Freewill

The world is filled with choices, and yet we seem to find reason to complain that there aren’t enough of them.  How often do we go food shopping, only to look in the refrigerator later in the day and say that there is nothing to eat?  We pay an obscene amount of money for cable or satellite television so that we can have more choices of shows to watch, and yet, I often find myself scrolling through the guide saying that there is nothing on TV.  My kids have a room full of toys (and each other), but it is not uncommon to hear complaints about being bored, and having nothing to do.

It seems to me that, as a society, we have conditioned ourselves to never be satisfied with what we have.  I’ve witnessed first-hand (in business and in my personal life), people criticizing things that don’t appeal to them rather than trying to find something that does grab their attention.

For example, while working in real estate, I spent more time than I care to admit to with some “buyers” who were looking for their first home.  I put the word “buyers” in quotes, because qualifying as actual buyers requires making a purchase.  Each time I went out with them, I thought…today is going to be the day that they find something.  Each time I came home, I would vent to my wife about them.  Not because they didn’t find something.  I understood that they had specific wants and needs.  What bothered me is that they would pick apart each house in great detail, even though they had no intention of making an offer.  A lot of time and energy could have been saved by just moving on to the next house.

Ultimately, these “buyers” did some things during the course of negotiations that I found to be underhanded.  Not only did they show no respect for the significant amount of work that I had done, but they also had no qualms about wasting the time of other professionals that I had recommended to them.  Their actions during the negotiations were “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” When I finally decided to stop working with them, it felt like a weight was lifted off of my shoulders.  There was no way to get back the wasted time that I had spent with them, but at least I wouldn’t be wasting any more time with them going forward.  It taught me a valuable lesson that I carry with me to this day…time is valuable, don’t waste it doing things that you don’t want to do or with people who you don’t want to be around. We are blessed, as Americans, to have freewill, so why not take advantage of it?

When I started writing this blog, I received a lot of positive feedback.  People shared some very personal stories of their own, and I felt like positive things were happening.  Of course, new things always tend to be exciting until the bloom starts to fade from the rose.  If this were a money-making venture, it would be necessary to do anything possible to keep the excitement at a high level to continue to build an audience that could be monetized.  But it isn’t.  I have my reasons for writing this blog, but profiting from it directly is not one of them.  If it was, it would be much more aesthetically pleasing and feature strategically placed advertising.

No one is forced to read this blog.  There are people that receive each post via e-mail, but they have chosen to do so of their own freewill, and can elect to stop the e-mails at any time.  Otherwise, the only people that are reading are those that take the time and effort to do so.  Since I write about a variety of topics, it is highly unlikely that everyone will feel a connection to every post.  We all have our own interests, and different life experiences, so it is understandable that some people will be drawn to certain posts that don’t appeal to others.  It is quite possible that there will be certain posts that don’t appeal to anyone, but that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a reason for writing them.  Everything that is written for this blog is done so for a specific reason that may (at times) only be apparent to me.

I’ve had people question me recently about why I speak about my projects in vague terms.  I’ve had others tell me that they aren’t always interested in what I have to say, or in how I am saying it.  Suffice it to say that this blog is serving a purpose for me, and helping me to achieve my goals.  Sometimes I may share them, other times I may not.  While I do hope that people get something out of my blog, the fact of the matter is that I would still be writing it even if no one was reading it.

Some people may have been interested in my blog when it first started, but no longer find it appealing.  That’s fine with me.  I know the feeling.  There are television shows that I used to watch that I no longer enjoy.  The same holds true for magazines, music, talk shows and more.  When I no longer am interested in something, I just move on to the next thing.  As I mentioned earlier, I learned a valuable lesson about time while working in real estate, so now I spend mine how I choose.  In the astute words of Rush (one of my favorite bands)… “I will choose a path that’s clear…I will choose FREEWILL!”