This is a blog response to Steve Pavlina’s blog How to Be a Man.

As with Steve’s blog post, I don’t believe this advice all applies only to women. Steve picked the theme, so I am sticking to it.

Throughout the post, I will also share examples of women who have been personally inspirational to me. It is my hope that you will find inspiration in their stories as well. Read the rest of this entry »

You — my readers — have been asking me some fabulous questions for a while now. Today starts the first in what I expect will be a fairly regular series I’m simply going to call “Ask Erica.” The first question in this series is surely on some of your minds — not about me, but about you. The question is: Why should you decide to become rich? Read the rest of this entry »

You probably already know that you can save a lot of money by using websites like eBay and craigslist. Most “how to save money” blog articles tell you you can save money by using these sites, but don’t go into a lot of details. I want to change that by showing you exactly how I have used these websites to save tens of thousands of dollars on everything from a 50″ plasma TV to Ralph Lauren sheets.

Using the methods I’ve outlined below can save you a thousand or more dollars on as few as two or three purchases. In most cases, you won’t spend more than an hour or so doing the research — meaning these methods are absolutely worth the effort. Read the rest of this entry »

I am sure you have had those perfect, amazing moments where everything just seems to work. Often called “flow states” or “peak experiences”, we produce some of our most amazing work during those times, and experience a breadth and depth of humanity that is not often seen. This is my journey from being burned out and exhausted to finding a workable way to get to a flow state on a daily basis. Read the rest of this entry »

A rather unfortunate incident turned into a source of entertainment for me today…

The unfortunate incident was that my old desktop computer, which I set up in 2006 and used pretty much every day since, finally gave up the ghost. Therefore, I spent most of this weekend setting up a new desktop system (a Shuttle SX38P2 Pro with an Intel E8400 processor overclocked to 3.4GHz/1600MHz FSB, if you’re curious.)

While setting up my new desktop, I decided it was probably time to “clean house” a bit and go through all my old documents. I spent a few hours weeding out over 50GB (!) of no-longer-needed files. While digging through archives of documents I had saved, I came across a gem: A PDF report from the National Association of Realtors, which is dated November 28, 2005. Read the rest of this entry »