Unscrew Your Sorry Ass From the Couch

Posted on 26/08/2025 by Grumpa Joe

What does it take to get you motivated? Do others provide your motivation, or are you able to get yourself going? Grumpa Joe’s Place will strive to give you hints about getting the juices flowing. Mostly, he will tell you about how he gets his own sorry ass from growing into the couch.

The fact of the matter is that no one can motivate you but you! You are the deciding factor in making positive things happen in your life. Others can only scare you into doing something. Fear is definitely an emotion that will drive us into action. Usually, it is fear of a loss such as a job, a loved one, or money. This type of motivation does work, but only temporarily. As soon as you are able to get out from under the fear you revert to your normal unmotivated being. 

Your best bet is to set some simple goals to start your engine running. Make them easy to begin with. Achieving easy goals will empower you to begin achieving tougher ones. Take the smallest steps possible, i.e. “baby steps,” to accomplish the goal. The Japanese call this method “Kaizen.” Their philosophy is “go slow fast.” If you don’t believe this system works, ask yourself why the big three automakers in the U.S. today are on the verge of losing it to a Japanese big three. The Japs are relentless in their pursuit of the goal. They have been working it since 1945, and will not rest until they have world domination in the auto industry. They have continuously improved their designs and manufacturing processes in “baby steps” to the point of making superior quality products that delight their customers.

You can do the same with your own life. Set yourself a goal that is measurable, achievable, realistic, and tangible.

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See It, Believe It, Watch It Happen

Posted on 25/08/2025 by Grumpa Joe

See it clearly in your mind. Think in color and exact details. Make a mental image of your goal, then make a physical image. Create a collage of your vision. Use photos from the net, magazines, wherever you can scrounge them. Paste them together into the vision you are trying to achieve. Place the picture on your mirror so you can see it first thing every morning. Make a copy of the dream for your pc. Put it next to the screen where you can see it all day long. Whatever the goal is, a car, house, vacation, job, picture it in your mind.

Visioning is a powerful tool. Many men have advised that

 “If you can see it, and believe it, you can have it.” I have used mental visioning many times very successfully. In my career, I used visioning when I had to make a presentation before the CEO and the president of the company. I saw myself giving my report in a confident, knowledgeable way. I rehearsed the report over and over again in my mind. I could see myself overwhelming these powerful leaders with my confidence.  When the time came to report, I was prepared, nervous, but prepared. Each time, I received kudos from the CEO and the president.

In my private life, I see my goals clearly and keep them in front of me all the time. As the goal becomes more and more clear, the reality of achievement steps in and the vision of accomplishment takes over to finish.

You too should use visioning to “see” your goals. “See” the benefits you will receive after you complete the goal successfully. In other words, “PICTURE IT!”

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Retire from Retirement

Posted on 14/04/2024 by Grumpa Joe

I’m just sitting here talking to myself and thinking how easy it is to critique someone’s work than it is to do the actual work. Writing a book is a lot harder than reading a book, but criticizing a book is a lot easier than readng it. Enjoying a good movie or video is a lot easier than making it. Editing a book is harder than reading it. I am learning that getting an idea to write a book is a lot easier than writing a book. In my current work, I got a single idea of what I wanted a story to be about, but developing that idea into a full fledged story is another matter. An idea can sometimes be expressed in a few words or sentences, but developing that same idea and expanding it into a hundred thousand word story becomes work.

I enjoy a good story with solid characters and a good plot. In my story, I’m not sure I am doing enough to develop strong characters, and the plot seems to be weak. When writing, the principal thing to remember is to show the story and not tell the story. I am great at telling stories but weak at showing them. In fact, it took me a long time to know the difference between the two. By the time I learn that difference and apply it to my writing, I’m afraid my body clock will have worn out.

I often wonder how many books being written actually get published and how many of those that get published make money. What I do know is that the time I spend on writing a post or a story that it really isn’t worth the effort in income production. If I stood on a street corner holding a sign saying, “Please help a starving writer,” I think I would make more money than I would if I had published a book.

Even with all the ways I can think of to avoid wasting my time writing, I am determined to complete the work and send it off to a publisher. One way to tell if your time was worth it is if it is actually published. The second way is to make money on it. If you make some money, it is the measure of the story’s success.

If my book is published and it does make some money, then maybe, I can retire from being retired.

Filed under: Education, Motivation, Writer | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

Some Serious Traveling

Posted on 07/10/2023 by Grumpa Joe

While daydreaming this morning, I came across the number for the speed of light. Light travels at 186000 miles per second. The odometer on my car just rolled over to that number. Hmmm, I wondered how many hours have I spent driving that many miles. A quick division by 18 years and the miles per year have been 10,333 per year. Assuming I drove at an average speed of forty miles per hour I spent 4650 hours driving, or 193.75 days.

To put that mileage in perspective, it is equal to 7.44 times around the world. The problem as I see it is I never got further than Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Another way to put it into perspective is it is three-quarters of the way to the moon.

Think, if we could travel at the speed of light Mars is only 4 minutes away. At that rate exploring Mars may be a reasonable thing to do.

Traveling to Neptune, one of the farthermost planets in our solar system would take us about four hours. I can wrap my head around traveling at the speed of light, but I can’t fathom man-made global warming will melt all the ice on Earth. The limit to traveling that fast in a spaceship is the amount of fuel it takes to keep the engines going. I can see us finding a way to propel a ship in space because we are resourceful people. It won’t happen in this century but it could happen in the next.

Rings of Saturn

What an amazing life we would have traversing the Milky Way from planet to planet on our vacations. Or, driving to a Spa in the rings of Saturn, only a seventy-minute drive away from Earth. Or driving two and a half hours to Uranus for Jet Skiing on the Methane seas. If heat is your thing, take a short two-minute and twenty-second jaunt to Venus, or a five-minute ride to Mercury, but be sure to take a bath in sunscreen before leaving.

Uranus

Once we can travel that fast, the genius population on Earth will invent the products we will need to take advantage of the solar system’s recreational opportunities.

Mercury

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Progress Report

Posted on 25/09/2023 by Grumpa Joe

It is week two of installing and learning the ins and outs of my new computer, and I realize that I will not live long enough to learn it all. Between the iPhone, iMac, and all the supporting programs that make the machine useful to me I’ve lost my voice from screaming at them.

I began using a Grammarly program to punctuate better and write more clearly. It needed an update. I did the update, but it bonged me because the Word program I use also required updating. Excuse me? I clicked the link to take me there without any other recourse but to update Word. It is good that Bill Gates no longer works there and lives in a very private place with tons of security because I would be convicted of murder if he wasn’t protected. Why? I’ll tell you. Since I have regularly had to update my Word 365 program, I mistakenly clicked on re-register instead of as a new customer. Then, the fun began. I got into a circular argument about my wrong password or username. I chased and chased using every user name I usually use with every password I have ever used with Microsoft, and all of them failed. All I want to do is give you money for the privilege of using your valuable knowledge, and you give me shit about my passwords! Thank God, Lovely called me to have dinner. I left the room and did not return until this morning. The first thing on my list was to update my Word program so I could then update my brand new Grammarly program and maybe do something productive.

I went to Microsoft directly and used their online order system this time. I defied them by claiming to be a new customer, thinking their AI would treat me more kindly. It worked. I went through as a new customer using my old username without a password. One difference from yesterday was they quoted 69 dollars for WORD 365, but today it was $79.

My future is uncertain, as I look forward to learning how Microsoft has cleverly hidden all of its standard features behind new buttons on new pages to do the same old things. Only then will I finally be able to update Grammarly and attempt to master the wizardly world of English grammar as presented by Grammarly AI.

Filed under: Aging, Motivation, Science | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

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