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USA – Population Density

What is the United States of America (USA)? I mean, we all know that the USA is a Nation-State. We all know that the USA is a large group of people wrapped inside 3 political boundary lines. We all know that the USA is the combination of land and water with buildings and farms. But what is the United States of America really? Is it something more than the sum of these parts?

I argue that the USA is a living apparatus. It is one giant machine. And that machine has a purpose.  That purpose is to create, protect, amplify and maximize wealth. When I say wealth, I not only mean financial wealth in the form of money and United States Dollars (USD $). But I am talking about anything that anyone might consider wealth. This can include spiritual wealth, love, ideas, consensus of thought, the coordination of human beings, tanks, food and anything that you or anyone else might consider of value. Think of the USA as the average American may look at it. The Average American, let’s call him, “Bob” lives in the United States. Why? Well let’s say he was either born here or else he moved here. If he was born here and still lives here, that’s because he had no real reason to move away. And if he moved to the USA from somewhere else, Bob did so because he was either seeking a safe place to live, freedom from persecution, work opportunities or other reasons like moving to be close to family. For the case of Bob though, Bob was born in the USA. He is a proud and loyal citizen of the United States of America. He works a $15.00 an hour job, 40 hours a week. And he rents a room in California and lives a modest life-style. Bob watches TV usually after working at his job and he pays his taxes automatically every time he gets a paycheck. The reason why he lives in the USA is because he is comfortable here. Bob has a few friends and life isn’t easy but it is generally good. To Bob, the United States of America is stability, it is security. Bob doesn’t have to worry about unrest and riots in the neighborhood of his Orange County abode. This let’s Bob focus on other stuff like his hobbies of collecting beer bottle caps and nailing them to cork-board. And he has other hobbies of making clever comments on you-tube videos and taking screen-shots of people’s reactions. Overall Bob is a happy United States citizen. But Bob doesn’t make that much money at his job. Bob rents a room, he doesn’t have trouble meeting women, but he feels a bit uncomfortable when he brings them home with him. He has to be quiet because he lives with an older family and they go to bed early. Bob believes that the United States of America is a great place to live, but he’s tried finding work to get a better job and since he never finished college he has a hard time.

Can the USA go to work for Bob? Well, it doesn’t exactly work like that. In the United States of America you need to create your own wealth building apparatus out of the systems that are already in place. So it comes down to one question, “If the USA is a wealth building machine, how do I get that machine to build me some wealth?” Well first thing is first, you must identify your goals. What do you want for your life? And more specifically, what do you want the United States of America to do for you? Let’s tackle the first question first. And to give the questions some meat to chew on, let’s say Bob has a best friend that he goes to the movies with sometimes named, Greg. Now Greg isn’t the same as Bob. Greg is a bit more ambitious than Bob and he wants more from life. But Greg is bankrupt, exhausted and lives with his parents. Like Bob, Greg didn’t finish College but he was able to find a job as a video editor in Orange County because of an internship that he did. What Greg wants out of life, is that he wants to save up $40,000 so he can comfortably move out of his parent’s house and pay for an apartment possibly for a year in advance. Greg also wants to eventually meet a lady and get married if possible. But priority number one is to move out of Mom ‘n Dad’s. So basically we can say that the number one goal for Greg in life right now, is to save $40,000.

OK! So now we know that Greg wants $40,000. And we also know that Greg lives in the United States of America. Since we know that the USA is a wealth-creating machine, let’s help Greg make $40,000 using the opportunities and resources of the United States of America. Well, the good news is that even though Greg is bankrupt, he has managed to save $7,000 from his video editing job. So that means that Greg only needs to save $33,000 more in order to meet his goal. Let’s take a quick look at the cash flow for a typical month for Greg. He makes $3,500 per month at his job as a video editor. So let’s use $3,500 per month as the starting point for his budget. Greg doesn’t get charged rent by his parents, but he does have a car payment of $400 per month. He is on the family plan for his cellphone and Greg uses the wi-fi connection at his parents house so he doesn’t spend money on cell-phone use and internet. But Greg usually goes to Bruger’s Bagels for lunch and also get’s a drink from Starbucks at least once or twice a day when he is working his 5 day a week job. So Greg usually spends about $15.00 per day on food and Starbucks. (This is an over-estimate but when it comes to budgets it’s better to over-estimate your costs then to under-estimate them.) Let’s say that $15.00 per day also factors for the weekends because he might go out with Bob and get some food. So to calculate Greg’s monthly Food and Starbuck’s expenditures we multiply $15.00 by 30 days per month. So the total Greg spends on Food and Starbuck’s per month is…HOLY CRAP! Greg spends $450 per month on Food and Starbucks! That’s a lot of money. But don’t forget that Greg is Bi-Polar and he has to buy his medication and see a shrink every 2 months. Every time he sees a psychiatrist he pays $100 and his medication costs him $200 per month. So if he sees his shrink once every 2 months then he pays $250 per month on his Psych visits and for meds. Let’s not forget that Greg pays $400 per month on his car, which he uses to get to his video editing job. Gasoline costs Greg about $50 per month. OK! So let’s tally up the cash flow for Greg’s budget. He makes $3,500 per month doing his job, and he spends about $1,100 per month on car, food and other expenses. This leaves Greg with $2,400 per month. Let’s set aside $400 per month for emergency expenses, like clothes, going out and other stuff and say that Greg can save $2,000 per month. Since Greg has $7,000 saved up and he wants $40,000 that makes it so he needs to save $33,000 more in order to make his goal and move out of his parents’ house. In order for Greg to save $33,000 with his current monthly saving of $2,000 per month it will take him,  17 months. That’s means Greg is going to have to stay with Mom and Dad for another year and a half before he can have a place of his own.

Greg now has a choice, he can try and fast track to earn more wealth…or he can use his current funds to finish college. If Greg chooses to finish school he will definitely find it easier to get a job. The problem is that not all jobs pay very much, and his current job is actually very good money. So he has to choose what he wants to do and factor in his pride/long term goals. In this scenario he chooses to fast-track moving out and not finishing school. But he could have easily taken a different path. Like many of us, Greg is impatient.

Well, waiting a year and a half isn’t good enough for Greg. He wants to move out in 1 year. So in 1 year at his current savings rate he will have $24,000. $24,000 plus his $7,000 in the bank leaves Greg with $31,000 which is $9,000 less than his goal savings amount. So let’s find a way for Greg to take advantage of his interests and the opportunities and resources of the United States of America and make an extra $9,000 bucks!

OK! Greg has some hobbies. He owns a blog, he likes to make videos and post them on You-Tube, he likes going out to the movies with Bob and he enjoys watching Babylon 5. He has other hobbies but his blog in particular has the potential to make him some money. Well, Greg uses Google AdSense in order to make money on his blog. In past 4 months he has made 48 posts, he had 6,000 unique visitors, 35 ad clicks and he has generated a whopping total of $3.50 …  It’s not that much money but 48 posts isn’t that many posts in 4 months. Also Google Adsense will only let Greg get his Advertising Revenue once he makes $10 or more. So he has a lot of work to do before he get’s that first check from Google.

So how can we help Greg make more money with his blog? First of all, he needs to produce more content. Greg needs to start waking up earlier and blog every day. Maybe he should read my article on waking up early for inspiriation! If Greg wakes up and blogs every day then he will double his content in a month and a half. But what is Greg blogging about? Does he have a target audience? Let’s say, Greg’s blog is pretty dis-jointed and he blogs about pretty much whatever is on his mind and he doesn’t care if anyone listens or not. THERE’s NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT! (hehe.) It will just take Greg a great deal of content and consistency in writing for him to attract the visitors that he needs to get AdSense clicks. This $3.50 stuff just isn’t working. In order for Greg to make $9,000 from his blog in 1 year he will need to generate $750 per month in advertising revenue. So this means he is going to need to increase the viewership of his blog by 200 fold in order to have the kind of traffic he needs. Fortunately there are some tools that Greg can use to in order to get more juice out of his blog. Since Greg uses a popular web hosting company for webhosting. He has access to something called Awstats, this application tracks his hits and unique visitors. But Greg can also use Awstats to find out which of his blog articles are getting visited the most and also he can find out what websites and pages are referring traffic to him the most. Let’s not forget that with Awstats Greg can determine which search keywords are relating to his page. If Greg uses this information wisely he will be able to determine what articles are the most popular. But let’s take this information grabbing a step further and recommend Google Analytics to Greg. Since Greg uses WordPress for his blog he can download the latest Google Analytics plugin…Here’s a link. With this plugin he’ll be able to use Google Analytics and this program is GODLY powerful. With Google Analytics Greg will be able to find out what articles are bringing in the most Adsense revenue from related links. He then will have the choice to write more articles that are along the same subject lines as ones that are attracting clicks, or not. Google Analytics is great because it can also show you what country and city the web hits are coming from.

ijustine is a YouTube celebrity that I saw on Hulu.com

Once Greg starts to pump out more content for his blog, he can then use the many opportunities of the United States of America that are at his fingertips to spread the word about his blog and attract more visitors to his content. He can put up flyers about his blog. He can join other blogs that are in the United States of America and use his website URL in his avatar or post signature. Greg can get business cards made with his website information on them and then give them to people who may be interested in his blog. But once Greg gets a critical mass of articles that he thinks are really good. Let’s say he posts 500 articles that he is really proud of. Then he can advertise his website, on the web and even on TV. Last night I saw IJustine on a Hulu commercial when I was watching Babylon 5. Who’s IJ? IJ is this girl. What’s interesting is that she started as a YouTuber who posted videos of how she wants a pizza or other stuff. Anyway now she is getting commercials and her commercials are popping up during the commercial breaks of me watching Babylon 5. Well, once Greg has more content he can make either a text advertisement which shows up when someone puts a related keyword into google search. Or else Greg can create an actual video promoting his blog and if it is up to quality standards, Greg can put that video advertisement up on TV.

Well now we know that the USA is a money making machine! Just remember, if you don’t use it…someone else will. And there’s no telling what anyone else is going to do with the awesome wealth creating power of the United States of America, so you might as well harness some of that potential for yourself!

[UPDATE – 12/8/2012]

Looking back on this post it is very clear Greg had a decent plan. One thing I’ve noticed in talking to people over the last couple years is that going into debt for college can really create a hamper on one’s life. It’s like a gamble. The people who have done the best are either the ones who went into debt and paid it off quickly…or else the people who finished community college and worked through their vocational and or preparation for 4 year school degree’s. In the example above, Greg chose not to finish school. That can be just as risky and going into debt, because although credential-ism is unfair and often unjustified in the workplace, it is a very real aspect of societal interaction. So although Greg may do well with his endeavors, he may hold himself back mentally or neurotically by not getting that degree.

Speaking from experience, I took a different path than our virtual friend “Greg” here. I spent the money I saved up to finish my education in International Relations. Although the degree isn’t making me “tons” of money by a long-shot, I definitely do find that I have an advantage in getting a job. Also, I moved out of my parents house only a few months after getting my degree. So there’s something to say for the discipline and motivation required to actually finishing a task that one set’s out for.

But Greg, we hope you the best in your endeavors and never give up on your dreams! (oh wait, Greg isn’t real)

-Tyler

PS: Thanks for reading!

Ok right. So according to my latest article we have “Precious Mind Resources.” What are these resources? In a nutshell Precious Mind Resources are a mix between, time, attention and memory, both short-term and long-term. When I say, Mind, I don’t necessarily mean brain. Although I feel that the mind is primarily housed in the brain. I also think that the mind is wherever the perspective is focused on. So the Precious Mind Resources are a combination of the gaze of the mind and how that information is processed in the mind/brain organism. So when I was driving and getting frustrated I was sucking up Precious Mind Resources faster than fuel in my gas tank. I was focused on the road, trying to find parking in LA, which is no fun and trying to keep track of the time. At the same time I was focused on using my short-term to remember if any parking spots opened up. Overall my Mind was losing resources especially patience fast. So I guess you could say that Precious Mind Resources are a mix of patience and focus.

If you can save your Precious Mind Resources (PMR) then you can re-allocate them to do different things for you. So instead of being frustrated you can divert your PMR to do something else that is more productive. Maybe you can use your PMR to think about driving safely, or trying to remember what important events you have coming up instead of being caught with your pants down by life in general. Let’s face it, we all get busy and taking a few seconds every few hours to think about our goals and objectives is a good use of PMR.

But PMR can be used to do a lot more than manage your affairs and stay safe while driving. You can use PMR to take an active approach to life and be more on top of every second of the day. More in the moment. Lately I’ve used my PMR to sort out my problems in spare time. I’ll try and think about what obstacles I have in my life when I walking somewhere or in the bathroom. Then I’ll use the time I spend with other people to not think about my problems, and instead focus on being a good communicator. This ties into friendliness and especially kindness. What’s kindness? Kidness is basically treating people and entities with pleasant concern and overall respect and good-will. It’s a really good state of being to be in.

This is where things start to heat up. If you use kindness, you will start seeing results in the system by which you live. Remember in the previous article I said that if you perceive that you live in a world of chaos then you will create that world. Well imaging that you live in a world of kindness, and one way that you share that kindness is by being kind to your neighbors and people that you meet while walking down the street. Well, if you are sincere you will probably either be ignored, or in many cases your kindness will be politely returned by some sort of response. Now think about all the kindness you can generate by showing good vibes to people consistently without being annoying. People might start saying to themselves, “Hey, this neighborhood isn’t so bad after all!” or “I never knew so many nice people lived and worked here? Too bad I have to commute!” or “Hmm, all these nice people will be good for property values.” I remember once I was walking down a street in Downtown San Francisco and there was this dude walking on the sidwalk toward me and I nodded and said, “Hi, how’s it going?” and he stopped in his tracks and said, “You from around here. Or are you military?” and I said, “I just work loss prevention and I live down the street.” And he said, “Oh, cuz people usually aren’t that nice to me.” And I said, “Oh, well I was just saying ‘sup. Have a good night man!” and the guy walked away and said something nice that I can’t remember but I think it was something like, “Later.” Anyways it felt good to take a risk and show respect.

All that kindness has a way of multiplying. The more kind you are, the more opportunities you will have to have kindness returned, and also you will have a demeanor so other people will sense that you are more inclined to accept their kindness. The more you practice using your Precious Mind Resources (PMR) for the purpose of cultivating kindness you will find that conversations will be easy to strike up with people and random people in your daily life like people at the local coffee shop and employees at your favorite stores will start treating you more like an acquaintence or new friend than a cold customer. This makes your aura change. You will become more confident and will seem like a generally more “worth the flesh that you keep inside your clothes” kind of a person. You will be worth your weight, as opposed to just seeming like a bag of flesh that blobs around town. So then when someone either at work or school or randomly at some location like Starbucks or something approaches you with a business opportunity, there is a good chance that you were sharing your kindness with other people in the days and hours before the encounter with this opportunity and you will be more receptive and will have an auric field that is accepting the responsibility of wealth and power. You will seem more capable to accept a potential opportunities riches because you are already well practiced in accepting the fruits of daily peace of mind. And that’s all that most business transactions truly are, two people trying to achieve better piece of mind by putting their skills and resources together.

I have had dozens of business opportunities that have presented themselves in the past few years that just happened because I was genuinely respectful and positive and could remember the person’s name of whom I was talking to. So remember peoples’ names. That’s a winner tip. It’s more important than birthdays or any of that stuff. Birthdays are for facebook, if you can remember someone’s name then you are on the sincere path of opportunity. I’d say knowing someone’s name is priority #1, then know what their current situation is, are they in school? Are they working somewhere? Do they have any hobbies? If you know that stuff then you will make yourself a formidable acquaintence and people will wonder at coffee shops why you are such a great person to be around and they will probably wish that you knew them as well as you knew everybody else. That’s when the kindness starts to get exponential growth instead of linear growth. After getting a free tea tonight I was walking down the street and ran into the lady that put some of my Mom’s art up in her interior design store and she was with her daughter trying to get a table into her car. I met the daughter and then helped them get the kitchen table into the car and then headed on my way to the gym. I felt great. I had a hot cup of tea in my hand and every sip tasted like a small reminder of my small victories of little kindness blurbs.

Now as I share my kindness with you,

I give it with sincerity,

for even if we have never met,

I hope nothing but the best for you and your family.

We are all related by the atom and the cell and the mind,

so prosperity, tranquility and good times are my wishes for you.

As I listen to music on my computer,

I think of you,

and how you are the very reason why I have been listening to the same tracks over and over again,

trying to capture and replay the emotions of friendship,

which inspired this article in the first place.

with Love and Respect

-Tyler

I haven’t always been a positive person in my life. In high school and junior high school I was nice to people around me, but deep down I felt like the world itself was a place of chaos. I felt that in order to survive in a chaotic world, I needed to embrace chaos itself. I didn’t truly trust other people. I only trusted myself. I felt like I knew something special about how the world worked because I accepted the fact that everyone was out for themselves, and the people who weren’t out for themselves were nice, but they were kind of chumps. I had an attitude of, “That’s great that you’re nice and you sacrifice yourself for others… That’s one less thing that I have to do now.”

But is this outlook on the world actually how the system really works? By system I mean, the system by which people interact and have potential to prosper. The answer lies in one question, “What do you really want?” If you want to live in a system of chaos, the system will appear that way to you. Your desires shape the system by which you live. It’s not the other way around. This may seem strange at first because we are taught in school to imagine civilization as a force that brings order to the world. And without it, we would live in the opposite, which is savagery. But the fact of the matter is that if you are reading this, you haven’t known true savage existence in your life. Sure you may have been on a camping trip, or you may be an extreme sports hero or you may be one of those outdoor survival types. But for the most part, after everything is said and done, we can come back to a world of civilization and order after stints of chaotic episodes. But does that mean we perceive the world to be this way? Many of us perceive the world to be chaotic because we see things relatively. School and work and family seem to float over us in a blur of confusion and responsibility. And we compare these busy schedules to the small amount of free time that we really have and we say, “Life lately has been chaotic.”

Well I say, life can be tranquil, peaceful and full of kindness. And that kindness can cause opportunities to sprout like beans and little sprouts in a hydroponic garden! One of the first ways to make life tranquil is to learn to accept things and fight less. This in no way means to give up in life. What I mean is to take a stance in life that if we were to liken it to a fighting style would be more like Aikido than Boxing. Use the energy of life to your advantage. In Boxing, you have to keep your guard up and block hits and counter attack and be really strong in order to overcome your opponent. (Let’s say that your opponent represents problems and complications in life.) But in Aikido you use movement to parry and redirect the energy of the attacks from your opponent. How how can you redirect problems in life to lean toward tranquility. The answer is that you need to change your perspective on things. If you find yourself getting frustrated then instead of swearing all the time, try and find the source of the frustration and then learn from it. Once you learn from your frustration then adjust your perspective. If you can’t change what’s frustrating you right now, then look at the situation differently in order to save, what I call, “Precious Mind Resources.” For example I was in Los Angeles over Haloween trying to find a place to park so I could go to a party with a good friend. LA was packed with cars and there were cops everywhere and there was honking and overall it wasn’t the best time to drive. Not to mention I don’t like traffic so it was double trouble for me. Well, I started to get really frustrated when I couldn’t find any parking. And when I started to make wrong turns into the part of town where you go up the hill to the houses overlooking the city, I was just like “WAAAA! Get me out of here.” Then I thought I could turn right to get where I needed to go, but it was a dead end into a gated community and I was like, “GRRRR!” I was starting to waste time and I was beginning to fear that’d I hit my car or miss the party entirely. So the first thing I did was identify the source of my frustration, which was being in traffic. Then I learned from it and said, “Ok. I know I’m not the best LA driver. I need to find somewhere to park fast.” Then I changed my perspective and said, “You know what. I don’t think I’m going to find anywhere to park anytime soon. I’ll just park at that pay parking area and cough up the $20 bucks!” My friend was dissappointed and felt like we could have found something if we kept looking but my new perspective was, “He can think I’m a driving wimp all he wants, at least I didn’t get into an accident. And now I can enjoy myself at the party.” Take special not of the “enjoy myself at the party,” part. It is important. The reason why it’s important is because it symbolizes the “Precious Mind Resources” that I was talking about earlier.

Thanks for reading Kindness Multiplies and can cause Opportunity PART 1

Stay tuned for the continuation of this article only at www.overidon.com !

I eat meat. I drink coffee. Well, latte’s. I don’t drink caramel macchiato’s anymore. But for some reason I feel like it is time for me to start learning Reiki. I recently read the book, Crystal Enlightenment. And I learned a great deal about the healing properties of crystals. And I also read that some crystals are actually crystalline life forms. Deep down I always believed that some crystals were life forms, but it felt great to see it in writing. I personally believe that everything that is and everything that is not in our universe has varying degrees of life force. Actually, just writing that down makes me feel good. I love life forms! That’s how I feel about it. So maybe I should persue Reiki because I love life forms. And since I believe in crystalline life forms I will include them in crystal healing sessions in the future. I was born June 26th, 1980 so that makes me born the week of the empath. That means that I’m supposed to be empathic. That means that I am able to share in the emotions and feelings of others. This is true about me.

I remember in high school I used to tap into the empathic side of myself. I was in the peer assistance league in high school and I also was a part of this program called KSR the Knowledge and Social Responsibility Program. Those programs taught me to tap into my emotional and socially aware sides of myself.

Why do I want to learn about Reiki? Is it because I am trying to become more powerful? Is it because I feel something inside or lack something inside that I am trying to fill by supposedly helping other people? Is it out of greed? Deep down I think I can honestly say that I have been interested in Reiki in the past because of one or more of those reasons. I mean it is very romantic to envision oneself as having the power to lay hands on someone else and use the power of one’s own life force to heal them. But I think my old desires to want to help people were what was stopping me from taking the first steps in Reiki. What I mean by this is that Reiki is more about accepting energy that is already there than creating something out of nothing. I know this now intuitively without having to talk to someone else about Reiki. This is because just like how I am now more in tune with my crystals, I can understand that wants come from lacking, so do desires. But abundance comes from accepting responsibility. You have to accept things like they both come from within yourself and are confirmed by the outside cosmos at the same time.

Lately I have made some major breakthroughs in my life. I have been able to sit down and study math, albeit basic math. I have entered into programming with the Python language, which is something I’ve always wanted to do since I was very young. And now I am starting to finally study crystals and begin to treat crystals as lifeforms that need to be listened to not like how one listens to a person, but how someone might listen to a tree or a mountain range. I can feel my quartz crystal ball upstairs wishing that it was down here on the kitchen table with me helping me write. But the mere fact that I am sensitive to my crystal and can remember it’s beautiful spherical shape and many intricate planes and interior sensitivities.

As you embark on your own spiritual journey. I wish you nothing but great success. You already have all the tools you need to find what you are looking for. You just need to accept the fact that each new skill and ability requires responsibility. To yourself, and to the cosmos. The more powerful you become, the more mindful and emotionally and intuitively stable you will need to be. Otherwise, your power will be short lived. I can attest to that personally too many times than I’d like to admit. It seems like every time that I thought that I got to the place that I needed to be where I would either be happy or financially self-sufficient to support my goals I would eventually self-sabotage myself or become overwhelmed. The only solace is that for every failed attempt at either enlightenment or tranquility, the cosmos and I have shared a few memories. Those memories can be learned from and they make the process of becoming more in tune with one’s own spiritual, physical, mental and emotional abilities less like a chore and more like a pleasant brisk walk to the ocean.

It may be cold outside,

but the walk keeps our bodies warm,

like the gyro,

always spinning slightly,

we too learn,

with every new revolution.

Thank you for reading this article of mine and I hope you remember that now that you have read it, this article belongs to you as well. For the observer and the observed, the writer and the written share the sacred bond friendship with every drop of time that they spend together.

-Tyler