Friday Firedance Wrap-up

Hi, Steve Barnes here. This is the Friday wrap up for Life Writing and Fire Dance. Let's see. So it's been a great week and a lot has been happening, so I just kind of wanted to go back over because I think that every, every day, the beginning of the day, you should check where you are on the map and then take a look at what you need to do that day to stay on the map. Every week you should look back on what you've been doing, how, how it matches or relates to your overall long term plans and also look forward to the next week. And every month you should do the same thing. And every year you should do the same thing. So I make little check ins every week. So this is Stephen Barnes. I'm the creator of Fire Dance and Life Writing, which are technologies to bring all aspects of your personality together so that you can really embrace your life and use all the tools that you have to move your life forward in all ways. So this week I just kind of wanted to look back and see where I was in terms of the three major areas of my life in terms of writing. Great. Got together. Let's see. At the beginning of the week, I did a short story for a collection. I was asked, no anthology, rather I was asked to do that. And so I did. I wrote the first draft in Final Draft, actually I did a an outline on Google Docs and then wrote a first draft in Final Draft, not Final Draft, but Writer Duet, the online version of Final Draft. Then I copied that into Google Docs and converted the script into text and then polished it and turned it in, got a couple notes, made some changes and turned it back in. And that all seems great. And there might even be some discussion of turning it into a short film. Who knows? That was kind of fun. Then yesterday I drove out to Santa Monica and had lunch with Larry Niven, my beloved mentor and friend and uncle. And that was great. He and his nephew Tim did that out in Santa Monica. So we went out, did that and then we went out and looked over the beach. Just had a very, very nice time. Then today I had a zoom meeting with an expert on a certain aquatic animal that I'm researching for a book. I also found out this week that we have the COVID story on Analog called Sacred Cow. Larry and I do. And so that is out this week. So you should check that out and leave thoughts in the comments. Let us know what you thought about it. Okay, so that's kind of covers the writing aspect of things. There were some career things, some financial Things, nice things that happen. So we get to ask ourselves, well, how much of this do we want to go into taxes? And how much of this is going to go into this account and that account? That's all the management of that stuff. Okay. So that's kind of the business aspect of all the return to that if I need to, in terms of family things. Getting ready to create Jason's first product for Internet marketing. And he will be recording the. What you do is the basics of Internet marketing, or you have the opt in the value and the offer the thing. You know, you basically want to have private conversations with people. The Internet is more or less a public conversation. So you say to somebody will give me your email address and I'll give you this thing of value. And then you give them something of value and you show them the chance to know who it is that you are. And then you make them an offer for the thing that you're selling, the product or service that you're selling. That's what it is. And the people, when you go to a box store and there are people that are offering you little meatballs on toothpicks, or there's somebody out in front of an ice cream parlor offering you a little cup filled with custard, that's all they're doing. They're saying, you know, step into my store. Here's a sample of what it is that I do. If you like that, you might buy something that's just commerce. So my son Jason has been using a lot of really interesting technology for a while in order to increase his own efficiency and effectiveness. He's legitimately gained skills that if he were to go back a couple of years and talk to the younger self, he'd be able to offer that younger self something of real value. And whenever you do that, anytime that you have a skill that a younger version of you would want, in other words, you've invested your time and energy in learning something, you know, something about career, something about relationships, something about your physical health. And you say, me, five years ago, I would have done anything to got my hands on this. You have just discovered something that you can legitimately sell. I mean, that's, that's only, that's only reasonable because you could honestly recommend it to a younger version of you. So Jason has skills that he can honestly. He would honestly offer to a younger version of himself. So it's legitimate for him to learn how to build a marketing structure that will enable him to do that with integrity and, and remembering that the meaning of life is to be joyful and of service. If you can be happy, create your own safety and abundance by creating a service for other people who legitimately need something that's the best of both worlds. You're providing for your community. Your community is turning around and rubbing your shoulders, you know, with money. So we'll be doing that, and it's great. I just. I love teaching him, and my. My wife and I are getting along great. And I had a chance, like I said, to see Larry Niven, who I dearly love and spend some time with him, which is always precious. Last weekend, I had a chance to talk with my martial arts mentor, Steve Muhammad. Had a wonderful conversation with him. I treasure that so much. And actually, I'm going to reach out to a friend of mine who I do Filipino martial arts with, and hopefully he can come over sometime this weekend. We can play a little bit. That'd be fun. Okay. So I'm taking care of myself there. I also had. In the area of the physical. We're touching on the physical now. I had. My right shoulder was giving me a little trouble. Okay. Woke up this morning, give me a little trouble. Last night, it was giving me a little bit of trouble. So I strained it doing something. I can think of several different activities that I've done that could conceivably strain my shoulder. So anytime I feel any strain in a joint, first of all, I'm going to make sure to supplement myself properly with glucosamine and chondroitin to give myself the building blocks my body needs to build things back. Then what you do is you. Well, what I do, at any rate, is I use joint mobility drills where I'm circling the joint, I'm moving the joint through all of its natural range of motion. And I use a scale of 0 to 9 or 1 to 10 of pain. You know, so you're just sitting in a chair. That's a one. You're just. Just feeling what you're feeling. 10 is the worst pain you can experience. So what you do is you never let your pain go above a three. When you're doing any kind of movement. It can be intense, but you don't want pain and you certainly don't want damage. So if I move my shoulder within its natural range, movement slowly, even slower than that. So let's say I move it up this high and it creates a little bit of pain. Well, I don't move it that high. I only move it this much. I make a smaller circle. I move within the pain. I don't Go to the point. I'll go up here where it's a three or four. I stay down here where it's a two and a half or three. Okay. And I just, I circle that. But I'll work through my entire body, starting with my fingers. Now the Tai Chi form that I do is basically joint mobility form in a particular sequence. So if I do Tai Chi slowly and stop at different points, circle myself, feel my balance move back and forth, then I'm telling my body, this is the way I want you to work. This is what we need in order to have a positive experience of life. This is what we need in order to move joyfully, in order to be a good role model to my family, in order to work, in order to work out, you know, in order to have fun, in order to live fully, in order to appreciate and explore the opportunities that I'd be given right now at this point in life. So this weekend we're see what am I doing this weekend? Tomorrow I'm going to be creating lessons eight and nine, I think it is, of the Tai Chi class. And they're going to be 52 lessons in all. It's going to take one year for people to go through the entire form. And I'll be providing, you know, there's a lot of supplemental material, supplemental exercises, conceptual, physical, qigong, so forth and so on so that people can have a really, really complete experience at this. And in one year they get the whole thing. And so I'll be doing that tomorrow and then on Sunday I will hopefully I'll hang out with friends a little bit. I'm probably gonna go see Black Adam movie and then on Sunday I'll probably play virtual mini golf with family and friends. The walkabout mini golf on Oculus Quest 2 is so much fun. The pandemic, it was a place where my friends and I would meet every week and have fun. And no matter where they were around the country we would meet and there were, you know, we play mini golf and these wonderful courses and just kind of had fun and share, share joy with each other. That's important. It's important for me. So that covers the three major areas and just, you know, I take a look. Am I on track in terms of my long term goals? Yes. What do I need to do week next week to on those long term goals? Same thing. Work on my writing, work on my martial arts, work on my Internet business, work with my family, work out. That's it. And I'm on track. All I have to do is Focus on what I have to do today. And what I had to do today from the time I woke up was work my shoulder. I did yoga. I took care of business, took care of some business calls. I did a zoom call doing research, doing scientific research for story. And this that I'm doing right now, this conversation with you is the last piece of business I need to do. After this, I will probably go downstairs and watch some cartoons or something like that while I work on the script. Because I transferred the script from a short story. I mean I created it in, in Writer Duet, originally transferred it to Google Doc and then polished it there. But now I'm going to transfer it, I'm transferring it back, back into Writer Duet and I'm going to turn it back into a script and I'm going to polish it like that. I'm going to create a script. I want to do a script. I also need to go over the story. It actually was sent back to me with some tiny tweaks that the editor wants me to approve. So I'm going to do that and then I will get into my weekend. Weekend begins. But I wanted to say hi to you before I got into my weekend. And once again, if you enjoy this, like it, share it. But down below, ask me if there anything I can do to explore or explain anything that I'm doing in terms of working with myself, physically working with myself, my career, you know, whether it's the, you know, writing, which God I love and, and just there's new stuff happening all the time, or my family, raising my child, celebrating my wife, my. My wife to Natari, my marriage to her, you know, being with my soulmate, trying to care for my relationship with my daughter, my sister, my son. You know, just moving outwards from a sense of loving myself and respecting myself on the journey of life. Realizing that the meaning of life is to be joyful and of service so that every day I'm seeking joy. I'm also looking to improve myself in what I can offer to you. So be sure that you tell me if there's anything I can give you, anything that I can explain that I've been going over. If you want to go over to my website, www. Stephen-barnes.com and I will see you later hopefully. Like I said, leave comments. What can I do for you? You take care and I'll see you later. Bye bye.