’t the ultimate indicator of popularity, but it is indicative of a generally downward trend that has definitely been felt in terms of income.

So, while I welcome all comments that add something interesting, I’ve decided to stop using DoFollow. I realize this may cause some visitors to be less likely to leave a comment here. Fair enough.

I’ve done some searching and found that a few others share this sentiment and have likewise removed DoFollow from their blogs. A couple that I’ve come across are RT from Untwisted Vortex, “No More ‘Do Follow’” and Stephen Cronin from Scratch99, “Bye Bye DoFollow.”

What I can offer, though, is this: Since this is my personal blog and I tend to write about a number of different topics, I would be happy to link to your post or web page if I find it interesting or think it would be interesting to others who read this blog. Please feel free to leave a comment here or use the FreshBlogger Contact page to drop me a line.

I’m not writing this to denigrate the perfectly nice older woman who served us today. Quite the contrary, I actually feel sorry for her because I know what it’s like to work at something that’s not inspiring. It’s hard not to give the impression that you just don’t care.

Normally, people are pretty good at feigning interest, whether it’s towards a job, a movie, or a conversation. There’s probably a huge amount of fake enthusiasm going on right at this moment. Think of all the bright smiles, nodding heads, and forced laughs in job interviews. Awful, isn’t it?

A quick test of whether you’re faking it is to ask yourself if your outward body language and facial expression match your inner dialogue. If not, then, guess what? You’re faking it!

This is not to say that all fakery in life is bad. Much of what goes on is necessary for a society to function without all of us tearing each other’s throats out. Victorian politeness rose out of just such a necessity.

No, the most awful thing about all of this is the feeling behind the fake smiles. Really, it’s the lack of feeling other than, perhaps, disgust and rejection. Why do so many people go through life like this?

Is it a reaction to the horrors of modern life? This sounds funny on the surface, but think about the real lack of challenge in our daily lives in the Western world. It’s perfectly normal to coast through life without being under any realistic threat of missing a meal or Human beings evolved to react immediately to stimuli in their environment. Modern life dictates that we suppress these reactions or delay them to an appropriate time.

Maybe we are so used to suppressing our real feelings about things that we really don’t feel them any more. We don’t allow ourselves to notice that we feel things so that we can get through the day, the terrible, relentless boredom of much of daily life. Apathy is just our defense mechanism against this horror.

There are so many sites out there that have volumes of information about particular topics that are simply too complex or take way too long to read and apply to a real world situation. The opposite is also true. There are many sites that give us a high level overview or maybe more of a cursory glance at a topic and don’t include enough detail to be useful. The 5 Minute How Tos are a reaction to both of these.

I have some ideas for some more short how to posts and you should start seeing them on this site soon. For now, I’ve put together a short summary below of each of the ones that I’ve already written.

• 5 Minute How To: Get Started With Blog Carnivals Blog Carnivals are a great way to get your posts noticed and get more traffic and links to your blog.
• 5 Minute How To: Find Your Blogging Voice Sometimes it’s difficult to establish your own particular identity. This post gives some tips on putting yourself into your writing.
• 5 Minute How To: Save Time With Future Posting If you find that you have bursts of creative productivity this is a great way to spread out those posts. It also comes in handy when you’re going on vacation or going to be tied up on other things for a while.
• 5 Minute How To: Find a Blogging Job If you’re curious about what it might take to get a paying job as a blogger, this post has some good information for you.
• 5 Minute How To: Redirect From a WWW Domain I found it necessary when moving my blog to redirect my old pages to the new ones, so that readers (and Google) could find me.
• 5 Minute How To: Improve Your Alexa Rank Alexa Rank is important for a few reasons, not least of them is the impact on the pricing of your (aff).
• 5 Minute How To: Get Started With AdSense This is where monetizing your sites begins. Everyone who has a web presence should have an adsense account and at least a passing familiarity with how to use it effectively to make money.
• 5 Minute How To: Get Started Programming with PHP Many bloggers use WordPress for their blogging software and since it’s based on PHP, this is a great tool to put in your web skills toolbox.
• 5 Minute How To: Drive More Traffic to Your Site These are some useful ideas for getting more eyes on your pages.

I hope you find this information useful. Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think. If you have any particular ideas or requests, I’d love to hear them.

This seems like a lot of posts to me. I know there are sites out there with thousands of pages of content, but this feels like an accomplishment. It’s taken around 4 years of blogging, writing, working, and just plain living to get to this point. A few of these articles have been kindly written by some of my good friends from the blogging community.

I feel like I’ve put a lot into each post on this site, even if I’ve held back somewhat at times. This blog has been a creation of my own and something that I’m pretty proud of. That’s another reason that I’ve decided to keep going and continue blogging. In a world swimming with people and information and ideas, this is my own little corner.

It may be another 4 years before I double this number of posts, but I hope not. I’m feeling positive about this blog again and about a lot of things and I’m planning on keeping this little spark alive. Stay tuned for more.

I’m not here to whine about my life. Actually, my life is pretty great, all things considered, but sometimes it gets really stressful. I know this happens to all of us. Sometimes things build up, mostly little things, that add to a load of stress that becomes a heavy burden over time. You get to the point where you just feel like you need a vacation.

Unfortunately, you can’t always just take a few days or a week off and drink beer and play the xbox in your underwear. Or if you can, more power to you!

So, if you’re stuck with bulling through it, it’s OK to just take things one day at a time. You will get through it. Do what it takes to get through the day and while you’re at it, try to make one little thing better.

You don’t have to be a superstar every single day, so set your sights on the low hanging fruit. Knock out something simple, even if it’s just cleaning your desk at work or folding a few pieces of laundry that have been sitting in that basket for a week.

These tasks seem minuscule, but they have a cumulative effect on your life and sense of accomplishment. If you can do one or two small things today and just keep the rest of the pack of howling wolves at bay, then tomorrow you can tackle a few more things, a few slightly bigger things, and in a few more days you’ll be back in your superstar game.

Hang in there, we can make it through today.

For posterity’s sake, here is the link to the old About page. It’s obviously a bit dated, but tells you a bit about where I was in my life way back in 2006.