Instead of fighting traffic on a half hour commute to a 9-5 job where I’d do mind numbing tasks for 8 hours, I casually ate my breakfast and sauntered over to my in home office where I began my amazing new life of getting paid for my own creative work and ideas.

I was so excited, I logged into my computer and went my Yahoo calendar to mark the date (it’s a bit crazy to think that Google Calendar and Gmail didn’t even exist back then!)

Last week on May 13, 2010, I was able to fly to Texas with my family of 5 to watch my niece graduate from college. I don’t say this to brag by any means, but just to highlight an example of some of the freedoms that scary decision I made 8+ years ago has given me.

It’s not always rainbows and butterflies of course. Working for yourself can be stressfull at times. No “guaranteed” paycheck each week, no “sick days”, your work life often spills into your home life time, vacations usually mean bringing along some type of mobile device so you can still get work done so you don’t have *too much* catchup to do when you get back to work.

Let me say this loud and clear though: The benefits FAR outweigh any challenges that I’ve come across.

In that 8 year span of time, my wife and I have had 3 beautiful kids (now 7, 5, and 2) and I’ve had the privilege of watching grow up each day. I’ve been able to take them to school, pick them up, be at home with them during the day (which includes changing more than my fair share of diapers :). I’ve been ablet to witness many firsts, new discoveries, bumps, smiles, tears, and laughter over these wonderful 8 years.

I’m not the same guy I was 8 years ago, and by no means am I a perfect example of keeping everything balanced, but I like who I’ve become and I’m loving the journey as a continue to grow to be a better father, husband, friend, small business owner and entrepreneur.

I hereby proclaim May 13th to be Rindependence (R.odney’s I.ndependence) day :)

Failure’s my last name, never’s my first one. You see I hood a lot, and yeah I nerd some. Hood’s where the heart is, nerd’s where the words from. Don’t represent either, because I merged them.  - Lupe Fiasco – “I’m Beamin”

“I need to ship this check and letter to this address overnight on this account” I accentuated the “thises” by pointing at the appropriate spots on paperwork in front of me.

“Sorry, we don’t have any waybills here so we can’t ship on the other persons account”

“Ummm…thanks.”

I know I’ve shipped on someone else’s UPS account before at the UPS store, but the guy behind the counter didn’t offer any other explanation and just moved on to the next customer.

Were they just out of the forms? Is this a new policy? Can a store down the street do it? What are my other options to get it shipped?

Sure, those are questions I could have asked. They are also answers that the employee (he actually looked like the manager/owner) could have proactively offered in an effort to offer outstanding service instead of just meh.

After picking up my daughter from school, I drove to the next closest UPS Store, determined to get the item shipped.

“How can I help you?” asked the newish looking employee behind the counter.

“I need to ship this check and letter to this address overnight on this account” Again, I accentuated the “thises” by pointing at the appropriate spots on paperwork in front of me :)

“We no longer carry the waybills in the store that allow us to ship on 3rd party accounts.  UPS doesn’t allow us at UPS Stores to ship on 3rd party accounts anymore.  As an alternative, you could login to the UPS.com website and ship under their account.  We have a computer you can use right there to login if you have their info.  If not, you could print it at home and bring it back. Our Next Day Air delivery pickup time is about 4:30, so if you can bring it back by 4:00, you should be good to go”

“Thanks!” this time I meant it.

Now that’s customer service.

Granted,he seemed to be a new employee who was just getting trained…but here’s hoping that he remembers that level of interaction after he’s been doing the job for awhile.

I ended up shipping the check and letter out via USPS Priority Mail for $4.75 from my own home using Endicia and slipping it in the mailbox for my mail carrier to pick it up :)

It’s basically just a test because I can :)

I know people say that a lot, but I genuinely appreciate music from the jazz, hip hop, country, rock, punk, ska, r & b, folk, pop, top 40 genres.

From the oh-so-cool garage band you’ve never heard of to the american idol finalist.

But there’s one genre of music that I like that transcends all those genres, and that’s what I like to call “the funny talker”.

It includes Billie Holiday, Josiah Lemming, Amy Winehouse, Raul Midon, Edelle, Sharon Jones the lead singer of Sugarland, Duffy, Amos Lee, Eddie Vedder, Corinne Bailey Rae, David Gray, Ryan Bingham,  Al Green, Jason Mraz, Lil Wayne…hopefully you get the idea :)

Recently, I came across two new funny talkers, but only one of them stood out enough to make me click the infamous “buy album” link in iTunes.

Jazmine Sullivan and Madeleine Peyroux

I first came across Madeleine Peyroux while riding in a friend’s car. She had the CoffeeHouse XM Radio station playing, and I thought they were playing Billie Holiday. She pressed the “info” button and it said “Madeline” something. So I typed it into the Notes app on my iphone and looked it up when I got home.

I found the correct name on iTunes (and YouTube) right away, and she is an amazing singer.   As many people probably have written about her,  it’s uncanny how much she sounds like Billie Holiday.  The problem for me was that while I love me some Billie Holiday, I couldn’t get over someone new sounding *so much* like her.  I listened to a few snippets, but I couldn’t click that “buy album” button.

Then today I came across Jazmine Sullivan after someone on Twitter posted a reply mentioning Heavy D was on Twitter.  So I checked out Heavy D’s Twitter page and from there I saw that The Fat Boys were on Twitter (old school hip hop).  I clickety clicked the Fat Boys homepage and heard one of those annoying music players auto-playing.  But since I had my headphones on, and I was nostalgic for some Fat Boys, I let it play.  One of the tracks was a remix of “bust your windows” by Jazmine Sullivan.

Right away, I could hear the funny talking in her voice.  This particular track had an Amy Winehouse flavor, but it was still unique. I headed over to YouTube to listen to a few more tracks and what stood out was that her voice was like a unique mix of so many artists: Amy Winehouse/Lauryn  Hill/Mary J Blige/Alicia Keys/Sharon Jones with a sprinkle of something else that made it uniquely Jazmine Sullivan.

I listened to a few snippets of tracks on iTunes, walked away, and finally came back and clicked that “buy album” button.  I figured I’d give her a shot and hope that the full album would be worth it.  It was.  To be honest, I’m not a big fan of just pure R&B singers…after listening to a few, they all start to sound alike. But on this album, there’s so many different styles, and she uses her voice in so many different ways, it kept up the flow through all 13 tracks.

I’m not gonna lie, I’ll probably end up buying the Madeleine Peyroux album sometime down the line.  But Jazmine Sullivan won out today.

This is the backstory that inspired my post on twitter here. Although it was a material thing in this case, it seems to apply in other situations as well :)

There was this house one street over I used to pass every day when taking the girls to and from school. The house was pretty much like our house except that it had one thing that I loved about it: it had a cool balcony. I’ve always thought it would be neat to have a house with a balcony. Somehow, sitting on the balcony (or a nice covered front porch) seems like the most relaxing thing I could imagine. I actually went so far as to go to their house and ask them who built their balcony right after they had it put up.

We could see part of their backyard from our house and they had an above ground pool, a basketball hoop, and shiny lights around their balcony. I always thought it was just the coolest thing.

Well, a couple of weeks ago we saw that the house had gone into foreclosure and there was a (sad looking) real estate agent inside doing an open house. We walked through the place and it was tore up from the floor up. Doorknobs missing, stair railings missing, doors from closets missing.

The biggest kicker was the balcony that I coveted. I went upstairs to check it out and it was all crooked and not built securely. It actually slanted down, so it wasn’t even level.

It was just an interesting wake up call that I think about now whenever I pass the house to pick up my daughter from school and see the for sale sign out front.

It was sad to see but also good in a way.

Objects in the envy mirror are not as shiny as they appear :)