Seth recently wrote a post called The non-optimized life.

If you haven’t seen his blog, you wouldn’t call it optimized by any stretch of the imagination. He rarely posts a picture, and when he does it is only to illustrate his point.

He doesn’t allow comments and he doesn’t use excessive links.

He’s a busy man, and it’s a wonder that he blogs at all, let alone daily.

He uses social networking in ways that maximizes his exposure without wasting his time.

This highly successful marketer/business man/author has taught this Daddy Blogger something very important:

I like to think that I’ve optimized my life by using Twitter to update my Facebook, or using Social Oomph to broadcast that I’ve written a new post every two hours on the day it’s posted.

But I still write all of those posts. Each message, even at 140 characters or less, represent time. Time I could have spent with my wife and kids. Time I could have been using improving myself.

My wife and I have discussed these ideas since I began this blog a year and a half ago. I’ve justified that time countless ways. It increases traffic, I’m making friends, it benefits my writing by helping me write quickly and directly.

As life moves forward, I see these justifications less as explanations and more as excuses. Actually, not just as excuses, but procrastination from doing the real work. The real work of finding myself and my family living lives that we can all be proud of.

Blogging and tweeting will slow, but the quality bar will be raised. If you enjoy what you see here, please subscribe to my RSS feed, because I won’t be telling you every two hours that I’ve blogged. Hopefully, I’ll find a voice worth listening to, and like Seth Godin, optimization (i.e. begging you to read me) will no longer be necessary.

You’ll just want to be here.

I’m about to hit ‘publish’ on this post at 11:00 pm on the Saturday night before the final game of the World Cup. I’d say when it comes to non-optimization, I’m off to a great start!

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One creator that includes helpful content is Travis Hanson over at his webcomic The Bean. Recently, he posted a blog entry titled Your Adventure: Creating Your Story. The entire post is well worth the read, but this passage caught my eye:

William Stout, his art is so cool and a reason why I do what I do, told me that everything around you is diverse and your art should mirror that. Trees do not all look the same, homes are different, bottles are different, people are different. Learn to diversify your artwork and learn to draw backgrounds.

Backgrounds and props have always been difficult for me because I had the misperception that they were boring and not part of the storytelling. This is completely false. The actors that are created need a place to live, and the reader needs to believe in that place.

It’s funny, Netflix just added a bunch of old school Nickelodeon cartoons to stream online, and I have been introducing my three year old to Rugrats and Aaahh!!! Real Monsters. I used to like those shows for the writing, but something bugged me about the art work. Watching them now I’ve realized that what bothers me is that the backgrounds look exactly like the characters. Generally, cartoon characters are put in front of backgrounds that look more realistic, or at least different than the characters. Not so in those old Nickelodeon toons, creating what appear to be very flat worlds…

Not much pushes the characters out from the background in 'Rugrats'.

Looney Tunes, however...

So learning from these and many other sources of inspiration, I’ve decided to face my apprehension of backgrounds and props and attempt to grow my style through exploring inanimate objects and background subjects for each letter of the alphabet. C can not be for cat, for example…

I’ll only take about a half-hour on each topic, so they may not be full color or very complete. The point is to work quickly and not worry about completion, but to work on some variation in technique.

Without further ado, here is the first installment of the 26 Day Object Experiment, the highly predictable ‘A is for Apple’.:

I am not alone.

Silly Daddy was/is created by Joe Chiappetta of North Riverside, Ill. I found some interesting facts about Silly Daddy over at the Geek To Me blog at chicagonow.com:

• Silly Daddy is the longest running comic about a family by a father. (It hit it’s 500th comic in November.)

• Mr. Chiappetta is continuously exploring new tools for the trade, consistently using a Pocket PC to create his comics, as well as being the first cartoonists to explore comics made on a mobile phone, calling them ‘telephonics’.
• Every comic at Silly Daddy is fully accessible to the blind or those with low vision. Every comic posted has described narrative that assistive technology software such as JAWS or ZoomText can read to the viewer.

I would like to take the time to thank Mr. Chiappetta for being a pioneer not only in webcomics, but in the world of dads chronicling their lives online! I hope I am worthy of crawling in your shadow, sir.

One more sidenote on Joe Chiappetta, he has also written an all-ages space opera called ‘Star Chosen’. Check it out!

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Calli: Daddy, can’t you tell me a story? (This is how she asks for everything now. ‘Daddy, can’t you…’ As if she’s tired of asking.)

Me: What kind of story?

Calli: I don’t know…

Me: OK. So. Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Calli.

Calli: Was she a Princess?

Me: Yes, she was a beautiful Princess!

Calli: Did she have a brother named Tristin?

Me: Yes she did! And he was a Prince! He was as handsome as Princess Calli was beautiful.

Calli: Yeah!

And so on. It’s kind of cool, actually, she makes my job easy!

=====================================================

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m playing around with trying to create a webcomic based on my family. I posted my first design of Kat as a manga character on DeviantArt last night, but if you missed the tweet, I’m posting it below. I’m taking my time with this, and I want to have three weeks of the comic done before I launch. But I’ll be posting sketches and ideas at DeviantArt and Flickr, and of course, sharing it all through Twitter and Facebook. So feel free to follow, friend, or fan me to see if my excitement will translate to the electronic page!

Speaking of Kat, we’re in serious crunch time for raising money for her Student Ambassadorship to Australia! They need all the money by May 14! We’re having a garage sale this weekend in a last ditch effort. If you would like to contribute, please see the ‘Chip-In’ badge to the right of the blog. Every little bit is appreciated, and we’ll make sure you get a Howe original thank you note from Kat either from the Land Down Under, or as soon as she gets home!

This post brought to you by Dad-Blogs' FatherHood Friday. Be sure to swing by for all the other great Dads and Moms who love to share their lives online!

Today’s kids are spoiled. They can have cartoons 24-7, on demand, no questions asked. Here at Howefitz Blog, I’d like to start  a tradition of making Saturday morning an event again. Cartoons belong on Saturday morning!

Please excuse the crudeness of the above comic. When inspiration strikes, I have to get it down on paper. Since discovering the blogging lifestyle, I now feel like I should share everything online…

If you follow me on twitter, you’ve probably picked up on the fact that I’ve been geeking out on my favorite webcomic, Hijinks Ensue. In fact, I went back to the beginning earlier in the week, and got to the end late last night.

If you’re not familiar with HE, it’s a ‘Geek Webcomic’. Creator Joel Watson has effectively cartooned himself and his friends, and four times a week, he draws strips of himself and his friends poking fun at popular culture and each other.

So it got me to thinking: My family cracks me up every day. My wife consistently provides just the right words that convey what we were both thinking. In short, my family would make a great webcomic.

Not willing to wait for the Wacom tablet I just ordered cheap on the internet, this first strip was penciled on actual paper with one of those wood sticks with graphite inside, then scanned in and ‘inked’ in Artweaver using just the pad on my laptop. When I actually launch the strip, I plan on using color, and between now and then I’ll figure out how to draw a straight line.

The strip shouldn’t interfere with the sporadic schedule of the normal Howefitz Blog, so don’t fret, fair readers. If anything, I’m hoping the comic will enhance the entire Howefitz Blog experience!

If you can’t wait for me to get my act together, I plan on posting early design sketches on my Facebook Fan Page for Howefitz Blog. If you’re not a fan yet, what are you waiting for?

So what do you think? Is the Daddy Webcomic Blog the wave of the future? (If I have my way…) or am I just being silly?

The Sunday Sermons here at Howefitz Blog are generally intended to explore the philosophies and religions of the world, and to hear your take. Today I’m bending the rules a little, but still discussing a way of thinking that our entire world is possibly embroiled in: that of complaining.

On Thursday, I told you about my attempt at going 21 days without complaining or making excuses. If you missed it, it’s at 21 Days. No Complaints. No Excuses.

I have gotten a lot of positive feedback through the comments and on twitter.

This led me to create a facebook fan page for this very idea. I would invite anyone that has joined me on this journey to fan the experiment and share your experiences.

As for my results? Let’s just say that Thursday was 4 days ago, and I am on day 2 of actually not complaining. That may be because it’s my second day off of work.

Who doesn’t complain about their job, right? That’s where I’ve found that it’s the easiest to break down. I don’t care how much you love your job, you’ll find things that you don’t like. I think this stems from the fact that in most jobs, it’s a team effort, with people making up that team of various skills/competencies. Someone’s bound to do something wrong, or as you would perceive as wrong. Maybe they’re lazy. Maybe they just don’t know.

If you’re not where you want to be in life, stop and ask yourself what the root cause is. Don’t be so quick to blame anything outside yourself. Every where you look, everything is changing. It’s how you deal with that change that matters.

In case you haven’t noticed, this message is just as much to myself as it is to anyone else. I feel like getting this off of my chest, letting the world know how I think, is a form of cathartic release. I can now begin to change myself.

The journey is far from over…

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image found at gracewalk.wordpress.com

A good blog is like a good book. Sometimes you want to go back and revisit posts that meant something to you. One such post by Tim Ferriss has been rattling around in my head A LOT lately. This post was called Real Mind Control: The 21 Day No-Complaint Experiment. In the post, Tim told us of Will Bowen, a Kansas City minister who decided to try an experiment. He would wear a purple bracelet to remind him not to complain for 21 days. If he did complain, he would switch his bracelet to the other wrist and start over at day 1. This is because scientists say that it takes 21 days to form a habit. If you don’t complain for 21 days straight, you’ve just formed a habit of not complaining!

There is now a great website started by Will Bowen called acomplaintfreeworld.org. There, you can order the purple bracelet, Will Bowen’s book and DVD, and even download a widget for your computer that will count the days for you. If you complain, you have to click ‘Start Over’.

Why would you want to do this?

I don’t know why you would want to do this, but I’ll tell you why I am going to do this, and why it took me this long to realize I should.

Reason #1

I’ve related in earlier posts how I may not be as happy with some aspects of my life as I could be. Sure, I have a wonderful family and my health, but I want more for my family and for myself. I find it too easy, however, to complain, or better yet, make excuses for why things don’t go as planned. That is why the title of this post includes ‘No Excuses’. More on that in a bit…

Reason #2

Complaining gets everyone down. Working in the retail industry, I can’t tell you how many times someone has commented on how they couldn’t do my job if they had to deal with the irate customers. I used to think the same way. What I do is think about what I would like to hear if I was upset. How does that fit in to what I can actually do?

So the no complaining piece is this: of course you identify the problems, but instead of seeing them as problems, make them in to opportunities to grow and improve the situation. Instead of just writing a situation off as something to complain about, isn’t there something you can do to improve or even remedy the situation? And if not, why sweat it? It’s out of your hands! Yelling at the Republican or Democrat on the television screen is just raising your blood pressure. The politician still sleeps at night, and won’t change his/her tune for you!

Why did it take me so long to decide to do this?

The answer is remarkably simple: Complaining is easy. There’s a certain release to cursing something that doesn’t go right. It releases you from the hassle of actually doing something about it. If you can blame something else, you’re not the responsible party, right? WRONG! If you don’t learn from those mistakes or incidents, you’ll just have more and more to complain about later on…

My dad always says that when you point a finger at someone (or something) three fingers are pointing back at you. This is why No Excuses is part of my 21 day experiment. If I’m not happy with something in my life, instead of making excuses (“It’s the economy!” “It’s the weather!” “I’m just following orders!”), I’ll find solutions and a way to take advantage of the opportunities.

I would like to invite you all to join me in this experiment. You don’t have to buy the bracelet, just throw a rubber band on your wrist, or download the widget like I did. The point is to stop complaining. And stop making excuses!

I will, of course, be blogging my progress, and in the name of honest blogging, will blog my failures as well.

If you are joining me in this experiment, please, let me know below. I will also start a discussion on my Facebook fan page, so you can chart your progress there as well!

Good luck!

Now, did you notice anything? Kids? Ok. A big yellow 7 year old bird? Good! Notice anything else? Were the kids outside?! AND they were PLAYING!!!! Keep this in mind as I continue to rant…

Yesterday, Christina Warren of Mashable.com wrote a piece praising Sesame Street and their Elmo iPhone app. Take a look:

Christina begins her article by saying:

Sesame Street is one of my favorite brands, not just because Grover is amazing, but because over the last 40 years, it has never been afraid of innovating and embracing new technologies.

To which I thought, absolutely! A quick search on my blog for ‘Sesame Street’ will reveal my love for all things Sesame Street as well! Calli and I have spent countless hours on the laptop watching and playing with our Sesame Street friends on sesamestreet.org! Even my very first column for Dad-Blogs was about Sesame Workshop‘s panwapa.com. (Feel free to visit the column here: Can You Tell Me How To Get To Panwapa Island?) So yes, I agree that Sesame Street is worth buying in to.

She goes on to talk about the app, and then this statement caught my eye:

On my running route, I see children in their strollers playing on iPhone or iPod touch devices. It’s amazing.

This post brought to you by Dad-Blogs' FatherHood Friday. Be sure to swing by for all the other great Dads and Moms who love to share their lives online!

The squeal of screeching tires sounded in my head and I did a spit-take. WHAT?! ‘Come on kids, let’s go to the park. You can play on my iPhone!’?

When I first saw that, I wanted to rant about the evils of technology and how Sesame Street shouldn’t influence kids to sit around playing with it. But then it hit me. Sesame Street is just taking advantage of how we as parents utilize technology in order to get their brand out in front of as many young eyeballs as possible. And it’s still a good brand. Sesame Workshop does a lot for our kids, and I would never discourage anyone from participating in that.

But iPhones in strollers?! Parents, please. What are you doing to your kids?

Don’t get me wrong, I love technology. I can’t rail against technology as I type my blog in to my laptop while I listen to Pandora and munch on my freshly microwaved breakfast. I’ve been known to hand my Blackjack II to my kid with a cartoon or game on. But I do that while we’re waiting at the doctor’s office or the DMV. And if we are at the doctor’s office, I look for toys. The dirtier the better. Builds up the immune system with antibodies. But I digress.

When at the park, dear parents, what ever happened to ‘Look, Junior, isn’t that a cute puppy?’ or ‘My, what a tall tree that is!’ If a kid is dexterous enough to navigate an iPhone app, I’m willing to bet that he/she is able to walk and explore the world around them. Why would you hamper that?

What do you think? Am I just flying off the deep end? Has my year plus of Daddy Blogging finally given me a self-righteous need to judge all other parents and find them inferior? How do you utilize technology in your parenting?

This post brought to you by Dad-Blogs' FatherHood Friday. Be sure to swing by for all the other great Dads and Moms who love to share their lives online!

I’ve spent all morning working on today’s post, well, the bits of the morning where I wasn’t taking The Teenager to school. Then there were the times I was holding the baby, which is a chore, let me tell you. Every time I hold that warm little snuggly body against me I can’t help thinking that I’d much rather be in front of my glaring blank white computer screen instead of throwing the baby in to the air and hearing his sweet, genuine giggle as I tickle under his ribs with my nose. Who wants that?

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah! I’ve spent all morning on a post that I can be proud of. This is not that post. I’ve decided to postpone that post until next Fatherhood Friday in order to do more research and obtain further photographic evidence.

So for today, please enjoy this peek in to my random fatherly brain, and I promise, next week will be a post more worthy of your precious time.

• My wife is the best editor/reviewer that I could ask for. She is the one person that I would allow to give me advice on my writing. She nails it every time, and is the reason the real post for today is postponed. I felt like something was missing, and she filled in the blanks. Man, I love her.
• Pandora just played Richard Strauss’s ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zoroaster), Tone Poem For Orchestra, Op. 30‘, which was the theme for ‘2001: A Space Odyssey‘, and I had to stop what I was doing and turn it up. I lowered myself to the level of my desk and imagined my laptop was a monolith. It did not, however, make me more cosmically aware. It just wanted to tell me not to use teeth whiteners or drink acai berry juice. The search for cosmic enlightenment continues…
• Last night, my considerate Calli gave my wife an astute warning about the window sill: ‘Don’t touch that,’ she said, ‘I put a booger there.’ She’s so thoughtful!
• Tristin’s asleep in his bouncy while still holding tightly to his knobby bouncy ball. He’s so cute!
• My wife hasn’t missed a day on the Wii Fit since we started, while it just yelled at me for missing four. My Mii is now sentenced to wear a hoody to sweat it out. Come on, Wii! I’ve been busy!
• We’re still wrestling with exactly the right punishment for Kat after she dented the wall with the Wii remote, and then didn’t tell us… Any ideas out there?
• I am pleased and honored to announce that I have 42 fans on Facebook after starting my fan page four days ago! Thank you all for the support! If you haven’t fanned me yet, there’s a convenient badge on the right for you to do so! My hope is that the page will add another level of interactivity to this blog, and sometimes I’ll be using it as a testing ground for upcoming posts, so be sure to check the discussion board! (Hint, there are a couple of discussions up now…)

Aaaand… my brain just stopped working. Hope all is well with you, and have a great time reading all the other Fatherly posts on this Fatherhood Friday!

Okay, so I just can’t go completely wordless this week. These pictures were taken yesterday by my lovely and talented wife as we hung out in Glenwood Springs, CO. We spent a lazy Tuesday going to the last farmers market of the season and basically just hanging out. We wound up buying Calli a $2 ring that happened to be green in a gem shop. That was the best $2 I ever spent. Calli immediately donned the ring and walked down the street calling out ‘Green Lantern‘s light!’ and striking the most amazing hero poses! So a touch of editing with Gimp 2 (Photoshop‘s free cousin), and voila! Instant tiny mighty super hero!

Tristin seemed to enjoy his ride in his papoose thing… and he slept well last night!

This post comes with apologies to SuperMegaDad and CKLunchbox for any horning in on your territory that the title of this blog may have done.  ;)