The significence of the holiday season means a lot of different things to a lot of different people depending on where you are from and your religious beliefs. For me, when I was a kid, it always meant family get togethers. My family is spread all over the United States some living as far as Hawaii. My mother has 3 brothers with families and we have not all been together since both of my Grandparents were alive.

I now have my own immediate family and also 2 children from my first marriage who are in their twenties. The youngest has just recently made me a Grandfather at age 47. I couldn't be happier. Unfortunately, I am not going to be able to be with them this Christmas but will be visiting them soon. This year, the family is coming to my house here in Florida.

I am making this post because I want to make sure that every one remembers why we are doing this. Here in the United States it has become the accepted norm that if you want to excel at your job, you need to put in 50 – 60 hour work weeks. This is as true for corporate America as it is for Blue collar America. Some where along the line we have become obsessed with chasing the dollar and material possesions for a lot of different reasons.

I was a legal resident of Holland for 2 years and I have traveled and worked in places like New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and South America. I met my wife in Venezuela. The rest of the world does not think like that. Family and being happy takes presedence over money.

This goes out to all you Americans. Don't forget to have fun! Being a workahoic is not going to make you happy. I have a hard time with this myself. The job that I worked when I was traveling required me to work 12 hour days, sometimes for 7 days a week. The jobs usually lasted 3 to 4 weeks and then off to another one.

Now I work a 40 hour a week job, but old habits are hard to break. My wife thinks that I am absolutely crazy. Sometimes I will get home from work and start working on the computer until 10 or 11 without stopping. Then I'll get up at 3am and put in a few hours before every one gets up.

It's good to know that I can still do it when crunch time comes but I have made an effort to scale back. Since using the planning and the Daily Did Sheet that Alex gave us, I have been able to do away with this type of behaviour. I have a sign on the wall in my office that says "Have You Had Any Fun Today?"

This helps keep me from being obsessed by my wants. All I really have to do is ask myself "why I am doing all this?" The answer is easy. Like they say, "a picture is worth a thousand words."

Alejandro and Mary, and of course Santa

With that said, I think I'll take a break, go watch some football, and have a couple coldies

Back in the summer of 1998, I left the United States for the first time in my life. I had recently went back to school to get a degree in electronics so I could start a new career and basically a new life. Three years prior I divorced my wife of 15 years and the school and new career was a way of starting fresh and putting all of that behind me. I pretty much swore that I would never get married again and intended to spend a lot of time doing the things that I like to do with no body to answer too.

I buried myself in my studies and work for the next 3 years. I got a great job working on automated welding equipment. The job paid really well but required me to travel and work between 72 to 84 hours a week. No kidding! The company does repairs at Nuclear power plants, coal burning power plants, refineries, and paper mills. These plants lose a lot of money when their units are down so the work schedule was 6 or 7 days a week, for 12 hours a day until the repairs are made. The average job lasted about 2 weeks but I have been on some that lasted for 3 months.

Back to the summer of 1998. I had been working my job for about 2 months and they sent me to work at a refinery in Puerta La Cruz, Venezuela. That is where I met the woman who changed my life forever. I am not going to go into all of the details (this post is getting way longer then I intended already), but we met and corresponded for the next 5 years via email and windows messenger. Luckily for me, my company had a lot of work in Venezuela and I went on every job to spend time with Yvonne (my wife's name). I also took several vacations to Venezuela over the years.

She was unable to come visit me in the United States because of our crappy immigration policies, but we kept trying to get her a visa. I won't go into the details, because they are a little shady, but after 4 years we finally managed to get her a visa. Meanwhile, I accepted a position with my company as the maintenance manager for our European division that is located in Holland. We got married in the United States and then spent the next 2 years living in Rotterdam.

I then came off the road and we moved back to the United States where I took a job at the home office working in the shop. (no more traveling) This came with a considerable reduction in pay but was worth losing every penny. At least it is to me now. I hope I haven't lost you yet because I am just now getting to the point of this post. After spending 7 years travelling all over the world and being heavily exposed to South American culture, I have realized that our way of life in America is absolutely nuts!

We work ourselves to death so that we can keep up with the Jones or some other idiotic reason. (Europeans have a mandatory 36 hour work week) Family values have gone to shit in this country. We go to such lengths to chase the almighty dollar and turn a blind eye to the things in life that are truly important. Teenagers are running wild and getting into trouble. Why? Because their parents are too busy pursuing their careers to notice what is going on. They both work. The kid has been letting himself in the house after school since he was 10 and stays their unsupervised until one of the parents arrives to tired from work to even talk to him.

This has become the norm. The same goes for the elderly in this country. The minute they show signs of not being able to care for themselves we put them in a home to live out the rest of their days staring at a television. OK, this is turning into a rant. I'll stop. I just want to thank my wife, of 5 years as of Friday, Yvonne for showing me what is really important in life and how to tell the difference. If I made a list of what matters most to me now, happiness would be at the top and money and material objects don't even make the top 10.

I want everyone to think about why you have started your online business. Make sure that your only reason isn't just the money. Ask yourself this: "Am I having fun?". If the answer is no then you are probably doomed to fail. Unless you are just incredibly passionate about making it work, you will never have the drive it takes to see it through. Those programs that talk about making money fast are a crock. You have to look at this as a business and until you do, you are going to have poor results.

Start looking for ways to outsource the work. You need to be the boss, not the worker. I no that most of you do not have the money to start paying people to do your work. I know exactly where you are at. You can do it yourself as long as you are working towards an outsourcing scenario. Start recording your daily tasks in a video form so that you can easily turn the work over to an assistant when you can afford it. That day WILL come.

Don't fall into the trap. I know people that start a home business so that they can have more freedom and free time only to end up working more then they did at their old jobs. don't totally defeat the purpose of working from home. Yes, you will have to at first but don't let it take over your life. Remember to have fun! Work in spurts of no longer than 2 hours and then go spend an hour playing with the kids or hitting golf balls. You can even spend time with your wife. What a concept!

Happy Anniversary Yvonne! The last 5 years have been the best of my entire life.

In my last couple of posts, I mention that I have moved to Forida. I am going to tell you a little story about why I moved and need to share what happened when I moved. I have come to the conclusion that God has a very twisted sense of humor. It amazes me how things can be going so good and then turn to shit in an instant. (hope the language doesn't offend anyone, but if it does…tough shit because it's my blog)

I quit my 9 to 5 job in May of this year to pursue a career of working at home on the internet. Actually the job was more like a 6 to 6 and sometimes the weekend, good ridance! Through a very strange turn of events beginning with Google canceling my adsense account, which was the better part of my online income, and ending with a series of personal disasters that had a huge financial impact and might qualify for a spot on the Springer show, I have returned to the 9 to 5 world.

I refuse to dig into my savings and my present online income isn't quite enough to cut it so I am working as an electronics technician again. The new job is only 40 hours a week and promises to be much better than my previous job doing pretty much the same thing but with a different company. I have been on the job for 3 days now and it looks as though things are going to be great.

So I am sitting here writing this in my new condo in Fort Myers, Florida, handing out candy to the trick or treaters and I wonder what 's in store for me here. I am a firm believer that things happen for a reason. Despite all of the negative things that have happened to me in the last few weeks, they are only minor set backs. I still have my health and my family and even though my internet business has had a major set back, I will continue on the same path as before. My advise to everyone and anyone who will listen is to never give up and you will eventually get what you want out of life. With that said, let me tell you about the real Halloween nightmare that I experienced.

I have moved quite a few times in my life but always rented a truck and enlisted the help of friends and family. This is my first experience with so called "professional movers". Of course, I went online and Googled movers. I found a site where you enter your information and they send it off to 10 different moving companies who in turn, contact you and give you a quote.

They all contacted me and asked me what I had to move. You literally go room by room and list every piece of furniture. You then tell them how many boxes you have and they use all of this information to give you an estimate. Be carefull when you do this! I made sure that I listed all the furniture. I did forget some work out equipment that I had in my Mother's garage but that is all. We ended up with about 60 medium size boxes instead of the 50 that I estimated.

I went with the cheapest price not just because it was the cheapest but they were only one of three that said they could pick up on the 25th and deliver on the 26th. Here is where the fun begins. The movers are supposed to pick up at 9am on the 25th. It's 11am and I haven't seen or heard anything. I call the dispatcher and he tells me the truck has broken down and it is getting repaired, he will keep me posted. Five hours later, I have still not heard anything so I call them again. The dispatcher gives me more of the same and can't tell me when the truck will be here if even today.

This is where I get pissed off and ask to speak with his boss. After talking with his boss, the dispatcher assures me they will be at my house sometime that evening even if he has to pay them overtime. This tips me off to the fact that he had no intention of sending the truck til the next day so he wouldn't have to pay his men overtime. The truck shows up at 3 am with only 2 men to load a 3 bedroom apartment with an office. Needless to say, they didn't finish loading the truck until 5pm, which is understandable since the guy who was in charge spent most of his time doing paper work and talking on the phome while his helper did most of the work.

Now let me tell you about the paper work. Half way through the loading of the truck, the guy comes up to me and says "You have a lot of things here, it is going to take up more space on the truck then the estimate". I ask "How much more space?" He says, "At least double." He shows me the paper work he has been so diligently working on and the estimate has gone from $1800 to $4000. He tells me that I must authorize the rest of the payment for him to continue loading the truck. Keep in mind that I have already payed 75% down and the power and water are going to be cut off the next day. What am I supposed to do at this point?

I look at his paper work and the cubic feet that we went over is more than the original quote. There is no way in hell that we had twice as much stuff than I listed on the original quote. These people do this for a living, you can't tell me they aren't any good at estimating how much space certain items of furniture take up on their trucks. Therefore, it is obvious to me that they purposely under estimate the cubic feet on the original quote to hook you. The original quote lists the estimated cubic feet x2 plus a 45% discount.

The amount you go over is multiplied by 3 with no discount. They also charged me $1000 for packing materials which included rolls of tape at $5 per roll. Of course they covered everything in blankets and wrapped it like a mummy with tape. They also used 5 big boxes that they cut up to wrap some glass coffe table tops. This came to $1000. Have you heard enough yet? Would you have killed somebody by now?

All said and done, the trucks loaded and ready to go.  I feel like I just woke up after my first night in prison. The family is in the car and we are ready to drive to Florida. I ask the driver if he knows how to get there and he says yes. I say, "I'll see you tomorrow." He replies, "Oh, we won't be delivering for a few days". This is where I think to myself that if I act on my feelings right now, I will be waking up in prison soon. Instead, I walk away laughing like a lunatic.

It's Monday, I go into work and the movers are unloading at the new condo. I come home for lunch and everything seems to be going good. Funny, they have 4 men here to unload. Before I go back to work, I sign off on the paperwork and the guy hints around that I should give his guys a tip. After I get up off the floor, I tell him that his overage charges broke me and I didn't have any money left. He acts like he's pissed off.

Later that day I come home from work to a disaster. All of the boxes that were offloaded after I went back for work, had been shoved in the garage instead of being carried to their designated rooms in the condo. They also left a huge pile of trash in the middle of the yard. Should I have expected any different?

The truth is that this incident has inspired me. I don't believe in getting mad, I like to get even. I am going to write an ebook that will show people how to avoid scammers in the moving industry. I have talked to some friends and family about the incident and evidently 60 minutes has done an expose about the same thing. These kind of tactics are widespread in the moving industry.

I think I am going to use this as an example. I will set up a blog or website and use the SEO techniques that I am going to show you to dominate the search engine results for some keywords relevant to the moving industry and see if I can save some people a lot of heart ache and greif. Oh and by the way, the name of the company that, in my opinion, ripped me off, is called Moving Out. They are based out of Miami.