January 19th, 2020

One of the things that I find most amusing as I reflect back on my life is that the times that were the hardest, are also the times in which I learned the most about myself. I’m grateful for those lessons, but I don’t like to go through the hard times. No one does.
Yet, they occur in each of our lives, and we are forced to figure out solutions to problems that we never wanted to encounter. Problems or challenges like these push us to new discoveries, and while we’ve heard that a thousand times, we’ve also forgotten it a thousand and one times.
Think about the athletes who’ve done great things that no one thought the human body could do. Or the scientists who made new discoveries out of great human suffering and adversity. Or the average folks who have gone beyond their natural skills and found out that they can do more than they thought. Maybe you’ve experienced this, too.
The question becomes, then, why do we forget these lessons so easily? We can all relate to being in the middle of a challenge and feeling the heaviness of heart, the fatigue, the sadness, or even the depression that comes from not seeing an immediate answer. But rather than remembering our previous successes, we tend to see each new crisis as a new obstacle.
Here’s a suggestion to overcome this habit, because in many respects, that what this is. We have developed a habit of selective forgetfulness. Instead of letting yourself get wiped out, physically, mentally, or spiritually by a new challenge, try creating a victory journal. You can actually call it anything you like, but the idea is to recap each of the major obstacles that you’ve encountered in your life, and how you overcame them.
In a journal or notebook, write down one “challenge” per page. Describe the situation, and if you can remember, how you were feeling at the time that you went through it. Then, detail what you learned through this event or how the situation was resolved. This “victory” portion must be positive. Look for the upside of what happened, and while there may still be some residual discomfort, if you focus on the positives, with particular attention to what you learned about your own resiliency, then you will begin crafting a journal that speaks to your strengths. This journal will be a reminder for the next time you face a challenge. Going into any new challenge with a history of your proven track record makes the challenge far less daunting!
As a Christian, I am reminded often that, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Phil. 4:13) That doesn’t mean that I can do whatever I want, but it means that through Christ, I can do what I need to do when it’s time to do more than I think I can, because He helps me. It’s because of Him that I can do more.
In my victory journal, the evidence to that is clear. I can see God’s hand upon my previous challenges, and therefore I know He is right here with me for any new ones. This becomes my living testimony, my victory (in Christ) journal, and that’s a journal worth remembering.

October 19th, 2019

Diet affects every aspect of health, from your energy level to how quickly you recover from illness (or sometimes even whether or not you get sick). If you’re desperate to lose weight, diet is crucial. The right diet choices ensure that you maintain muscle while losing fat and that you don’t increase your risk of preventable diseases. So what does this have to do with using a printable food diary?
Despite the importance of daily food choices, very few people can answer questions about calories, grams of fat, fiber, carbs and other important information about their diet and meal choices. The biggest reason for this is probably that they just don’t know where to find the information in the first place or how to keep track of it in an easy way.
One excellent choice is to use a printable food diary. While there are food diaries online, it’s important to have one that you can print out since you may not eat every meal where you have easy access to the Internet. It’s also easy to transfer information from your printable food diary to one online.
Trends that you want to look for include total calorie consumption, intake of different types of fats and the various nutrients that you get from each meal. As you see the trends start to emerge, keep two things in mind. First you want to limit your intake of the unhealthy stuff, like saturated fat and cholesterol. Second, you want to make sure you’re getting plenty of the good stuff, like iron, B vitamins, omega-3 fatty acids, etc.
Tracking your diet with a printable food diary is only the first step. Don’t forget that good diet choices should be combined with regular exercise. Give your body and your heart something to do with all that metabolized food. The combination good diet and regular exercise will be sure to boost your energy level and stave off the diseases that have been shown to follow poor diet choices.
The biggest challenge to getting benefit from a printable food diary is probably just printing one out and getting started. Here’s the easiest way to get started. Create a new document and at the top of the page put the following headings
Date
Meal (B=breakfast, L=lunch, D=dinner, S=snack)
Food description
Calories
Fat (grams)
Carbs
Fiber (grams)
Then add blank lines below for each entry in your daily food diary. Remember, the key is simplicity, not complexity. The easier it is to do, the more likely you are to do it. Not to mention that just tracking those details about each meal gives you a ton of information to use when making changes to your diet. Print it out and start tracking with your next meal.

Now is the time to start a gardening journal; as you start planning your garden, start making notes in it. It can be a 3-ring binder with pocket folders, a calendar with pockets, or an online gardening journal. Keep everything pertaining to the garden in it.
Keep your garden designs in it. Every year when you do a new graph for a layout for your garden or one of the garden beds, place it in the gardening journal so you have it for the next season. This will help with plant rotation.
I also make a lot of notes during the season that become a wealth of information for the following years on what to do, or how to change it, or what not to do.
You’ll want to write down the last frost date, how severe the winter was, and anything unusual about the winter. Write down when you were first able to work the soil, as well as when the perennials started coming back to life and the seeds that self-sowed start popping up, germinating. Keep track of bloom and harvest dates, fertilizing dates, and what kind of fertilizer.
The more notes, receipts, seed packets, and pictures you add to your gardening journal the more helpful it will be for the following growing seasons. If you tested your soil’s PH, write down what you used to test it, when you tested it, what the PH was, and any amendments you may have added to it. Note any insect pest damage or critter damage. Take and keep photos of the actual insects, damage they’ve caused, and the course of action to rectify the situation. Pictures of your seed beds, seedlings, plants, blossoms, diseases and anything else you want to photo will be a great help in your future gardening endeavors.
Remember to keep your gardening journal up to date with:
all dates

what you have planted

what you have tried

what has worked well

what needs improvement

unusual changes to the weather

new insects, birds, butterflies

soil amendments

compost

changes, additions, or deletions that you may have made, etc.
Keep track of the nurseries you purchased seeds or plants from. Also any handouts you’ve acquired. Check with your local county extension office for handouts and garden journals.
After all these years I still get excited with each phase of the gardening season and the possibilities it brings. I’m still experimenting and learning something new everyday with all of the new techniques and theories that continually come out.
If some of your plants didn’t make it this year, that’s okay. It happens to all gardeners including me. For reasons we may never know a certain percentage of our plants (flowers, fruit, herbs, vegetables), just don’t seem to make it sometimes. Other times we know why – due to an extremely rainy summer or we didn’t provide for enough drainage, or we had a drought, or a hungry little rabbit that has decided to have it for lunch. Perhaps the bee population had decreased.
Sometimes these things just happen – we can’t predict it, we’re just left wondering what happened. Keeping track of everything in your gardening journal, may provide some clues as to what really did happen and help you prevent it the next season.
Extra Items To Include In Your Gardening Journal:
How you prepared your soil, exactly what you did

Seeds started indoors, when and exactly how you did it

Transplanting dates

Hardening off dates

To do list

Individual Plant Profiles

Fertilizing Schedule

Disease Control

Harvest, dates as well as plants that did well and those that didn’t

Yield Amounts, did you grow enough, do you need to grow more next season

Records of Preserving Your Harvest: drying, canning, freezing, jellys, vinegars

Recipes for Canning, Freezing, etc

Tool maintenance unless you have a tool maintenance journal
Enjoy growing and using your herbs and do take time to sit out in your garden and enjoy the colors, aromatic scents, as well as the birds and butterflies that have taken up residence. While you’re sitting there, make notes in your Gardening Journal. Take care, and take care of your garden!

April 19th, 2019

Any ideas what journal articles are? Have you tried to write one before?
Scientists and engineers who want to present original work often do so by publishing them as journal articles in peer-reviewed publications. These types of writing tend to be similar to formal reports in content, although they tend to differ in length and format.
Because of the limited space that most journals can accommodate, submissions will usually need to be abridged from their original report versions, making some rewriting as well as a good software proofreader necessary.
Summaries will need to be either descriptive or informational with descriptive elements. Other summary formats usually won’t serve the need to learn about the topic while taking up little space.
There is little to no room for appendices, so you might need to get rid of them.
Forget about tailoring the material for multiple audiences. The limited room makes having that unlikely. As such, try writing for as general an audience as you can handle, keeping in mind that the majority of people perusing it will likely be your peers in the industry, students and members of the academic community.
Basically, journal articles are usually picked through recommendations from professors and other influential individuals in the field, so look towards those people when hoping to get your work published in one. Different types of journal articles can be seen in these types of publications, including letters, research notes, full articles that range from five to twenty pages, supplemental articles and reviews.

Money is one of those things that makes most of us crazy! You either have lots of it or none of it. It’s seems that we give this commodity a lot more power than we should, to the point that it actually controls our lives and base our beliefs and values systems on it. Sometimes, there comes a time when we really need to think of money for exactly what it is, a state of mind. Our attitude towards wealth and money seems more important than any other aspect in our lives. For some it is even more important than anything else in the world. Which, from my point of view seems very sad indeed.
Let’s think about it. How we think and feel about money seems to determine how we live in society these days. If we have lots of money, and a high paying job, then it seems logical to think that we are better off and positive about our future and in turn, others in society are likely to be attracted or think highly of us. However, If we don’t have a great deal of money, don’t have a job, or have the security of a permanent job, then we are much more inclined to develop disorders such as Depression and such as well as the opinion of other in society looking down on us for not ‘Keeping up with the Jones’.
To instigate change in our thoughts about money, either having or not, we really must start with changing our mindset and our predetermined opinions we have towards others around money and social prosperity. From change comes the power and determination to adjust and really see the real value in life.
Here are some things you may like to do for those situations where you feel uncomfortable when you spend money, or feel depressed about your financial state, or at any other time when you need to keep positive of your outcome in life.
Gratitude
Be Grateful for what you have. This may sound basic and like something your parents used to say to you when you were little, but, to be honest, it works. Take a notepad and write down all the good things that you have in your life. Don’t concentrate on what is lacking and don’t focus of material possessions or bank balances. Think of things like: Your Best Friend, the love of your dog, a roof over your head, the birds that fly around in the garden. the heat that makes your shower hot, the family members you have in your life and so on. Once you’ve done this, write a list of the things that someone from across the other side of the world might have to feel grateful for in life. Compare the two lists and really think about the differences in your answers compared to the answers in the other list. Chances are you will have a lot more to feel grateful for than you realise.
Self Esteem
Whenever you feel bad or negative about money, try to see it for it really is. Whenever you receive your paycheck or you get that payment deposited into your bank account from a client sale, why not pause for a moment and think to yourself “I’ve earned this money by working hard for it but I will not take it for granted. The money itself is only a reward for my personal efforts, it is not an acknowledgement of my status in the world.” To become successful is not just about how much money you have, it can also be about your reputation in your line of work. For me, being successful in my business is more about how many satisfied clients I have, rather than, how much money I have in the bank. My reputation in the business world and how far I have come in my journey is much more important to me than having money to flash around.
Money Journal
Creating priorities is essential to find the money you need for your own self-care. To decide what your priorities grab a note pad and create a list with these categories:

Amount Spent (e.g. $8.50)

On What (e.g. Books, Lunch, Songs or Apps)

Feelings (e.g. Felt guilty afterwards, Felt good to read to magazine)

Once you have written down all the things you have spent for one month have a look at the patterns and try to figure out what to spend your money on in the future. For example, I don’t enjoy buying my lunch but I love buying apps for my PDA, so I make my own lunch and save money every week to buy a $20 music voucher so I can buy more of the things I like. By paying attention on how you feel when you buy things you can rearrange your resources to better suit your real needs and feel good about the things you buy instead of feeling guilty or feeling bad.
Intuition
Next time you want to buy something you want, why not get in the habit of asking yourself:

Do I really need this?

Why am I buying this?

If I buy this will I still have enough money to pay for…?

Give yourself time to try to hear your inner voice of wisdom. Asking these questions will trigger your intuition and help you when you’re feeling unsure if you should buy that latest item or not. If you think about it before you act, you can think about the effect it may have if you buy it or if you don’t. It may leave you short for that power bill you need to pay next week or it might be okay to buy it this week but you may not be able to buy the following week.
When it comes to money, I agree it does make the world go around but I feel that there is way too much emphasis on how much of it we have and the importance that some of put on money as being seen as a successful person. If you have tips, stories or comments then I’d love to hear from you.

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia was the birthplace of Keith Rupert Murdoch. He was born into a wealthy family in 1931 and his father was a leading owner of many newspapers. Young Murdoch was sent to Oxford University while a young teen and he was only 22 years old when the elder Murdoch suddenly died under what was deemed suspicious circumstances.
As the heir to the newspaper family business Keith Rupert began to assume many executive duties and in 1953 he became the managing director of the News Limited. Soon his attentions would focus on the expansion of the Murdoch empire and he set about acquiring many of the competing news publications.
His first buyout was the Perth based Sunday Times. The brash young businessman utilized many of the tabloid fundamentals that he had learned from both Lord Northcliffe. Soon the struggling Sunday Times had become a major success. Expanding his reach, Rupert Murdoch began acquiring other newspaper businesses such as The Daily Mirror. It would not be long before Murdoch took control of The Dominion paper in New Zealand. This would be followed by additional takeovers that would eventually lead to Rupert Murdoch becoming the dominant stock shareholder for the New Zealand Independent Newspapers Limited media group. He would retain this prominent position until 2003.
Murdoch was directly responsible for the debut of Australia’s 1st daily newspaper to achieve national prominence, The Australian. This paper would help boost Rupert Murdoch’s personal stock and would earn him a reputation for heading a serious, quality newspaper. Additional businesses were added to the rapidly expanding Murdoch network but once he had made conquests in Australia, New Zealand and Britain his eye was on moving into the US newspaper world.
The first of Murdoch’s many acquisitions in the US would occur in 1973. This was the year when Rupert Murdoch would seal a deal that gave him the San Antonio Express-News. Shortly after this buy was completed he created a tabloid that would become a fixture on news stands and supermarket checkout aisles, The Star. 3 years after making his first US newspaper buyout Rupert Murdoch would take over the New York Post.
Murdoch still wanted to add to his thriving media empire and in order to purchase a US television station he became a naturalized United States citizen in September of 1985. His Fox Network would be embroiled in controversy and scrutiny at the beginning but today this network is a major player in the market. In 1995 Rupert Murdoch cinched a deal with communications giant MCI that provided for the development of The Weekly Standard which was to be a combined project involving both a news website and a magazine.
His most recent acquisition was that of the 2007 purchase of the US based financial journal, the Wall Street Journal and the Dow Jones Company from the Bancroft family. The Bancrofts initially rebuffed the News Corp offers but after 3 months and a sweetened offer of $60 per share or just more than $5 billion.
Even though he has had to battle lawsuits, enormous debts and a shifting world economy Rupert Murdoch continues to be a leader in the world of media and communications. He recently celebrated his 79th birthday and his current personal net worth is estimated to be $4 billion dollars.