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Most of the Blogs Out There Are Not Written for Those With Crushing Debt Burdens

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Even though this is probably no surprise to anyone out there – I read a lot. From books to magazines to newspapers to websites to blogs to academic reports to you name it. I find myself reading a great deal of varied content on a weekly basis. Right now, for example, I’m reading a book about post-World War II educational curriculum development in America as well as the ninth book in the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. I’m also halfway through a book about how approaches to best educating students has changed in the last 20+ years.

But aside from all of these books and reports I really like to read blogs written by everyday people who accomplish extraordinary feats. I have a small cadre of such blogs fed into my RSS feeder. Some of these blogs are written by people who have lost tremendous amounts of weight, others are written by people who have gone from a skinny physique or a chubby physique to winning bodybuilding competitions. Some of the blogs are written by guys who were introverted and wound up changing their lives to become social butterflies. Other blogs are written by people who have managed to travel around the world for an incredibly small amount of money before they were a certain age.

I don’t necessarily identify with any of these blogs or their writers because none of them really speak to my direct experience. In other words, at one point I lost 125 pounds so I already know how to accomplish that goal, I’ve never been an introverted person so I don’t need tips or pointers on how to get out there and meet people, and I’m not the biggest traveler so those lessons really don’t apply to my life. What I do enjoy about these blogs is reading the sense of accomplishment that these people achieve when they meet their goals. As someone who has met (and continues to meet) certain goals in my life, I understand how great that sense of accomplishment feels.

It’s awesome.

However, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in many of these blogs. All of these amateur writers are missing commentary that speaks to a growing number of individuals in our country. Let me be more direct: not one of these bloggers, these self-professed self-help gurus, these accomplished weight loss success stories, these people who have overcome seemingly insurmountable odds, etc. have accomplished their major goals and retired a tremendous amount of debt.

While these bloggers build their own ego and create their own hype because they lost [insert large number here] pounds or because they traveled to [insert large number here] countries, you can’t find someone who has managed accomplish a major goal while saddled with a tremendous non-mortgage debt burden. And it’s like this all over the blogosphere. For example, I read a lot of guy blogs (those blogs focused on items of interest to guys in my age group). These blogs range in variety and type from guys who spend a lot of their time working out and talking about the best techniques for working out to guys who claim to have a lot of social success to guys who manage to weave the fundamentals of their faith throughout their daily lives.

All of the writers that I read on guy blogs eventually wind up writing an entry about how their readers can become better at [insert whatever here]. Well, the impetus for writing this entry was a piece of “advice” that I’ve seen pop up over and over again on these guy blogs. And that same piece of advice pops up on all of the blogs that I read – not just guy blogs. That piece of advice is that if you want to be the absolute best at [insert whatever here], then you absolutely cannot have any debt.

That’s right. I’ve read bloggers saying that if you want to lose weight, you can’t have any debt because you need the freedom to be able to spend as much time as possible working out instead of being stuck working one, two, or more jobs. I’ve read bloggers saying that if you want to increase the size of your social circle, you can’t have any debt because if you don’t have excess funds to do new and exciting things, how can you expand the number and type of people that you’ll interact with? I’ve even read bloggers who say that if you want to meet the type of girl that you think you’re most compatible with, then you can’t have debt because that debt weighs on you mentally and restricts your ability to see yourself with a successful girlfriend, fiancée, or wife.

But here’s the question that prompted me to write this entry…

Who doesn’t have some type of debt? I don’t mean that as a matter-of-fact type of question with the expectation that your response would be, “I guess everyone has some type of debt.” That’s not what I’m going for here. Think of the real answer to that question – who doesn’t have some type of debt? Well, you have independently wealthy people or those who come from tremendous wealth and don’t need to pay their own way through life. Okay. You also have those people who have worked their butts off and earned enough money such that they don’t have to carry any debt. Okay. And you know what? You might even find that people who are the exact opposite of these wealthy people also don’t have any debt. That is to say that those people who never took on college debt yet still didn’t graduate with a degree or those people who just graduated from high school (or not) and wound up living in their parents’ basement; the habitual underachievers out there.

Is there any other type of person who doesn’t have some type of debt? I really can’t think of any, but I would suggest that there should be a fourth category – those people who choose to write a blog focusing in depth about their success at achieving a goal other than retiring debt! After spending a few years reading some of these blogs I’ve come to the conclusion that people out there who accomplish what they believe are great things are not saddled with a tremendous amount of non-mortgage debt. They don’t have a significant amount of consumer debt and they don’t have a significant amount of student loan debt. They have that freedom that I referenced above – the freedom to not be tied down to one, two, or more jobs. And with that freedom comes the ability and flexibility to spend more of their time losing weight or working out or hanging out at local clubs or spending their time learning new hobbies or traveling around the world, etc.

They don’t know what it’s like to work an 8am to 6pm job with an hour commute wrapped on either side of that workday plus spending an hour each morning before you leave for the office working on freelance projects and several hours at night when you get home at night working a second or third job. And I specifically wrote that last sentence to begin with “they don’t know what it’s like” because that’s the problem that I’ve been having with a lot of the blogs that I read: the writers just don’t understand how self-righteous and, frankly, alienating they sound when they write their entries.

And here’s the prime example that I know so many of you out there have probably seen before… How many of you have ever read a weight loss blog or a weight training blog that condemns those who say they don’t have the free time to work out? Usually, the writer says that this is just an excuse and that you can make time to lose weight or work out if you really want to…

If you really want to? Really?

Are you fucking kidding me?

The only person who would write such an ignorant comment is someone who don’t wake up at 5am (exhausted) and then fall into bed at midnight after working the entire day to earn money in an effort to retire debt. Who would tell someone who keeps this schedule 5, 6, or 7 days each week that they are lazy or that they are the cause of their own lament because they don’t make time for working out? I know who would tell someone that – a blogger who has never had to try to tackle both [insert a personal goal here] and retire a significant amount of debt at the same time.

The reason why I wrote this entry is because I know I have a lot of random readers on this blog and I can track where some of you come from out there on the internet. Some of you are coming from some of these self-help, conquer the world type of blogs and that’s great. Believe me, I want to conquer the world and improve my health, wealth, and well-being just as much as those other writers. However, I live my life in the real reality – a reality much closer to where you probably exist, too. I understand that it’s hard to train to climb Mount Everest when you have a six-figure student loan debt crushing you and dictating nearly every move you make. I understand that it’s really hard and really difficult to lose weight when you’re working 16 – 18 hour days (or longer). I understand that it’s difficult to put the proper amount of time and effort into increasing your social circle or even finding someone worthwhile to date when you’re so focused and, unfortunately, controlled by crushing levels of consumer or student debt. I understand where you’re coming from – I get it.

And I don’t think that you’re lazy. I don’t think that you’re anti-social. I don’t think that you’re making excuses. Not at all.

What I do think is that you’re stuck in the same rut that the majority of population is stuck in – you’re forced to do things to retire debt (or generally improve your financial position) that prevent you from fully engaging in the other activities that you want to engage in. You’re not going to find this understanding on those self-help blogs or the guys’ blogs or in many other places out there because the truth is that those writers simply don’t understand. In about 6 years I’ve paid off nearly $100,000 in student loan debt and I have another $21,000+ left to repay. I repaid that amount while losing a tremendous amount of weight, gaining most of it back, losing much of it again, and gaining some of it back again. Professionally, I work around the clock; not just a 9-to-5 type of job. Believe me, I understand the burden of debt and how it really does dictate what you can and cannot do with your life.

And, like many of you, I’ve sat there and listened to people in my personal and professional life ask me why I don’t [insert whatever here] while I’m young? These people also have no idea what it’s like to be suffocating under crushing consumer or student loan debt. Folks constantly ask me why I don’t go away on vacation (my last real vacation was back in 6th grade). Well, I don’t go away on vacation because I can’t imagine spending a thousand or two bucks on vacating reality while I still owe money on my student loan. That would be financially foolish. People ask me why I don’t go out and find a “nice” girl to date (usually, their definition of “nice” is different than mine, but that’s another entry). They don’t understand that when you work around the clock, you don’t have much time for socialization outside of your standard circle. And, to mix a little bit of a guys’ blog mindset here, they don’t understand that the girls you meet while you are burdened with immense debt, while you are out of shape, or while you are working around the clock are typically not the girls that you want to marry! I assume it’s the same for the ladies out there looking for a man.

To sum it up, I just warn you all to read these self-help, self-improvement blogs for purposes other than examples to follow. Chances are very strong that the writer you’re reading doesn’t have the same life experiences as you do. And chances are even stronger that they never had to tackle an immense amount of undischargeable consumer or student debt before, during, or after they accomplished whatever it is that made them an amateur expert.

Be rational, believe in yourself, and tackle your debt first. Once you remove that crushing yoke, then focus on your health (losing weight, gaining muscle, etc.), and after that you can focus on your social life. There’s no way around doing what makes sense and this is the path that I really believe makes the most sense for the most people out there.

Now… back to the grind!

NOOK Book Review: Stone of Tears by Terry Goodkind

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Back in November I wrote a NOOK book review for Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind. Wizard’s First Rule is the first in a series of books called The Sword of Truth series. The second book in that series is called Stone of Tears (also by Goodkind) and that’s the book that I’m focusing on in this NOOK Book review.

As I wrote in my last review, reading Wizard’s First Rule made me realize that there is more to the fantasy genre of writing than just the masterpieces created by J.R.R. Tolkien. It’s a good feeling to know that there is more quality books for you to read in a genre that you enjoy and it’s good to know that there are series of books that follow a particular story through the years. That was one of the many factors that initially attracted me to Wizard’s First Rule and one of the many factors that made reading Stone of Tears so enjoyable. In other words, unlike a movie that ends after two hours and leaves you contemplating what might happen next for each of the characters, Stone of Tears gives the reader a very detailed accounting of what happens to each of the main characters in Wizard’s First Rule and – most importantly – begins the next phase of Richard Rahl’s journey.

The book starts innocuously enough with life reawakening after the defeat of Darken Rahl at the People’s Palace in D’Hara. However, with one of the Boxes of Orden (magic boxes that if the right one is opened up, the person who opens it can rule the world) still open, Zedd and Chase are unsure what to do. In a matter of a few pages, the action begins again as something called a screeling pops out of the box and begins attacking Zedd (an extremely powerful, good wizard) and Chase (a big, hulking warrior type). Zedd ultimately figures out that to defeat this screeling (a beast from the underworld that laughs whenever it’s attacked or injured) one needs to freeze it in water and then hack it to pieces.

Pleasant.

And the action continues from there as the story progresses with Richard and Kahlan Amnell (a woman with the power to make people tell the truth simply by touching them) leave the People’s Palace before the attack takes place and go straight to the Mud People (an independent, tribal group of people who live unburdened by the laws of the land). It is at the land of the Mud People where the real story of Stone of Tears begins to take shape.

Richard is a wizard, but doesn’t want to admit it to himself. Part of the magic “gift” is being struck down by headaches from time to time. Richard gets hurt by these headaches because he doesn’t know how to control the magic within him. During his stay with the Mud People, three women called Sisters of the Light visit him and offer him help to control the painful headaches. There’s a catch, though. The catch is that he’d have to wear a collar to control the headaches. Given some of the torture that Richard endured in Wizard’s First Rule while he was collared, the reader believes that it is unlikely that he will ever commit to wearing a collar again.

And that’s how the story progresses. The headaches get worse, the sisters come back and offer their help, Richard refuses, and the headaches continue. However, remember that there are only three sisters that are visiting him. One of the rules of the game that the sisters are playing is that each time one of them is rejecting by Richard, they must forfeit their lives. So after the second rejection there is just one sister left.

While Richard is rejecting help from these sisters, he begins dabbing in the spirit world again and unintentionally summons up the spirit of his now-dead biological father – Darken Rahl. Darken Rahl, while no longer having a physical form to occupy, tells Richard the same thing that he told Zedd in the first book – that he is an agent of The Keeper. Oh, and if I haven’t explained it already, The Keeper is the term that is used for the entity that is, essentially, the devil in this series. The Creater is the term used for God.

Another spirit eventually visits the world of the living as the woman who tortured Richard in the first book (but was eventually forgiven) tells Kahlan (who Richard is madly in love with and on the verge of marrying) that she must force Richard to wear the collar to control his magic or he’ll die. Seems like a pretty tough situation for Kahlan, huh? Either you support the person that you love and his phobia of wearing a collar that will remove his control of his life or you lead that person to do something that he is deathly afraid of and, in the process, likely push him away from you for good while saving his life. What’s the Mother Confessor (Kahlan’s formal title) to do?

Well, she ultimately forces Richard to put on the collar and it does save his life by removing the headaches. It also rips Richard from her and begins the fraying of the stories of the cast of characters in Stone of Tears. By fraying of the stories I mean that there are a variety of different tracks that begin around this time in Stone of Tears and it would be hard to cover each of them. So I’m only going to comment on one or two more items about this novel and then move on.

The first thing that I liked about this novel is that it expands the world of the Sword of Truth series. We are introduced to the Old World which is separate from the three lands that are covered in the first novel. Along with the Old World, the reader is also introduced to a little bit of history of the land by learning about a major wizards’ war that took place three thousand years ago. Those additions to the series really make this book worth picking up and reading.

Related to this first point is the deepening of each of the characters. Take Kahlan for example – she spends most of her time in the first novel as a stoic woman who is nearly unshakeable until the end of the novel where she begins to fall in love with Richard. In the second book, the reader learns of Kahlan’s devotion to her people when she finds a band of 5,000 young soldiers who are trying to seek revenge against an armed host of 50,000 men devoted to something called the Imperial Order (more on that in the book). Though Kahlan rails against these young men for thinking that they can successfully attack and halt the Imperial Order troops, Goodkind goes to great lengths to explain how Kahlan feels for them. He then goes to an equally great length to describe how she trains these men to become skilled killers and warriors. We find out later in the novel that the young men are successful in defeating every last one of the 50,000 troops, though they lose some 80% of their own force over the course of the fight.

And that’s just the deepening development of one character!

The second thing that I liked about Stone of Tears is that Goodkind doesn’t mind providing some good social commentary within the story. Namely, towards the latter half of the novel Goodkind directly attacks socialism and communism as a failed way to lead any group of people. More specifically, Goodkind uses a 1,000 year old wizard (oddly enough, he’s related to Richard) to explain what is known as the wizard’s second rule: The greatest harm can result from the best intentions. Goodkind then weaves that rule into a commentary about the people who live in a city called Aydindril and, to a larger degree, through the Midlands (a land ruled by Kahlan). He notes that the people believe the lies of the Imperial Order because they promise the people a share of the money found in Aydindril (i.e. income redistribution in today’s political terms). Ultimately, the people of the Midlands choose to have Kahlan decapitated (although she’s not really killed and, instead, escapes) because of their greed and lust to have a share of the treasury (which they never get anyway).

I liked that social commentary and Goodkind does a much better job of describing it than I did in the paragraph above!

If you’re a reader of science fiction or fantasy novels, then I think you’ll enjoy Stone of Tears. I hesitate to say that you can easily read this novel even if you haven’t already read Wizard’s First Rule, though. While Goodkind does provide some very brief summations of each character in the early parts of Stone of Tears, as a reader you won’t really be able to get a firm grasp on what’s going on in this fantasy world unless you read the first book.

On a final note – this series is beginning to get very complex and a bit large to cover in these rather simple NOOK book reviews. Due to that fact, I don’t think that I’ll be providing many more NOOK book reviews for the Sword of Truth series. In all likelihood, I’ll probably provide a tweet here and there on my twitter feed (@JVince81) each time I finish a book or have some additional commentary about the series. So, if you haven’t already please be sure to follow me at @JVince81 to get the latest updates on my thoughts surrounding the Sword of Truth series. Oh, and for what it’s worth I’ve already completed the third book in this series and started reading the fourth book so I’ll definitely have some additional commentary in the coming days and weeks!

I found Stone of Tears to be a very enjoyable read and a journey of self-discovery for Richard, Kahlan, and all of the Midlands. The introduction of the Sisters of the Light and the Sisters of the Dark bring an interesting plot development to the story and create an incredible amount of “what if” scenarios for the reader to ponder. In the end, I think that Stone of Tears does justice to Wizard’s First Rule and joins the first book in setting a firm base for the future of the Sword of Truth series. I recommend going out and getting a copy or downloading a copy of Stone of Tears on your NOOK. Enjoy!

NOOK Book Review: Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind

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For those of you who read my last book review it should come as no surprise that I was totally and utterly let down by the popular-at-the-moment fantasy series – A Song of Ice and Fire (more commonly referred to by the name of the first book, A Game of Thrones). George R. R. Martin’s miserably written and poorly paced A Song of Ice and Fire series left me wanting much, much more out of everything that this genre has to offer… but I wanted absolutely nothing more from Martin. The first book and a half that I read was boring, excruciatingly drawn out, bland, and (because I inadvertently read some spoilers for future plot points in future books) ultimately totally useless to the reader or the storyline. The first book and a half in the A Song of Ice and Fire series left me annoyed, unhappy, and wanting a real fantasy and/or science fiction series to indulge in.

The A Song of Ice and Fire series failed in every way possible from basic storytelling to failure to generate a compelling plot to an inability to provide a riveting action/adventure storyline. The series failed in making characters that the reader could emotionally invest in and actually care about (which, again, doesn’t really matter since I know now that everything in the hundreds and hundreds of pages in the first few books is useless). The A Song of Ice and Fire series failed to make this avid reader want to read more from the series or this writer.

And yet, those are all of the areas where Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule excelled.

Wizard’s First Rule is the first book in Goodkind’s The Sword of Truth series – and it’s awesome! I’ve always heard of Goodkind as a popular fantasy author, but I never really gave him the time of day. As a J. R. R. Tolkien fanatic, I tend to group every fantasy writer from the last fifty or sixty years into a “wannabe” group. Admittedly, that’s a bad point of view to have regarding contemporary fantasy writers, but that’s what makes me a fanatic for Tolkien. So when I first read positive reviews of Goodkind’s work a few years ago I immediately wrote him off as another Tolkien wannabe.

Now, after having read Wizard’s First Rule, I know that it was a bad decision on my part to assume that Goodkind’s work wasn’t worth the time. This book was great!

In a weird way, I’m actually glad that my disgust for Martin led me to Goodkind. Since I wanted to see what Goodkind had to offer, I decided to download Wizard’s First Rule, which happens to be the first book that he ever wrote. After some research I learned that this book is the first book in a ten book series (the aforementioned The Sword of Truth series) that follows the adventures of the main character – Richard Cypher – and his companions Kahlan Amnell and Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander. In Wizard’s First Rule, Richard fights against a powerful wizard named Darken Rahl. The story follows Richard from his beginnings as a woods guide (someone who helps you traverse a landscape by showing you how to navigate through the forest) through his progression to what is known as the “Seeker.”

As the Seeker, Richard is tasked with finding and defending the truth. It’s a task that is somewhat shared by Kahlan, who holds the position of Mother Confessor. The Mother Confessor is the most powerful of the confessors – people who can use their power (magic) to make people tell them the truth. There’s a lot more to the whole confessor thing than just that, but you can read all of the details in the book.

There are a lot of twists and turns in this book, but one thing that stands out to me after having finished the book a few weeks ago is that I can remember a whole heck of a lot of the story. I remember Richard and Kahlan interacting with the Mud People, I remember the stories of Chase and Adie (among other characters) and the descriptions provided for the different locations around the landscape. Goodkind’s writing does that – it grips your interest and creates a really powerful image for you to latch on to and, essentially, feel the story.

However, I do have a bit of criticism for Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule. Now don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed Goodkind’s writing style. However, it appeared that some of the emotion-based writing was hyperbolic to the extreme. In other words, it seemed like every time Richard encountered a new emotional experience it was the most extreme feeling of that experience that he had ever felt or would ever feel again. For example, his interactions with Denna the Mord Sith (a woman whose job was to bring days, weeks, months of endless pain to her captives) brought him the most physical pain ever while the thought of losing Kahlan makes him feel the greatest feeling of despair that he could ever feel. Hopefully, that style of exaggeration diminishes in the future novels in The Sword of Truth series because if it doesn’t, then that would be the worst thing ever!

If you don’t understand what hyperbole means in literature, then the really lame literary joke that I made in the last sentence probably didn’t make any sense. No worries. Moving along now!

Granted, even though I’m a Tolkien maniac I did notice the influence that certain elements of the Lord of the Rings had on Wizard’s First Rule. For example, in the Lord of the Rings series you have the deformed former hobbit Gollum who is twisted and deranged by the power of Sauron’s one ring. Well, in Wizard’s First Rule you have Samuel – a former man who was the Seeker and wielded the fabled Sword of Truth that Richard now holds. His lust for the Sword of Truth deforms him into a very Gollum-like creature who is constantly saying that sword belongs to him. Gollum and Samuel are very, very similar and I hope that Samuel being modeled off of Gollum is more or less a tribute to Tolkien and not something that the author would argue was organically created in this story.

Before I wrap this up I thought I’d provide another comparison. A Game of Thrones was 733 NOOK book pages while Wizard’s First Rule was 681 NOOK book pages. The difference between the two isn’t just the 52 additional NOOK book pages. The difference is that those 681 pages of Wizard’s First Rule are packed with storytelling, drama, intrigue, mystery, exciting people and lands, treachery, despair, triumph, etc. Meanwhile, those 733 pages in A Game of Thrones is packed with – well, ultimately useless words – lots of words that evoke little-to-no emotion and tell little-to-no lasting, meaningful story. It’s 733 pages of wasted time.

Reading Wizard’s First Rule sold me on two things:

First and probably most importantly, I’ve become a fan of Terry Goodkind. The man can write a fantasy novel! Here’s hoping that the intelligent fun and excitement of Wizard’s First Rule carries through to the rest of the series. Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve already completed the second book in the Sword of Truth series though I plan to delay diving too far into the third book as I finish up some Bible readings that I started a few months ago.

Second, as a reader who is reluctant to change I’m beginning to understand that there is a vast fantasy and science fiction world out there besides the master of the genre, J. R. R. Tolkien. And that may not be as immediately important of a learning point as becoming a fan of Goodkind, but if I can manage to put my Tolkien mania aside again (after finishing the Sword of Truth series, that is), then the sky really is the limit in how many books in this genre that I might find interesting.

In short, if you’re looking for a good fantasy book to read, then I suggest picking up (or downloading onto your NOOK) a copy of Wizard’s First Rule. This is what a fantasy book should be!