I don’t do this in my  life in terms of personal relationships or professional responsibilities, but when it comes to personal leisure and personal development (improvement / restoration / sustenance), I have a habit of committing to things and then having a change of heart. I think a lot of people in North America generally have this problem, due to a variety of reasons.

We don’t recognize that our body is the temple of the soul. As a result we neglect our body and our issues of physical / biological health  while being more concerned about the relational and sensational aspect of our life (psychology, emotions, politics, satisfying immediate physical needs). Furthermore, in our increasingly impulse-driven society, we are actually devolving as a society such that the entire North American culture is becoming less likely to commit to anything that doesn’t deliver fast results with minimum effort.

However, there’s a disconnect. Sometimes in the attempt to save investment of time, money or effort, we end up losing out in the end. A few examples of common “loss from the start” commitments for North Americans are diets, gym memberships, exercise equipment, doctor’s appointments, physical exams and check-ups (especially applicable to men). These are things that the average North American invests in financially or with an initial verbal commitment, but fails to maintain or integrate into one’s life. As a result, while the initial verbal commitment freed us from the guilt of not having done anything, the fact that we don’t actually do anything to follow up (long-term commitment) puts us back where we started, if not a few steps even further back.

So where’s this all coming from? Well today for the first time in at least 3 years, I went to the gym. My cousin, who’s a few years younger than me, persuaded me to join him and get a gym membership in order to get back into shape and maintain good health. The Watermania gym membership at Riverport in Richmond also offers free access to the swimming and sauna facilities, so that was an added perk. The annual membership costs $400. I had to think about it a few times because it’s easy enough to give that peice of plastic with your name on it and not thinking about your $400 investment until there’s only a short time left in your membership and you have to “make it worthwhile.” And I would know. Earlier this year, I registered at Fitness World (more expensive, no pool or sauna) for a five-month pass. How many times did I go to the gym in the five months? Not a single time. Zero. I can make excuses such as we were moving, and I was setting up my business, but the reality is that I made an impulse purchase at the time, and was not actually motivated enough to attend the gym until now.

It’s true, perhaps I would not have been motivated to sign up at Watermania now if I had not lost out on my previous membership, but the lesson I’ve learned is that you should think things through before you make a purchase, just as we think things through before making a life-altering commitment. I also learned, more importantly, that when you make a commitment of anything relating to your health, wellbeing, etc., you should try to get a partner, spouse, friend, sibling, or any loved one who can keep tabs on you and encourage you to stay on track. Having another person to push you through something that is good for you is extremely helpful and can sometimes make the difference between “just in time” or “too little, too late” in terms of preventing diseases, health problems, or wasting your $250 Fitness World membership.

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Image Source: Rick, Eschipul

This has been a very interesting week and the past weekend was also quite unique. I had the opportunity to do a lot of introspection, meditation, thinking, being, and learning. I was at a Sikh retreat on the weekend and then coming back I’ve been meeting with clients and working on new business ideas the past few days. Before leaving for the retreat, I was feeling a heavy emotional burden after the Burma cyclone and China earthquake and Crisis in Somalia - I was started to get restless about the plight of poor people around the world and the inaction of world governments. At the retreat I was exposed to a lot of new information and it is taking me a few days to digest it, especially the situation of poor farmers in Punjab, who have been committing suicide over the unbearable burden of high-interest loans and the demands for payment from relentless and intimidating lenders. I’m trying to spend some time to learn more about the microcredit concept for which Muhammed Yunus won a Nobel Peace Prize recently, and thinking if that could be applied in Punjab. Since 1947, the government of India has depleted Punjab of its resources without giving support to residents in the state, causing the Punjab economy to devolve from one of the most productive in South Asia to a struggling economy.

Coming back, I’ve been talking to people about new website and business projects. It was very difficult, though, to get my mind away from the Punjab farmers and thinking about their widows and orphaned children. So I really didn’t know what to blog about - I have new things going on for WordPress and internet marketing but my mind isn’t totally into it so my blogging might be off and on over the next week.

For those of you who use StumbleUpon regularly, do you encounter a situation where a website is very nice, very well made, or has a very good purpose, BUT does not inspire or interest you in any way?

Perhaps it’s some very well done art or photography, or a worthy local cause in a foreign country, or something which you support but don’t necessarily want to see more sites about.

Do you thumb it up or down? You don’t want to thumb it down because it’s not something poor quality. But you don’t want to thumb it up because you don’t see it as relevant to your interests and don’t want more sites like that showing up.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding the way StumbleUpon works and the influence of thumbs up/down, but sometimes the little voice in my head says, “Go ahead! Just thumb it down. No one will notice. This highly efficient humanitarian charity isn’t even on your continent!”

Hey everyone,

You have to admit it - for most social people, Facebook is more a habit than a hobby. We’re so accustomed now to logging in, a few times a day, checking photos, notes, groups, etc. Posting on peoples’ walls, making graffiti, and wasting time defining our relationships. Facebook has us like coffee has… well most of the working population. Some people can’t get through a few hours, let alone a day, without their coffee. Now what happens when, the thing that you kind of depend on every day, is bought out by the super mega company that kind of monopolizes all computers in the world? Hmmm! Huge potential for evil!

According to Kara at All Things Digital, Microsoft has been gauging Facebook’s interest in being taken over.

After failing to court Yahoo!, Microsoft is a little anxious for a partner. Well, I think Microsoft-weds-Facebook would be a match made in heaven. You all know Facebook’s real goal is to control and influence large amounts of people to make profit from them. It’s like Orwell’s 1984 2.0. And who better than Microsoft, well besides Google, to help Facebook reach that goal?

Comic: Pooch Cafe by Paul Gilligan

Hi Everyone,

The Tazzu Wordpress Camp on Wednesday was a great event, and I’ll be discussing it in detail in a day or two. However I just wanted to post a few thoughts that I had during and after the event.

I thought it was kind of ironic that originally WordPress had been built as a blogging platform, and the majority of WP users only know it from that angle. However, I have been using WP for the last two or more years for everything but blogging. I’ve been using it to design websites, make catalogues, create mashups, and I’m currently planning a WPMu Social Network (God help me if BuddyPress doesn’t come out soon!).

I think WP is supreme for blogging, but my experience highlights the uniqueness of WP as a CMS application. There are many content management systems out there. I’ve used Microsoft CMS, Drupal, Joomla, and Wordpress. I found WP to be quick to set up, easy to manipulate, and very flexible depending upon the developer’s goals. Some of the larger applications have more powerful engines that can do great things out of the box. However I think WP is so flexible and light-weight that using it has been irresistable for me.

The point of this post is to hint at the future. Over the next two years, I know WP and WPMu will start competing more head-on with the mainstream solutions out there. However, I wonder, will the concerns of the blogging community outweight the concerns of CMS developers who use WP? To whom will Automattic and the WP community give preference? At some point, for the community and for the application core, there is a fork in the road. Both paths leading out from there are great and worthy, but they are different and will be interesting to different types of audiences.

What I’d like to see is the WordPress core product splitting into two editions: WP for Blogs, and WP CMS. This way, we could grow out of the “posts” and “blogroll” terminology, and start using more website/content specific terminology. We could allow developers to not only custom sites for clients, but also custom dashboards and admin panels.  I know Matt Mullenweg hinted at his interest in the growing use of WP as a CMS during the recent WordCamp in Dallas (video), but how serious are they about it? I would love to see “WordPress Suite 2009″ of unique products, some of which are already available, each with its own focus: BBPress (forum), BuddyPress (social network), WordPress Mu (multiple blog hosting), WP CMS (websites & mashups), and the original WP Basic (blogs). I think it would help expand the WordPress brand, and provide unique solutions for all types of content developers and managers.

stay in high spirits

-k.s.