In brief, the article is about Dr. Henderson and his work to integrate full inclusion, a program where disabled and non-disabled students learn together, into the O’Hearn school and ensure that every student at the O’Hearn receives a quality education. My personal opinion is he’s achieved a great success in his work and the people I interviewed agreed. As Dr. Henderson is retiring at the end of this school year it was a perfect time to profile him and his achievements.

If you have a few minutes and want to read about a great educational leader, check out O’Hearn’s ‘heart and soul’ prepares to move on at DotNews.com. If you enjoy the piece I would love it if you shared it on your favorite social networks. As always, any critiques are very welcome but please do so here. Any comments relevant to the content of the piece please post at DotNews.com but any feedback for me please keep on this blog.

Though a little bit of money flowed in here and there via various freelance writing gigs and advertisements, it was by no means equivalent to a full-time salary. Over the past two months my incoming cash flow has increased more and more each day, but there’s still a story to tell from the previous ten months.

Resigning in a Recession

One year ago I resigned from my full-time job as a Senior Tax Administrator at State Street Bank. While my time at State Street was beneficial and lucrative, it simply wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Armed with that knowledge and a hefty savings account I turned in my resignation letter and looked to the future.

A lot has already been written on why starting a company during a recession might be a wise choice, but let me go over a few points briefly [also check out Paul Graham's "Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy" post and this article from the UK Times Business section by Rachel Bridge).

Five reasons to start a business in a poor economy:

1. You might lose your job; a side business provides a safety net.
2. You likely won't earn a big raise, so you'll lose less by quitting in a recession.
3. Prices and thus costs will drop during a recession.
4. If you can succeed in a recession, you'll thrive when we recover.
5. Value will be a priority for everyone, new companies can gain business by pricing low.

Successful Savings

At the time, I had no real plan about how I'd make money but honestly, it did not concern me. Nearly all my friends and family members were shocked by my resignation. After all, every economic indicator was pointing to a long term recession in the United States and global economies. A lot of people thought it was foolish to leave a well paying job to pursue my passions, especially when I did not know exactly what those passions were!

Readers of My Last Name Means Money know my opinion that storing as much money as you can in online savings accounts is vitally important to your success and tolerance for risk. It's an obvious tip, but one I implemented very well. Once my savings account reached a level where it could fund my lifestyle for at least six months, the risk became bearable.

Wise Investments

A big reason my savings account is still supporting me is that I aimed to withdraw money only when necessary. There were many times I failed and made foolish expenditures, but for the most part I stuck with the plan and still have enough cash to ride me through the next six months. Overestimating how much money was needed to survive for six months also gave me plenty of leeway to afford those not so wise spending decisions.

A big use of my savings account went towards investments that led to a simpler lifestyle that was easier to afford. My used bicycle easily paid for itself countless times now through improved health, lowered transportation costs and free entertainment. It also gave me plenty of time to think while pedaling about the city of Boston. Time to think is a very valuable asset.

Another investment was continuing to be a Boston Celtics season ticket holder. Though it was a huge use of my money, most of the tickets ended up getting sold to friends at face value. Sure, that cash didn't earn any interest but I was able to hook up my friends with Celtics tickets and hold a great contest at The 42nd Estate to win a pair of Celtics playoff tickets. It's a product that has maintained it's value and allowed me to get back money throughout the year that otherwise might have been spent on a trip or other use that I could not re-sell.

I also continued to pay down my student loans and am now less than $3,000 away from being completely debt-free! The wisest investment I made by far, however, is the one I did not make. When I resigned from State Street I also elected to not re-invest my 401k into an IRA. Instead, the money has sat in a Citibank account as liquid cash. I would take a hit on cashing out my retirement account early so for now it sits there earning a little interest, which is immensely better than losing half its value in the stock market. Sometimes doing nothing is the best action.

Dow Jones Index for the past year, down 5,000+ points, -41%

A few not so wise expenditures:

• Xbox 360 Console – great release for frustration but no time to play with it.
• Second bike and bike frame – planned to fix up the first one and build a bike from scratch but again, no time.
• Countless domain variations of the42ndesate.com – a few were OK but I went way overboard with this one.

Pinpointing my Passions

Along the way many, many mistakes were made, but these mistakes enabled me to learn about myself and my true passions. Sometime in November/December I realized my passion was right in front of my face the entire time. I love blogging and social media and spent a lot of time learning and growing my knowledge in those fields. It was then that we began an overhaul of The 42nd Estate. We recently pushed out a new design and began publicizing our service offerings:

• Freelance writing
• Blog & social media consulting
• Web hosting

Over the past few years, I picked up a lot of knowledge about blogging, writing and maintaining WordPress installations. I also spent a lot of time researching how to tweak our servers and picking the brains of my buddies who are experts in the field, which has enabled us to begin offering hosting to clients who need it. I am by no means the world’s most authoritative source in any of these fields, but I also realized I don’t need to be. My goal was never to strike it rich, but merely to afford a simple lifestyle while using my knowledge to help other people and organizations become successful.

Over the past few months The 42nd Estate has begun acquiring more and more clients each month and genuinely helping people become successful. It’s a great feeling to finally discover your passion and realize it can be your job too. And that, my friends, is why the word “nearly” is in the title, cash-flow free for nearly a year!

Photo of all that cash is by Tracy O. Thanks Tracy!

Then, the power went out due to the snowstorm here in Boston. NSTAR, our electrical utility, was quick to act and the power was back on about twenty minutes later. Once my router rebooted, I posted Car-free for nearly a year! to my blog. After it was live, I tweeted out a link to the post and updated my linkedin status with the url too (tip of the hat to Rachel Levy for the linkedin idea).

Then, the power went out, again. Fifteen minutes later, all the appliances in my house began whirring up again. It’s amazing how silent the house becomes when there’s no electricity to power all our various gadgetry. Luckily, my laptop’s battery was fully charged so I could continue working, but the lack of internet certainly limited me.

I spent the next two hours tweaking a few things with The 42nd Estate’s slick new design, writing up a review of Saints & Soldiers for OTIBR, and working on a few tax related matters. Then…I know you can feel what’s coming by now…the power went out!

When my internet re-appeared, I noticed some hits coming into my car-free living post from reddit and Universal Hub. I figured it’s time to go for broke and did something I never did before, submitted my post myself to StumbleUpon. Afterwards, I sent off an e-mail to a good friend with a few ideas for a site re-design he’s working on for one of the local newspapers here (more to come on this soon). Went downstairs, checked the mail, saw my business cards were here (pictures coming soon), and then…

I won’t even write it but for those keeping track, that’s number four of the day.

At this point, my motivation and productivity were rapidly depleting. To take advantage of the little energy I had left, I packed up my laptop, put on my jacket and walked out the door to head down to the Sugar Bowl Cafe down the street for coffee and free Wi-Fi. Literally as my hand was closing the door, I heard that familiar whirring noise running through the house. I sighed and walked back inside, turned on the coffee maker and flipped on my Xbox 360. At this point, I needed some stress relief and there’s really nothing quite like Call of Duty 4 to take the edge off.

After a few rounds, I heard my iPhone buzzing a few times with new e-mails. I reached over, touched into my inbox and saw a new message on my facebook wall from Linda:

just saw a link to your blog on boston.com… anyway i think we are long overdue for one of our dinners, so if it ever stops snowing put one on your schedule

For my non-Bostonian readers, boston.com is the web-site of The Boston Globe, the preeminent newspaper in Boston. I clicked over and sure enough on their home page under New England Blogs, there it was, Prose of a Pol’s latest post on the year of carlessness.

My jaw, iPhone and pants immediately dropped to the floor.

OK, I lied about the pants bit.

And the iPhone…but my jaw did drop, that part was true!

So I sent out a few texts and tweets to my friends with about seven hundred exclamation marks, checked my server status, and then just sat there in a state of mild shock. The newspaper that I grew up reading, the real one, not that tabloid on Herald Street, just linked to my blog, on their front page. Wow.

At the end of the day, Prose of a Pol had its biggest traffic day since moving over to the new server and it help up perfectly. Reports from my friends stated that the site continued to load instantly during the whole day. I confirmed this fact periodically throughout the night on my iPhone while I worked on a few other tasks. For anyone whose curious, the final stats showed 1481 visitors and five power outages, compared to an average of 400 visitors. It certainly wasn’t my biggest day, that honor belongs to the day fark.com listed my Battlestar Politica post, but being on the front page of boston.com is something I’m proud of. So to whoever is responsible for updating the New England blogs section at the Globe, thank you!

So far, only one thing is certain, I do not miss driving, not even a little. If anything, cutting driving out of my life has actually improved my life! My transportation related stress decreased significantly, my health improved quite a bit, my wallet is fuller than it would have been and my general happiness has skyrocketed. I’ve carried items on my bicycle that I never imagined possible (a full size cooler for one, strapped across my shoulders), pedaled distances I would have once thought impossible (to Walden pond and back and then some), and carried my bike for miles at a time when it’s broken down on the road. Plus, there’s many small trips into and through the city that are actually faster than driving, saving me time and money.

The thing that really surprised me the most, however, is how completely baffled many people are by my car-free existence. There’s been many times when I’m out and about at a social gathering and once people find out I got there via bicycle and was planning on returning via bicycle, they start offering rides and asking three or four times if I’m sure I don’t want a ride. My insistence that I do not need a ride because I already have a vehicle, which I enjoy using, slowly sets in but they remain shocked and awed at the notion that I would rather propel myself a few miles while enjoying mother nature rather than sitting in a box tapping a pedal. I feel alive and energized when I’m pedaling while driving leaves me bored and tired.

My seven-eight year driving career helps me understand the appeal of driving but at this point, having experienced the sheer joy of cycling to my destinations, I really don’t think I could go back. I’m even planning on buying a touring bicycle and traveling up and down the east coast, across the country to California and possibly beyond! Perhaps I’ll change my mind as I grow older and the constant pedaling takes its toll on my body, but for now I’m sticking with my bicycle and no, I don’t want a ride, do you?

*Photo by Lukas Vermeer.

1. This blog now has better up-time than Google!

Check it out, I signed up for a web-site monitoring service called mon.itor.us and received my first weekly report recently:



Yeah! This blog had better up-time than Google last week! My host for this blog is bluehost. So far I’ve had very few to no issues with them and they are always quick to respond to my e-mails. For the low, low price of $6.95 / month it’s tough to beat bluehost. Note, those are affiliate links so if you do choose to purchase some hosting from bluehost it helps me out with paying for the hosting costs of this blog and you get great hosting for a low cost. A win-win situation!

2. This blog now features only one sidebar column.

I’ve increased the post text size and made the post width a little bit wider while combing the two sidebar columns into one. I’m going through a minimalist phase and will look to move or more of the sidebar deals into other places or simply remove them to give this blog a nice clean easy to read look. As always, let me know via a comment here or an e-mail how you feel about the new look.

3. This blog now lists less categories.

There are still way too many categories on this site and in the sidebar to the right but slowly I’m converting some categories to tags to decrease the huge list. Over time the categories list will be broken down to ten or less very high-level areas with the tags being used for specificity.

4. This blog now has a social network page.

Instead of listing the various social networks I’m a part of in my sidebar, I created a page solely to list any social networks I’ve joined so you can keep up with me in my dealings all over the intertubes.

5. This blog now used as a reference for college research papers!

I discovered a curious reference to this site today, the site, cheat house (which I will not link to due to Google Adsense policies), hosted a paper by a student and check out one of his/her references:



It appears this student used my paper comparing U.S. accounting standards to international accounting standards as a reference for his/her paper.

That’s all for today. Hope everyone has a nice relaxing Sunday.

Check it out, here’s me duplicating some of the art on my public web-site, Banksy to prove I am the real Banksy.

See. Clearly I am Banksy as that signature which I just wrote looks exactly like the one on the main Banksy site.

Yup, the whole being British thing and living in the U.K. was just a ploy to throw you off my scent. Though I’ve preferred to perform my art in anonymity, I must now come out and declare myself publicly to prevent that hack Robin Gunningham from getting the credit for my brilliance.

Here’s the me replicating the infamous gorilla from my menu page.

See. Identical.

Even the purple will make sense now. It’s a shout-out to my real public high school, the Boston Latin School, whose fine art department and classic education made me the rebel I am today.

So once again, do not believe the Mail on Sunday when they “report” that Robin Gunningham is Banksy.

No, I am Banksy.

I will now retire to my own personal island for I am rich.

Oh, and here’s one of my favorite Banksy / Adam Pieniazek pieces:

Don’t believe me?

Are you Banksy?

Check out my author bio on the brazeen careerist. It’s a better description of me than my own about page!

That’s it for today, I’m off to see the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, tonight. If you haven’t heard it’s apparently a wicked, wicked amazing flick. I’ll let you all know tomorrow if it lives up to the immense hype.

• How I Quit Smoking In Less Than One Minute And You Can Too! Part 1

Also subscribe to my feed to ensure you catch the whole series!

In the first part of this series we discussed how after 18 years of living nicotine free, a drunken encounter with the cancer stick led me down the desolate path of addiction to cigarettes. I say addiction to cigarettes because the addiction goes behind being hooked on a drug, it’s also a lifestyle, a social enhancer (and destroyer), and it’s something to do. It’s the last one that really gets you too. While waiting for a bus, walking down the street, taking a break from the cubicle, listening to someone talk, reading a book, and so on and on goes the list of activities made more bearable with a smoke in hand.

To those who’ve never smoked, it’s tough to explain why it’s so difficult (yet, easy) to stop. Before I started smoking I always thought that if I ever did smoke I could easily just quit whenever and be done with it. Once I started smoking I realized my previous thoughts weren’t quite 100% valid. There was some truth to the idea of just quitting, but when social factors such as friends, advertisements (the stop smoking ads would just remind me I hadn’t had a smoke lately), and other social situations are added into the mix it becomes tough to separate smoking from your daily, weekly and monthly activities.

The post-dinner smoke becomes a habit and eventually all activities are associated with how they relate to you having a smoke. Getting up in the morning means your first smoke of the day, showering means you can have a smoke while you wait to dry off, finishing your homework is a cause for a cancerous celebration, and look at that, the end of your cigarette is just a reason to light another one with its butt so you don’t waste lighter fluid. It’s not so much that quitting is difficult, it’s that returning to your regular life without a cig in your hand is awkward, foreign and overwhelming.

With that, as promised let’s get to the pros of smoking:

• It’s a social enhancer.

At a party or other social event, smokers automatically have something to discuss or use as an introduction.

• It’s legal.

I’m sure a lot of smokers would prefer a nice, fresh Cuban cigar to their cancer sticks, but alas the non-free market doesn’t work.

• Help Southern farmers.

Though many people in the Southern states have expanded to other crops, there still exist a lot of people who rely on tobacco for their livelihood. You might be killing yourself slowly, but at least you’re putting food on someone’s table!

• It’s a relatively cheap drug.

Compare to alcohol or coffee or any of the other legal drugs and the per smoke cost of cigarettes seems cheap.

• Get a nicotine high every now and then.

Most smokers stop getting a high from their cigarettes a few packs into the habit and pack a day smokers are lucky to get any kind of feeling off the first puff of the day, yet alone the countless other butts they consume.

• Save medical costs by dying early.

Grim but true.

• Or smoke so much your lungs are encased in a protective layer of tar.

Unrealistic but very rare cases do exist where people live into their 100′s and smoke a pack a day. I don’t recommend this strategy.

Now, for the cons of smoking:

• It’s a social crutch.

Opposite to what I said above, cigarettes can become a social crutch for some, where they run to the smoking area at parties and stay there for the night’s duration.

• Increase pollution locally and globally.

Butts everywhere, mass-production emits tons of carbon and other chemicals, transport spews more pollution and even consuming the cigs puts smoke into the air.

• Smelly clothes.

You might not notice it but non-smokers will be repulsed by your stinky aroma.

• Less disposable income.

Here in Massachussets cigarettes costs about $6 per pack. If you smoke a pack a day, that’s $42 a week, $168 a month and a whopping $8,736 $2,016 a year! That’s insane!

• Being reliant on a foreign substance.

One of the big reasons I quit smoking was my desire for independence and freedom (this desire also led me to ditch the car and buy a bike). While a conscious smoker your happiness will be tied to whether you’ve gotten your nicotine fix recently or not. Not only that but it determines your daily schedule and what you can and can’t do.

Now there’s of course plenty of other negative aspects of smoking but I’m quite sure the vast majority of visitors here will be aware of the dangerous and unhealthy aspects of cigarettes so I’ll spare everyone from reciting the evils of smoking.

In the next (and possibly final) post in this series, we’ll tackle what I did to quit smoking, how you can use my strategy and we’ll open up the discussion for any other strategies or ideas you have. My strategy really did work and it’s simple enough that anyone can use it and logical enough that I feel it could work for a significant amount of you.

Being relatively smoke-free for more than six months now I’m here to tell you about the immense benefits of not smoking and how to quit smoking in less than one minute. There’s simply too much material to cover in one post so we’ll have a 3-4 part series about cigarettes, their dangers and how to quit. Today let’s go through some of my personal history. Next we’ll talk about the pros and cons of smoking, focusing on health, economics, and time. Finally, we’ll discuss how to quit smoking in less than one minute. If you’re not subscribed to the RSS feed, now would be a good time to subscribe!

For the first 18 years of my life I never smoked a cigarette and was very adamant about the dangers of smoking and trying to get people around me to quit. When I was a little kid there was one or two incidents where I threw a cup of water at my step-father while he was smoking. Needless to say I quickly figured out this was not a very good strategy! I’d also see my mom smoking on very rare occasions and would take the cigarette from her and threaten that I’d start smoking it if she didn’t put it out. So, you can see I was certainly not a smoker, knew the dangers and publicly promoted not smoking.

Alas, a few months into my freshman semester at the University of Southern California, I got a little too drunk and ended up smoking a cigarette and enjoying it. Though I smoked on only very rare occasions for a few months, eventually I degraded to being a pack a day smoker. The low point came that summer, while working for my step-dad as a construction worker, I smoked nearly two packs a day!

The next school year, I incidentally transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, home of Tobacco Road. Though I didn’t repeat the mistakes of smoking two packs a day I still smoked way too much. Even as a poor college student, I could easily find ways to scrounge up the $2-$2.25 for a pack of smokes. Yup, they are dirt-cheap there as much of America’s tobacco is grown in the region.

So my drunken slip turned into a habit and six years later at the age of 24 I was still smoking nearly a pack a day. At this point though my desire to quit was growing exponentially every day. A few incidents pushed me past the tipping point. In January of this year I quit smoking cold turkey. I had one relapse, which I expected to happen, but it only served to further convince me that not smoking is clearly the right move. Seven months into my smoke-free existence and I’m wicked happy and healthy. Buying and riding a bicycle personally helped me remember to keep my lungs clear and over the course of this series we’ll discuss similar strategies for kicking the habit and staying clean. Remember to sign up for the RSS feed or e-mail updates to stay up to date.