Be Selective With Your Energy. In Fact, Be Downright Arrogant.

I've stopped checking my emails every day.

Before that, I shut down my Behind Closed Doors program.

And this past Saturday night out with the girls?

I drank…sparkling water.

Yet, I can confidently confirm that I am not pregnant, suicidal, dying of cancer (at the moment, anyway) or just having such great sex that I can't be bothered. (Again, at the moment.)

So why the drastic changes?

Well for one…

…vodka was making my neck appear larger in real life–not just in the side view mirrors in the car. This is a problem when you actually have to look at yourself.

Exhibit A.

But second–and more importantly…

…because I've always been acutely aware that the moment something starts feeling like work–and not like an adventure–is the moment it's my responsibility to change it. Not because I don't like to work hard, but because there's a difference between work that feels like it, and work that doesn't.

And when I started TMFproject years back, the idea was to bathe myself silly in the latter. Because, after all, isn't that the point of running a business where you make the rules?

It's about keeping things fresh and exciting; challenging and engaging. It's about making sure I'm always giving my best–and never getting complacent when it comes to my art.

So I've been taking some time to do some thinking, as of late.

To determine where my efforts are best served, and how I can knock it out of the ballpark to wrap 2012. And not knock it out of the park in the same sense as last year, hitting my goal of $97,000 with this blog, for example, but in a way that feels good, too. Satisfying. Fulfilling. In a way that brings out my best work. My best art. My best everything.

You could say I've been going through a really neat transformation, in a way.

One that keeps encouraging me, more and more, to remember to live my life outside of the computer screen–and not just in it. One that keeps reminding me to live–and not just talk about life. And one that keeps relentlessly jabbing me with a hot poker, hissing at me to prune back any of the activities that aren't contributing to my greater quality of life–and my greater work.

It's about being selective with your energy.

Because while you might have some extra time–you won't always have the extra head space.

There have been plenty of times when I'll have a few spare hours, but can't wrap my brain around a project because it's busy whirling around 30,000 other things. And that's the moment when you start experiencing diminishing returns–you keep working harder to keep up with everything you've got to do, and yet, the quality of the work you're putting out suffers. And you didn't start this so you could run around like a maniac, doing sub-par work you feel guilty about; you started this to have a higher quality of life, doing work that makes you glow like a pregnant woman who just moisturized her face with 3/4s a vat of Vaseline.

Head space is important. Without it, you can't truly create at the level you want. Just ask J-Money Fields, who recently published a post on a similar topic.

So the rest of the year?

Dedicated to getting some.

Not ass. Head space.

I fully expect to release The Middle Finger Project–The Book by the end of the year, and you better believe I'm giving it everything my little writer fingers have got.

This is the work that doesn't feel like work.

And I have high fucking expectations.

You didn't think I'd stop drinking vodka just for the sake of my neck, do you?

That'd just be vain.

And we all know a girl with black and white photos of herself plastered all over her website is anything but.

The Middle Finger Project. Not Your Grandmother's Blog.

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