Category Archives: The JBE

Building On Your Foundation

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I had a gig that I loved. Of all the various “straight” jobs I’ve had, I felt that this one was as close to being perfect as I’d ever find. I felt uniquely qualified to carry it out. Then, a governor was elected, a man with an angry spirit much like Mr. Trump’s. He knew nothing about workforce training and because he was stupid (but thought he knew more than anyone else), he cut the budget for training in Maine. He continued his assault on the state’s training infrastructure for eight years.

Once I found out the job I enjoyed and was good at was going away, I figured it was time to craft my personal brand. That’s how the JBE originated in 2012.

I considered a host of various templates and ways to message what I wanted to say. I made sure I included a blog as part of the new WordPress site I built and plugged into the world wide web. Ultimately, I settled on the idea of “reinvention” because in 2004 and 2005 that’s what’d I was doing—reinventing my way of doing things. By 2012, I’d gotten pretty good at it. Writing was an essential skill I utilized then and still do.

I read Alvin Toffler in high school and I came back to the noted futurist during my period of retooling. It was Toffler who “gave me” the tagline of “learn, unlearn, and relearn” as a means of understanding what learning was in the context of creating something brand new—again, that idea of reinvention.

Besides Toffler, there were others. I became a fan of the likes of Seth Godin, Daniel Pink, and of course, I was already a fan of Mark Baumer, perhaps my biggest cheerleader relative to the need to embrace new ideas and doing it with gusto and with a certain kind of fearlessness. Continue reading →

Too Many Things

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Is it possible to reach a mark where you are trying to juggle more balls than your juggling talent allows?

People who study these types of things will tell you that multitasking is like a mirage—or better, the benefits of multitasking are all a myth–designed to extend us far beyond our functionality. Basically, the more that you have to do, and try to do in combination with something (or somethings) else, your effectiveness diminishes—often exponentially with each successive spinning plate that you add.

For the first time since God knows when, I felt overwhelmed this week. I just have too many damn tasks cluttering my to-do checklist. It’s possible that launching my volleyball officiating trial balloon while working four days in the financial services arena, being on-call at the funeral home 2-3 nights each week, and also driving a few shifts for the Uber have pushed me beyond my capabilities. And then, where the hell does writing fit into this patchwork quilt?

Do you ever feel like a juggling clown?

Do you ever feel like a juggling clown?

My long drive home from Standish after my first JV and varsity volleyball matches last night had me feeling wrung out and wondering, what’s next? Or better, thinking that maybe I could exercise some measure of control over my life, at least for one weekend. Continue reading →

Writing Questions

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I’ve been writing for a long time. Well, it seems like that to me, and for most people, 14 years isn’t anything to sneeze at. That’s a quarter of my life.

If you’ve been a reader of my various blogs, then you are somewhat familiar with my story. If you haven’t heard it before, here it is in a nutshell. At the age of 39, after dabbling with writing on-and-off for a couple of years, I got serious about my craft. Much of this newfound motivation was a result of reading Stephen King’s well-known book about writing, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. I followed his advice in establishing a routine and adopting discipline. About a year later, I had an essay published. Three years later, my award-winning first book, When Towns Had Teams, came out. That was in 2005.

I continued on through two Moxie books, the period I called “the Moxie years,” and in 2012, decided it was time to move on to something more personal—a book of seven essays touching down on my life experiences, with several centered on my hometown of Lisbon Falls. That book was a failure from a sales standpoint, even though it contained my best writing to date.

During the last decade-and-a-half, I’ve also spent extended periods freelancing for local newspapers, regional magazines, alt-weeklies, and a few websites. I’ve gathered a file of clips, with my most recent ones posted here. Continue reading →

A Change is Gonna Come

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When I launched this website back in 2012, I never intended it to be overtly political. The Jim Baumer Experience was me attempting to establish my personal brand, and this site (and blog) have played a part in that process. Life is a lot different these days.

Work is now a combination of freelance opportunities, with other fairly interesting part-time gigs rounding out the mix. I’m not sure how I want to write about all of that, at least not in the context of this blog.

Politics lately has taken up more of my blogging time than I intended. Over the past few weeks, I’ve made a valiant effort to reason and write about what’s going on from where I sit. Basically, it’s gotten me nowhere. How can you reason with people who have lost their minds and lack any historical context for anything that they believe?

What is it that I really love to do and would spend most of my waking hours engaged in if making money and paying bills weren’t the bane of my mortal existence? The answer would be, write. And likely, it wouldn’t be writing about politics, either.

I won’t promise that you’ll never see another political post here at the JBE, but I can say that you won’t be seeing one in the near future. Continue reading →

Publishing Progression

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When I got into publishing, it was mainly a method to get my first book to market.  I started out knowing very little. At the time, indie publishing (what most call, “self-publishing”) wasn’t being embraced by the likes of Amazon and others, because it hadn’t yet become a lucrative income stream for them. But self-published books have been around since books first rolled off Gutenberg’s press.

Printing's come a long way since Gutenberg's time.

Printing’s come a long way since Gutenberg’s time.

What once was the domain of legacy presses and authors who couldn’t get a book deal, now finds writers like Jamie McGuire landing on the shelves of major retailers and books like Andy Weir’s The Martian (originally self-published) are being made into Hollywood movies. Continue reading →

Most People Don’t Follow Through

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The road to hell is paved with good intentions. You’ve heard that one before, haven’t you? While clichéd for sure, it speaks to a universal truth—people like to talk, but they’re even more enamored with procrastination. But intentions by themselves don’t result in success.

Even though my blogging has been consistent over the years, I don’t always feel like putting up a post. Since I’ve selected Tuesday and Friday as days for fresh content, I have a commitment to making that happen. I’ve self-imposed these deadlines to ensure that my blog doesn’t end up like so many other vacant storefronts out there by bloggers who thought it would be cool to blog and then got waylaid by boredom, or difficulty, or the myriad of excuses that people use to not do what they need to do.

James Altucher mentions the importance of being consistent and persistent. He’s speaking about podcasts in his case, but I think those traits are applicable to just about any task-oriented endeavor. You’ve got to commit to making it happen, and then you need to follow it through—not once, or twice, or for a week—but time after time, for a year, five years, and even longer.

Practice makes perfect.

Practice makes perfect.

Continue reading →

Another Year of Books and Reading

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With the commencement of a brand new year, I set out once again reaching for what I’ve established as my personal baseline figure for books to read over a twelve-month period. While far from being scientific, I arrived at my number of books to read per month, and in the course of setting the bar, I learned that I’m way above the average number of books read annually by almost all other Americans. I now believe that doing so keeps me sharper (I think) than less ambitious types.

As it shakes out, my bedrock number of 36 books read is triple the U.S. average, at least according to Pew Research, my researcher of choice in this matter. The “average American” in the U.S. reads 12 books per year.  That’s a paltry number, but it’s the average. That means many of the people you work with and interact with read a lot less than that.

My wife reads a lot of books. My son once more hit a reading number that dwarfs my own 2015 total of 53 books, which exceeded my goal for the year, but fell short of last year’s total of 66.

Previous end-of-year book summaries also served as attempts at advocacy, citing the benefits of being a reader. Two would be broadening your awareness and increasing knowledge. But I have to remind myself periodically that we live in a time when ignorance trumps all else—most wouldn’t consider broadness an asset—and they wear ignorance like a coat of arms.

Not only are Americans light readers, I’d go one step further—if they do read anything at all, their tendency is towards books offering cover and validation to their views on politics, culture, and any other subject that they have an  awareness about. Or, they read simply for pleasure and escape. I get that and I’m not opposed. Miss Mary is a reading-for-pleasure kind of girl.

My 2015 reading list seems a bit more pell-mell than some of my previous ones. Scroll down and take a look back at 2013 and 2014, and you be the judge.

John Gould and a few other books from 2015.

John Gould and a few other books from 2015.

Continue reading →

What Are You Doing?

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I said I wasn’t going to put up a Friday blog post this week. I lied.

Granted, probably only four of you will bother reading it, since most Americans are out doing their Black Friday shopping. Stay hydrated and be nice!

Today’s title was prompted from my experience attending a recent open house put on at CEI’s brand new building on Federal Street, in Brunswick. It was also a Chamber of Commerce Business After-hours soiree, too. As someone that used to do these every month, I’m thankful that my life at the moment no longer requires my regular attendance.

I did run into a few former colleagues and partners. To a person, they asked me “what are you doing”? That’s never an easy, elevator-type question for me to answer. I don’t have just one thing I do, or I’m not doing the same old, same old that most people have been doing, forever.

My work gets me out of the office.

My work gets me out of the office.

Here’s one thing “I’m doing.” I rode over to New Hampshire in early November and completed two resort profiles for both Loon Mountain Resort and Gunstock Mountain Resort. These were done for RootsRated, an intriguing outdoor adventure portal. They were part of the site’s “An Insider’s Guide to the Best Northeast Winter Resorts.”

If you are really interested in what I’ve been up to (at least the writing), my website has all of my published work, from latest, dating backwards. Of course, I also know that people ask questions because they don’t know what else to do when they run into you, and I’m okay with that.

Wearing the Uniform

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Freelancing has its perks. There’s flexibility of schedule, a comfortable working environment from home, and no employee handbook to memorize.

My membership in free agent nation is coming up on three years. During that time, I’ve managed to cobble together a myriad of paying gigs—unique reports, video production, facilitation, teaching writing, and managing grants. I’m also learning to be more patient, during the dry and uncertain patches.

Last year, a unilateral decision was reached that the JBE needed to update his writing portfolio. So 18 months after setting that goal, I’ve managed to write for a number of newspapers, including the Boston Globe, did a couple of critical pieces about Portland (one of the few not sugarcoating life in the “golden” city that sits on Casco Bay), plus putting together a series of monthly travel features for the Lewiston Sun-Journal. I had hoped to do a bit more muckraking, but there aren’t many venues that pay local writers to dredge up stories about Maine’s kakistocracy. Continue reading →

Some ‘Splainin to Do

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I’ve been putting up regular content here at the JBE since 2012 when I first launched this site. The primary purpose of creating this WordPress platform (my first time designing my own website, btw) was launching my personal brand. At the time, given what was happening—basically, getting down-sized—plus, I was reading Seth Godin, Daniel Pink, and others; personal branding seemed to be the proper exit ramp to free agent nation.

The most important aspect of the JBE now looks like it’s been centralizing where I blog. That’s one reason why I chose to include one as part of the website in the first place. At the time, my plan was to write about reinvention and other things central to my personal brand.

With all that’s transpired over the past three years, the blog remains the primary reason I keep the site up and running. My efforts the past year to reinvigorate my own freelance writing is the reason why I also maintain another site where I post my freelance writing clips and keep my online portfolio up-to-date—something that seems like it would be a requisite for a free agent writer these days. The personal brand thing—I’m not as bullish on that anymore. Continue reading →