Happy One Year Birthday Wildly Passionate!

Side Note: This 16th was the one year anniversary for this blog. Thanks for reading and expect great things in the next year! My passion has been ignited and I’m unstoppable! For any new visitors, welcome to the new era of passion and life. Email me at joodieshy@gmail.com if you have any questions about this website or would like to contribute to the blog in some way. It’s great to be wild, and passion is all we have to love our lives. I hope to inspire and nurture your expansion in life/love/career/everything!

What does it mean to be qualified?

Qualified: adj.

1. Meeting the standards, requirements, and training for a position. (via Wiktionary)

Letting cats decide your success?

Hmm… My advice? Invent your own standards!

Really, who has the qualifications to decide what makes a person qualified?! There can’t be a certificate for that… who would give it out? Who would sign it? Cats?!

Inventing New Standards

This is a constant evolution today. It’s always happening, flowing. Change in who can do what, why, when, where, etc. Women can vote. Interracial marriage is legal (still working for the gays). Straight men can wear pink. Gays can work in political positions. Standards constantly being raised and expanded! Sometimes the transformations are big and history making, other times it’s small cultural changes we experience. You have every right to start making your own standards. Nobody else can really know what makes you feel validated, only you can feel that. These examples may not be specifically related to your life or career goals, but see them as inspiration. Maybe you’d simply like to be pioneer of your own life. The first step is to get rid of everyone else’s thoughts, views, opinions, feelings, and fully embrace your own. Your life. Your trail. Blaze on!

Landing The Gig

So you’ve decided to set your own standards. Maybe you meet them, maybe you fall short, or maybe you really are WILDLY QUALIFIED already! Isn’t it great, you get to decide! If you think you still have some growing or learning to do before making any promises that’s important. Nobody wants to feel like a fraud. Many well educated and talented people fear being exposed as frauds in their area (such as many popular artists and writers). Why?

They think someone else is setting the standards for them. It’s not true. If you are doing something, and you love it, enjoy it, or even if you’re terrible at it… you are NOT a fraud. You ARE doing it! It’s impossible to be fraudulent if you did the work and wrote the article, took the picture, painted the walls or whatever your goal is. You won’t get sued for acting with authority. In the court of law, I believe your case would be thrown out for lack of evidence. (Obviously, lying and making up degrees/certificates is the exception. Don’t do it.) If you’re doing ANYTHING you are valid. It just matters that you’re doing. The level of skill and expertise you have really doesn’t matter. It will change with time.

You Are Authentic

If you like something you did when you were 6 years old, but now you’ve thrown it out the door, maybe you should take another look. When you were 6 you loved doing. (Creating, dancing, jumping, screaming…) You were just as qualified to love your work as you are now! You didn’t beat yourself up for making purple trees when you were 6. So act as if you’ve got all you need. You have the authenticity and you still love to DO, just like you did when you were young. So, really, you’ve been deciding your level of success since you were a child. Try to get back in touch with that wild child, loving everything you created, showing-and-telling to whoever would listen, and ignoring the kid sleeping in the back row of the classroom.

Because you love it, you’re qualified to do it. Embrace what you love.

It’s great to be unqualified: make it up as you go along!

This is part of my Unmapped Path life project and writing series. To read more about the series click here. As more articles come together I will compile an easy-to-access page to find my writings on various related topics.

Problem: I’d like to live a life of freedom and passion, but I don’t know what I want to do, I’m not passionate about anything.

We often wonder, what am I supposed to do with my life? It’s something everyone has to think about. It’s something everyone has to make decisions about. But sometimes, we really have no clue what to focus on. What is my passion? What is my purpose? What should I do? In the online world your passion typically fits neatly into a small category of topics called a “niche”. Wouldn’t it be great if we all knew we loved testing laundry products and could follow our dream of being a consumer product reviewer? Or, if we all knew we really loved talked endlessly about fitness tips and nutrition? Or if urban gardening seemed like the most fascinating thing to film? Maybe you are fantastic at drawing frogs? It would be great! We all strive for this! It’s really a gift if you’ve already got it all figured out. But for the rest of us…

Our lives are not neat. We do not fit perfectly into any category. Our interests have range, fluctuate, or perhaps we don’t yet know what we really care about. Here’s what I know:

• Passion develops over time. You are not born with it.
• You must endure a lot of trial-and-error to find some clarity to know your true passions.
• Sometimes you’ll stand alone in your interests. (But if you are still standing after you realize this, you’ve hit gold.)
• Passion is an emotionally charged thing. Stay open to your heart and listen to it (even when it’s whispering).
• Sometimes we scare ourselves out of it (maybe we start getting too real, too alone, too… passionate even!) Have courage.
• Who are your idols? What were they passionate about? Why? Use these answers to develop clarity.
• Lastly, this is common, normal, and completely okay. You have company, you just don’t know it (we’re all wandering on our own paths too).

There are many ebbs and flows our lives go through and sometimes we have to hang out in the fog and wait for things to settle before we can see where you put our feet out next. It’s difficult to find your way with no horizon point. And this can cause a lot of frustration! (It can be very scary too!) But this is exactly what you’re here for. To pave the way in a new direction. To move forward, driven by your own motives, your own heart, your own truths. It’s hard when there’s no lighthouse to show you the shoreline and lead you home. The very essence of your life’s journey is all about leaving the light you know and finding the light you love. Developing a compass is really the best thing you can do to avoid walking around in circles. And in my next article I’ll explain a bit more on this “compass”. For now, make piece with the fogginess surrounding you.

You are in uncharted territory. It’s brave, it’s brilliant, and it’s all yours! You are the pioneer of your own frontier. The possibilities couldn’t be more unimaginable. Be patient with the land. The fog will clear.

“The Boss Of You” Book Review from Joodie Shy on Vimeo.

A really good read for all my passionate women out there desperate to strike out on their own. It’s a dream, and this book will start putting the structure together for you to keep afloat. Write up a business plan, budget and mission statement with this book! I wish I’d taken my business more seriously when I started out. How much time I could have saved!

If you’re planning to start a paysite of your own you’re going to need to get familiar with several web based services out there. They will help you market, sell, and communicate with your customers. Note: These are all based on personal opinion, I’m receiving no commissions or payments to mention their names, I simply want you to know my top picks.

• Blogging Software: WordPress
• Email Newsletters/AutoResponders: Constant Contact
• RSS Feeds: Feedburner
• Video Clip Downloads: Clips4Sale
• Photoset Downloads: Images4Sale
• Videostreaming (Non-Nude) : Justin.tv
• Credit Card Processor: CCBill
• Online Accessible Email: Gmail
• Item Auctions: Ebanned
• Best Webcam Site: Camwhores

Quite honestly there are so many choices out there I feel bad leaving a few out. But if you can focus your work on a few sites and create an awesome profile, video, or other content it will pay off in the end. Some services may cost a small fee while others are completely free. Check out customer support and see if they are willing to handle any issues you may come across. Sometimes free services are poorly supported and will be more of a headache than a help to your website. I’ll be posting a similar post listing my paysite computer software kit.

This is part number one of the “First Steps” series. Before you can register your domain name you need to know what you want to call your business! Writing down a list of keywords that inspire you, or describe you can be very helpful. Adding words like ‘porn, sex, xxx’ to your domain name may limit your reach on the web. For instance, many email spam blockers would instantly categorize any legitimate email you may be sending out as spam. Also, search engines may filter you out immediately and possibly unfairly. Once you have your keywords, form a few possible business name ideas. Keep them short. Catchy. Descriptive. And enticing. Use something you wouldn’t mind seeing written out on a business card, or in a logo on your website. Something with lots of possibilities. Also, keep it easy to spell and remember. Many people just use bookmarks, but isn’t it much easier to type out your favorite websites and access them from any computer?

Now comes the reality. Checking if your domain name is available. Head over to GoDaddy.com (by the way I’m not affiliated with them, I’ve simply used their services for years and never had one problem) with your ideas nearby. The best suggestion I have is to aim for a .com. Using .net, .org, .biz, etc can be harder to remember and many people just remember your business name, assuming it’s a .com and they can find it later. Essentially, make it as easy as possible for your potential customers to find you. Sadly, you have to assume your site is one of many in a large list, and most people have a very short attention span. Make sure you stick out in people’s minds and make it easy for them to remember you! Now, all of this can be very difficult considering the huge amount of .com’s that are already registered and taken. Very often I’ve had to go to option 4, 5 or 6 on my list. But stay strong, and make sure you get something you can live with for a very long time (changing domain names often is bad for business).

So now, let’s say you’ve found the perfect domain name. What next? It’s actually pretty simple.

1. Add to cart.
2. Enter in your personal and billing information (GoDaddy accepts Paypal!)
3. Ignore all the crappy addons they want to sell you.
4. IMPORTANT! Add Private Registration. This is absolutely mandatory in my eyes. Just do it.
5. As far as picking registration length… ask yourself how optimistic you’re feeling about this business? (…hopefully very!) Go for a few years.
6. Again, ignore all the ‘great deals’ they want to sell you.
7. Check out.
8. Save all the login info they give you.

And that’s it. You now have a domain name! Stay tuned for part two in the “First Steps” series!

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