PersDev.com - Neal's Personal Development

I began a novel for NaNoWriMo.  I’m pretty excited about my progress so far, and I thought I’d share a bit with you.

I’m planning on getting it published when I finish with it, and I’m about half of the way done with it.

Chapter one

The boring life

Tick Tock Tick Tock

The clock echoed in the spacious office.  Time flows, without meaning.

She scribbled away at her desk.  Who knew that the corner office would be so much work!

Zoe was putting the finishing touches on her report, Multidimensional Transmorphic objects.  Piles of papers that had to be dealt with sat in her inbox.  Even today, they still relied on the tried-and-true paper method.  Something about the physical paper in your hands brings back nostalgia.

She reached over and tapped the desk.  The three dimensional display of her report popped up.  With a flick of her hand, she flicked through the pages of MTO and satisfied, snatched the report and headed out of her office.

Zoe walked down the hall with purpose.  Today was an important day.  She had been working on the theoretical models of mutating, cross dimensional objects for months, and had finally finished her work.  A major project like this, solved so efficiently and quickly, usually meant a promotion.

Zoe was an ordinary girl in most regards.  She worked hard, and was a top performing workaholic.  An introvert, she did nearly all of her work by herself, only gaining input after she had a decent model created.  Even then, the input was minimal at best.

Somewhat tall, Zoe had a decent complexion and frame.  Nothing to brag about, but she was pretty.  She had wavy dirty blonde hair, and kept it hid up in a bun.  She wore glasses, and didn’t put on makeup.

She lived for her work.  Most days were spent in the office, and on her projects.  No social life to speak of, Zoe’s evenings consisted of TV dinners and sleep.  On the weekends, she pondered theory, while relaxing in her reclining chair.

Zoe’s footsteps clacked the marble floor as her heels hit.  Zoe didn’t typically wear heels, but it’s not very often she meets with her boss.  Her black skirt complemented her white blouse.

Susan Birmingham.  Susan was Zoe’s boss.  Genetics had favored Susan.   She had long, flowing silky brown hair, and looked like a supermodel.  Susan was the person that they coined the term ‘hourglass figure’ after.  Confident and cocky, she came across somewhat as a bitch.  Perhaps it was her unnatural genius-level talent and wisdom.

Zoe stepped up to the office.  The modern design of the building used lots of glass, accented by metal.  The offices were all giant, one-way glass walls.  Like the rest of the office, everything was automatic.  By walking to the office, Susan was alerted to Zoe’s presence.  When she was ready, Susan would allow Zoe to enter.

A door shaped opening appeared in the glass in front of Zoe.  She stepped into the office.

“I see you’ve completed the report.  Thank you Zoe.  I will review it, and get back to you.  I’ve sent a new project for you to work on while you wait.”

Susan had an eerie knack of being able to tell what was going on.  It’s as if she had read Zoe’s mind.  It took a while for her to get used to it, but Zoe had been Susan’s busy bee for a long time.

“Thank you Susan, I’ll get right to it.”

The exchange was quite short.  Not nearly as dramatic as Zoe anticipated.

She walked back out of the office, and the glass wall closed behind her.

Her breathing increased, her pupils dilated, and her pulse quickened.  What was happening?  Zoe felt calm, yet it was as if she was having a panic attack.  Not knowing what else to do, Zoe headed back towards her office.

Fear slowly crept into her thoughts.  What is happening to her?

She reached her office, and the glass opened.  Halfway through the door, a glimmer of light caught the corner of her eye.  Looking down the long hallway towards her boss’ office, Zoe saw a strange shimmering object, unlike anything that she had seen before.  The object disappeared down another hall as abruptly as it had appeared.

Zoe’s curiosity was piqued.  Maybe the object had something to do with her fear.  Despite being out of breath, Zoe ran down the hall.

Clack clack clack her heels went.  “Damn, I should’ve worn normal shoes” Zoe thought.

Reaching the end of the hall, she turned towards where the object went.  As she turned, a brilliant light filled her eyes.  It was like a spotlight, overwhelming her vision, not allowing her to see anything else.

BOOM!

Suddenly, Zoe was back in her office.  Her report was in her hand.

For a long time, it’s been my goal to run a marathon.  My brother, Roger, and I have the goal of running the PF Chang’s marathon next year and have recently begun to train for it.  We have been following the Nike+ Walk To Run schedule, and I formatted all of the workouts in excel in the form of a calendar, complete with spaces to put gold stars.

Nike plus is a great resource to maintain a motivation to run.  By allowing you to track your progress, pace, goals, and distance, you have a lot of data to track your progress.

So far, we’ve followed the schedule pretty well, occasionally switching days up as we needed to (blue stars, and ‘X’s).  I hope you find it as useful as I have.

As promised, here’s the calendars:

January Nike+ Workout Calendar

Febuary Nike+ Workout Calendar

They’re in XLSX. Most people I know can access this format, but if you can’t, post a comment and I’ll upload the XLS format.

Hello World!… again.

I’m pleased to announce the relaunch of PersDev! A bunch of changes have taken place:

I’ve switched domains from persdev.sidecoder.com to persdev.com.

After waiting 7 months for the domain to expire, I’ve managed to get a hold of persdev.com, which I’m super excited about! Since last October, when I decided that I wanted to blog about personal development, I wanted a new domain name, instead of piggybacking via a subdomain on the SideCoder domain name. PersDev was everything I wanted: short, easily remembered, and instantly understandable. In other words, something that portrayed personal development from the first glance, a lesson that I learned from the Toastmasters name (when I talk about Toastmasters to someone for the first time, they always inevitably say, “Is that where you learn to make great toast?”). However, all of the domain names that I could think of either didn’t fit the criteria, or were taken. The only exception, persdev, was my first choice. It was in the process of expiring when I first discovered it, and I was instantly hooked on the name.

Be sure to bookmark PersDev.com!

A new updated theme and feel for PersDev

Ever since the launch of persdev.sidecoder.com, I’ve been dissatisfied with the green “Mondo Zen Theme” that I had. While that theme was ok, it wasn’t what I wanted for my site. I wanted something that was contemporary, visually stimulating, feature robust, and easy to use. My current theme, “Inanis Glass” satisfied that.

The new theme allows for user chosen themes, quick and intuitive access to the RSS feeds, and the ability to search the site. Plus it just looks nice.

I’m changing the feel and style of the posts

I’ve come to realize that there was a fundamental error in my thinking when it came to posting blog articles. I was focused on providing value, and therefore talked a lot on what I thought others could do to improve themselves. This was a mistake. Although that format does provide some value, it can come across as authoritarian, which doesn’t fit my personality.

From now on, I’m going to write primarily on my own achievements, insights, and goals. This has many positive effects:

• Original Content – I’m not going to use other people’s concepts and jargon, since I’m not going to be researching my articles. This allows for my true perspective to come through, not one that has been tinted by someone else’s experiences.
• Posting Rate – In the past, I stuck to a posting schedule, which didn’t work out for me. That led me to not posting for several months. By posting on my own experiences, not only will I post when I get something new (a lot more often than going a few months without a post) but I will be much more motivated to post.
• No BS – These are my own experiences. There’s no fluff. If I’m trying something out, and it doesn’t work out like expected, that’s what I’m going to report. The vegetarian experiment really showed me this – vegetarian websites made it sound so awesome, while my experiences showed me that it was a difficult lifestyle. If I just researched vegetarianism, instead of experiencing it, I would’ve never been able to talk about it.
  
  Another thing about No BS that is great is that it is so rare on the internet. I think that not only will it keep you here, it will also drive more traffic to my website.

An optional user registration system

With the new theme, user registration is a breeze and it comes with a variety of benefits:

• It allows you to post comments without typing in your information over and over again.
• You can edit how your comments appear on the site.
• You’ll be automatically enrolled for our newsletter. – Although I don’t have any current plans for a newsletter, I would eventually like to have one. If you don’t want this, you can always opt out of the newsletter. I guarantee that there will be an unsubscribe link at the bottom of it. The newsletter will have exclusive content to it, as well as letting you be in the loop of what’s happening on PersDev.

Happy Easter everyone!

When I originally began the whole Vegetarian-For-Lent thingy, I intended on becoming vegetarian for 40 days, which was what I thought the time frame for Lent was. However, that’s not the case. Apparently according to this site, the 40 days of fasting doesn’t include Sundays, so Lent is actually 46 days long, to include Sundays. A couple days before I started, I counted out 40 days (including Sundays), and that was last Monday. Since I have no religious ties to Lent, I decided that this week I was going to wean myself off of a straight vegetarian diet back into a meat eating diet.

Surprisingly, my first meat was calamari, which I had never had before. My brother and I went to a fancy restaurant and he ordered it. I was intensely curious, so I stole a couple bites. More »

I’ve had quite a few new experiences since my last post. I’m proud to say that I’ve successfully stayed a strict vegetarian this whole time (no meat, even fish).

Sustainable Vegetarianism
I’ve found that in order to sustain a vegetarianism lifestyle, you have to discover comfort food that meets the vegetarian criteria. If you hate Mexican food, bean burritos are probably not a good food to think you can eat for the rest of your life. Naturally, if you’re only doing the vegetarian experiment for a few weeks (like for Lent), then you don’t have to worry about this as much. You can suffer through a few bean burritos or just avoid them altogether.

I’ve spent the last few weeks implementing this concept. One of the interesting things about this experiment is that my tastes have changed. I remembered HATING cottage cheese as a kid, but the other day I was craving it. I bought some, and now I can’t get enough of it. The same goes for bagels and cream cheese. I honestly can’t think of anything that I enjoy as much in the morning as a cinnamon raison bagel with strawberry cream cheese. (Yes, I know this is weird, but it tastes REALLY good!). More »

Greetings! If the writing style seems funny, that is because I am actually not Neal, but his girlfriend. I have also decided to jump in on that whole Lent thing that he was talking about. Specifically, the vegetarian for 40 days. However, I have added ANOTHER element to mine, which is giving up caffeine (in all of its delicious goodness) as well. More »

Ok, I realize it’s not quite a full week, but I think 6 days is a good start to record my initial thoughts and experiences of Vegetarianism.

It’s been quite an experience so far. Many of my expectations have been shattered, while many have been fulfilled. I’m really enjoying this new experience. More »

Well today is it. Today is the last day that I’m going to allow myself to eat meat, at least for the next 40 days. Lent starts tomorrow, and as I said earlier, I’m going vegetarian. I’ve been gorging myself on all sorts of meat-based meals over the last few days, from a seared steak to penne shrimp. I’m somewhat apprehensive in relation to starting a vegetarian diet, but my dominant feeling is excitement.

Throughout the next 40 days, I plan on blogging about my experiences. I will talk about what I’ve been eating, my cravings, thoughts about vegetarianism, and perhaps even recipes.

Since I’ve never followed a diet outside of the Standard American Diet (SAD), I’m really curious about how a vegetable based diet is going to affect me, physically, mentally, and emotionally. I have a feeling that it will make a great impact on me in all three of these areas.

A big insight that I had in relation to my own personal development is that I had the tendency to read about, think about, and imagine what certain lifestyle changes would have upon my life. However, I never implemented those changes. I realized that I wasn’t improving my life at all, because I wasn’t experiencing the things I had in my head, or attempting to make those things a reality. When I realized this concept, I began focusing on action-oriented personal development, specifically, things I could realistically accomplish in a relatively soon. Vegetarianism is one of those goals. I have a strong belief that I will grow more from going vegetarian than I could ever grow through just thinking.

Part of my goal in going vegetarian is to explore new foods. If you have a tasty vegetarian recipe, I’d love to know about it.

Wish me luck!

- Neal

As I said last week, I’m going vegetarian for Lent. Vegetarianism has always been interesting to me, and only recently have I considered the possibility that I could become vegetarian.

When I first decided to participate in Lent, I had absolutely no idea what vegetarianism was all about. I though that it was basically eating salad for every meal. Since then, I’ve come to learn a lot about the vegetarian lifestyle.

There is a lot of faulty information regarding vegetarianism. I’ve heard from friends, family members, and other acquaintances that the vegetarian diet is unhealthy. This usually takes the form of a couple different phrases: “You can’t get enough protein” or “There’s certain things that you need (like nutrients) that can only be found in meat” are the most common. I disagree. I think that if you eat a balanced, healthy vegetarian diet, then you will have everything you need. I think that the sheer number of people who are vegetarian today prove that you can live without meat. More »

When I was talking to my girlfriend recently, she told me that she was planning on going vegetarian for Lent. I’ve heard of Lent before, but I had no experience with it. My prior experience of Lent consisted of me going to Starbucks with one of my friends and them saying that they can’t have caffeine because they gave it up for Lent. At the time, it sounded silly; why would you give up something that’s somewhat innocuous, only to be able to have it for the rest of the year.

Lent is a Catholic practice of giving up a vice, praying, and penitence. This lasts for approximately 40 days, from mid-February to Easter Sunday. Just because Lent is a religious practice doesn’t mean that you can’t also use this time to break from one of your vices. More »