Mid Life Celebration

Mid Life Celebration.

While many have or dread the infamous “mid-life crisis”, I am having a mid-life celebration.

What are you having or dreading?

What are you doing about it?

I’ve come to many conclusions in my life.  And at age 50, I’m confident in my ability to be pretty well balanced, and well grounded.

It’s liberating to make concrete decisions about who you are and what you value.  And when you do so in no uncertain terms, you will find a peace and a joy you never thought possible.

At least that’s the world I live in.

Carpe diem, jeff noel 🙂

jeff noel is a jerk!

jeff noel is a jerk!

Maybe.  Maybe not.

Depends on your definition, and Dictionary.com defines: jerk: Slang. a contemptibly naive, fatuous, foolish, or inconsequential person.

One thing for sure, and writing all these blogs helps make things clearer.  Putting thoughts on paper requires you to inventory what your values, beliefs, etc, are.

And I’ve come to a conclusion.  To some, I am definitely a jerk.  To others, a refreshing, and challenging way to look at life.

Of course, there is complete unscientific bias here, but I have to agree with the later.

Carpe diem, jeff noel  🙂

Professional Speaker jeff noel

Professional speaker, jeff noel, gives speeches to change the world.

I never give the same speech twice.

I’ve been called audacious, by a former Disney leader.

On a good day, I’m uncommonly insightful.

Just wanted to share this.  Sounds boastful, but it’s true.

Carpe diem, jeff noel 🙂

World’s Biggest Search Engine?

What’s the world’s biggest search engine?

Trick question here.

Still think you know?  Google?   Yahoo?  MSN?  Ask?  Bing?

Try this.  Your mind.

Told you it was a trick question.

Now for the next trick.

How much of it, and how often, do you search with it?

Try this.  Go look in the mirror.  Do you have the answers to your big questions?

Be creative.  Be focused.  Be  disciplined.  Be patient.  Or not.  But please don’t complain to me if you don’t use the biggest search engine out there.

Carpe diem.  If not today, when?  jeff noel 🙂

Zombie, or just tired?

Totally zombie. Only two other times in my 50 years can I recall being this tired.

The first was driving a Washington State University professor’s pick up truck from Pullman to Seattle, twenty-five years ago.

The professor was relocating and driving his U-Haul moving truck.

We volunteered to drive his pick up, on one condition.  We could throw our two 18-speed Trek touring bicycles in the back.

My wife was a WSU Residence Hall Director for several years.

Upon returning from our cross-state bicycle Honeymoon, we’d have to load our 48 boxes of “stuff” on a shipping truck and then drive our green Mercury Monarch to Orlando.

Before our Honeymoon, we had to be completely packed and moved out of the Coman Hall apartment.  It took all night.

Then, we had a six-hour drive across Washington.  Let me tell you there were some terrific, wide-open spaces.

The kicker, Cheryl could not drive a stick shift at the time.  Otherwise we could have taken turns.

Cheryl loves to tell the story of me howling like a dog, and other assorted crazy things to stay awake.  It was torture. I could not stop.  The professor needed to be in Seattle.  If he only knew….

We made it.  Finally.  Got a great night’s sleep in our tent, and then started our bicycle trip through the San Juan Islands of the Puget Sound, before hitting the North Cascades Highway east, over the Cascade Mountain range, back to Pullman.

I was too poor to give my wife a traditional honeymoon.  So, one year after we were married, we took that cross-state bicycle honeymoon.

It was the best 17-day honeymoon money could buy.  Seriously.  Seventeen days of world-class honeymoon.

The other kicker, even back in 1984, that $200 wasn’t very much money.

Carpe diem, jeff noel 🙂