masculinity

July 18 2017

On the Side: Making Extra Money – Part 3

Sell Everything

Dave Ramsey talks about getting out of debt by selling everything that isn’t nailed down.
Debt might not be your rationale about making more money, but there are certainly ways you could turn the junk sitting around your house into extra cash.

1. Facebook – Sell in local garage sale groups / Facebook Marketplace
2. Online Selling Apps – there are a number of apps for selling. Letgo, VarageSale, and more.

Craigslist or other local classified sites
Ebay / Amazon – This takes a little more skill, but you can make money selling your junk on these sites.

This doesn’t include an old fashioned garage sale. Just put it out on a table and toss a price sticker on it. If it is sitting around unused, why not liquidate it, and put that cash back into what you need?

July 11 2017

On the Side: Making Extra Money – Part 2

Monetize your hobby

Growing up, my father had a hobby that paid. He was a professional birthday clown. He still is, though he has slowed down these days.

Dad was passionate about clowning, and learned the skill well. He practiced making balloons and telling jokes and simple magic tricks. I would come home from school to a house full of animal balloons, while he worked on new designs.

For dad, clowning was fun. But it also gave extra cash for the family. He would often pick us up after a job and take us out for dinner (still dressed in his clown suit.)

Your hobby most likely isn’t clowning, but I have to ask, are you able to monetize it?

Many hobbies, golf, shooting, four wheeling, etc, may cost quite a bit for men to participate. That doesn’t mean they are worthless hobbies! If you enjoy it and it adds value to your life, that’s fine! But I do want you to consider how you can create a hobby that can make money.

Do you like to make things? Wood Furniture, Leatherworking, Paracord Bracelets

Do you like to create? Painting, Graphic Design, Music,

Do you like to work outside? Landscaping, Gardening, Carpentry

Any number of hobbies could be turned into a way to make a little money. If you like golf, and are good at it – you could teach a course, or coach a student club! If you like hiking orhunting, you could take the inexperienced out to explore.

Take a minute in the comments to tell me what your hobby is, and we can discuss how you can monetize it!

July 4 2017

On the Side: Making Extra Money – Part 1

Passive Income is Best

In the old days, one average salary could feed, shelter, clothe, and entertain a family. Today though, inflation, corruption, and financial mismanagement have put us in a position where we often find ourselves in pursuit of more “hustle” to make ends meet. Many families have two or three jobs just to cover basic expenses.

I’m no financial guru, and while my own income streams are still growing, I have studied and researched much about how to create a side hustle to make residual passive income.

What is passive income?

Passive income comes from royalties, rents, dividends, or residuals. You work up front or invest, and over time, your investment pays you back.

Investopedia says:

Earnings an individual derives from a rental property, limited partnership or other enterprise in which he or she is not materially involved. As with non-passive income, passive income is usually taxable; however it is often treated differently by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

What would that passive income look like for you?

1. Rental properties – If you have some cash to invest in rental properties, and enough to keep up the properties, you can make enough to pay for your investment, and then make a profit.

2. Royalties – If you write a book, record music, and sell it, either through self-publishing, or a publisher or record label – you can collect income each month from that source.

3. Investments – investing cash in a mutual fund, or even riskier stocks can bring you dividends each month.

Online business – this could be many things. Often, people create products to sell – they could be real tangible items, virtual courses, subscription services, or more.

Passive income is not free and easy money – it does take work, time, and investment to build these sources – but they can pay off later with minimal maintenance, if done well.

Ultimately, my goal is to generate a full time income from passive income. I’d like to be able to “retire” from working to build someone else’s dream, and work 100 percent building my own. I’m not there yet, but we’re headed there!
I highly recommend following Pat Flynn at Smart Passive income for some ideas on how to make it happen for you!

June 28 2017

Love Your Wife More Than You Love Yourself – Part 5

Thank and Affirm Her.

Use your words. Say what you think and feel about her. I don’t know why this is so difficult for many men to do – but it’s essential to building a good relationship.

She needs to hear, “Thank you.” How often?
You can never say it enough.

She needs to hear, “You are beautiful.” How often?
You can never say it enough.

There are many things unique to your wife that she needs to hear, and I’ll leave that up to you to decode and decipher her. But I can tell you that almost every woman I’ve ever met struggles with self-image, self-worth, self-doubt issues. I think it’s safe to say that it’s a common thing women struggle with.

As a husband, your responsibility is to build her up. To affirm her. To use your words to reassure, comfort, and back her up.

I would talk about the negative things we say – when we cut down, criticize, and tear her apart with our comments – but honestly, that’s another discussion entirely. All that I will say is to stop. If you have constructive advice or concerns – you need to wrap that in love. For every legitimate criticism, you should have already given her five to ten compliments.

June 27 2017

Love Your Wife More Than You Love Yourself – Part 4

Listen to her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt like the guy in this video.
Women are a mystery. I know it may be overgeneralization to say this – so apply whatever amount of common sense is needed to understand it.

Women don’t want you to fix their problem, as much as they want to feel understood, acknowledged, or listened to.

There are times, obviously, when what she really wants is for you to fix the drain under the kitchen sink.

But there are many times, she just needs to air her grievances to her best friend. She doesn’t want you to solve or fix the problem, but to listen to her.

This is hard for us. Men are fixers. It’s in our nature as men to find broken things and fix them.
Women do want things to be fixed. But more importantly, they just want to be heard, understood, loved, accepted.

It may seem counter-intuitive and self-sabotaging to sit in that situation, where she pours her heart out, and you just listen.

You would not think that it is difficult, but learning to listen has been one of the toughest challenges of my relationship with my wife. I’ve always got a solution, and answer, a suggestion. Keeping those quiet long enough to fulfill her actual need, though, the need to be heard and understood – that’s the real challenge.

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June 20 2017

Love Your Wife More Than You Love Yourself – Part 3

Serve her.

This, is perhaps the hardest part of love. Men, we see ourselves as leaders. (Which isn’t a bad thing. We’ll get to leadership, and what that means in a minute.) We see ourselves as lovers, we see ourselves in so many ways, but picturing ourselves as servants is so difficult.
The truth? No matter where you are in live, you’re a servant to someone.

To quote, Bob Dylan, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody. It may be the Devil, it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

In the case of marriage, you’re either serving yourself, or you are serving her.
Are you helping her with chores around the house? Are you providing for her needs? Are you doing things that help her? Are you making sure to please her first in the bedroom? (C’mon guys. You know that matters!)

If you want a happy wife, you’ve got to take on the role of a servant. It will make you a great husband. A happy husband. And if you do it well, and if you do it right, she’ll reciprocate.
Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. ― Martin Luther King Jr.

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June 13 2017

Love Your Wife More Than You Love Yourself – Part 2

Study her.

How well do you know her? I know that now that my wife and I are approaching the time in our life when we’ve been together longer than apart, I know her well. Very well. I can walk in the room, and without a word, I can tell what she’s thinking, or how she’s feeling. (Not always, of course – women, after all, are always mysterious and surprising sometimes.)

As we get older, this relationship changes and morphs. It’s not just physical or emotional. It’s spiritual.

I am not saying we are a perfect example – we frustrate each other and annoy each other all the time. But I can tell you that for almost 20 years, I’ve studied her.

When we were dating – we started out asking each other questions. When we were engaged, we read books together about marriage -and went through THREE different premarital counseling courses. We knew we were getting married young and making what everyone else thought was a bad decision – so we wanted to make sure we were well equipped to face it.

So we started off with a really strong foundation.

As we have progressed in our relationship – I’ve always tried to be attentive to her. She thinks I don’t pay attention – but I do. Sometimes I choose NOT to do the thing that she wants me to do – for any number of reasons. But in general, I want to KNOW this woman I married.

In the bedroom, I know what she likes.
In the kitchen, I know what she likes.

If you want to know how to study and learn your wife, I highly recommend you read the book “The 5 Love Languages” as a starting place.

It breaks down the different ways that people love, and it will help you understand her, and how to communicate with her.

May 16 2017

Wild: The Fire

To be wild, to hear the heartbeat of nature, to feel the rush of adrenal strength, to drink from the fresh air and howl at the moon – these are things that are embedded into men.

Something else that we’ve lost when our culture became civilized and pushed out the wild men – the fire.

Today, we gather around the television and let people tell us stories, with the imagination already painted for us. Or we pretend to gather in virtual communities – typing with our thumbs and sending each other cat videos and poop emojis.

But in the WILD – men gathered around a fire at the end of the evening. The fire cooked the food from the hunt. It kept the predators away. It kept the tribe warm.

But more importantly than that, it united them. It gave them communion with each other, with the stories of their ancestors.

They laughed, sang, and told stories while the little ones fell asleep in daddy’s lap.

Generations later, we brought the fire from the outside to the inside, in stone hearths. Our tribes were smaller, but the same thing happened. Grandpa played his fiddle, Pa smoked his pipe. Grandma braided hair and they told stories of the good old days.

Today, our heat is made from underground pipes or copper coils. Our songs are auto-tuned, and we all listen to our own with our Beats by Dre or earbuds. Our stories aren’t even our own anymore – as we stopped having real adventures generations ago. OR we’re afraid that Grandpa’s war stories might frighten the children, or trigger the young and traumatized adults. (When Grandpa was their age, he was in ‘Nam dodging bullets.) But now Grandpa lives in Florida, or in a nursing home, rather than to spend his remaining years with his loved ones.

Can we recapture the tribal fire? Can we sit with our band of brothers, their wives, kids, moms, and dads and tell stories again? Can we teach our kids that electronics are nice, but sometimes the untamed and raw beauty of a fire is what our soul really craves?

May 9 2017

Wild: The Hunt

To be wild, to hear the heartbeat of nature, to feel the rush of adrenal strength, to drink from the fresh air and howl at the moon – these are things that are embedded into men.

Hunting today isn’t what it once was. We used to hunt because it was life. We didn’t hunt, we didn’t eat. Now, it’s a sport, a multi-billion dollar industry. A government managed program that requires permits, fancy orange vests, and expensive equipment.

At the core of the wild is the idea that we must seek, stalk, kill, and haul our prey home to feed our young.

It was a right of passage for young men for generations – to get that first kill. To take the life of an animal, and to learn that our life depends on the life of another.

I understand that there are some that don’t eat meat -but don’t think for a minute that you aren’t still killing SOMETHING when you pluck that carrot out of its dirty ground!

Our cultured and shiny environment now doesn’t require people to get their hands dirty. If you go to the store to buy meat, you buy meat. You don’t see the beating heart, the twitching nerves, or the cold stare left behind by the animal that gave its flesh for you.

Today – our “hunt” may be translated to many things.

• Rites of Passage. What rites do we use to identify our maturity into manhood? What ritual marks a teenage son turning to a man? What ritual marks a man turning to an elder? I fear we may have dropped many of these by the wayside, and I think we must begin to resurrect them.

“Men cannot be men—much less good or heroic men—unless their actions have meaningful consequences to people they truly care about. Strength requires an opposing force, courage requires risk, mastery requires hard work, honor requires accountability to other men. Without these things, we are little more than boys playing at being men, and there is no weekend retreat or mantra or half-assed rite of passage that can change that. A rite of passage must reflect a real change in status and responsibility for it to be anything more than theater. No reimagined manhood of convenience can hold its head high so long as the earth remains the tomb of our ancestors”

— Jack Donovan (The Way of Men)

• Strenuous Activity. Chasing a deer through the woods, wrestling a bear to the ground, or even holding perfectly still to avoid chasing off the rabbit are all strenuous. They build strength and speed in us. What are we doing to build strength today? Are you active? Are you moving? Are you training to build your body better than it is?

“Training for me is a metaphor for life. Period. The Dedication. The Determination. The Desire. The Work Ethic. The great success and the great failures – I take that into life.” – Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

• Respect for the source. In many cultures, a hunter or farmer would say a prayer as he slit the throat of his animal so that it could be bled out. He respected the beast that would feed his family. Now, we could have a long talk about the evils of factory farming, but that’s another topic for another day. The crux here is: Are we grateful for the sources of our provision today? Do we show respect for the company where we earn our cash? Do we show honor and respect for the work and for the hunt for our success? Or do we just demand and assume that our wealth will be handed to us?

May 2 2017

Wild: The Call

To be wild, to hear the heartbeat of nature, to feel the rush of adrenal strength, to drink from the fresh air and howl at the moon – these are things that are embedded into men.

Men are wild, mighty, and fierce. Yet our culture wraps silky ropes around our necks, and shaves our faces, and trims our nails. The wildman isn’t quite socially acceptable. It’s not okay to have dirt under your fingernails, or to kill your own dinner.

We don’t have to reject civilization entirely, there is a time and a place for manners and polite conversation and neckties and cologne.

But I believe that all men, even the dandier, fluffier ones, have a call – drums beating in the distance – that beckons them into the wild.

“But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as a man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called — called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.”

― Jack London, The Call of the Wild

Fury. Sometimes, yes. Wild fury and righteous anger stirs up in the hearts of men. Driving them to action, to battle, to fight. Hopefully, it’s tempered with the code, with the order. Fury must be kept in check, and be used to propel justice, to free the oppressed, to protect.

Tests of Strength. From the time boys are young, they enter contests, either alone or with their brothers, and their fathers – to see how strong they are. Wrestling, weightlifting, arm-wrestling, “bloody knuckles,” Chinese hot-hands, even thumb wrestling. This wild behavior may seem reminiscent of goats butting their heads against each other, or bears mawing at each other’s necks…. But it’s a part of who we are. We don’t necessarily outgrow it. And that rough and tumble tug-of-war helps shape us, helps bond us together, and helps remind us who we want on our side if there is a time to fight.

The call of the wild pushes men to success. It drives men to be refreshed in nature. As long as we wrap it up in silk and lace and soap, it will still be there.

“He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars.”

― Jack London, The Call of the Wild

“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.

This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad in a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight.”

― Jack London, The Call of the Wild