Tao of Bachelorhood

That's more sugar than I've had in a week. (Photo by Theresa Thompson)

To be honest, the Tao of Bachelorhood’s anniversary was four days ago, but I was a bit laid up, so better late than never.

It’s been an interesting year, and I thank you for reading and responding. In the first few months it was all baby steps, but as I learned what was important to you I was better able to keep rolling, and working on this becomes more of a pleasure every day.

I’m working for your benefit—and learning plenty myself in the process—so please, don’t hesitate to drop me an e-mail or voice mail message. Whether you’re stuck somehow and would like a second opinion or fresh idea, or if you have a suggestion that would help deepen your enjoyment of this site, by all means let me know.

Over the past year I’ve created some killer content, if I say so myself, and I’ll bring some of it out of mothballs periodically for the benefit of anyone who hasn’t been with me since the beginning. We’re still just laying the foundation though, and my current list of article ideas is long and varied. In addition I’m adding multimedia content: the very first Tao of Bachelorhood podcast is coming up in the very next post, and some video may even be on the horizon.

For those of you who might have recently found this humble blog, let me point out a few of the cornerstone bits:

• A Simple Starter Workout

• Attracting Better Women, and The Myth of “Up-dating”

• 10 Steps to Working a Room

• The Most Important Trait for Men, and How to Get It

• The 3 Stages of Seduction

• The 3 Things You Must Be to Attract Women

• 22 Tips to Jumpstart Your Life

• Eat Right

• Do Real Men Moisturize?

• The Secret to Getting the Date (Not Just the Number)

• How to Tell When a Woman is Interested

• Be Observant; Be Successful

• No-Weights Workout

• How to Perform 14 Basic Skills (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3)

Read on, and thank you once again for giving me some of your valuable time. I hope I can help you get where you want to go.

Don't make our Evil Booth Babe have to hurt you. Because she will. (Photo by matchity)

This is your periodic reminder that Tao of Bachelorhood is a two-way street. Is there something you’d like to see here? Have a question about a tip, a technique or a product? Do you have a situation where you could use another man’s opinion? Just let me know:

• Comment on any article. While my blog is still young, I have the ability to read and reply to every comment on the site. If you have a Gravatar, you’ll even get your cool picture beside your comment.

• Send an e-mail to bachelorhood@gmail.com. Again, I respond to every message. Ask questions about something on the site, or about anything at all, or suggest an article.

• Leave me a voice mail at (917) 475-6367. This is a dedicated number, and I try to follow up on messages within 24 hours.

• Tweet me at @bachelorhood. Obviously this is better for shorter conversations.

• Join the Facebook group. You can ask questions or make comments on the wall, or start a discussion thread. The group’s just started but after we’ve got enough members we can also start running some contests, arranging meetups and other activities.

I know all of this is on the right side of every page, but those following along with RSS readers and such don’t always see it.

The first step to getting what you want is letting it be known. Thanks for your support so far, and I look forward to helping you out in the days to come.

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If you possibly can, please consider donating toward aid groups helping Haiti dig out from its devastating earthquake.

The options are many and easy:

• The American Red Cross (either online or by texting HAITI to 90999).
• UNICEF.
• Doctors Without Borders.
• Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti Earthquake Fund (text YELE to 501501 to make a $5 donation).
• The UN World Food Programme. This is my charity of choice.

Check with your employer to see if they will match your contribution. Also, be careful of the scams that always seem to pop up at times like this: send money and not items, through a legit program (here’s a list from Charity Navigator). And be very careful of text-message scams.

Our ability to help those in need did us all proud after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Let’s do it again.

You did not want to be drinking Bud Light anyway. (Photo by awnisALAN)

Well, the Tao hasn’t been around for quite a full year yet, but I’ve put a lot of content into the ol’ place, and it’s a great time to reflect on the stuff I think you can most learn from, or be entertained by. Also, I’m putting my time into finishing off the Starter Workout e-book for you, so this takes the place of new content.

1. A Simple Starter Workout — how to get yourself started in an exercise program with commitment and intensity.
2. Attracting Better Women, and The Myth of “Up-dating” — can you really get women who are “out of your league”?
3. 10 Steps to Working a Room — aka How to Meet People. Use this tonight!
4. The Most Important Trait for Men, and How to Get It — whatever you want in life, you can’t really have it until you have this.
5. 22 Tips to Jumpstart Your Life — you can’t “just do it” until you have something to do. Here are 22 somethings.
6. Eat Right — how to get your kitchen stocked to start feeding yourself properly.
7. Body Hair: Keep, Trim or Shave — what women want to see, with charts.
8. Dating: Picking Up the Check — this tricky question, unquestionably decided in an iron-clad fashion.
9. How to Perform 14 Basic Skills (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) — one men’s site wants you to learn these things; I actually help you learn them.
10. How to Tell When a Woman is Interested — she actually can’t help but let you know, and this is how.
11. Be Observant; Be Successful — two words that will change your life: pay attention.
12. No-Weights Workout — you have zero excuse now.

I hope you have an awesome New Year, and if you have a choice of parties tonight, pick the one that’s the smallest or with the largest percentage of close friends. Leave the drunken mass gatherings to the amateurs.

We’re almost halfway through the month and it’s now looking like a mustache. Behold:

Once again, I’m growing out my mustache (or “mo”) for Movember, a month of fund- and awareness-raising for prostate and testicular cancer. The Movember Foundation partners with the Prostate Cancer Foundation and Lance Armstrong Foundation, two organizations doing great work in this field.

Donate if you can (all funds go to the charity) at my official Movember page. I’m hoping to grow one mofo of a mo. We’ll see if genetics has other plans.

One more task for you (and this one’s free): you still have time to follow Drew Carey (@DrewFromTV) and help him donate to LIVESTRONG. $1 for every follower, up to a million, by December 31. Go do it!

Not actually Wooly Willy.

For the past month and a half I grew out some facial hair to rock a fairly authentic Captain Jack Sparrow for Halloween. Then, on November 1st, I shaved it all off.

Now I’m starting the process all over again, but this time it’s not just for me: I’m participating in Movember 2009, raising dollars and awareness for prostate and testicular cancer worldwide during the month of November. The Movember Foundation has raised millions for beneficiaries like the Prostate Cancer Foundation and The Lance Armstrong (LIVESTRONG) Foundation.

Men all over the world will be growing mustaches for the entire month of November, as a visual reminder of these important issues for men:

• 1 in 6 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime.
• Testicular cancer is the most common cancer in men 18-35.

You can stay posted on my progress through my Movember “MoSpace” page. While you’re there, please consider making a donation — of any size — towards men’s cancer research. While simply raising awareness is important, so is research. Times are tight for everyone, but do what you can.

If you’d like to participate by growing your own “mo,” you’re only a day behind — sign up now at Movember.com.

Yes, we’ve been unavailable for the past couple of days.

Long story short: a server malfunction complicated by inability of the hosting provider to provide anything resembling failover. Or prompt communication.

It’s time to say goodbye to Dreamhost and work with a more stable provider. Don’t get me wrong: Dreamhost should be fine for a hobby site where you don’t mind a multi-day outage that’s treated like a normal state of affairs. But I’m trying to grow this site, and can’t when I’m unable to work on it.

All clouds have a silver lining, and I’ve spent the past couple of days working on some nagging offline tasks. I’ll have some new content up for you shortly. Thanks for hanging in!