I was at a business meeting in Whistler B.C. a couple of winters ago. While I was there, one of my goals was to learn to snowboard. Well picture this, sports fans: a graybeard (me) standing at the “snowboard lessons” sign waiting for an instructor. Along comes a young lady with a big smile; she introduces herself and asks me if I skateboard.

Uh, no, I don’t.

“That’s okay, but it would be a help if you did” she says. I gulp and think: What have I gotten myself into? The lesson starts off pretty well. Once I know how to slide along on one foot and push with the other she directs me to the bunny hill. I’m feeling pretty confident, to tell the truth. What’s this? I think. I want a mountain! At the top of the bunny hill she explains the mechanics of snow boarding and without further ado; I launch myself from the top.

I careen out of control for about fifty feet or so (I may not know how to steer, but I’m having the time of my life!) before a seven year old tyke steps dead in front of me. The “how to stop” part of my recent lesson goes out the window; I hit the deck instead. That spares the wee child, but not my butt, which grinds a decent-sized furrow in the snow. That’s when I really understand that to get it right, I need to shelve my dignity for a while. I keep my ego going, though. I’ve always used it as fuel to keep going, because even if I look silly, I’d rather not give up. That’s the kind of person I am, and today, it sustains me through multiple wipeouts.  Never give up. Never.

It takes some time, and a couple of hard falls, but eventually, I graduate to the mountain.

The view from the top is spectacular – and the only way to the bottom is down is on a slippery piece of lumber everyone is calls a “snowboard” – an alien appendage that’s strapped to both feet. There’s no fear. I just feel a bit . . . . weird. Confident, but weird.

I tighten the bindings, point the snowboard down, holler “Fore!” and away I go! Right away, I notice there’s more room for error than on the bunny hill. The snow is a lot fluffier, which should cushion my falls. Things are going great!

I swoosh along, go around a corner and all of the sudden, the run narrows up, big time. So much for having room for error! There’s a tall timber on my left and a rough rock wall on my right. Suddenly, the mechanics of turning become really, really important to remember. I slide through the narrow spot and in front of me the view is great – but the snow’s running out. I’m hitting the end of the slope.

When I drop over the edge, my first thought is that the nice young lady who taught me might have a sadistic streak in her.

It was steep, steep, steep! In order to get down I have to do something that feels like it violates what I thought were the laws of physics: lean ahead to control my rate of decent. Trust me when I say that it takes a lot of discipline to lean forward when you’re sliding down a mountain.

When I hit the bottom (and live!), my instructor says that normally she’d take beginners down a gentler slope the first time down the mountain, but since I was quick learner and doing so well, she decided that I needed more of a challenge. Well, that gives me a shot of emotional fuel (remember my ego?) and I head back to the top, again and again.

I finally had to quit when the muscles in my legs were burning so bad, I could hardly stand. That evening when I was in the hot tub, feeling sore, but mighty fine about what I’d accomplished, I realized that if you want to do something bad enough, you need more than raw determination. You must believe that failure isn’t in your personal dictionary. You may fall again and again. The snow and the cold are bitter, but success is so very, very sweet.

P.S. I had taken my camera along to take some pictures for posterity, but even though it was in the front pocket of my ski pants I killed it on one of my more spectacular wipeouts. It turned out to be the only casualty.

Halloween is history for another year. (Does anybody else remember when it was spelled Hallowe’en?) I always like to take time in the morning to stroll around and peak outside – having time to do that is one of the perks of having a home-based business. When I got up this morning and went downstairs I saw a heavy frost on the pumpkin we left on the front porch to “scare” trick or treaters. I went to the washroom to wash my face, looked in the mirror and noticed that the frost was showing a bit more in the old chin whiskers, too.

So, me being the king of curious, I sat down at my ‘puter and did the Google thing. What makes hair go gray?  Type that in for yourself and you’ll see the results: all 472,000 of them.  The first search page went up in a blink of the eye (and made me happy I bought a nice, speedy Mac), and I flipped through the listings fast. By the third organic listing I found what I was looking for. There was good news . . . and not so good news.

In a perfect world, hair turns gray over a period of time that’s solely determined by your genes. Every hair has specialized pigmentation cells. They eventually stop renewing themselves and your hair loses color. It’s only natural.

In the not so perfect world I inhabit on a day to day basis, there are many more causes, including stress, poor eating habits, bad health, smoking and excessive drinking – and that’s just for starters. These factors speed the process up considerably. Some people have to drive mega-miles through killer traffic lineups just to get to the office. They experience major pressure at work and after they punch out, have endure the long drive home again. Those three things are enough to drive a person smoke, drink, or both.

I’m sure glad I left all that behind. It’s slowed down the graying process. Now that I look outside again I can see that it’s warmed up some and the frost is gone, so no snow for today. It’s time for a “rip on me motor sickle.”

That’s why I love making money from home. It makes life seem a little less gray than it could be. What would a home-based business do for you?

When I was a kid, TV was something we watched at Granny’s house when we went into town. If you’ll remember from last time, I lived in the country without a lot of amenities, so when we didn’t travel down to visit and watch I read. I was an avid reader – still am in fact – for probably no other reason than there were no other distractions.

I was about thirteen when Dad came home with a transistor TV. It was a seven inch (17.78 centimeter) by seven inch black and white model. We powered it with electricity from a twelve volt car battery. TV was never the center of my life, so maybe that made me something of a dreamer. If so, great!

When I was younger I chose truck driving as my career. It always gave me a good living, I got to see the country I live in and get paid for it. I learned to look at each day as a new adventure. It usually was (maybe I’ll talk about that in a future post). Now I’m surrounded by family and home. That’s another good thing – It gives my life balance.

I sure do miss the country, where you don’t have to license your cat and if you’ve got a dog, it can run free. I’ve got a few birds around the house now in a tree out back, but I can imagine a whole forest full of them out there, just beyond. I’m looking forward to seeing them because when I retire, I’m going back.

If there’s one thing I’ve taken from my life that I think other people should know about it’s that I get a lot of strength out of my past, and everything I’ve done, but those things don’t own me. I chose what to take forward when I traded my truck’s keys for an opportunity to make money from home. I chose the good things I picked up, like the ability to concentrate that I got from a mostly TV-free environment as well as an appreciation for nature and new, challenging situations. I think taking charge of your life doesn’t mean leaving everything you had behind. It means being able to choose and keep the good things about yourself and use them as a source of inner strength.

Greetings to the world! I ‘m doing some thing new here and I’m not sure how to begin. I guess I want to tell you how I got to be here. Let’s face it: I could talk about making money from home for ages, but what I really want to do is connect and tell you what kind of person I am so you’ll know where I’m coming from. This is new, so bear with me!

Let me tell you something to start: I like humor. It is something that’s has pulled me through even in some of my life’s darkest moments. Even if my own sense of humor wasn’t up for poking holes in my problems, someone else would make me laugh. I’ve found that even the most serious things have a funny side. Of course there are serious times, but my point is that if you can find some way to  smile you’ve already taken the first step in the right direction. That’s my opinion, anyway.

One thing people get a crack out of nowadays is when I tell them about how I grew up. I am the oldest of a family of seven (three brothers and three sisters) – large by today’s standards. I was raised on a farm in northern Alberta, Canada without the luxuries of plumbing or electricity. Our version of running water was grabbing two pails, running to the dugout and packing it to the house. We were poor as far as money went, but we ate like kings. From our meat to our vegetable garden, all of our food was homegrown. Folks ask, “How could you live like that?” Fact is, it’s easy, as long as you don’t know anything different!

When I got married, we settled on two kids – we decided seven was a bit of a stretch. Three grandkids, a calico cat and the birds in our yard are busy enough, eh? I still think of the country all the time. I like living at my own pace and freedom. That’s what the country means to me now, and that’s what working from home does, too.