Namaste, I hoped you enjoyed the October Newsletter. I am happy to be offering a free gift each month in conjuction to the JaymesGrace.com Newsletter. Perhaps you noticed an underlying theme of new beginnings in this first newsletter. The first person to email or blog correctly that they have found the hidden message supporting this months theme will be this month's prize winner - "Good Luck" to every one. The winner will be announce in the blog and in next month's newsletter.

Tomorrow I will attending a book signing by Dr. Cornell West being held at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore (my all-time favorite library.) Including in this months newsletter was an article on meditation. Along with my current daily meditaion I practice an affirmation. For over the past I have been focusing on "I trust the process of life." If you don't currently have one of you own, try mine - it has been extremely comforting and soothing!

Yes, it took most of the day and all of last night, but JaymesGrace.com is finally live. In order to access it you must type into your browser jaymesgrace.com or jaymesgrace.com/

Tomorrow I will finish pointing and clicking everything to their correct destinations. For now I am gonna to take a breather. Newsletter announcements will be going out shortly! Thanks for being a part of our launch.

Well, its just a little past mid-night and I am ready to launch. But there is a delay; a bit of technical difficulty. I have contacted Houston and with some patience and a little tweaking here and there, I should be given a go shortly.

Well, I have one issue resolved, yet still no go on the launch. It is now 12:35 am. There is nothing I can do now but wait and I am going to fall asleep. When I awakened I should be able to launch and I expect the website to be up and available for viewing some time later today.

One! This is it; and tomorrow is launch. I may not be done, but nevertheless... I am glad that the countdown has come to a close. Because you know that there is always more to do or that can be done, so it is good to have an anticipated or scheduled close.  A good portion of today's work was dedicated to clients. Unless you can absolutely retreat to Walden Pond or some facsimile, no one project gets your full attention.

I personally am incapable of working on only one project at a time. I bet I am not alone in that category. And if you are self employed... you have clients, employed... you have a boss. Otherwise you have children, spouses, partners, pets, obligations. I think my point is that you can not always get it all done by a specified time. Yet the specified time is an important tool that will sometimes indicate that it is time to progress even if work has not been completed by your projection. Moving on will most often times prevent you from getting stuck.

I am sure there are many out there that are waiting to complete a previous assignment that you may have given to yourselves before moving on to the next step. As a result, unemployment insurance has not been filed, resumes are not updated or sent out, phone calls have not been made, web sites not yet set up and so on and so on.

Am I suggesting that things be half done? No, on the contrary; what you do complete, do it well. But don't let uncompleted task stop you from moving on. Because in reality, there will always be uncompleted task. Tomorrow we launch!

Day 2! Wow, I gotta tell you, that's scary. It means we are almost there  And still there is much to do. For those of you who keep checking back, I want to say thank you. I really appreciate your interest. I have also noticed that many are joining in for the first time...it is great to see you as well.

Once the JaymesGrace.com website goes live, please share it with friends. And if you are familiar with our work...your referrals are greatly appreciated. If you want to contact me, contact info will be on the website.
I realize this was a short entry; enjoy them when you can. I can be verbose at times!

Day 3! Wow, day three. I thought I would wait until the end of the day today before I made my entry in order to give some hi-lights of what work took place today.But that's not gonna happen. Progress today was slow. Hey, we are still in a retrograde. Looks like I will be working late tonight. I'll let you know tomorrow how things progressed throughout  the night. I kinda feel like I'm doing my own version of that renovation show where they move the bus at the end for the reveal. But the night before they are outside in the dark working with the spotlights on trying to make the deadline. Yeah, that'll be me tonight, tomorrow and Wednesday night!

Day 4! Yes, we have crossed the half way mark in our countdown. There is still lots of work to be done but today is the day that I recognize as my sabbath. Though admittedly, I will me doing some work and I have a few email correspondences to send out.

I want to encourage anyone visiting the blog to please leave a comment. Particularly in regard to Day 6's message. Talk to you soon.

Day 5! Today marks the half way mark to the launch of the new website for JaymesGrace.com. Though we still have a lot of work to do, I am glad that we are almost there. I am having difficulty staying connected to my router this morning. I do have a back-up USB antenna, but I rather not use it today. So it may turn out that construction will resume this evening, while physical work on the office space continues today.

So far work today has been focused on  planning and research. A necessary ongoing endeavor no matter where you are in your business. Some of you know that JaymesGrace.com is an independent (that means small and privately owned) consulting firm. We consult (and assist) on marketing, advertising and brand management. Our focus is primarily on entrepreneurs, small businesses, artist and local churches.

That is a little of who we are. Next week I begin to share more of what we do, including our non-profit work. Here's hoping you might want to get involved.

Yes, it is Day 6. But please bear with me while I broach a serious subject. We are going to talk about computer literacy as I promised yesterday; but first let’s look at the foundation of this discussion.

 

Illiteracy is causing irreparable damage to our society. If you think that sounds like an exaggeration, you're wrong. For proof, check out these illiteracy statistics.

 

Illiteracy Statistics

In a study of 20 'high income' countries, the US ranked 12th on literacy tests. Illiteracy has become such a serious problem in our country that 44 million adults are now unable to read a simple story to their child. A few other shocking facts:

• 50 percent of adults cannot read a book written at an eighth grade level.
• 20 percent of Americans are functionally illiterate and read below a 5th grade level.
• Nearly half of all Americans read so poorly that they cannot find a single piece of information when reading a short publication.

How Illiteracy Affects Job Prospects

• 3 out of 4 people on welfare can't read.
• 20 percent of Americans read below the level needed to earn a living wage.
• 50 percent of the unemployed people who fall between the ages of 16 and 21 cannot read well enough to be considered functionally literate.
• Between 46 and 51 percent of American adults have an income well below the individual threshold poverty level because of their inability to read.

How Illiteracy Affects Society

• 3 out of 5 people in an American prison can't read.
• 85 percent of juvenile offenders have problems reading.
• Approximately 50 percent of Americans read so poorly that they are unable to perform simple tasks such as balancing a checkbook and reading prescription drug labels.
• To determine how many prison beds will be needed in future years, some states actually base part of their projection on how well current elementary students are performing on reading tests. (WOW!)

How Illiteracy Costs Taxpayers

Illiteracy has been proven to cause children to drop out of school. Dropouts cost our nation $240 billion in social service expenditures and lost tax revenues.

Now, if you are still with me…’cause I know I had to step away after initially reading that.

Let us extrapolate how the disparity gap increases with computer literacy or illiteracy. Through our indulgence of not correcting our young people’s grammar and the advent of texting vocabulary, we have helped to create a subculture of illiteracy and poverty that is now entering into the infancy stage of it’s third generation of victims. Progress does not happen in reverse. At the risk of using the word never, I’m going to say we will never go back to using pictographs to communicate. The written language is here to stay. In very much the same way business communication (where money changes hands) will not go back to sending mail through the US postal system for most of their correspondences. Eventually, they won’t even send a fax in the way it was first introduced. Even an initial application for employment will be sent by use of computer.

The world of computer has it’s own language. Of course you have heard it spoken; but similar to when hearing a foreign language that you are unfamiliar with, one usually tunes it out. Though most of the words sound familiar:  HTML. Server, host, domain name, site, link, attachment, browser, Mac, Joomla, platforms, virtual, viral, 2GB, 50MB, flash drive, blogcast, podcast, etc…but can you use them intelligently in a sentence? And I am speaking elementary levels here. If computer literacy is not taken seriously, we will find that we will have created another subculture…this one will be computer illiterate and facing a similar and ever widening disparity gap between those who are computer literate and those who are not and find themselves facing similar hardships.

As for the aforementioned victims (and I use that word “victims” intently), now they will need to learn to read two English languages and they are going to need some help. We will touch back on this. For now there is more work to be done. Tomorrow marks the midway point.

Day 7 and counting! Lots of construction work yesterday, even though I had a long appointment out of the office. Good news is that my cholesterol levels are great! Yes, the good and the bad (LDL and HDL.) And where I feared I might have early on-set of arthritis, it's just tennis elbow. Luckily the building and construction we are doing here does not require heavy lifting (at least none that require use of my left elbow.)

Back to the launch of JaymesGrace.com, I feel we are on schedule. Even though at day seven, the schedule is getting tighter. Yesterday lots of work and planning was done on the sister sites.  One goal we are trying to accomplish is to implement a tool to allow all hopeful entrepreneurs and small business owners to have a media or web presence. 

Work did sist last night at about 10pm and will not resume again until tomorrow (a little retrograde interference.) But we have some physical work (painting, filing) to do aound the office. Since tomorrow there will be no reporting on construction, I will be chatting about computer literacy.

Thanks for joining me today.

http://www.gnn.com/