Hi there!

I’m ba-aaack!

[SIDE BAR – THIS IS KINDA LONG BUT I RECKON YOU’LL LIKE IT!]

If you have been reading my Gary-Land blogsite then you will know that I was “incommunicado” most of the weekend. You see I had a family committment (a wedding – on the “other side” if you get my drift) to attend. I’d already committed to attend months ago and I’m not the sort of guy to back out of a committment once I have agreed.

Anyway, as you can probably understand, this FRUSTRATED the living suitcase out of me because I have so much work to do in my business, so many ideas and projects underway plus the replies and upgrade (some day – LOL!) of my blog with this Alex Jeffreys Internet Marketing Coaching Course that we are all undertaking (and thoroughly enjoying to date too, I might add).

So, the Ministry of Fun and Entertainment (MOFE – aka “the wife”) is getting REAL testy with me because I got up at 5.00am my time to listen the the Brainstorm Session 1 with Alex Jeffreys and all you good folks… and I am still sitting there at 9.00am and MOFE is doing the foot-tapping fandango with the whole eyeball-rolling thing coz she is wanting to get going. NOW! “NOW GARY – HURRY UP!”

Just before I get stuck into telling you about our “adventure” I gotta say that “bell” thing that Alex was referring to and giggling about every now and then towards the end of Brainstorm 1 was a result of me texting him little messages.

Remember how he was whingeing about his MOFE not bringing him a cup of coffee? Huh? Well, (WARNING: male chauvinist moment coming up) I have a little gold bell on my computer and when I ring it my MOFE comes a-runnin’ with a nice cuppa for me. It’s a long and amusing tale that has resulted in this procedure and I won’t go into it here (maybe another time, maybe not). So, I was texting Alex telling him to “get a BELL!” and he was texting me back and commenting. It was rather amusing. (I find humour in the dopiest things – LOL!)

Back to my predicament… MOFE had already packed the car and done her hair and make-up etc AND changed clothes half a dozen times. I jump in the shower, have a shave, get dressed and I am ready in, like, ten minutes. MOFE starts driving so I can write in my journal. We headed south-west to the great Western Australian countryside – heading for some God-forsaken place that I had never even heard of before – called Kin-Kin – actually, “the Kin-Kin Retreat” where there are – as the brochure said – “quaint” cottages all set in a “peaceful” State forest. Now Gazza (me) interprets quaint as NO running water or electricity and peaceful as NO idiot in their right mind would want to go there.

So MOFE is motoring along at breakneck speed wanting to get to the “family extravaganza” in the friggin’ wilderness ASAP and here is me… frantically writing notes while informing MOFE to “SLOW DOWN” and “STOP TAIL-GATING” and “WATCH THE TRAFFIC FLOW AHEAD” – just my usual instructions that MOFE ignores anyway. Until she brakes hard enough so all the bits and pieces on the back seat slap us in the back of the head and end up on the front seat. And I get to say, ” I told…” – never mind!

I resume writing furiously in my book. One eye on the book, the other eye on the road. No wonder I can hardly read what I wrote now.

Any-old-ways, when we get out of the city precincts, I switch on the sat-nav, key in our destination (sort of – coz Mr Sat-Nav had no idea where this hidden gem of a place was either) and some guy’s voice starts barking at us, telling us where to go. Well, I won’t go into the intricate details of all this apart from to say that WE GOT LOST! Well and truly. Thanks Mr Sat-Nav! Plus neither of our cells had ANY signal. We might as well have been on mars.

So, eventually, I decide to ask MOFE to pull over and I would back-track using my own inbuilt never-fail “human” GPS that I was born with and I would “get us out of this MESS!” Er, that was my plan. On the way we see kookaburras, a big bungarra (like a big monitor lizard) scurry across the gravel track, snakes, foxes, all manner of bird-life…

… Ahhhhh… the GREAT outdoors! Not a human being anywhere to be seen for miles. Just look at the serenity!

Needless to say I got us HOPELESSLY lost on gravel tracks and we ended up at some abandoned relic of a shack in the middle of – duh! – I still dunno. After 2 hours of left, right, up, down, back and forth I eventually “fluked” our way out with MOFE’s beautiful new Nissan all covered in red dust. Gee, she was REALLY happy about that too!

Looking back on it now – what a LAUGH it was!

Anyway, we EVENTUALLY, find our way out and home in on the Kin-Kin Retreat. More traversing State Forests and down all manner of gravel tracks and we are there! MOFE is delighted. There are all her rellies milling around, the males all swilling copious amounts of beer (They are all country hicks, I mean, folks). We get out and they all ask, “Where have you been?”.

Some guy, shoves a can of beer in my hand and says, “Here, get this inta ya!” So, I did. I was thirsty anyway and it was mid to late afternoon.

Now, unlike them, I’m not a big booze-artist. While I sipped on mine, a dozen or so “bushies” slammed down about six cans each all the while burping, f*rting, swearing and going “aaaaaaaaaaaah! I needed that one!” And all the others would make similar comments and then they would all go, “Ha, ha, ha.”

Am I missing something here? I’m thinking, “Yeah, sure – dipsh*ts!” I’m already feeling disgusted. And I’ve only been here five minutes.

I excuse myself from the drinking ring and go for a walk. I immediately dub Kin-Kin “Noof-Noof.” I dunno. It just looked noofy to me. I have names for everything and everyone and the only person who can even understand true Gary-lingo is MOFE who is so used to it that she generally ignores it anyway. So, I might as well be talking Klingon.

We unpack and “settle in” and MOFE remarks, “isn’t it cozy?” I grunt through gnashed teeth. Grrrr!

Cutting in here…

We went to the wedding and the reception – all very nice – ALL very country (to a city boy). They kept drinking (guzzling) all through night and all morning.

Just to let you know how it all went at the church…

Most of the hicks were skulling cans of beer just outside the church door then, when the padre called us in for the ceremony, the hicks removed their corn-pipes (not really – just made that bit up), hoisted up their britches and argued about whose can was whose as they lined them up just outside the door ready to snatch them straight back up and get that beer into their gullets the moment the ceremony ended.

Oh dear! Here’s my problem…

Like – for the two nights we were there – I’d wake up at 6.00am and stretch, find a nice quiet place in a clearing in the forest and start my morning regimen with exercise (like I do EVERY day… yeah, yeah, I know… I’m so darned disciplined) and come back sweaty and out of breath to find them all… drinking! This actually annoys me because then they start saying stuff like – der! – “you city boys are weak as p*ss!” when I decline a can of beer at 7.00am. There is NO WAY that I want to be ANYTHING like them. So why am I as weak as p*ss?

You see they have no goals or ambitions. Correction – they all want to have the biggest beer-guts and see who can drink the most beer in the shortest possible time. I just see that as ridiculously stupid and so self-destructive. So, I retreat into my log cabin and take a shower under the broken shower head. I get dressed and do my best to get as far away from the early morning drink-fest as I can.

I’m miserable. I got nobody to play with, no-one to talk any sense to and even MOFE is off with the women talking weddings, babies, goo-goo, ga-ga, blah-blah.

So I take pen and journal and I start adding to my little project that I am working on. Then I sit there outside my “quaint” cabin and think. WTF am I doing here? Like… I am REALLY miserable. I have nothing in common with these guys and I mean a BIG FAT ZERO! I am SO wasting time. So I get up and make MYSELF a cuppa. Coz I forgot the bell (Alex) and anyway MOFE is up with all the women talking blind melon chitlin ge-dang, ge-dang country-speak stuff with them.

I sit there thinking, how the bloody hell can I get something positive out of this weekend? Please God! Give me strength. Give me a hint. Give me something! Then a bunch of kangaroos go bounding by. Kangaroos? I watch them for a moment. Boing-boing-boing. Thanks God.

I’m still sitting there and…

… words start assembling in my head. Something is in there calling me, “Gary, Gary!” Then all of a sudden… in it comes… WOO-HOO!

Am I excited? You betcha. I grab my journal, turn to a new page and start writing. I mean REALLY writing. The words are coming so thick and fast I can’t even keep up. I scribble. I run arrows here, there and everywhere. I write side notes. I attach other bits of paper. Then, half an hour later I stop. Exhausted, with writer’s cramp. And there it is – something wondrous! … (Don’t ask me what it is. Not yet anyway!).

I’m gonna type it all up – NO WAY could I out-source this coz it’s all in Gary-Code right now. But, even I have to admit that my idea is pretty darn good. I’m gonna make an e-book out of it and share it around with everyone in Blog-Land and I sure do think it is gonna have application. I know – ABSOLUTELY – that I will use it BIG TIME.

So, there you have it. My miserable weekend at Noof-Noof turned into something amazingly positive and it was all because I stopped jamming my head with interference from negative sources (SNIOPs) and stuck with my guns, was true to myself and turned something I wasn’t enjoying into a positive outcome.

Aside from all that the bride was stunningly beautiful and I am so happy for her. I watched her new husband’s eyes and the way he looked at her and I could see his love for her and hers for him. They are gonna be very happily united.

The trip back from Noof-Noof was uneventful and the minute I got back to my office I fired up the computer and wrote this.

Next task… Project X! It’s a hooter!

Gary

Hi Folks,

I have just got back from taking my p*ssing and sh*tting machines for their daily constitutional walk. I have two female dogs and you would swear they should have been born males. Today we stopped our “walkies” on six occasions for the Maltese Lhasa Apso-cross and three times for the King Charles Cavalier Shitzu-cross. And that was a very poor effort by their usual standards.

What is truly odd is that I have taken to counting the number of times we have to make these pit-stops. Even more odd is that my entire family asks, “who kicked the winning score today?” And the weirdest thing of all is that I am writing about it here and, no doubt, it will probably come up in later blogs etc, etc.

Ah… the power of story-telling.

I could go on about the trials and tribulations of walking my puppalitos but you get the picture. They are a pain! Anyway…

… just before I took them out I left a comment on Yip-Man’s thread about his most obvious talent… his ability to write clearly and concisely. You should all go and read his latest blog entry on Module 3 and what I had to say about it. And he reckons he is a geeky, untalented dude. You know what I say to that? … Pfffft! This guy is seriously selling himself short.

As I was walking the pupsters I was thinking about this entire blogging thing and how addictive it can be and how bloody time consuming it can be.

Then, after I returned and made sure the little dudes had a full water bowl each – you should see them guts down that water when they come in with their tongues hanging out – I get back to my desk and sitting there was a comment from Hilary Dickinson. I scanned Hilary’s long comment and I knew straight away that we had another writer on our hands (check out what I said to Hilary in the thread on “Special Talents” – the one before this). It’s obvious when you read stuff from peeps (Hi Deano! Loved the e-book dude) like Hilary.

We have other writers out there too. Coleen is one. And I was at a blog the other day where I left a comment about this guy’s obvious (to me anyway) written ability. I’ll identify this guy later when I remember where I was but he was one of the new guys with a very raw blog. Anyway, his words just rose off the page at me and I though “wow!” And I told him so in the comment I left.

Now, here’s my take on things at this point – and this is not being rude or disrespectful to anyone…

The Blog-Land camp is separated into three main groups:

1 – Techies – oh, the wonderful guys and gals who can turn html and scripts and binary paraphernalia into something sensible that we can all enjoy. There are those with very basic skills like me and those with vast skills like the Delaneys, Smiths, Skavhellens and McCalls of this ever increasing Blog-Land community.

2 – Writers – the people who can write clearly and concisely and the spearhead of that shaft who can enchant us all with their stories. It is one thing to be a great technical writer. It is something entirely different to be a decent story-teller. For instance (a bit of trumpet-blowing), I would pit myself against anyone in the world as a technical writer. I am just that confident (Sorry if it sounded bombastic but I have the runs on the board and the proof to show). But I am still learning story-telling. That is an art which sits at the very top of the writer’s mountain.

3 – Learners – people (peeps) who are neither techies nor writers. But this vast community at Blog-Land is so rich with talent that all you folks who are learners, newbies, virgins, whatever need to do is ask questions and graft yourself onto those who can do the bits and pieces that you need to survive and prosper.

I have never seen a bunch of more talented people anywhere. What a friggin’ AWESOME team! I am really proud to be in the company of you guys.

Now, moving right along…

… although the “techie era,” as I call it, is steep now there will come a time when everyone will be pretty much up to speed with all the WordPress, Paypal (ha – I’ll have more to say about them later – MUCH more), Aweber, hosting, scripting, Google-Analytics, SEO etc, etc etc. And that is when the writers will start to fly.

So, when the writers get all their techie stuff sorted out to their general satisfaction – WATCH OUT! They will unleash some stuff that will just have your head spinning. So…

… my BIGGEST tip is this – watch the writers, study them. Some are on display now, though they are holding themselves back a little. I know this. I can see them gearing up. Getting ready.

What can YOU do (if you are a “non” writer or worried about your written communication)? The answer is… PLENTY!

Practice your writing skills in your comments as you move from blog to blog being helpful. DON’T copy words – that’s plagiarism – but copy style.

Watch how somebody, who you like the writing style of, says things. Then ferment that in your mind, use your own imagination and life experiences and use your own words to clone yourself around that person’s STYLE. I have done this in the 200,000 word crime-thriller novel I completed earlier this year (still looking for a publisher) and I think I have done a reasonable job. In fact, I was even more devious. I cloned the style of three of my favourite authors – masters of the art. And there is NO REASON why you can’t do the same right here in Blog-Land.

There is no replacement for practice. Practice your craft here on these blogs. What better place could you have? And there will be people who will comment on what you have said and give you immediate feedback. That will allow you to adjust and improve. Always analyse the way people react to what you say – both verbally and in the written form.

Words and the way we use them (communication) are fundamental to human existence and our ability to surge forward with technology. If you don’t believe that… then why are there 700 billion cell phones in the world? Why are we so utterly desperate to communicate with each other ALL the time? Remember Tom Hanks in that movie where he was stranded on that deserted island? I forget the name of it now but, in the movie, it drove him nuts. He had nobody to communicate with.

Words are the most powerful weapons that we have in our entire arsenal. They can invoke love or war and everything in between.

Oh… here we go again… into my office has just come “Guts-Ache” number one. She’s whimpering for me to give her a doggie treat. See? She is communicating. I know exactly what she wants by the tone of her whine. I’ll get her something in a minute when I’m done here.

Finally… whew!…

I will be incommunicado as I travel to the country tomorrow and all weekend to attend a wedding where we have the Martins on one side and the McCoys on the other (that’ll be fun, huh? – Yee-Har!). So this will be my last offering for a few days. I wanted it to be a good one to give you all some ideas to ponder upon.

Oh… on that score, if you want some hints and tips on the technical side of writing just have a look down the RHS of my blog – under the Mt Everest blogroll. There you will find some further information on how to sharpen your writing skills. I put them there to help you. Look for “HINTS & TIPS” #’s 3 and 5.

So, if you think I have gone MIA over the next few days then you will be correct. But, in the words of my favourite actor (sh*t, this is revealing far too much about my head-space)…

… “I’ll be back!”

Practice. Get those comments happening and as an added bonus you will be strengthening our web-ring like a giant spider’s web criss-crossing back and forth. The ‘bots and spiders of the search engines will love it and soon we will dominate the entire web!

I sincerely hope this information has been useful to you.

…”Hasta la vista, babies”…

Gary Simpson

Jeepers Peepers!

Whew just took the headset off after more than 5 hours on the Alex Jeffreys Module 3 Webinar. I’ve got a headache!

How about the info folks? Huh? How juicy was that?

Heh… heh… I have to say that I was bang-on target in my private phone conversations with the likes of Coleen Cook (the “snitch”) and through the various emails I have had from some of you regarding where this is all heading. And if I don’t mind saying so myself – BULLSEYE!

Some people have even posted things asking if I have any “inside” information. Nope. I just like to look to the horizon. It’s OBVIOUS! This is gonna be some sort of a ride to remember and… because of the QUALITY and TALENTS of so many of the people here… this is gonna be a team to be reckoned with. Mark my words.

Anyway, what did you guys think about Module 3? Remember, let’s keep the REAL juicy stuff between ourselves…

You know something folks? I am AMAZED at some of the incredible talent we have running around this community of the Alex Jeffreys Internet Marketing Coaching group.

I gotta say I am getting blown away by the kindness and generosity that people are showing others.

And the talent is extraordinary! Let me give you a few examples… I have just been to Nigel Yip‘s blogsite (who I am dubbing the “Yip Man” after Bruce Lee’s very famous kung fu master). Nigel has produced a totally awesome video that he is producing an e-book for. And talking about e-books look at what Garry Parkes is doing! He’s gonna publish a periodical e-book for the entire crew featuring stuff too galactic to mention here. And he’s done a video from scratch too!

Then there is Dean Holland bunkered down at Holland House bashing away furiously at the keys to create his e-book for his “PEEPS” – LOL! (peeps)

And the techies! Let’s not forget the incredible techies we have here. I’m sure we have others but just to name a few who have made themselves extremely useful around the blogs… Austin Delaney, David Smith, Jeff McCall. These guys can read html and code it all up faster than I can probably dream up nick-names and other trivia for you all.

Then we have Coleen Cook providing school-room humour over at her site and Harry Harris making up Star Wars themes over at his site (I still wanna be Obi-Wan, Harry, or maybe Yoda before he got old and fat and short and dumpy and developed his droopy, hairy rabbit ears – and BZZZZZZT – I even have a light sabre!)

These are just some of the fabulous people that we have here. And I visited a few “newbie” (don’t like that word much, dont like guru much either – see elsewhere on this blogsite) fellows this morning and I tell ya what folks… they write so clearly and concisely that it was a pleasure to read their opening blogs. They will certainly give me a run for my money.

So… with such a lead in, I want to ask you all – what do you have special talents in? Come on. Don’t be shy, bashful, humble, whatever. If I spot you I will tell everyone about you. (Or if Coleen sees you she will be bound to “snitch” on you – LOL!) I am on the hunt… show yourselves oh-humble ones!

Be brief and just tell us all what you are good at. Just to break the ice, I’ll lead off. Keep it short and keep it on thread (ie topic).