Gregory Paul Johnson – Personal Update 201005 | 31 May 2010 | Monday
Summary. This is the monthly personal update for Gregory Johnson. Life categories listed alphabetically rather than in order of increasing interdependence described on the map page. The primary area of significant news this month is under Effective Living, Health, and Lifeways. New text is added at the end of these three categories to save on reading time. Other areas remain unchanged.
- Activism. With regard to activism, I believe that the answer is to live the answer. As such, I believe that lifestyle activism and becoming the media are the most powerful methods for impacting the world. For this reason, sharing my photography, producing videos, and writing content for the ResourcesForLife.com website continue to be my primary means of activism. The site has had over a million visitors in the past few years. There is now a ResourcesForLife.com @ Ning network as well. My book, Put Your Life on a Diet, continues to do well, and I’ve expanded the book’s web page and also added an online community area for discussions about it.
- Career. I’m thankful that my work at the University of Iowa is going well and my consulting business continues to be busy. My current clients continue to be wonderful to work with, and I’m also gaining some new ones. I’m very grateful.
- Effective Living. I’m trying to stick with the Schedule for Life and the Holistic Living System which help provide maximum effectiveness and efficiency. I’ve not updated these systems for over a year, so an update is probably due later this year. New: On Thursday, 27 May 2010, my new iPad arrived. Today I wrote an article about how the iPad marks a significant shift in computing.
- Finance. I continue to look for ways to decrease my regular expenses and increase my income. I enjoy investing in Kiva, an organization that loans money to the working poor of the world.
- Health. I’ve gained about 20 pounds since moving to downtown Iowa City in August 2009, and I’m now about 60 pounds over my ideal weight. So, I’m now looking for ways to take my weight management system to the next level. Living downtown has been very convenient. Maybe too convenient. Having everything so close requires a greater commitment to exercise. I’m now using an elliptical system at home for exercise. I’m also making an increased effort to use bicycling for transportation whenever possible. New: Over the past few days, I’ve created a nutritional supplement portfolio and spreadsheet that provides me with a baseline for my daily nutritional needs. As of today, I began tracking my fitness and meals on my LiveStrong.com holistic wellness tracking page.
- Lifeways. Over the past year, I’d developed a humanist-based ethics system called the Holistic Unification Lifeway Practice. The goal of having such a system was to make it universally accessible and relevant to all people, even those who aren’t religious. New: In March 2010, I cracked the G-d code and wrote about it on the Adonaikido web page (see entries about G-d, prayer, and Messiah). Based on this discovery, I have returned to focusing on Adonaikido as the expression of my faith. The significance of cracking the G-d code is about as monumental as my discovering that Jesus is Jewish. Essentially, the G-d code is the formula (a theory actually) that explains how G-d is simultaneously all-powerful yet limited. On May 28, I received a fascinating article via email (from Frangipane.org) that described this phenomenon in Christian terminology.
- Relationships. Makur and I got married on the 14th of November 2009. Our wedding video is now online. I continue to be grateful for the relationships I have with family, friends, colleagues, and clients. We’re now living in a 360 square foot apartment in downtown Iowa City.
Many thanks to all of you who are continuing to keep me in your thoughts, prayers, and meditation time. ~ Gregory
About the Personal Update
For about ten years, the first and most important communication I would send out each month would be a personal update covering seven areas of life described on the Map Page of the ResourcesForLive.com website. I reference this monthly practice in my Schedule for Life. Over the years, my personal updates went out each month to about 10 family members and friends who I consider to be my “advisory board” – a group of people with several hundred years of collective wisdom. As well as looking for feedback and guidance, I also saw these updates as a way of making a regular personal life assessment. As of September 2007, I began publishing these monthly updates here in my online Journal. The seven areas of my personal life have solidified in recent years, so there’s not much “news” to report, but as there is, I’ll report it here in these updates.