2009 Trend Predictions from Trendwatching

Trendwatching has taken its crystal ball, thanks to its trendspotters, and identified several consumer trends for 2009 including “LuxYOUry.”

My overall impression is it’s about authentic living and thoughtful consumption. Peruse the list to see how the trends could fit with your goals to make money or start a business. Or even start a new trend!

(What does this photo have to do with trends? Feedback is one of the trends but I only had a feedbag photo on hand.)

My Trend Predictions

• People will rediscover the benefits of communal living and of hanging out in cafes to escape their roommates.
• The barbershop quartet will return to the streets, aided by iPods, as people seek creative ways to make money.
• More people will experience happiness by connecting with other people in person and living in “the now,” unhindered by jobs and material things. (Well one has to find a silver lining!)

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Those Freakin’ Ideas Somehow Work

Rarely do I laugh out loud from an email. But today someone wrote:

“I visited your site and came away inspired. What a great idea to tap into the community - my favorites are “learn to weld” and “clean out my freakin closet and filing cabinet“

Welcome to Spring!

And thanks to the poetically named ThatPoetChick for expressing how we all feel about our overstuffed closets. And that same chick happily reached her goal to “hook up her freakin’ printer”—another well stated goal.

Somehow throwing in a word of frustration does seem to add a sense of urgency to get it done.

I myself need to back up my freakin’ harddrive and file my freakin’ taxes, although I tend to not list chores like that on my life list. (Here’s my freakin’ list. Wait no it’s not freakin’ it’s awesome! You can see I tend to exclude those freakin’ chores, which I usually jot in my Blackberry or on an envelope.)

In the spirit of first day of Spring cleaning, check out all of the “clean out my” goals that may inspire you!

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Non-Foolish Ideas for What You Can Do With $5000

The Motley Fool article What to Do With $5,000 has some great ideas, ranging from travel to investing to giving it away.

An addition to the “giving it away” option would be taking advantage of the gift tax law, to give a gift of cash to a deserving person—who won’t have to pay tax on the gift per IRS rules. No I’m not referring to giving it to SuperViva Really!

(In an odd bit of irony I found out my car had been towed, yet as I was typing this. One thing NOT to do with $5,000 is waste it on driving-related mistakes.)
Other thoughts?

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What could be scarier than public speaking?

The next time you need to speak in public, have one thing in mind: This won’t kill you.

It’s not like you are renting a car late at night in Maine and have been warned by multiple people to turn on your high beams to beware of moose standing in the road.
You certainly will not have had this message reinforced by stats of how many people died this year of moose collisions.

And for sure you did not have a toll-taker respond to your question as to whether moose bound across the road or stand by the side with a colorful image like: “They stand in the middle and since they’re the same color as the road you really can’t see them. And when you run into them the car buckles their legs and they go slamming into your windshield and roof right into your car. You pretty much die if that happens.”

You’re merely standing in front of a crowd who wants to hear what you have to say.

It’s not like you are racing 3 hours to get somewhere with your eyes wide open, almost no other cars on the road, trying to reach your destination before falling asleep or meeting your maker through contact with a horned two ton animal.

This is all I could think about on my long drive: how much scarier it is with the prospect of encounters with wild animals and death than it is to stand in front of a room delivering a presentation or speech. Forget picturing people naked. Picture a moose’s rack of horns in your torso. That’ll calm you down.

With just an hour left on my drive I called my brother in law and regaled him with tales of my fearful driving, asking if there were even more moose on the smaller roads on which I was about to embark.

“It’s not moose season!” he replied.

See, your fears are often just unnecessary.

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