If you don’t know where you are, you can’t know where to go.
Being an outdoor person when I started thinking about doing a series of LearnDesk courses on how to start a business, I incorporated my experiences as an outdoorsman to illustrate my points. The course will contain 12 lessons going through how to conceive of an original business concept and start a business in the U.S. One important aspect of this process is taking stock of one’s own capabilities which is the object of this lesson.
One of the most difficult tasks that beginning entrepreneurs have is to make a realistic evaluation of their own abilities. Lesson 4 of my LearnDesk series covers a series of points from personal appearance to communication skills. No one likely has all the skills to run a successful outdoor-based business. The objective of this lesson is to have viewers systematically evaluate different aspects of the business world to determine which aspects they need to improve, and which are best farmed out to others.
Often the person who starts a business has a creative idea. This idea goes through a developmental stage to production and finally to market. It makes no difference if the idea is a manufactured product, a piece of art, a service, or an intellectual product. Of necessity this often starts as a one-person show. Very soon the person who sparked the idea will discover he needs help to file a patent, get a proofreader, or in finding someone to make a prototype. By identifying personal strengths and weaknesses the company can be designed so that the person who started the company can be put to best use and not bogged down with the details of accounting, shipping products, etc.
By doing an honest self-evaluation, entrepreneurs can undergo self-training to overcome their own deficiencies or search for temporary collaborators who may come from educational institutions or chance encounters.
This course is based on my acclaimed book designed for beginning entrepreneurs, “Make Your Own Job: Anytime, Anywhere, At Any Age.” The free 45-minute video lesson is available on YouTube at the Hovey Smith Channel and may be seen below. The twelve LearnDesk lessons may be subscribed to at a cost of $200. The lessons will be held twice a week.
There are two versions of Lesson 4. The one immediately below is longer and more complete, and the version below it (scroll down) employs photographic illustrations to illustrate the topics and is shorter. I was fighting a respiratory condition at the time I recorded the lower version and my voice was impacted towards the end. I recorded the second version after I recovered.
Interviews are part of an author’s life and are always approached with a degree of uncertainty. Will the equipment work? Can I make the interview on time? Will the weather knock out my phone? Can I understand the host, and can she or he understand me? More questions as the moment approaches, and finally the telephone call arrives and you are, for better or worse, on air with the world and with an audience and host that you may not know.
The typical parts of a radio interview are first identification. Who and what is being talked about? Then the author is asked to describe his book. A frequent follow-up question is how did the author come up with the concept? Sometimes a question about the writing process itself and almost always what the author hopes that the reader takes away from the book? The interview concludes with a statement on where the book can be purchased and in what formats.
Because of some connection problems related to the storms that we have been having here in Central Georgia this year, the interview was running late by the time we began, and I was a bit flustered by that time. This was not my best interview but was adequate.
In an apparent rush to get this review out during the rush before Christmas, reviewer Mark Heisey made some errors in his review, although he did capture the general intent and tone of the book. First he misspelled the family’s name. It is Calsase and not Calase, the family have lived in Louisiana for three generations and Frank, a Marine Captain, had been divorced from his wife before the family made their trip.
The complete review appears below:
book review by Mark Heisey “Frank took the gun from Roger, slapped in another magazine, pointed it towards the car, and gave it a burst of bullets. The screams stopped.”
The Calase family is going to Sicily to see relatives they have never met. Robert and Nancy, along with Robert’s brother William, are taking their children back to where their family came from a generation ago. They are bringing their daughter Mary, who works as a hairdresser downtown with William, and their sons, Frank and Roger. Roger is a failed portrait painter who just broke up with his girlfriend in San Francisco and is heading back to the family home in Louisiana. Frank is a Marine, grounded from flying due to injuries, who has learned while on his way home for leave that his wife filed for divorce. Although the Caleses suspect that the Sicilian branch of the family may be involved in some illegal activities, they don’t imagine that they are a major part of the Sicilian mafia. Amidst growing bloodshed, Luigi, also known as the Claw, plans to marry two of the young Sicilian ladies to the American brothers as a show of strength to the other mafia families as well as to get them out of the country and away from bloodshed. And Luigi is not a man to disappoint.
Smith is an accomplished writer, and it shows in this work. His sentences are well-written with few grammatical errors, and his pacing feels natural. Smith also does due diligence when it comes to researching the people, places, and items he places in the novel. His attention to detail is evident. The English Patient, by Michael Ondaajte, is a novel that stands out partly because of the impeccable sense of place the reader experiences. Smith’s book is similar in tone. The locations, history, food, architecture, and culture of the Sicilians described in the novel transport the reader to the Italian island. Particularly notable is Smith’s passion for writing about food. The reader can see, smell, and practically taste some of the meals served in the novel. Another interesting parallel is how both branches of the family are very loyal to those within them and have a code of honor, even if the two branches operate very differently. There is a nice tension built between the family ties that bring the groups together and the moral/criminal differences that drive them apart. Many readers will find themselves both liking the Sicilian branch of the family and fearing the harm they may inflict upon the Caleses.
There is a lot to like in this overseas adventure: mafia battles, undercover agents, family ties, blood feuds, and a good sense of place. However, there are times when the book seems to include too much educational detail. There are also points where the plot complications feel too easily and quickly solved in a work where taking time for more information is paramount. Still, this book has a broad appeal. Readers who enjoy a skillful handling of setting and atmosphere will find this work resonates with their tastes. Also, those who like a good adventure with a nice bit of action focused on relatable characters in unusual situations should find this novel an enjoyable read.1
Hunters often face the unique challenge of finding unlabeled or missing-label packages of meat in their freezer which are generally known as “mystery meat.” If one is a diversified hunter, this might be deer, wild hog, wild turkey, Canada geese, duck, swan, rabbit, squirrel, or raccoon. Faced with the high price of commercial turkeys this year, I dug deep and found a package labeled “Goose Cooked, 2017.”
This package had to be one of the smaller species of geese. Since it was cooked, this meant that I had cooked several at once and frozen the excess bird wrapped in plastic bags and aluminum foil for some future use. When I dug it out of the depths of the freezer, I decided that its time had come, particularly as my Thanksgiving dinner guest would be Bill Krantz who had accompanied me on a number of my waterfowl hunts in Georgia and elsewhere.
Thawing, reheating, and cooking a goose that had been frozen since 2017 presented no problems for me as I had cooked a commercial Butterball turkey that had been frozen for over fifteen years a few years back, and it had turned out fine. I also had no doubt that while I was in the Army I had been served birds that had been frozen for decades along with the World War II era C-rations that we were still consuming in the 1970s. As a Geologist and resident of Alaska, I also knew of people eating frozen Pleistocene wooly mammoth meat that was some 10,000 years old.
Thinking about the potential hunts that this goose might have come from, the possibilities were that this was a speckle-belly goose from Louisiana, or a snow goose from either Canada or North Carolina or perhaps a North Carolina brant. All of these had been memorable hunts done with Mortimer, a flintlock 12-gauge cylinder-bored shotgun made by Davide Pedersoli. I considered that the most likely possibility was that this was a North Carolina snow goose.
Most reports of snow goose hunting are from the Western states, but significant numbers also work the Eastern Flyway. During very severe winters they may even winter as far south as Central Georgia where I now live, but most commonly do not venture much further south that North Carolina in any great numbers. Of all geese, snows like to migrate in huge flocks and attracting these birds often requires a trailer loads of decoys. The migration of these flocks attracts immediate attention as the cackling birds pass over head, forming the largest flocks of waterfowl that many hunters have ever seen.
Their numbers grew to the point where they were destroying their Arctic nesting habitat, and Spring goose seasons were opened to help keep their population under control. Although they fly over mountains during their migration across the continent from Alaska and Canada to North Carolina, they feel most at home in the flatland prairies of the Midwest, and the billiard-table flat fields of coastal North Carolina where they will eagerly feed on emerging vegetation, particularly planted crops.
Outfitters who specialize in this type of hunting take fairly large groups of people to effectively hunt their huge spreads of decoys. A typical tactic is to locate where they are feeding, set up their decoys outside of this area and call the boiling mass of white birds to them using mouth and electronic calls. In the spring the fields are covered in wet, clingy soil that yields deep ruts, and great care must be taken to keep the support vehicles from getting stuck and the hunters from getting so mud-bound that they can no longer trudge out to their blinds in their waders.
Some of the best goose hunting weather is when it is spitting rain or snow, which is not the best for the flintlock water fowler. Flip open or covered blinds may sometimes be sledded out on the muddy fields. Each outfitter is constantly attempting to come up with some means of keeping his sports somewhat sheltered while still providing reasonable shooting opportunities while chasing a constantly moving target as the flocks move around the temporary and permanent ponds dotting the flat landscape. Constant scouting is necessary to find the geese and successfully hunt them.
Snow geese overfly areas where there are permanently position blinds on wildlife refuges, but only rarely will they drop down to shotgun range. If they do not see their fellows in the hundreds speckling the dark fields below, they cannot often be coaxed to descent from their typical flying altitude of one to several thousand feet. Yes, you can see them and you can certainly hear them, but nothing outside of cannon can reach them.
The hunter arrives. He is assembled with his party and the guides after meeting in the parking lot of the motel and everyone is loaded up to caravan out to wherever the guide has picked out for the day’s activities in order to arrive 30 minutes before daybreak. It is blowing and spitting snow, and the cased guns are protected as well as they might be. There are two four-wheel drive pickups for the hunters and guides and another pulling the trailer with the rag, full-bodied, and mechanical decoys which must be all put out before sunrise. While an open landing area is left in the middle of the spread, everyone is given a bundle of decoys to unfold and put out while the guides tow the cockroach-shaped layout blinds into position. Ultimately the decoys are put out, and the hunters are re-united with their guns. They then bed themselves down in their lay-out blinds as comfortably as possible to watch the sunrise that colors the scudding clouds with rose-colored tents as the clouds began to break.
With the sun and increased visibility, the level of noise increases as flocks of snows, seen as boiling white clouds, noisily rise and settle down again. Anticipation grows and the electronic calls are started and the mechanical decoys activated. The question on everyone’s mind is, “Will they fly this way?” The answer is “Patience. We will get at least some geese. Let the flock build before you shoot. Don’t shoot until I give the signal.”
Mortimer, now out of its case, primed with FFg black powder for maximum damp resistance and with the lock covered by a mule’s knee is loaded and ready. My load consists of 1 1/4-ounce by volume of HeviShot which is averaging about a no. 4 in size contained in a plastic wad sitting on top of a charge of Cream of Wheat, a felt, and card wad propelled by 100-grains of FFg. This is the most weather resistant load that I have developed for this shotgun that has proven successful on larger geese and swan. This gun and load know each other. They have killed before, and can do so again – even from a cylinder-bored gun.
Will the geese come? It is now full daylight, and no geese yet. Finally after a number of false starts a flock of some 50 birds or so rises, gain altitude, and heads towards us. “These may work,” the guide says. “Don’t anybody move.” The flock dips, readjusts, makes a quarter turn, and then strikes out towards our spread. Me and Mortimer are ready. We have been ready for more than an hour. The unfamiliar confines of the lay-out blind and cold have stiffened my entire body. A welcome shot of adrenalin pulses through my body as the birds approach. I purposefully do not look up.
Finally, the much anticipated command comes. “Shoot.”
The birds are milling, churning, and rising as gun barrels probe the air looking for a target. The problem is too many targets. Which one? Which way is it flying? Where is it going to be when my shot reaches it? Most hunter have to resist the impulse to blast away to exhaust their unplugged magazines as quickly as possible with the apparent expectation that some shot has got to hit something somewhere.
With one shot, I don’t have that option. One shot. One bird. In Manitoba, Mortimer had taken four snow and one blue goose with as many shots. It had also taken a limit of two speckle-belly geese with two shots. It was once more time to do it again.
Spotting movement on the ground, the flock milled and clamored to gain altitude, with each bird seeking its own path to safely. I sat up, freed the long barrel from inside the blind, picked out my bird, cocked the gun, pulled the brown barrel until the ivory bead was past its neck and head, and pulled the trigger. The flint scraped hot metal off the frizzen as the pan opened and the red hot fragments impacted against the waiting powder grains flashing the pan. A jet of flame burst through the touch hole into the powder sub-chamber which now propelled burning fragments into the rest of the charge starting the shot column down its journey through the 38-inch barrel.
More powder ignited along the way building pressure until ultimately the wad column cleared the muzzle. The heavy shot with its added momentum now pulled out of the shot cup as the lighter lagging components fell behind. The shot hit the goose and it fell dead in the air. Shooting continued on both sides of me. While they shoot, I cleared the gun and using premeasured charges stored in plastic tubes reloaded Mortimer to get ready for the next flight. This sequence will be repeated several more times during the hunt, but we have done it. Mortimer and I have shot North Carolina snows.
Once again, I eat, and remember the origin of this Thanksgiving dinner shared with a friend.
If you live in the East you can contract with guides and hunt snow geese in North Carolina and Virginia in both spring and fall. These guides hunt every day they have parties, and now is a good time to contract for a spring hunt or perhaps book a January hunt when ducks, swan, and snows are all in season. However, they must be hunted under the usual waterfowl regulations with plugged guns, manual calling, etc. For more information about these hunts refer to my books “X-Treme Muzzleloading” and my e-book, “Hunting with Muzzleloading Shotguns and Smoothbore Muskets” which is available from Amazon.com and other electronic book outlets worldwide.
Writing a press release for a novel or movie is different than producing one for a newspaper. To have its largest impact, the press release should in one page tell the reviewer exactly what he, or she, needs to know immediately and not waste time with fluff about the author or production company. The reviewer wants to know what the work is all about and less about the author and the company that is sending out the release. Both have necessary parts to play in a press release, but the release is about the work; not the people who made it.
The following is a press release about my new novel.
Quantum Discovery
Announces new Sicilian Adventure-Romance
Bravery, blood, and bullets mixed with lust and love are features of Until Death Do You Part: An American Family Meets Their Sicilian Cousins when a Louisiana family’s vacation in Sicily turns deadly when they arrive on Monday and are informed that their two sons are to be married on Friday or none will leave the island alive. A potential Mafia war has caused Luigi, The Claw, to want to get his daughter and niece out of the country, and a chance visit of this American family with unattached sons provides the opportunity to send them to the United States. Frank, a divorced Marine Captain with PTSD and his failing artist brother, Roger, agree to wed “two of the fairest flowers of the island” and accept 100,000 euros a year to support their new brides They have second thoughts when they discover they are marrying into one of the most powerful Mafia families in Sicily. As they visit Sicily’s historic sites, they are attacked by a rival mob. Wanting out, they accept a plan hatched by an Irish priest and their gay uncle to be seen by their prospective brides naked in bed with two gay strippers in hopes that the women will call off the wedding. This wedding has also captured the attention of the FBI and the Italian Anti-Mafia Association who are watching the situation to possibly prevent a union between American and Sicilian Mafia families. Lust ultimately yields to love, and the Americans agree to continue with the wedding, however brief their wedded lives might be.
Prize winning author Wm. Hovey Smith is a Professional Geologist noted for his 20 outdoor and business books. He developed this novel after five years of research including a trip to Sicily where he gathered much of the information used in the novel. He employs his knowledge of geology, architecture, art, history, business, and the outdoor world to create a novel that not only tells an appealing story, but also highlights Sicily’s 3,000 years of history and culture. He has also completed a screenplay which is being marketed to Hollywood.
Quantum Discovery aids authors in self-publishing and marketing their books to traditional publishers, TV, and movie industries. For additional information contact agent Calvin Frost.
Good novels, particularly those with a variety of domestic and international settings require time, sometimes years, to research and write. In the case of “Until Death Do You Part: An American Family Meets Their Sicilian Cousins,” the germ of a story originated five-years-ago when I met a family of Sicilian origin in Louisiana who had just returned from Sicily and a visit to other members of their family, some of whom had historic Mafia connections. Subsequently, I met a family in Mississippi who had attractive sons who were having martial difficulties. While working on my line of outdoor books, I mentally tossed around a plot that would combine these two families’ experiences into a single story.
It would not be much of a story if I told a travel story about where they went, saw the sights, and returned. For a novel to happen there had to be factors regarding motivation, characters, crises, some climatic event, and a resolution. Ultimately some 70 characters were involved in the story, but initially I had only the Louisiana family that I knew nearly nothing about. I had to make the family diverse, which they turned out to be. One of the sons I decided would be a Marine Captain, an ex-flying officer who had been retrained as a forward observer and deployed during the second Iraq War where he participated in calling in an air strike and was exposed to some horrid sights. Then he experienced a mortar attack and when he was e-mailing home, he found a Dear John letter. His wife had left him for another man.
That gave me a back story for one of the characters. His younger, and slightly smaller, brother was an artist who had taken up painting using old pigments such as used in the 1400s. He was a perfectionist and could never finish anything, although he had talent. As the book opens we find him in San Francisco being thrown out of an apartment that he shared with his girlfriend because he could never make rent money. These events brought both of the adult brothers home, unattached, so they could join their parents, gay uncle, and sister on their trip. Roger, the younger brother, nurses an old Scout II, The Busted Beast, across the desert to Louisiana after having a series of interesting encounters with a transvestite named Dixie Crystal, two bare-breasted nuns and a giant of a guy that he thinks is going to leave him dead in the desert.
With the family thus assembled and on their way to Sicily what could I think of that would add interest to such a book? They had to meet some difficulties that were other than the ordinary things like losing passports, getting robbed, missing their flights, etc. I would need some device that would put them in mortal danger. The Mafia is a useful tool for that. What if both of the guys had to get married to two women they had never met or everyone in the family would be killed? My novel in set in 2004, and not the 1400s, how could I make this happen, and make up a convincing story as to why two women would ever agree to marry two strange men?
Something horrible had to happen. An innocent had to die. I felt bad about it because Davide was a handsome young guy who worked at the equivalent of an ice-cream shop and was beloved by all, including Cecilia, one of the brides-to-be, who was going to marry him. Davide takes his own life to end a 200-year-old vendetta. This tragic act convinces the women that they would be willing do do anything to leave this island of seemingly endless blood and death.
Now some characters are need to stir up the plot. I invented Luigi, called The Claw, who lost a hand during World War II and ultimately became an enforcer for one of the Mafia families. Because he had assisted The Resistance to the German occupation, he was given a job as an artist working for an American team during salvage archeology after the war. Luigi is the father of Cecilia and Uncle to Angelica,. He had raised them both since they were children. Because he fears another round of Mafia wars he wants to get these women out of the country, and by happenstance two Americans are to visit the island who are at the moment unattached. After some persuading, the two women agree to entertain the idea and he and Donna Carlos, the wife of an arrested Mafia Don, are already booking spaces and having the women’s dresses made before the American’s arrive.
Everyone is shocked when the men in the family are informed on Monday that the weddings will take place on Friday. He adds an annual support of 100,000 euros a year to sweeten the pot, and the men reluctantly agree to meet the two women who are described as “two of the fairest flowers of the island.”
As the novel progresses, ties of blood, lust, respect, and bullets bind the two parts of the family together, despite the determined efforts of Apachee, a rival Mob member who supervises several attempted shootings, a bombing, and poisoning. The family’s successful extraction from the island enlist the aid of a wild boar slain with a flintlock musket by one of the grooms, an Irish priest who has become overly fond of Grappa, two gay strippers, the FBI, Italian Antimafia Association, and the U.S. Air Force.
After the outline of the novel was mentally running through my head, I made an 11 day tour of Sicily to gather site information, gain a feel for the food, and have a good look at the island. This trip was of considerable aid in enriching the book with the essence of Sicilian culture. It helped me considerably when I was able to add Sicily to the locations in the book that I described. I have a series of YouTube videos that I took on my Sicilian trip.
This book is now available in softcover and e-book from Amazon.com and other sources worldwide, and as a 7-hour audiobook from Amazon and many other outlets.
About two weeks ago Don McCauley did an excellent interview with me about my new book, “Make Your Own Job: Anytime, Anywhere, At Any Age” on “The Author’s Show.” We had done an unusually through pre-interview interchange which enabled me to mentally prep for the show.
This was excellent because my book is unlike any previous business book in that it presents a method of self-generating business concepts, selecting which to act on when, and then goes through the entire process of starting a business to do what you need, or want, to do at the time. There is always a danger when producing a non-conventional book that it will not be appreciated by those who have deeply ingrained opinions of what a business book ought to be. Kurkus, the international book review firm that is known for giving critical reviews said that, “This is a worthy book for the newbie entrepreneur,” which is high praise indeed.
In their opinion I succeeded in producing a business book that is suitable for non-business majors containing excellent information that the average person can use. Some chapters, like the one on patents, they liked better than others, but they also liked the fact that I gave coverage to the entire business process as might be done by everyone from teens to seniors in a scant 150 pages. That business need might be to raise immediate cash, develop a side-hustle while you work for someone else, or select a business that you really enjoy doing to bring in some extra money during your retirement years. The need to self-generate income has never been more pressing than now when the entire economy is readjusting from the impact of the Corona Virus. There is an undeniable degree of security to be gained by having your own business running, even if on a small scale, so that you can have a source of income that you control.
The variety of businesses that might be selected could be inventing and making a physical product, specializing in retailing some particular type of goods on a worldwide basis, selling knowledge, something creative in the arts, or assisting others by founding a non-profit organization to full an unmet need. Nor is it required that you select from any one of the above. The recommended program is to plan for your new business, execute it, evaluate it, and move on to the next thing if the previous concept did not work out so well. Be observant, be flexible, take risks, learn from your failures, and have fun doing it.
These and other concepts were presented during the interview which we enjoyed doing. Both of us have sat on both sides of the microphone many times before, and we appreciated each others’ work which made for an unusually informative and enjoyable program.
If you want a good listen, Google “The Author’s Show” and look for my name Wm. Hovey Smith and the book’s title “Make Your Own Job: Anytime, Anywhere, At Any Age.” If you happen to miss the show today, it will be archived and you can catch it some other time or listen to it more than once. You can use the URL http://www.theauthorsshow.com to connect to the show at any time.
“Make Your Own Job” is available as a softcover, e-book, or a 7-hour audio book from Amazon.com and other sources worldwide.
Listening, instead of reading, has considerably increased the versatility of Make Your Own Job: Anytime, Anywhere, At Any Age, by making it accessible to commuters and drivers through their internet connections as a downloadable audiobook. If inconvenient to listen to on a laptop or tablet, the book may be downloaded on a phone or thumb drive that plugs into your vehicle’s sound system. Other advantages include being able to increase the listening volume for those whose hearing is not as sharp as it once was.
I selected LisenUp Productions of Atlanta to do the audiobook because it was convenient to me here in Central Georgia as well as to promote another industry in the state. I had the opportunity to audition three readers, and I selected James Edward Thomas as the reader, rather than recording it myself. Recording a seven-hour book requires a sound-insulated recording room, high quality mikes, editing skills, very much patience, and a voice that remains consistent over time. While I possess some of these items and personal qualities here at Whitehall, I lack others. Another very considerable problem is distribution. It may be well and good to produce an outstanding reading of a novel or piece of music, but the challenge is putting it in the hands of the distributors who market it to individuals, public libraries, business firms, etc. Some large public libraries, for example, will buy only through a particular distributor. Not only does ListenUp produce audio books, they also market them to all of the major distributors of audiobooks including Amazon, the elephant in the room.
Another beneficial result of the audiobook is that it also drives sales of the companion softcover and e-book versions. While listening is wonderful for getting an overview of the contents, Make Your Own Job is designed to be used, as it describes a unique method of conceiving of and selecting among self-generated business concepts that most readers would want to reference from time to time. The print version also allows the user to quickly look up materials on say, trademarks, without having to re-listen to an entire book to recover this information. With a novel the easy location of textual material would not be so significant, unless readers wanted to check back to see if the author pre-shadowed a significant clue earlier in the text. Unless they were avid fans, they would not likely lay out significant cash to buy a physical copy of the book.
Although business books have the reputation of being long, dry, and boring, listeners will find that Thomas’ reading of Make Your Own Job to be entertaining as well as informative.
What to do if you are in the midst of shooting two videos and your camera fails, and cannot be repaired?
Order another of the same model on line. – Done. Received.
Do what you can to salvage the videos in progress. – Done. (See Hovey Smith YouTube Channel 01/27/2021 about Bon Richard getting ready for squirrel and small game hunting.)
Get your Covid-19 Vaccine at your local VA. – Done.
Fortunately I had made an appointment at the VA in Dublin, Georgia, five days previously. I got up at 5:30 AM so that Hector and I could reach the hospital by 10:00 AM, and we arrived about an hour early on a rainy, overcast day. Unusual for appointments, the signage at the hospital directed me to the auditorium which was on the second floor of the Administrative Building. After checking in just beyond the entrance doors, I was escorted upstairs to fill out paperwork and checked in again before being asked to wait for a nurse to check my blood pressure and temperature. For the second time I was asked if I had any symptoms of the virus. All but a few chairs had been moved out of the large room and I was asked to wait until my number, number 6, was called. Then I was escorted by a nurse into a draped exam cubicle and she gave me the shot in my arm. She also filled out a card that I had been given telling me that I had been given the Moderna Covid-19 Vaccine and recorded the date. After the shot I was asked to wait for 15 minutes while sitting well apart from anyone else in the room. After that I was checked out before I left the auditorium and given a return appointment for the booster shot at the end of February. As I write this the following day, I have no adverse symptoms except for a slight soreness in the arm where the shot was given. Hector, my Lab, was waiting patiently in the truck when I returned and we had an uneventful return trip through some modest showers going home. Being a vet, I have had many vaccines and shots before without any ill effects, and expect none from this one.
The Dublin VA was one of the first institutions in Georgia to receive the vaccine, and I was fortunate that I received some of the last of that initial shipment. That shipment is now completely allocated, and they will again accept veterans that they regularly treat when they receive a fresh supply. Other VA institutions in Central Georgia that have been giving the vaccine are Georgia Veteran Education Career Transition Resource Center (VECTR) in Warner Robins and the Macon CBOC. Contact your nearest VA facility for information on where and how you may receive the vaccine if your are a veteran signed up for treatment at the facilities who is a health worker or over the age of 65.
4. Work on your webpage.
As I am a writer I had started a webpage in 2007 and updated it periodically as I had written new books and done other activities. I named it after myself www. hoveysmith.com, as this seemed the easiest way for people to find me. Over the decades, I added information not only about my growing number of books, but also other activities such as my radio shows, knife-building efforts, international speaking, and most recently my business books. The last is Make Your Own Job: Anytime, Anyplace, At Any Age which is available in softcover, as an e-book as well as an audio books. As it turns out, age is not only working on me, it is also working on my website. I was informed by a technician that the coding on my old version of the program would, in some cases, no longer work with the newer generation of browsers. The remedy, he said, was to purchase a newer version of their program. That brings up more talk, because the update might require that the entire website be redesigned and all of the information reentered or discarded. Among the several pages linked to the site there was an order page with a single entry for my first book, but I could not add anything to that page. The remedy I derived was to post the written descriptions and instead of doing a text-wraparound the image, centered the image above the text and placed a link beneath it to Amazon.com and ListenUP Audio Books where they may be ordered. You may view the results at: www.hoveysmith. com.
A business book for the non-business major, Make Your Own Job: Anytime, Anyplace, At Any Age, provides detailed instructions on how to select the best business opportunity at the moment, how to grow that business, and how to investigate longer-term business possibilities while you are still employed or running your own business. Life is not static. Business opportunities may arise at any time that can be taken advantage of provided that a person has the tools to recognize, evaluate, and take advantage of them. Pre-Covid-19, the worker had only the problems of having their jobs exported overseas, being automated out of a job, downsized out of the company, having their products become obsolete, being replaced by younger workers, or having to leave a job because of injury or disability. All of these dangers to workers still exist, but have been overshadowed by the virus outbreak, which has accelerated these trends and closed all but essential business activities in entire cities and states. Although vaccines have been developed, full job recovery is not anticipated to occur until 2024 by which time companies will have become more automated, relying more on at-home workers, and consolidated many job functions. The only way workers can protect themselves from these uncertainties is to develop their own means of making a living which is by starting mini-companies or companies to insure short-term and longer-term income for them and their families. This book is designed to show how to recognize and take advantage of emerging opportunities.
To avoid the high failure rate of new business ventures, the author details how to systemically rank potential opportunities into short-term, medium-term, and longer-term possibilities and selecting the best option for fulfilling one’s immediate economic needs , while simultaneously considering longer-term prospects. Not all businesses fit the needs of all people all the time.The ultimate objective is to discover a business that is so appealing that you would work at it even if no one paid you, but which will also satisfy your goals and aspirations, which will change over the decades. This new venture may be as simple as selling or exchanging something you already own at swap events or on barter websites, or it might require advanced college degrees or technical training.
Although opening a store-front business may be the first thing that comes to mind, internet-enhanced or based businesses are usually less expensive to launch, have less fixed costs, and can very often be done from your home or apartment. Such businesses may involve selling goods, services, knowledge, the fine arts, or writing. Many of these alternatives are illustrated by Smith’s life experiences in the book.
The book was released on January 12 and is now available from http://www.listenupaudiobooks.com, and will soon be available from audio book suppliers worldwide. A softcover version of the title is also available from Amazon.com.
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Hovey the Hulk captured with my Cannon VIXIA HFR 800 Video camera. 