A new way to look at your Potential!

Thanks for your patience with my writer's block for the past month. It has been a long time since I neglected this blog for such a long time.  I know I am not homeschooling any more, but I had decided to write about other things.  I guess I still don't know what to write about.

What would you like to read about? Seriously, this is not a rhetorical question. I would like some ideas. Since the other part of this blog was supposed to be "home business" - would you want to hear about home business ideas, or are there already too many of those out there?

Meanwhile, here is another interesting read from my old email files. I was actually archiving and deleting things, and I came upon this in the "Deleted Items" archive folder.  My sister-in-law sent it to me in 2005. It was by no means the oldest item in the folder. There were actually things in there from 2003.

Pause for a moment and contemplate someone who has saved deleted emails since 2003.  I bet you didn't know there was such a person. That will make the story that follows even more amusing.  It is entitled

No Email

An unemployed man is desperate to support his family of a wife and three kids. He applies for a janitor's job at a large firm and easily passes an aptitude test.

The human resources manager tells him, "You will be hired at minimum wage of $5.35 an hour. Let me have your e-mail address so that we can get you in the loop. Our system will automatically e-mail you all the forms and advise you when to start and where to report on your first day."

Taken back, the man protests that he is poor and has neither a computer nor an e-mail address. To this the manager replies, "You must understand that to a company like ours that means that you virtually do not exist. Without an e-mail address you can hardly expect to be employed by a high-tech firm. Good day."

Stunned, the man leaves. Not knowing where to turn and having $10 in his wallet, he walks past a farmers' market and sees a stand selling 25 lb. crates of beautiful red tomatoes. He buys a crate, carries it to a busy corner and displays the tomatoes. In less than 2 hours he sells all the tomatoes and makes 100% profit. Repeating the process several times more that day, he ends up with almost $100 and arrives home that night with several bags of groceries for his family.

During the night he decides to repeat the tomato business the next day. By the end of the week he is getting up early every day and working into the night. He multiplies his profits quickly. Early in the second week he acquires a cart to transport several boxes of tomatoes at a time, but before a month is up he sells the cart to buy a broken-down pickup truck.

At the end of a year he owns three old trucks. His two sons have left their neighborhood gangs to help him with the tomato business, his wife is buying the tomatoes, and his daughter is taking night courses at the community college so she can keep books for him.

By the end of the second year he has a dozen very nice used trucks and employs fifteen previously unemployed people, all selling tomatoes. He continues to work hard.

Time passes and at the end of the fifth year he owns a fleet of nice trucks and a warehouse that his wife supervises, plus two tomato farms that the boys manage. The tomato company's payroll has put hundreds of homeless and joblesspeople to work. His daughter reports that the business grossed a million dollars. Planning for the future, he decides to buy some life insurance.

Consulting with an insurance adviser, he picks an insurance plan to fit his new circumstances.

Then the adviser asks him for his e-mail address in order to send the final documents electronically.

When the man replies that he doesn't have time to mess with a computer and has no e-mail address, the insurance man is stunned, "What, you don't have e-mail? No computer? No Internet? Just think where you would be today if you'd had all of that five years ago!"

"Ha!" snorts the man. "If I'd had e-mail five years ago I would be sweeping floors at Microsoft and making $5.35 an hour."

Which brings us to the moral of the story: Since you got this story by e-mail, you're probably closer to being a janitor than a millionaire.

Redeeming Email Forwards

After my last post,  I have been mulling the question posed to me by a couple of homeschool mom friends, which is "Do homeschoolers ever really retire?"  So quite a few days have passed, and I still really don't have a response clear in my mind.  So here is something else while we are waiting.

I get a boatload of email every day.  Since I have been marketing online for more than a decade, I am on many marketing mailing lists. 

Many. 

I also have about a dozen email addresses where I receive hundreds of pieces of marketing mail of various kinds. Most of this mail you would probably consider spam. Most of it actually is. But there is some that you probably would consider spam that is legitimate mail for me. One person's spam is another's bread and butter.

Then there are the 477 notifications from Google Buzz, messages from Facebook informing me that people have liked or commented on my link or activity, or that someone has suggested that I become a fan of [insert name of fan page], or invited me to [insert event], messages from Twitter that someone has followed me, messages from Qwitter that someone has unfollowed me, requests for contacts from Linked In, and newsletters relating to social media.

I also receive a variety of newletters about health and wellness, and a fair number of political newsletters and emails. I also subscribe to a number of things via RSS that download into my Outlook.

I thought it might be fun to share a sampling of what I receive.

From my Digg feed (which now numbers 1184 unread):

13 Great Nerd Movie Scores by Folks Other Than John Williams

John Williams is obviously the Greatest of All Time. Everyone knows it. But there are some new composers and some old vets who also deserve their share of recognition.


View article...

From my marketing mail:

No Sponsoring Required, Residual Income, Join Free Today!!!

Susan, Our Marketing Plan Gives You A Unique and Powerful Way To Passively Earn A Generous $363 Without Referring and Without Having To Pay Any Monthly Fees!!

Six Phone Prospecting Phrases That Could Be Costing You A Fortune

From My Political Email:

Prom Ruling Affirms ACLU Agenda
Executive Order just "cover" for Pro-Life Dems
NY Man Arrested, Jailed for Praying
Hope and Change - The Constitution 

On the personal side, probably about 1/4 of the mail I receive consists of forwards of various things. Some bring tears to my eyes, some make me laugh out loud, some inspire me, and some I don't even bother to open.



I thought this one was worth sharing as we move into Holy Week.

'Excuse me, Are you Jesus?'

A few years ago a group of salesmen went to a regional sales convention in Chicago.They had assured their wives that they would be home in plenty of time for Friday night's dinner. In their rush, with tickets and briefcases, one of these salesmen inadvertently kicked over a table which held a display of apples. Apples flew everywhere. Without stopping or looking back, they all managed to reach the plane in time for their nearly-missed boarding.

ALL BUT ONE!!! He paused, took a deep breath , got in touch with his feelings, and experienced a twinge of compassion for the girl whose apple stand had been overturned.

He told his buddies to go on without him, waved good-bye, told one of them to call his wife when they arrived at their home destination and explain his taking a later flight. Then he returned to the terminal where the apples were all over the terminal floor.

He was glad he did.

The 16-year-old girl was totally blind! She was softly crying, tears running down he r cheeks in frustration, and at the same time helplessly groping for her spilled produce as the crowd swirled about her; no one stopping and no one to care for her plight.

The salesman knelt on the floor with her, gathered up the apples, put them back on the table and helped organize her display. As he did this, he noticed that many of them had become battered and bruised; these he set aside in another basket.

When he had finished, he pulled out his wallet and said to the girl, "Here, please take this $40 for the damage we did. Are you okay?" She nodded through her tears.. He continued on with, "I hope we didn't spoil your day too badly."

As the salesman started to walk away, the bewildered blind girl called out to him, "Mister...." He paused and turned to look back into those blind eyes. She continued, "Are you Jesus?"

He stopped in mid-stride, and he wondered. Then slowly he made his way to catch the later flight with that question burning and bouncing about in his soul: "Are you Jesus?" Do people mistake you for Jesus? That's our destiny, is it not? To be so much like Jesus that people cannot tell the difference as we live and interact with a world that is blind to His love, life and grace.

If we claim to know Him, we should live, walk and act as He would. Knowing Him is more than simply quoting Scripture and going to church. It's actually living the Word as life unfolds day to day.

You are the apple of His eye even though we, too, have been bruised by a fall. He stopped what He was doing and picked up you and me on a hill called Calvary and paid in full for our damaged fruit.

Please share this, {IF you feel led to do so}. Sometimes we just take things for granted, when we really need to be sharing what we know....Thanks.

I am glad he stopped what He was doing and picked me up and paid in full for my damaged fruit. I had plenty. I can only hope that people catch a glimpse of Him in me as I go about my daily life. My goal is that one day people would "mistake me for Jesus."

Do people mistake you for Jesus?