baby bird's journal

Hello, something I realized recently

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:35:45 GMT

Handling reality is far more effective when you handle it as is.

I don't know who all reads my page, but it doesn't matter. I do know that several of you don't spend a lot of time surfing the internet, but I do and I can tell you this-- it is just filled with the lowest consciousness individuals you are likely to encounter outside of perhaps a prison. It's sad, and it makes me feel a little ill whenever I encounter it for long.

It's not just the internet where you see these things, it's all over the place, but on the internet you're likely to encounter a breeding ground for it.

Anyway, the other day I was driving in rush hour traffic (the source of a great deal of consciousness lowering experience for me) and came across this guy who did something stupid and self-centered. I don't remember exactly what happened anymore but it's not important. What I do recall is he did this stupid thing, and I started to imagine a worst-case type scenario unfolding where it escalated into road rage.

It was in that moment when I had my realization. It occured to me that, in my imagined scenario, this guy had become upset to the point of committing road rage because he was unable or unwilling to distinguish fantasy from reality.

I sat with that thought for a while, looking at it, analyzing it, spinning it around, checking it out from every angle, testing it in my mind, and I think I've come to the conclusion that it's the very same problem that I have and that perhaps everyone else has when they become upset. I'll explain.

I imagined one of the thousands of people on the road following behind me in the HOV (carpool) lane at rush hour and pushing closer and closer until they're less than a single car-length behind me, flashing their lights, sometimes honking, yelling, or gesturing until they have the chance to get past me (or simply TAKE the chance to pass me while it's been there all along) and then cutting me off, all the while endangering themselves, me, and all the other traffic around us.

What are they upset about? If you were to ask them, they would probably say they are upset that I'm driving so "slow" in front of them or because I was "in their way".

It is my contention that it is neither of these, nor is it likely anything that at least 99.9% of them are likely to give as their reason for being upset. In fact, I believe that the reason they are upset, and actually the reason almost anyone becomes upset in almost any situation, is because they are unwilling or unable to separate fantasy from reality.

What do I mean by separating fantasy from reality? Well, we often talk about the supposed negative effects that violence in music, television, movies and video games has on young, impressionable minds. The jury is still out on that one, but let's take for a moment the situation of a "normal" adult in a rather ordinary day-to-day situation becoming upset. Whether due to media influence, poor upbringing, lack of education, or whatever other possible cause, these individuals become upset over the most trivial of things because of their inability to separate their fantasy from reality. In our traffic example, the reality is that I'm driving slower than they would be, or that I'm occupying the lane in front of them and preventing them from progressing at their desired speed in that lane. The fantasy is that I should be going faster, or that I shoudl not be in their lane, or that I should be getting out of their way. They become upset when reality steps in and forces them to resolve the fact that what they believe *should be* doesn't match what actually *is*.

You see, were they dealing with reality, then they would have nothing to be upset about, because reality is that someone in front of them in the lane they're in is driving slower. Were they to accept reality then they would simply slow down and follow at a safe distance, or start looking for an opening to change lanes and pass me safely upon the realization that I'm going slower and will otherwise impede their progress. That's seeing reality as is and dealing with that reality.

Getting upset is not accepting reality as reality and instead stubbornly insisting that what they imagine should be reality *should be* reality and allowing themselves to become frustrated as their fantasy continues not to manifest itself in reality.

It's very frustrating indeed to have the universe shove into your face continually that it doesn't give a flying crap about you or what you want and is perfectly happy to just remind you at every turn that you are not a god and that life does not in any way revolve around you.

So I started looking at my own life and the kinds of situations where I tend to get upset, and it seemed to me that this holds true for me too. I become upset because I am unwilling or unable to separate my fantasy world from the real world, and it seems that I'd rather make myself upset by holding to my ridiculous belief that the way *I* think life should be working at a given moment is the way life *should* or *will* work at a given moment and constantly seeing that it doesn't and won't.

It's so funny because in looking at my life from this perspective, I began to realize just how petty and ridiculous the things I become upset over really are. They don't matter. They simply don't matter. And furthermore, if I were to just *accept* that things are as they actually are, I would immediately be in a position of power to *DO* something about them because I would be dealing with a situation as it actually *IS* instead of dealing with it as though it matched up with some imagined scenario I've created. Dealing with reality is much more effective when you deal with it as is instead of pretending or wishing it were some other way and trying to deal with it in those terms.

Does that make sense? Tell me if anything isn't clear or you just didn't get it, because I believe everyone out there can take this lesson and erase being upset from your lives once and for all. Or at least in pretty much all of those areas where you choose to apply it.

time for another update

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 09:40:29 GMT

I'm alive! Work is very slow this year, I have no idea how I'll make it through the summer just yet. But I'm still working long hours. Quite a few new thoughts and ideas, but just so tired right now.

Why is the economy tanking? Because we think so. It's interesting, the economy works just like we think it does, except it doesn't. It works the way we think it does not because that's the way it works but because we think it does. Weird huh? So when the collective "we" thinks it's tanking, it tanks. And it tanks because of the reasons we collectively think it tanks.

That's what makes this election so important. Well, one of the reasons anyway. Policy doesn't matter. The President can't control the economy, though I'm certain that those who hold the office wish they could. Even the Fed Chief can't control the economy. He can steer it, but it's really an illusion. He can steer it because we believe he can. He tells people something so convoluted that we don't really know just what he told us, but it sounds plausible so we believe it. And it's just enough to make us believe that things will work out in a certain way, and so they do. At least that's the way it worked when Greenspan was the Fed Chief. Now we have Bernanke, he's new and Bush (my not favorite one) appointed him. He kind of had to though because he's the President and he needed to control the economy because he's the President and it looks bad if he can't. And Bernanke is a bright guy and qualified to take the reins from Greenspan. So what choice did Bush have? It was either Bernanke or put some other patsy in that nobody would credibly believe and tank the economy. So we got Bernanke. But he's new and not established and people were afraid of who'd replace Greenspan and if anyone was like me they really didn't look forward to Bush appointing Greenspan's replacement. So Bernanke has kind of a tough job. He has to come in and appear to belong as Greenspan's successor. He has to create a smooth transition from the Greenspan era, he needs to look like he's coming in and not running roughshod over the past few decades that Greenspan has overseen and kept on track quite well.

But he also has to create a new economy out of what Greenspan left, because he isn't Greenspan so Greenspan's economy can't continue. I think we're there right now. Unfortunately for Bernanke, we're also in the midst of a perfect storm, so many different things going haywire at the same moment in history. It destroys the collective "we's" faith in the system that only works because we have faith in it, and when we see these other things going haywire we use it to confirm our fears. So we have a potential collapse of a long-established and factually broken system on our hands, and the only thing of large enough scale to restore our faith in a system and make it work, is an imminent election.

It's not that the election itself will fix anything. It's also not that the new President, whoever that may be, will have anything to do with bringing back the economy. He or she can't, because the President has no control over it. What's important at this stage is that the collective "we" have our faith restored that everything will work out and everything will be ok. That's the only thing that will spur the economy and get things moving again. It's a frightening thought for a few reasons.

One, the saying "pride goeth before a fall." There's been an AWFUL lot of pride goething (my own word invention) for the past several years, and I'm afraid that we will be so self-absorbed in all these ridiculous politics of the past decade or two that we'll lose sight of what's actually necessary and important (not in a words way, in an actual physical real genuine way) and continue voting for politics and politicians. It's not going to take policy to fix what's wrong right now. It's going to take hope and faith and belief (not the right-wing, school shootings happen because we're not praying or pledging alligience to the flag in school kind) and a willingness and desire to unite again ("united we stand, divided we fall" anyone?) and work together for the common good (I'm not talking about communism or anything "weird" or "icky" here, I'm talking about looking past the end of your own nose). That's why I could support either McCain or Obama in the White House. It's got absolutely nothing to do with policy (the wrong policy can still wreak havoc, don't get me wrong here), and everything to do with a departure from the kinds of people who can't lead and don't belong in such an important office. Hillary does not belong in the White House, woman or not. In fact, if you want to see women having a chance in the White House, you can't vote for Hillary because she'll ruin any chance for another woman to get there for the next several decades. At least that's my opinion of her, you're free to have your own differing one if you like (for now?).

I forgot the other frightening thing about what I said above. But here's something else to think about. Historically, Democracies have about a 200 year life span. Ours is going on 232 years old which is quite a respectable run when you look at facts. It's not like there's a mainspring somewhere that's unwinding and once the ticker stops, it's done. We can make it last much longer. It's just that historically speaking, we don't stand much of a chance of pulling our collective heads out of our collective butts and actually doing that. Too many people are into breaking things, wrecking things, and being generally negative and destructive people because we've been taught that that's entertaining or fun. Sure, it can be. But there are limits and we're quickly reaching them. There comes a point when everyone is a court jester and there's no king left to rule. Then what? So it's time to buck up and start acting like adults and let's fix this train wreck before it happens. Then we can have some fun again.

I was going to teach you all something else. As far as voting for someone, or otherwise figuring out who to put in charge of something important and not being sure of who's actually the right person to put there. Here is an easy way to figure it out that's pretty reliable. Who are the supporters? If you want to know what kind of person you'd be putting into the White House, just look how their supporters behave. That's exactly the kind of person you'd be putting there. Here's why.

It's in our nature to become like that which we admire. This is something that's very hard to fool if it's even possible at all. It cuts right through the BS and gets straight to the heart of the matter. So what is Hillary really like? Look no futher than her staunchest supporters. What are they like? What are they REALLY like? Politicians don't know this yet, I almost hesitate to tell you this because I don't particularly want them to find out. It'll only make my own life more difficult if they do. Anyway, a politician can present a public face and become whomever he or she needs to become to win your favor. They however cannot control the public face of their supporters. Do you want a genuine person in office? Find someone whose supporters are genuine, and look at the work they actually do with their hands, not the words they say. You can't fake work, work doesn't lie. If someone believes A and not B, they aren't going to spend their time fighting A and doing B.

The second part of the above is this, and it's something powerful to use in your own lives. Do you want to become a better person? There's no secret, there's no trick to it. Admire better people. It's that simple. Not happy with the way you handle difficult people? Start admiring someone who handles them the way you'd like to. I'm not talking about paying lip service to admiring them. I mean actually admire them in your heart. You'll find yourself becoming more like them. Not happy with how motivated you are? Admire someone who has the motivation you'd like to have. Not happy with how you handle finances? Admire someone who's good at it. I bet you didn't know it was that easy did you? Think about it. Think about something you like about yourself. Where did you get it? Most likely it's from someone you admired at one time or another, because it's rare you'll come up with these things totally on your own. Think about something you don't like about yourself. Where did that come from? Most likely it's a negative trait shared by someone or someones whom you admire or have admired in your life. This is why the Bible tells you not to idolize people, because you're going to draw in their bad traits along with the good, and the more people you idolize, the more bad traits there are to draw in. It's simple math.

OK, that's my ramblings for today. Chew it up, think about it. Think about it some more. Think about what you're thinking about. Think about why you're thinking about those things. Think about where those thoughts originated. Think about everything you can, and I'm serious about that. Do it. You might find the results interesting, and at the very least you'll learn something about yourself, or you'll learn that I'm a nut job. But either way, you've gotten something out of it right? And I've charge you nothing. How about that? Spend that extra couple pennies on something worthy and make the economy work again, k?

Maybe next time I'll write more about capitalism and the coming age and revolution (I'm not talking about gun toting shoot 'em up revolution, not even ballot box revolution here so don't you conspiracy theorists go thinking it's "The Day" just yet please. And corporate groupspeak marketroids, I'm not talking about your kind of "revolution" either, but you might like what I have to say anyway actually because it means something new and promising for you to play with, a shiny new toy of sorts).

Another year older

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 12:54:28 GMT

Well, sorry the updates haven't been forthcoming lately, the holidays and my birthday and work have kept me a little off-kilter. I'll try to resume my updating tomorrow. For now, there are new pictures on my flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/8405833@N03/ from a photo outting I had with my friend/roommate Chris a few days after Christmas and my birthday/new years eve party gathering at the house. Go check them out and I hope you enjoy them!

Happy New Year everyone! I hope 2008 is the best year you've had yet!

Hmm...

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 12:53:21 GMT

I'm frustrated today that I'm not perfect yet. I have no expectation of being perfect, I choose to aim for perfection knowing fully that I cannot achieve it, but it's frustrating none the less.

Life is unusual in that if we are completely true to ourselves, we will not be genuinely good people at all times, and if we try to be good people at all times, we will not be completely true to ourselves. Is there a balance to be had in this? I'm of the opinion that there is not. I believe in trying to be a good person at all times, which means not being completely true to myself and that leads to an eventual breakdown where I will at some point break from being a good person and wind up doing something that I'll regret as soon as I go back to trying to be a good person. That's failure, and it's a very human trait.

I know there are those who would try to convince me that I'm not a bad person. Well, I never said I was of course. But I'm not always a good person and there's no sense denying that because none of us are. That failure is a part of growth, and without it we would never learn that we'd succeeded. That's not to say there is no success without failure, but there is no realization of success without the experience of failure.

What I mean by that is that you can set out to do something, and succeed at it on your very first try and be aware you succeeded. But you can't realize what that success is. I don't know how to describe that better except to say that when you fail at something, your awareness of success when you later succeed is greater than had you not failed at all. It's like being given a million dollars vs. earning a million dollars. If you've worked for it and put in effort to get it, you have a greater appreciation for its value, or at the least it has a greater value to you.

So essentially failure is an investment into success. When looked at in that way, you realize that you need not be afraid of failure. In fact when you look at a failure as an investment into success, you can think about how to leverage the failure to maximize your success in the future.

That's how to look at it from an economical perspective. Some people are great with money and for them that probably works. Many people aren't great with money though so that doesn't help if you fall into that camp. So how about if you look at what DOESN'T work with money and then try to not do those things with your failures.

For example, when I'm feeling frustrated because I'm not perfect yet, in essence what I'm doing is spending my failure on frustration, or even sometimes self-pity. Those things are really just escapism, kind of like having a ton of bills due and spending money to go see a movie, another kind of escapism. Instead, one could either spend their money paying their bills, or invest it into a better future; say, getting an education to get a better job. I can spend my failure instead on an education in whatever it is that I failed at so that my odds improve for a future attempt. In my example, I can spend the return (i.e. experience) on my "failure" investment (not succeeding in being "perfect" in some event) to pay for an education on "being perfect" (studying what led to my failure to determine its cause and then working out a solution to prevent it from happening if the situation were to come up again), thus bettering myself and coming back with an education in how to accomplish my goal on a future attempt.

Does that make sense?

How to replace a complaint with a solution

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 06:32:34 GMT

I think somewhere down below (at least at the time of this writing?) I've mentioned that complaining doesn't change anything and things are still the same because you didn't do anything about it. Today let's talk about the difference between complaining about something and doing something about it.

A while back I realized that some things in the world around me bother me. They're various things and they bother me for various reasons. What I realized though was that I always tended to complain about them. Why? What good does that do? Did anything I complained about change? Not a one.

Well, that's maybe a little exaggeration. I did go back to my old job and spend 2.5 hours going over the things I thought were wrong there which were the reasons I decided to leave the company. But actually now that I think about it, that example kind of illustrates my point too. It was different from complaining, it was doing something about it.

If you've ever complained about something, what was the end result of complaining? How many of those things were addressed and fixed? Probably not many, especially if they were big complaints like the way people drive, or the way politics works in this country.

Here's how you do something about it instead of complaining. When you see something that's not the way you think it should be, or that you think could be better in some way, stop and think about what it is about it that's not ideal. What is it about it specifically that bothers you and why? How could it be different that would address those things? What could be done to make those differences into solutions? Do something meaningful about that.

The thing is, it's really easy to find fault in something, any idiot can do it. I'm not saying everyone who complains is an idiot, just that they're really not living up to their potential. I'm not excluding myself from that either by the way, lest you think I'm not a hypocrite (honestly, I am a hypocrite when it comes right down to it). What's not so easy is to find fault in something and then come up with a solution for it. That's just an excuse for not doing something about it though, I'll tell you why.

You don't need to have all the answers. Not having the answers doesn't mean there are no answers to have, to believe this would require believing that you're omniscient, and trust me, you're not. ;) But the reason you don't need to have all the answers, or even one answer for that matter, is that you can still DO something about it. Of course, complaining is "doing something about it" if you want to be pedantic, it's just not doing something very effective about it. So if you complain about a lot of things and find that it doesn't have any effect on a lot of things, remember that point.

The reason you don't need to have all the answers (or any answers) but you can still do something about it is because there are probably people out there who DO have the necessary answers.

Let's say that the problem I see is that when I'm sitting stuck in traffic, I don't know how to calculate pi to 100 places. I don't have the answer to that, I have no solution, nothing I know will allow me to fix that. I can sit there banging my head on my steering wheel yelling about not being able to calculate pi, complaining to anyone who will listen, or even anyone who won't. That's not going to fix the problem. But chances are that someone out in the world actually knows how to calculate pi to 100 digits.

Using my own suggestion from above, what I need to do is identify what's not ideal about the situation. What's not ideal about the situation is that I don't know how to calculate pi to 100 digits. What bothers me about that? Well, I'm sitting here stuck in traffic waiting for that yahoo 17 cars in front of me to get a move on and being able to calculate pi would occupy my mind as i while away the minutes waiting for that yahoo 17 cars in front of me to get a move on. What can I do to address that? I can be able to calculate pi to 100 digits. How can I make that into a solution? I can find out how to calculate pi to 100 digits.

What I can do instead of complaining is bring up to people that I'd like to know how to calculate pi to 100 digits. I don't need the answer to my problem to be able to do something about it. By not complaining about not being able to calculate pi to 100 digits, and simply bringing up to people I talk to that I'd like to know, I can either find out how to calculate pi to 100 digits or maybe be pointed in the right direction to someone who can teach me how.

You see, complaining doesn't illicit solutions. That's because when people complain, they're not looking for solutions. If they were, they'd ask for them. No, when people complain, what they're really looking for is a sympathetic ear, or some assurance that they're not the only one who sees the problem. It's a social activity, a way of seeking the acceptance of our peers, or a way of looking like we must be better than that person over there who's waist deep in the midst of that problem we see.

The distinction here is to get yourself not to complain about something, but to simply open up a dialog about whatever deficiency you see and why you think it should be different and perhaps how it could be different which would address whatever deficiency you see. Presenting it to people in that light is far more likely to illicit answers and solutions rather than that sympathetic ear or even more likely, having whatever you say go in one ear and right out the other.

That's called doing something about it. You may not know how to solve the problem you see in front of you, but if you can identify it and communicate what's wrong to you with it and how it could be different, you can probably find someone who does know what to do about it. Then it's a simple matter of either asking that the solution be implemented or taking the answer to someone who has the ability to implement the solution.

If it doesn't change then, then the problem still exists, but it's not because there isn't a solution, it's because there's another problem in the way. Identifying that problem might be a little more difficult because it's probably going to involve some resistance on someone else's part to accept their responsibility in the matter. But it can still be identified, and you need to recognize this as a completely separate problem so that you won't complain about it but rather start looking for a solution to that problem as well.

Sure, that's could mean that fixing something takes a lot more work than it should, but that's what it takes to fix it. Don't see something as a mountain of problems, see one problem at a time and work through that, then move onto the next one. When you do things this way, it may take a while, but at some point an entire series of problems will suddenly align themselves with solutions and they'll just disappear all at once. Think how great that will feel, especially when you realize that the only reason they disappeared was because you DID something about it.

It's kind of exciting isn't it? Every single one of us has this ability within us just waiting to be tapped. Think about how great it must feel to solve problems, think about how much energy we all waste every day complaining about things when there are simple solutions to many of these problems and all they're waiting for is for you to do something about it.

That's what I did with my old work. I worked there for over 2.5 years, and much of that I had things I'd complain about. I complained and complained and complained and the problems just sat there and sat there and sat there, defiant to the bitter end. Eventually there were so many things I was complaining about that I stopped loving my job, I stopped waking up (exhausted or not) not thinking "dude, I get to go to work now!" first thing in the day. Instead I started waking up thinking "crap, i have to go to work again. ugh!" and that's not a very rewarding way to start off the day I assure you.

But finally I sat down and created a list of the things I'd been complaining about for the better part of 2.5 years, I articulated what seemed wrong to me and why, and then I was able to start seeing ways these things could be different which would eliminate those problems. Then I went in to the boss' office and sat down with him for 2.5 hours and went over those items and making suggestions and discussing them. These were no longer complaints, this became a dialog that I'd opened. And in this case, it wasn't so much a matter of not having the answers, I had several answers and I gave them to my boss. Some of them weren't really solutions for various reasons, but they were answers and the dialog was opened. This is what makes it possible for meaningful change to take place.

Now sure, I spent 2.5 hours of my time doing this and that was the cost to me and you might say that that's kind of a high cost. But put it into perspective first. I'd been complaining about many of these things for over 2 YEARS! Day in and day out, complain complain complain. How much of my time did I waste with that?! 2.5 hours PALES in comparison to that! And that doesn't even factor in the health, mental, and stress issues I created for myself as a result of these complaints and my shift in attitude as a result. I *COULD* have simply spent that time over the course of the 2.5 years as the problems arose, and the solutions could've happened that much sooner! That's the real cost to me, the cost of complaining and not doing something about it. So, 2.5 hours? Seriously?! That's absolutely nothing. And this is why I think it's so important to bring this up and share it with everyone who reads it.

So that's my entry for today. Enjoy! :)

What I wanted to do

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 12:19:56 GMT

What I wanted to do was to post one update per day. The funny thing is, the post below this one was intended to be posted yesterday and today I realized I hadn't posted it here, so I posted it today. But since that wasn't my intention, I decided it would be unfair to me to count that as today's post, so that's what happened.

I'll post about this very incident and what I mean by unfair to me since it so neatly brings itself up here.

What do I mean by being unfair to me exactly? It's my time to begin with, so how can I possibly be unfair to myself by using it in whatever way I choose?

Well, what I mean by that is that I've made myself a commitment to make these posts a regular thing. So what happens if I don't make one? The answer is nothing happens. I'll say that again because I need you to really think about that, it's very important. Nothing happens. What do I mean that "nothing happens?" I mean precisely that. NOTHING HAPPENS. And that's what's important about it.

There are no direct, obvious consequences to not posting for a day. No one is going to ground me, I'm not going to lose TV priveleges, My eyeball won't pop out of my head, I won't get hit by a bus, nothing. But that is so very NOT what I mean when I say that nothing happens, although these things are true as well.

We have to remember what my goal is here, what I've defined as my purpose in life, and that is "to change the world in a profound, meaningful and positive way." So now when you think of things in those terms, and I say that what happens if I don't post one day is that "nothing happens," you have some idea of what it means that nothing happens. And therein lies the real, hidden consequence of not following through on my commitment.

If I have set forth as my purpose in life to make a profound, meaningful and positive change in the world and nothing happens, what would that be? A catastrophic failure. If I set forth as my purpose in life to make a profound, meaningful and postive change in the world and I catastrophically fail, who is that unfair to? Me. It also happens to be unfair to those whose lives would be impacted by those changes in the world, but they would be none the wiser. I would be the wiser, I would know the difference because I would be fully aware of my intent and my failure, and as such I am the one it would be unfair to.

So that's why I posted this today. Maybe it will help spark some kind of realization for you too. Have a great day, ponder on what I've said, let it sink in and make a difference to you, and enjoy!

How to see people

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 12:18:34 GMT

This entry is essentially the response I had to another friend's recent blog post. I'm going to paraphrase that here because it's not mine to repost.

In the original blog post, my friend said something to the effect that when they're together with someone else alone they understand the other person. Their friend is unique, persevering and ready to conquer the world, passionate, has big dreams, seeks truth, confident, radiant, comforting, and basically someone who they adore.

But when their friend steps out into the rest of the world and it's not just the two of them, something happens to their friend. They no longer understand them, they no longer recognize them. The attributes that were so admired before seem to be wiped away by the influence of others, in short, that when their friend steps out into the world, they become afraid to continue being who they are in solitude and that the things that were admired are not there anymore, or are simply masked and not visible to admire anymore.

My reply was as follows.

This is a great post (I say that not knowing its inspiration but then that's probably what gives it its power). You're right, it's true of everyone, even those who would say it's not. It's in our nature to try to survive life and this is one of those things that on some level we think will make survival more likely, or at least easier because we won't have to deal with all the hassles we're sure we would have if we were just who we are.

This could spark an interesting conversation, at least to me. The person in the first paragraph seems to be someone who inspires and moves you in some way. Then in the second paragraph this person seems to disappear and another takes their place. A person you don't know or recognize and thus don't understand. The truth though, I believe is something else. They are in fact the same person, the one you know and understand and who inspires and moves you as well as the one you don't recognize and don't understand.

One could see this as someone putting on a mask when venturing outside, or one could see it as two opposing sides to the same coin. I've always chosen to see it as really neither of those. I'm not sure how I would describe it exactly because I've never really tried to, but when I look at someone I see the face they put forward to the outside and I also see the face they're hiding beneath. In doing this, I recognize them both as only two parts of a greater whole.

Something I realized a few years back is that we human beings have created ourselves an elaborate framework with which to understand life, but much of that framework is a machination of our own invention. What I mean by that is that we've invented concepts to better describe and understand what we see around us. Time is one of these concepts and the thing to understand about that is that time does not exist anywhere in nature. No animal has a watch or a clock or a calendar or anything of the kind. Nothing in nature except humans live according to any schedule.

You could argue that animals by and large sleep at night and wake during the day, but some animals do the opposite. You could argue that bears hibernate in the winter and are awake the rest of the year, but other animals do not. These things which we see animals doing as part of some "schedule" have nothing at all to do with time, and have only to do with a direct reaction to nature. Were it not cold in the winter and difficult to find food, bears likely would not need to hibernate. Were it possible to hunt and capture prey the same at night as it is during the day, animals would not need to sleep or hunt at those specific "times" of the day. Human beings have created the concept of time to better understand and study and predict and respond to the natural order occuring around ourselves. There is no schedule in the universe save that which we have created in our minds.

The reason it's important to point out the above is because by recognizing that this piece of the framework by which we understand the world around us does not actually exist, we become able to think outside of that framework. To make this easier to see, think of the concept of time as merely a tool we can use when we need to work on something around us. Say we're a fisherman, in this case the concept of time is used as a tool for predicting when and where we will be able to find an abundance of fish. Another way of putting it would be to say that Rembrandt grew up doing carpentry work as a kid (I don't know artists, so bear with me here). Had he always used the tools of a carpenter and always had a hammer in one hand and a saw in the other, he would not have been able to create the artworks he is known for today. By realizing that the hammer and saw were only tools, he could set them aside and free himself to do something different.

Now having said that, we can get back to the point I was making in how I look at people and how I see their "mask" and their real face underneath as just two parts of the whole thing. When you set aside the concept of time, you can suddenly also see the beginning of someone's life, the middle of their life, and so on all the way to the end of their life as simply more parts of the greater whole. This is the way I look at people, and the way I've learned to experience them as individuals. I don't see the person before me as simply what I see in that one instant in time, but simply that instant being nothing more of the person than their eyebrow is a part of their face, and their face a part of their head, and their head a part of their body, and their body a part of their being.

If you can open yourself up to seeing and experiencing people as their whole being, you can really gain a much greater appreciation for what that being is and what it can mean to yourself, those around them, the world, and of course ultimately all of existence because once you understand that you can remove the framework and constraints of time from the way you experience a person, you can start removing all the other constraints from everything else in the universe and see that again, that individual's being is but a part of his or her environment, which is a part of the world, which is a part of the universe, which is a part of all of existence whatever that may entail.

Everything is connected, everything is a part of the rest, all of it is together whether we like it or not. Being able to look at the world and experience life from such a point of view allows for orders of magnitude greater levels of intimacy than you could ever imagine exists without knowing this point of view.

Post 2 for the day, enrollment

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 12:15:40 GMT

This is something I was thinking about a few days ago regarding a conversation I had with my roommate the evening before. I came up with this after thinking about it for a while, I told him the next day and he said he wanted me to write it down for later because he wants me to have it to compare from now to later after I complete some other stuff I'm working on. Anyway, don't worry about that for right now. I'm sharing it as is because I still think it's interesting and useful and that people will enjoy it. So here below, is essentially what I said.

Everywhere I go I can look and see problems, things that are wrong, things that should not be the way they are. Can you see those things too? I'll help you. What are some complaints you have in the course of a day? Think about driving in traffic, what about your co-workers or your boss, what about conversations you overhear at a restaurant, what about things you witness while out shopping a few days before Christmas, what about that bum on the corner, or the starving orphans in North Korea, or the killing in Iraq, or the things you hear about on the news, or things being put before Congress, or the things politicians themselves do? Yeah, I knew you saw it too even if it was different from what I saw.

Why are those things like that? Why do they happen? Why do they keep happening even after you see them? Why do they keep happening even after you started to complain about them to others to raise their awareness?

Well, believe it or not, I've found the answer to those questions and it's really obvious too.

Those things are still like that because you didn't do anything about them.

I'm not accusing you, I'm not blaming you, I'm not shouldering you with the responsibility for why they're still like that. But they're still like that simply because YOU didn't do anything about it.

Why didn't you do anything about it? Is it because you didn't think you could make any difference?

Let's think about that for a minute. You're one person. CAN you make a difference? Can you REALLY end the killing in Iraq, or keep the orphans in North Korea fed, or fix any of these other problems?

No, of course not. One person cannot fix any of these problems, not one of them! It won't do any good to try either because the problems are quite simply beyond what you can do. How can one person feed and take care of all of the starving kids in North Korea? How can one person stop all the killing in Iraq? It's stupid to think you can fix any of these problems, you'd be a fool to think so.

But let's look at what one person is. One person is one person. You say, "Well duh!" But why is one person one person? Because they're only one person. That means they're not two people, or three, or twenty etc. One person today is one person out of 6.8 billion. In fraction form that's 1/6,800,000,000, and that's a TINY faction! Do you see now why one person can't make a difference?

But can one person make a difference? Yes.

What about everything I just said up there? How can the answer be yes now? Well, that's simple. It's because one person is not one person, not in this world. In this world one person is more than one person, one person is one person AND one out of 6.8 billion other people. And furthermore, EVERY person is one person AND one out of 6.8 billion people.

Here's why that's important. Since one person cannot make a difference because they're only one person and it's impossible for one person to make a difference, one person only has to realize that they aren't just one person, but also one out of 6.8 billion people. When this happens, and one person DOES SOMETHING ABOUT IT, something amazing happens because of everything I said above.

That one person being one of 6.8 billion people doing something about it instantly makes it possible for ANY of those one out of 6.8 billion people to do the very same thing. Is there any problem you can think of that can't be solved by 6.8 billion people doing something about it? I didn't think so.

So remember that next time you see a problem, something wrong, or something that shouldn't be the way it is. The reason something is the way it is even though you noticed it and might have even complained about it to other people is that you didn't do anything about it. Now, what are you going to do about it?

My friends are keeping me on track

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 12:13:45 GMT

A few weekends ago I did something called the landmark forum. It's difficult to describe, but I felt it was kind of like zen-light. I gained a lot of perspective from it and learned a few new tools (really the product of that perspective) for living life well, being effective, having integrity, being true to yourself and so on. It's way more than I can explain but many of my new posts will be a product of what I got out of that.

So since the landmark thing, there's been a whirlwind of things going through my mind. Gaining a new perspective on life can be kind of like sleeping somewhere unfamiliar, having a really good long, deep sleep and then just as you wake up and open your eyes you feel a little disoriented and have to take a moment to re-orient yourself and place everything back in order in your head. Have you ever slept at someone else's place or some hotel and woken up and at that very instant just expected you were somewhere else? It's like that. You look to your left but your nightstand isn't there with your clock on it, your closet isn't on the same wall with the same door as it is at home, for some reason your suitcase is sitting there open with a pile of clothes in it etc. and then you go "Oh yeah, I'm not at home in my bedroom."

This whirlwind is similar to that, I have some new ways I can look at things and when I do, they look different. So the whirlwind is caused by taking that all in, and sometimes that new way of looking at something makes you look at something else from a different point of view too, and so on and so forth. So yeah, my brain has been pretty busy lately going over those kinds of things.

That whirlwind is taking place even now as I'm sitting here typing this out. I'm going round and round thinking about this and that, trying to come up with what I'll write but there's no conclusion, I just keep thinking.

There were two points to my posting this update, and the first was just to say that it's great that I have friends who are helping me keep on track and that I'm working with to continue my positive energy so that it doesn't just disappear into the void.

The second point was to share the journey. The reason for that is so that A) I can share it with whoever reads this, and B) to perhaps help guide and inspire you in your own lives. Whether you share my purpose in changing the world or not, what you'll read here is what it takes to do that.

We're all humans, we all have our little quirks and foibles and none of us has exactly the same set, so even if you do share my same vision it's not going to happen the same for you or be experienced the same by you. The value however is that regardless of the details, all the stupid human tricks and problems and setbacks I'll be having are a part of what it takes to change the world. It's a daunting and overwhelming thing to undertake but you don't accomplish something daunting or overwhelming by standing there are wondering at how daunting and overwhelming it is. You accomplish it by starting where you are.

And that's where I am. So I hope you'll enjoy what you read and maybe once in a while you'll find it interesting or helpful or insightful and it'll spur something in your own life somehow and move on from there. I think that's all I have to say about that right now. My goal is to make these posts a regular thing from now on.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all!

today is not yesterday

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 08:58:04 GMT

so yesterday i was feeling a bit depressed due to work/financial situations, and today there are a million possibilities everywhere i look. i'm excited and i can't wait to get started.

i had a great discussion with my friend today, and it awoke me to a few things that i hadn't fully grasped before. one is on how interconnected everything really is. one was how everything can provide you with the tools to be applied everywhere it was never intended. my friend has a marketing degree, and i've long had a bit of a hatred of marketing because i only saw the negative over-commercialisation that it produced. but today i realize that marketing is only a set of tools, the impact of which is all in what you use them for. just as you can use a hammer to build someone a home, you can also use it to bash in their head. it has nothing at all to do with the tool itself, it has to do with the person weilding it.

my friend showed me how she was using her marketing skills as a way to break down problems in her life and how to overcome problems and help to unlock her potential. it never ever would have occured to me that this is even possible. had i not known her, i would still today hate marketing and everything it stood for. now i see how it can be very effectively applied to life's problems and the tremendous benefit that can be achieved using its lessons.

she also mentioned how she thinks this is always possible, for example if you had an engineering degree instead of a marketing degree, it would also provide you with a set of tools which could be applied to tremendous benefit in other areas in life which it wouldn't necessarily seem to apply to. it was this which made me realize how interconnected everything is, and how any education in any field is of benefit to not only the person who has that education, but potentially everyone around that person as well. it made me excited to pursue more knowledge in anything i can get.

i'm excited to learn anything i can learn, about anything i can, and to extract the tools from that knowledge and begin using it in my pursuit of changing the world. the things that i see being achieveable really are out there all around me. it's up to me to prepare myself for them.

i also became aware of how the zen meditation thing, specifically the enlightenment aspect raises one's awareness of the things around them. how to explain that? it is said that when one reaches the state of enlightenment, that that person becomes aware of everything around them, rather than being only partially aware of the things around them. this is fairly simple to achieve in moments in life, many people attain enlightenment in zen meditation (and other types as well i've no doubt), but the thing with people who dedicate their lives to this is that they are striving to achieve that enlightened state in every minute of their lives. rather than simply being enlightened while one is meditating, they remain enlightened in everything they do every day. this is what allows them to fully realize their potential in life.

that's what i saw when i was talking to my friend, the possibilities that become available to you when you are fully aware and conscious of everything around you. i'm amazed by just how huge the difference is in the world around you depending solely upon your own state of mind. the fact is that nothing in the world changed while i was talking to my friend, certainly nothing in my immediate environment, but the difference in what i saw before me is just indescribeable.

the world you see before you is not the world as it is. the world you see before you is the world as it is, filtered by the limits and constraints that you put on yourself. most people go through life imprisoned. chained, and held back from what's truly possible. and there is no conspiracy taking place here. make no mistake, you are a prisoner of yourself, a prisoner of your own mind, living in a prison of your own making. there is no reason to live this way, nothing is really holding you back from accomplishing what you want to accomplish if you simply open your eyes.

the beautiful thing about being a prisoner in your own prison is that you have full access to the blueprints of your prison, you know it inside and out, better than anyone else. and the other great thing is that you are the prison warden. you must realize that you may see guards in the prison keeping you from escaping, but you also get to be the one who can fire those guards if you choose to. the truth is that you are free to walk out of that prison at any time of your choosing, you have only to have the realization that it's possible, that you have that power, and the determination to do so to make it happen.

today, i am taking another step outside of my prison and out into the world. today i am taking another step in removing the veil from my eyes and learning to see the world as it really is. today, i am making things happen for the future.

i'll keep you posted. :)

an update

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 18:57:09 GMT

work at the old job will be done soon. i can hardly wait for that to be over with. i've been studying more on zen, and i'm starting to understand what it means. that's quite a lot of progress really, considering how unusual some of the things can be. it's really fascinating though, and i'm beginning to understand how it works and how it applies and why it's useful. zen is where "koans" come from (pronounced koh-an), one of the most widely known of which is "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" and another, "if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" which i'm not sure is an actual zen koan but it could be.

a list of zen koans is here, they are brilliant and i think they are the only way of coming close to describing what zen is all about. there are 101 on this page, if you'd like to read them. zenindex.html (www.ashidakim.com)

i'll paste one that i've heard before here:
-------
A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.

Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!
-------

hope you enjoy! have a great day everyone!

looking for elightenment?

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 09:12:09 GMT

i realize that i haven't written anything recently, the fact is that i've been slipping somewhat. but that's ok, what i'm trying to do is a huge change in so many ways, i never expected it to be easy. and i anticipated what's been happening too. it's disappointing but it's also one of the signs that tells me it's good for me and to keep pushing on. i have my friend to help me with that too, she's a very driven person and can be pretty motivating. :)

i am making progress towards my goal, i challenge myself every day and i don't think i usually get through the day without spending at least a little time thinking about this and working towards my goal. the steps are just smaller than i'd like.

*** one "interruption" later ***

i was just talking to another friend of mine whom i hardly ever get to talk to recently. it's my dutch friend who is studying to become a dentist. i love talking to her, especially after not getting to regularly, because it makes her perspective more fresh and new and helps me to get more insights from talking to her. while talking to her i realized that looking back over the last month or two, one area where i've really made good progress that i hadn't even been looking at is in how i interact with women. it's kind of funny because this is an area i've been trying to change for quite a long time, but it's the one that i've been putting the perhaps the least amount of conscious effort into recently whilst still putting in *some* effort. that's an observation that i think i want to keep in mind and consider more, because maybe it works kind of like the pink elephant thing. i.e. "don't think about a pink elephant." and all you can do is think about a pink elephant that there's a 99.9999% chance you weren't thinking about until you were consciously directed not to think about it. interesting thought....

anyway, i've been quite a bit more... umm... open? i'm really not sure what word i need here. something along the lines of open, receptive, or something like that when i'm around a girl i'm interested in. in terms of making eye-contact, smiling, talking to her, trying to break the ice more etc. i think that's a positive thing even beyond my searching for a mate, especially since over 50% of the population are female.

and that brings up another thing i need to think about some more. when i talk to women, i am a different person than when i talk to men. i talk more softly, more sensitively, more emotionally, more considerately and so on. when i talk to men i am more blunt, crude, and direct. what does that mean? and is that representative of most men? i think i'll ask my gay friend about that next time i see him. my guess is that in his case he would be the same way around other men, or at least gay men, and not do the things i do around women so much. i'm wondering if it's some kind of strange sexual interaction or if it's something society teaches us or if it's chemical/genetic/physiological or if it's simply some kind of personal bias or what.

i believe this one thing in particular is largely responsible for the miserable failure that so many relationships turn into these days. what if we could live out our lives completely uncensored? what if we felt free to just be ourselves and not hold back who we are no matter what company we're in? and how much of this is a problem with how easily we allow ourselves to be offended? how much is due to our own insecurities in our beliefs that we don't want to allow someone to differ too much from our own norm? and how much of it is due to the faulty beliefs we hold and the way we live our lives? that's something interesting to think about. i'll see if i can find a way to write more about this in my next update.

in the meantime, i am alive and well, and will be changing jobs in the next few weeks. it has come time for me and the company i am working for to part ways, we have reached what i believe is an empasse. the direction they are going does not align with the direction i am going now, and the best and most productive thing i can do at this point is to cut the string and diverge from their course. well, so maybe i have been more successful than i thought these past couple of months. :)

On maximizing your effectiveness; A healthy dose of reality: Who are you? Where are you?

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 21:32:49 GMT

When travelling to a destination, we must begin where we are. It is so very fundamental and logical that when travelling from point A to point B that we are starting from point A that we take this fact for granted. When we are attempting to do this in a more abstract way, such as a journey of self-improvement, taking this for granted is a big and easy way of setting ourselves up for failure and not ever reaching point B.

My friend and I who are pursuing this goal of self-improvement and living life consciously and having a life's purpose that we are attempting to reach are two different people attempting to achieve somewhat similar things. Our approaches are going to have to differ if we are both to achieve our maximum potential. For example, she has a very detailed spreadsheet outlining her larger life-purposes which she further breaks down into sub-goals and so on into much finer grained short-term goals. This allows her to track her progress and ensure that she is on-track in her pursuit. I on the other hand tend to take a more seat-of-the-pants, shoot-from-the-hip approach. Her method is good and I recognize the benefit in doing it so I am doing something similar, but my strengths don't suit my using the exact same method as hers. Were I to do it her way, I would be spending most of my time trying to build this outline and keep it updated, and not a whole lot of my effort would be spent in actually achieving my goals.

This is but one example of the importance of knowing where point A is before embarking on a mission of reaching point B.

THE IMPORTANCE OF KNOWING YOURSELF

If you have ever set yourself a goal and had a difficult time reaching it, perhaps it is because you have not properly defined that goal, or have not properly recognized your starting point. Setting yourself a goal, especially a long-term goal where you cannot achieve it in a short enough time span to recognize that you are actually achieving it, may require identifying milestones along the way so that you can track your progress.

For example, if you are dieting and your goal is to reach 150 lbs. and you currently weigh 153 lbs., that's fairly easy to track and recognize that you're on track because it's such a short distance to go. Now imagine that you want to reach that same 150 lbs. but you currently weigh 180 lbs. This is a longer term goal, so you set yourself shorter term milestones to track your progress such as losing 1 lb. every 2 days.

This way you can see that you are actually reaching that goal rather than going about whatever plan you had to reach your goal weight and not using a scale for 2 months and then suddenly finding that after the last 60 days you have lost a whopping 3 lbs. What a surprise that would be, right? Obviously that wouldn't be an effective way of pursuing your goal, so you would weigh yourself every day and note whether you'd lost your pound every other day or not, to see whether you are on track.

But what if instead you wanted to reach your target weight by a particular date? You could still set yourself the smaller goal of losing a pound every other day; and while this makes it easier to tell that you are making progress, it doesn't really tell you whether you are actually on-track to reach your goal. This is an example of where identifying point A is important in getting from point A to point B. You have a specific goal and a specific timeline for reaching that goal, and tracking whether you have lost a pound every other day is likely not to keep you on track for reaching your goal within your desired timeline.

What you would do in this case is weigh yourself at the outset so you know where you are starting from. With this, it's easy to see whether your goal involves losing a pound every other day or 10 lbs. per day which tells you whether your goal and your timeline are realistic or not, and allows you to define concrete milestones along the way to tell not only whether you have lost a pound in the past 2 days or not, but whether you are still on-track to reach your desired weight by the desired date or not.

This gives you another tool to use to make adjustments in your day-to-day pursuit of your goal. This not only gives you the ability to see whether a time-critical goal is on track, but it also allows you to evaluate your effectiveness in pursuing your goal, and gives you a tool to analyze on-the-fly whether your goal has been realistic and gives you the opportunity to make adjustments along the way not only in your pursuit, but in your plan of pursuit and even the goal itself, which can make it more likely that you will actually achieve your goal.

Here's an extreme example in order to better illustrate my point. Let's say you weigh 180 lbs. and you want to reach 150 lbs., and let's say it's June 1st and you want to reach your target weight by June 8th. Now anyone who's ever dieted knows that you can't do that, short of having liposuction or being involved in a tragic accident and having to have a leg amputated right? But what if you've never dieted before, nor known anyone who has, nor do you know anything about dieting, let's just assume for a moment that you have no awareness that it's not possible to lose 30 lbs. in anywhere near a week. In that case, you'd be setting yourself up for failure.

You fail in reaching your goal once, well ok, sometimes people fail. So you try again, this time weighing 176 lbs. and wanting to reach 150 lbs. by June 15th. Again, not a realistic goal as anyone who's ever dieted can tell you. But our hypothetical dieter doesn't know that, they only know that they failed to reach their goal last time, but this time they're really determined! A week goes by and they fail again. Let's say this time the failure is really disappointing because they tried so much harder this time, they were really committed to reaching their goal this time. Now they're depressed and they binge like never before and gain back all the weight they'd lost and then some.

Now not only did they fail, but they have further to go to reach their goal for next time! That is, if there IS a next time. Anyone who has set goals for themselves and repeatedly not reached their goals knows that with each failure it becomes more difficult to see the value in setting a goal for themselves and to actually set a goal the next time because there becomes an assumption of failure. Failure tends to cause one to lose sight of the possibility of success and makes them less likely to pursue bigger and bigger goals and want to improve over where they are today.

It almost goes without saying in a way, successful people tend to be successful, and people who are unsuccessful tend to be unsuccessful. The thing is, in most cases there is no invisible barrier keeping unsuccessful people from being successful. Much as they would like to believe, there is not some big conspiracy out there to keep them from becoming our Mr. Successful. More likely, it is his own failures which are blocking him from trying to become a success. After all, he has failed at the last 20 things he has tried, why would this time be any different?

This is why I believe that it is paramount to properly and accurately identify point A before you try to get from point A to point B. It is especially important to do this with a more abstract goal where point A and point B aren't physical places that you can just open your eyes and see. And more important still if point B is something you haven't seen before and haven't achieved before, such that it really is a foreign thing to you.

In the case of self-improvement, or pursuing a lofty and far-reaching life's purpose where failure would become ultimate because any true measurement would only occur at the end of one's life, it really is important in the pursuit of this goal not to fail. In this case, identifying point A actually means removing one's rose-tinted glasses and taking a solid, no-holds-barred, honest and realistic look into one's deepest, darkest, most-hidden places and identifying the real you; the good, the bad, and the ugly all together.

An example that I gave to my friend recently was where she told me that it would be best, in living life consciously and pursuing my life's goal, to wake up early and spend some time each morning as a part of my daily routine thinking about what my overall goal is and thinking about the smaller, short-term goals involved so that I can spend my day more effectively pursuing those goals consciously. I agreed that this would be the most effective way to approach each day and that this is a great idea. I also pointed out that because I know myself quite well by now, that I also knew I have a high likelihood of over-sleeping and not waking up with enough time to actually do this. That doesn't mean that I should throw the idea out and resign myself to failure in waking up to live life consciously, but it also means not to fail at the larger goal just for the sake of perfecting its pursuit and ultimately failing at that early stage.

So my suggestion back to my friend was, knowing my likelihood of failure and what that point of failure would be, to find a workaround while trying to address the roadblock which would most likely keep me from being successful in that smaller goal. The workaround in this case would be, rather than spending 30 minutes in the morning before I go on with my day thinking about my overall goal and mission and the smaller steps that need to be made in their pursuit, start out by spending 30 minutes per day before going to sleep doing the same thing. Except since it's at the end of the day rather than the beginning and not being able to use it to plan my day, instead using it as a time of reflection, a time to look back over the day and determine what my effectiveness was and where I could've been better. Then to set the goal of waking up 5 minutes early the following day to attempt to plan in advance for the day to maximize my effectiveness and gradually work that 5 minutes up to the ultimate goal of waking up early enough to think about my life-goal and live my day consciously, making the most effective use possible of my time.

This way, if I fail to wake up early the next day, I have at least accomplished something by the end of the day. It's a partial accomplishment at best, but a partial accomplishment is better than none. And it's not the end goal anyway, it's just the best step I can make towards the goal of waking up early and living my day consciously with maximum effectiveness for today given my starting point, my point A. This sets me up not for failure at reaching a goal I'm likely not to reach, but for success in setting a realistic course toward reaching that goal. Over time, I can learn to wake up early and to make living my day consciously a part of my morning routine, such that oversleeping will be the exception rather than the rule.

Hopefully this example illustrates my thesis point of identifying point A before embarking on a journey to point B. In the case of my pursuing my life-mission, my larger goal of changing the world and improving myself, point A translates into who I am. And who I am is more than where I happen to be standing or sitting at the time, or what my name is, or who my parents are. Who I am is those things in addition to my mindset, my heart, my soul, my mood, my time and place in the world, my time and place in my life, my desires, my motivations, my strengths, my weaknesses, my successes and failures, my experiences, my past and my present, and even my future. All of these things play a role in how I will react to different events and different settings, and in whether I will be successful with a given pursuit or not, because all of these things affect whether or not a particular course of action will actually be effective FOR ME.

on happiness

Mon, 21 May 2007 23:56:14 GMT

I've just come to a realization about happiness. I never knew what it was before. I actually still don't know what it is, but now I'm aware of this and I can pursue it.

What my realization is, is that if you find happiness difficult to find, it is because you don't know what it is and you aren't able to recognize it. Happiness is all around us, everywhere we go, every day. You can feel happiness without knowing what it is, just as an infant can feel gas without knowing what it is, or see light without knowing what it is.

If we continue thinking of this analogy, it's easy to see that the more you know about something, and the better you understand it, the easier it is to harness that thing. Consider the sun as an infant. You know nothing about it or its nature or its effects, but as you grow older you begin to notice its correlation with shadows and how the shadows aren't there when the sun isn't out. Then further you notice the correlation between the shadows and warmth, and you begin to put together that the sun provides the light, and the shadows are its absence, and that in absence of that light the temperature on your skin goes down. Now, with this knowledge you are able to regulate your comfort to a degree. If you are cold, you know to move out into the sunlight, and if you are hot, you find a spot with some shade.

Happiness is no different in that respect. It is all around you in life, in various places taking various forms; and you can feel its effects on you but you really don't understand how or why, in fact the very nature of happiness. As you grow older you begin to associate different things with this feeling of happiness and you begin to learn how to surround yourself with certain things and people or to manipulate your environment in ways which often bring these feelings of happiness to yourself.

But you don't always notice that it's not these things and people and these environments that are bringing you that feeling of happiness, there is something else, something deeper and perhaps more abstract to it. There is proof of this fact as well. Consider something that makes you happy, and then just think back to a time when it didn't make you happy. Or think of something that made you happy at one time but no longer does. Nothing changed about that thing at all, so where does the feeling go? This I think may be the key to a greater understanding of happiness and how to learn its true nature. And without knowing what that nature is and without having that understanding, I can still tell you this based upon everything else I've experienced in life: once you find that understanding, that knowledge of the true nature of happiness, it will be very easy to find under any circumstance. And I think that is something we are meant to pursue. That may even be what is meant in the bible by a "peace beyond understanding." What makes it beyond understanding is that most of us probably never realize there is more to it than what we see, so we never move past the point where we think that it's those things or people or environments that are making us happy. No wonder then that we get so frustrated when it stops working.

For my part, I'm going to try to figure this nature out because once I understand what happiness really is, it will be far easier to spread it around everywhere I go.

There's your food for thought for today. Hope you enjoy it!

since my last update (actually from may 9, 2007)

Mon, 21 May 2007 23:53:36 GMT

well, since my last update, things have been going well. that's not to say that things are going perfectly according to plan, because i still have to fight practiced ways for positive change in myself. but with this new mission/goal, it's *A LOT* easier to be aware of when i'm not on the right track. furthermore, it's much easier to make corrections when i have a definite direction to aim in.

this was a difficult thing to arrive at, obviously, or it wouldn't have taken so many years to figure it out; but it's definitely worth all those years of struggle in order to get to this point. i would do it all over again if i had to.

for anyone who is struggling and directionless and "lost" i will tell you to persevere, don't ever ever give up. it will take you as long as it needs to take you to get where you want to go, but it will happen and you'll understand that what i'm telling you now is true. it makes living life (in terms of trying to figure out what you should be doing)a lot like going from advanced algebra back to single digit addition, it's that easy. and it makes the fulfillment of doing what you do seem as though you've gone from being a slacker to finding the cure for aids, cancer, heart disease, alcoholism, mental illness and alzheimers and finding that it doesn't cost anyone anything. ok, maybe that last one is a little exaggeration, but it's kind of similar to how i imagine that.

i went to a concert the other night, to see vienna teng, http://www.viennateng.com/ and she is one of my favorite artists. sure she's a pretty and smart young asian lady, but she is also much more than that. her music is inspirational and filled to the brim with feeling and experience. she has a gorgeous voice and is a wonderful pianist and songwriter. hearing her perform live is just amazing, something i hope to be able to do at every opportunity. anyway, after the concert i was visiting her website and reading through some of her blog. she had held some kind of contest recently that seems to have involved having people send in essays about their experiences with her music, how it inspired them or helped them etc., and it brought to mind that she also seems to have arrived at a point in her life where she feels the need to make a positive difference in the world around her. that point at which you become intensely aware of the world beyond your front door, outside the comforting environment of where you live your life. i also read about her tour this time being centered around being as "green" as possible. that is to say, making the least impact practical on the environment while doing the tour. from using so-called "green" t-shirts, to trying to use the most economical and environmentally friendly transportation realistically available. she had wanted to use bio-diesel, but it isn't readily available in commercial tour bus form. this made me happy, because i had always had a sense that she was a good person, and before the concert i was thinking about it in terms of my own recent revelations. i found myself wanting to ask her if she would like to change the world. but she beat me to it, she is already trying to. ;)

that made me very happy. i hope to encounter more such people in the future. and to make that easier, i will try to help MAKE more such people in the future.

oh, and the other reason i brought up the concert, PICTURES!!! :D yes, in my gallery are a couple of pictures of the lovely miss vienna teng, including one with the both of us together. WOOHOO!! now i have some idea of what my future wedding photos will be like. ;) hehehehe

i am happy. i feel alive and vibrant, i feel radiant. i mean that sounds silly to me, those are attributes i would tend to ascribe to a young mother to be, but yet i feel positive and those are the kinds of things that seem like they would apply. i suppose that is a good thing. it doesn't feel like a manic happiness, which i have experienced several times in the past. that kind of hollow manic happiness that punctuates itself with sadness and depression, and worse, apathy. no, this feels like the same kind of change that i had a few years ago when somehow all of that negative stuff seemed to just switch off and basically never return. i think this will be a long-lasting thing this time. it doesn't feel hollow and empty, or plastic, or fake. it feels like it's real. it isn't manufactured, when i think about it i have an explanation and it makes sense to me even after several days. which tells me that what i feel is something that i understand and comprehend, which makes it something that i can keep if i so choose. and that's great!

i'm going to check on my banking stuff now, tomorrow is my first car payment as i recall, and i need to sit and figure out how much i need to set aside where for when and for what so that i can make sure everything stays up to date and on time etc. this keeping track of things has already paid off. my extended warranty that i bought was financed because i had to buy it separately from the dealer and it therefore couldn't be included in the financing there. anyway, as soon as i got the information, i went and setup the automatic payments so that i wouldn't have to think about anything except keeping enough money in my account to cover the payments on time. and i noticed right away that it *should have* been taken out already and it hadn't posted yet. i waited a couple of days because it was a weekend, and it still hadn't posted, not even as a pending transaction. i had even set up the automatic payments a second time because i couldn't remember if i had actually entered the information or not. well, when i called the next day and inquired about it, they double-checked the account number i had used and i found that two numbers had been transposed. he said that that happens sometimes because the information entered at the website is entered manually by their staff, the system isn't automated yet, and sometimes someone gets things switched around a bit. so they corrected that over the phone and processed the payment while i waited to verify that it was set up properly this time, and then they waived the late fee and put it in good standing.

there was a time when i would've used something like this to justify my long-standing heel-digging hatred of all things banking and financing, but today i realize that utopia is a nice place to have in mind when you're making something, but reality is a distinctly different place and there are simply things that just aren't going to work right sometimes, and we must simply deal with them. from my new perspective, this incident was just a mistake, one that's easily corrected and moved on from. there's no point in sacrificing my own happiness and satisfaction and pursuits in my life just to "get back at" the people who were "responsible" and who would never even know about my little temper tantrum anyway. how silly i've been all these years!

so i still have some more growth to go yet, but today i'm hoping that i'll have some more growth to go for the rest of my life, because the pursuit of that growth is so rewarding and beneficial to not just myself, but to all those around me as well. it's like flying on an airplane when they tell you that in case of rapid cabin depressurization, you should put your own oxygen mask on before attempting to help your children with theirs. i'm trying to think of a way to say this without sounding trite or using an analogy but i'm coming up short. basically, if you always put everyone else 100% before yourself, your life is going to fall apart unless you've got someone else to hold it together for you (that i think is what makes really influential and successful people influential and successful. they put the right people in the right positions around them which allows them to focus strictly on what they excel at). and when you're continually distracted and de-energized by those things falling apart around you, you just have nothing left to give. in order to really help others, you just have to get your own crap together first, otherwise you're just pissing in the wind and you're going to end up soaked. there, an analogy to cap off a non-analogous explanation. :D

i hope that you all are doing well.

My mission, day 1

Sat, 05 May 2007 02:36:09 GMT

(It should be noted that I have back-posted a couple of entries from my other journal here, to give a little more context, although I still need to post a couple more I think.)

So I've been keeping track of my thoughts and the things that I've been wanting to write about like I said that I would, although you all wouldn't know that because I haven't written about them yet. The fact is, I don't think that I will write about them.

This doesn't contradict what I've said previously in my self-improvement oriented goals though. Quite the contrary, I've arrived at a revelation today which has really kind of rendered them obsolete. Ultimately It's because the things I've been recording for later just don't matter with regards to the pursuit of my new life goal. Since you may all be wondering what that is and what I've been up to, I'll give it to you without further ado.

I need to change the world. And I'm not talking about something small, I'm talking about Dalai Lama, Mahatma Gandhi change the world.

I've had this bug up my ass for the past several months now, a steady, nagging feeling; a calling if you will. I don't know how to explain the feeling, but it's sort of like it's just something I need to do. And I know that it's what I will do, at this point I feel quite certain about that. But where do I begin?

I am completely ill-prepared to undertake such a thing. I am utterly lacking in the skills necessary for this. Do our schools even teach any critical thinking skills anymore? I don't recall ever being taught any when I was growing up. Maybe had I continued with my education through to university level I would have found what I'm seeking, but the previous 12 years of education just completely sapped any interest in further pursuit in such a system.

However, there is no need for lamenting what's in the past, because it's that very past which has led me to where I am today. And I am also quite certain that where I am today is precisely where I need to be in my life. This is where I am supposed to start from.

So after giving it some thought, I've decided that the first step would be in identifying those skills that I'm likely to need to undertake this mission, and then the next step will be to obtain those skills. And to do whatever is necessary in the meantime in order to achieve that step.

I think that the first skills I will need to accomplish this mission may be learned through the study of logic (for critical thinking, which will prevent my being led astray by faulty arguments and lies), debate (for whittling away the excesses of a potential belief/idea/pursuit/goal and holding onto just the meat of it), and philosophy (for better understanding things at a more fundamental level and to enhance my ability to think through, past and beyond linguistic limitations).

So my next step will be determining the best course of action to move in this direction. I think that ultimately this may involve some research into the best course offerings by various universities in certain classes such as debate. This won't necessarily involve enrolling and becoming a full-time university student by any means, I really don't care whether I obtain a degree in anything at this point; but it seems almost certain to involve possibly moving around over the next few years to maximize my results. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. In the meantime, I think that I may have finally identified in a fairly concrete way what my life goal will be, and an actual direction to move toward an actual destination.

So hello world, from the new me on the first day of the rest of my life. The new me that springs forth from the same me as I have always been, but this time resolute, and with direction. May you be forever improved for it. I know I am.

what's been happening lately

Sat, 05 May 2007 02:33:22 GMT

well, where to start? i've been reading, talking to my friend a bit, working as usual, trying to keep on top of my finances etc. things have been going pretty well for the most part. i had an interesting week last week, some interesting clients and runs at work. i even got to go to nascar!

on the personal improvement front, i got some books which i've been reading off and on when i've had time. the one i've found most interesting is one on zen meditation. did i mention that before? i don't remember. anyway, this one is the biggest on my list right now, just ahead of keeping track of my finances on the computer and steve pavlina's website. my friend suggested that i download all of his podcasts and listen to them at work, so i've been doing that when i can. he doesn't sound anything like i imagined he would, but that's just one of those funny things where you have this preconceived notion of how a particular person should sound and those are rarely right in my experience.

anyway, they're interesting as are the rest of the articles on his website. quite a remarkable guy!

what keeps striking me is how frequently i read or hear something on his website and it's just what i've been thinking of on my own in recent weeks or months. and i'm always fascinated by how much of the stuff i'm reading there that i've already thought of myself before i knew about his site. still, what he seems to be able to do that i can't is to put those thoughts into words in clear, easy to understand language. even though they are things i've thought of previously, i'm still benefiting by his insights and having spent more time refining them.

work has been kind of annoying recently, in that i've been going in quite a lot earlier than usual for the past week or two. i don't like going in early like that, but it's not awful, it's just hard to wake up and hard to go to bed to get plenty of sleep before hand. in fact today i woke up late because i had forgotten to set my alarm clock to wake me up. i should've woken up at 10:15am to be at work by 11:15am, but it was 12:30pm before i woke up so i didn't get to work until around 1pm. baaaaad!!! but what's weird is that they didn't even call me or anything. huh?? we're supposed to call in an hour before our shift starts to let them know we're up and on our way, and if we don't make that call, they're supposed to call us and see what's up. i don't know what happened there, but that part wasn't my fault. so i guess everyone kind of dropped the ball today a little bit. well, at least the first run that i missed got covered ok. just not sure what happened to following up with me. i need to make it a point not to be late for work ever, instead of tending to be 5-10 minutes late quite a lot. i'm never late for clients unless traffic is to blame, and rarely then because i anticipate it and plan around it. but still, i need to work on the other times that i tend to be late. if i can just get myself to treat everything like picking up a client, that would be a good thing.

ok, time for bed. i need to be up for work in a few hours again. :(

well color me patriotic

Sat, 05 May 2007 02:30:38 GMT

I rolled over and submitted to The Man today, I just don't have time to not be earning a living or fighting the overwhelming force of "because we said so" that is government today. So as of approximately now or sometime today, my fingerprints will be permanent residents of lord knows how many government computer systems. I'm sure they will long outlive me. But hey, it's all worthwhile right? Because now it's impossible for any bad people to get anywhere near an airplane or airport. Thank god, I feel safer already, I'm sure you will too!

That's all I have to say about that right now. I'm still sick and pissed off.

when reality clashes with idealism, something's gotta give.

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 01:13:44 GMT

my reality is clashing with my idealism. working at my job requires that i have an airport ID. i get this through a little government bureaucracy called ground transportation which is part of a somewhat larger government bureaucracy called airport operations.

it's just a money grab, a way of bilking hard working folks out of an extra $100 a year, plus another $85 every 2 years for a DOT certified physical. the physical is fine because it's always a good idea to have those anyway to stay on top of your health, so we benefit ourselves from that. plus it helps ensure that when someone gets into a cab or limo or bus or whatever that their driver isn't likely to just up and drop dead on them.

the airport ID though, that bugs me. and now even moreso that it involves having a background check and submitting fingerprints. here is where my idealism is clashing with reality.

there was a time not that long ago, back in the 1980's and even 90's where you were never required to give anyone your fingerprints except had you been convicted of a crime. that word "convicted" is important here, it meant that even if you were arrested for something, the government had no right to take your fingerprints against your will until you had been tried by a jury of your peers and convicted of the crime, or you confessed and were convicted that way. that's the way things work in this country, and that's the way they ought to work. your fingerprints are your own, they are a part of your body and you're the only one who should have any right to them unless and until you do something to change those circumstances.

well, this is the post-9/11 g. w. bush paranoia pro-law-enforcement america. land of the sheep, home of the cowaring. now days, the government reckons that it has every right to anything of yours with or without your consent. well, ok, i'm exaggerating somewhat and let's try to stick to the topic at hand. today, obtaining an airport ID requires submitting all 10 fingerprints and going through a full background check. i'm told by my employers that this is conducted by both the fbi and the local state law enforcement, and i haven't confirmed that to be the case independently and historically i'm inclined to suspect that this is what they tell me to convince me of its legitimacy etc and get me to quit asking questions.

so what's the problem you ask? isn't security important? don't we want to keep people from crashing airplanes into buildings and blowing things up? well duh, of course we do, but this is a fool's errand.

this doesn't benefit me in any way whatsoever. it only costs me an additional $35 a year OUT OF MY OWN POCKET. that's right, my employer isn't the one that pays for this new background check, this new "security procedure" if you will. i do. i bear the cost myself. but that isn't where i take issue.

nor do i take issue with the fact that they want to do a background check on me. feel free! there's nothing there, it's clean. and i'm not saying that i have nothing to fear because i've got nothing to hide, because that's a copout that i cannot stand as well. what i'm saying is that i can tolerate them wanting to conduct a background check on me for the purpose of giving me an airport ID and being able to work at the airport. what i take issue with is the pretense that this is to enhance security at the airport and thus in our nation. IT DOES NO SUCH THING!

you would think that if this were truly the concern, that the very airport most affected by this post-9/11 madness, the airports in new york city, jfk, laguardia, and even newark airport in new jersey would be the first to implement such "security enhancements." well, they're not. the fact of the matter is that any taxi driver or chauffeur can simply go to the airport and pick people up and drop them off. it's a public place!

in fact, ANYONE can just go to the airport even here and pick people up and drop them off. FOR FREE! without any kind of background check! without being fingerprinted! without anything! there are over a quarter of a million people each year who do exactly that here at our wonderful airport. among these people who are just coming and going all willie nillie through our airport are no doubt murderers, child molesters, rapists, robbers, gang members and so forth. so... why exactly am *I* being singled out simply because i'm trying to earn a living??

THAT is issue #1 of why my idealism is clashing with my reality. issue #2 is with my fingerprints being collected. gone are the days when you would give your fingerprints to a government agency and they would sit there on a little placcard in a filing cabinet in an office or government archive somewhere. no, now they are gathered and filed electronically. and then transmitted to god only knows who or where and then archived FOREVER on those computers in those databases. gone are the days when one had some degree of control over how their personal data is used and stored and accessed. gone are the days of accountability, privacy, and even to some small degree, freedom.

i would even most likely consent to giving them my fingerprints FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE of conducting this background check on me, if i had full knowledge and assurance that those fingerprints would ONLY be used for the purpose of conducting this background check, and then PERMANENTLY and IRREVOCABLY DESTROYED unless and until i am convicted by a jury of my peers of committing a crime. but i know for a fact that this is not the case. it is WAY too tempting to law-enforcement to just go ahead and tuck those records away in allegedly safe-keeping for some imagined ocassion when they would be useful in tracking down some global terrorist. WELL THEY WON'T BE!! you see, i'm just this guy! a guy trying to make a living! a guy making a living by picking people up at the airport and driving them to a hotel! it's not like i'm becoming a cop, or that i'll have unrestricted access to top-secret information, or that i'll be working for the cia, or that i'll even be a school teacher. I'M JUST DRIVING PEOPLE AROUND for crying out loud! so what the hell is all this hoohah about?!

this is my dilemma. do i roll over and let them have whatever the hell they want every time they get a stick up their ass and have carte blanche handed to them because of some tragic event like 9/11 that convinces the majority of our citizens to surrender the rights and freedoms that thousands and thousands have shed their blood to secure for us? or do i stand up and say "no sir, not this american. you've gone too far, and this is the line in the sand. go back to doing things the legal way, to actually doing your jobs instead of expecting us to do them for you." what do i do?

ok, but the most exciting part is...

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 16:16:31 GMT

WOOO!! 69% Boomer!! :D~~~

You scored as Capt. Lee Adama (Apollo). You have spent your life trying to life up to and impress your Dad, shame he never seemed to notice. You are a stickler for the rules. But in matters of loyalty and honour you know when they have to be broken.

</td>

Capt. Lee Adama (Apollo)

81%

CPO Galen Tyrol

75%

Lt. Sharon Valerii (Boomer)

69%

President Laura Roslin

69%

Tom Zarek

56%

Commander William Adama

50%

Number 6

44%

Lt. Kara Thrace (Starbuck)

38%

Col. Saul Tigh

38%

Dr Gaius Baltar

13%

What New Battlestar Galactica character are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

Friday, July 28th, 2006 - 04:06:04 MST - missing thoughts and giant sparks

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 10:46:14 GMT

so i've wanted to update a couple of times to write some thoughts i'd had. but i didn't. mostly i didn't have the time when i had them in my head. in fact, i think that's the case with all of them.

this summer i had plans to play some video games and unwind to prepare for the next season at work, but that never happened. i also planned on working on some script stuff for my website. that didn't happen either, it takes even more of an investment than playing games (should that be obvious? i don't know).

instead fate has decided that i should keep working all summer long. in fact, this summer (which for the purposes of work i'll consider june, july and august. the other months are really pretty busy) i have only had one single unscheduled day off. that is crazy!

it's not that i mind the 6 days a week thing or the hours or whatever, i still love my job and that stuff just really doesn't bug me most of the time. it's that we start getting busy again in august and by september we're doing actual work again. that means getting time off will be difficult at best. and we're understaffed for getting busy again, so that means we have to hire a bunch of new drivers again, and/or get the old ones who left over the summer to come back, and long hours for everyone else. that means no time for birdy things, no time for relaxing or doing anything but work and sleep, and fitting snacks and whatever into my day wherever i can make them fit.

yeah, so no updates have been happening. no new features or bug fixes have happened on the website. the image gallery hasn't been completed. and of course i haven't had the chance to enjoy any new games at all. heck, i've barely managed to stay in touch with my closest online friends, and i see them online now and then.

the good side? well, thus far i've paid all of my bills on time this year and haven't had to borrow anything from anyone. ok, to me that's more than a good side, that's freakin awesome! i'm actually looking forward to the next year and what it will bring. but i'm going to have to be more careful this year, i'd like to think more carefully about the things i spend money on, and to weigh the things i might like to spend money on and set priorities on them. you know, like... plan or something. at least to a small degree.

why for to the planning? well, because a few things have come up that will potentially have an impact on me financially.

first, my roommate's friends from his work graduated from university recently and have taken jobs in new york and moved up there. he is thinking about going out there to visit them and thought sometime this fall would be good. sometime before it gets too cold (we're desert folk!). this would mean august or september, definitely no later than october. new york is expensive, the trip will cost lots. hundreds of dollars most likely, but i would expect less than $1,000 because it's not like our friends there are rich suddenly and are going to take us to their favorite 5 star restaurants or anything. most likely it'd be a trip on the cheap. the usual touristy destinations, empire state, statue of liberty; i dunno, stuff like that.

second, my other roommate met this girl recently and has been dating her and things have been going pretty well i hear. they seem to really like each other, and i met her, she is pretty cool. she is from germany and grew up there, then moved to the US and lived here for quite a while, then went to school in taiwan for a while, came back here and now is about to leave to china for i forget how long. a year, maybe two? well he's planning to go out and visit her there, and they thought i could come out on one of his trips and visit too. which i obviously thought would be awesome. they say you can get there for $700 round trip, and if you look around you can get it even cheaper than that pretty frequently. that sounds feasible, and i'd like to go if things work out. this one is very tentative though since it depends on so many factors that are out of my hands.

third, and probably most important to me is my friend's graduation. i promised her years ago that i would go to her graduation when she finished university to become a dentist. i didn't take that promise lightly then and i still don't. my friend lives in holland. that will likely be an expensive trip. sometimes you can get cheap airfare to london from here, around $350 round trip, but once you're in europe things tend to cost a bit. and i don't know how long i would go there for, but it seems to me that if you're going to the trouble and expense of travelling to europe, it ought to be at least 2 weeks. i'd say 1 week bare minimum just due to the graduation thing. but really... there is so much history and culture in europe, it seems like a crime to go there and skip out on most of it.

i feel like i could benefit greatly from actually going and seeing some other cultures first hand, seeing how people are, how they live, how the things that are so easy to point fingers at and laugh at or criticize from the states actually work for people who live in them every day of their lives. stuff like that. you know, expand my horizons and realize that we aren't alone in the world, it's not all about us, there's likely not just one right answer to a problem. i want to see other people, and understand their lives from their point of view, even if just to a small extent. other cultures seem to place a much higher value on this than we do here. i think it makes people better in life to do things like this, i wish we placed a greater importance in real, tangible, first-hand experiences. it's one thing to read text in a book or on a computer screen. it's entirely different to actually see it all in context as it's happening in front of you.

if you think about it, an easy way to see why this should be important in life is this. have you ever seen a story in a newspaper about something that happened to you or someone you know? think about the couple paragraphs in the paper, and maybe a small picture along with it. now pull the article and picture away from the experience and weigh it strictly as a newspaper story, change the names and details or whatever so it's not recognizable as your experience. now think about what it was actually like to be there, to see it happen as it happened from beginning to end. think about the people involved. think about the fact that you know the back-story, you know the people and their personalities, you know their motivations and their values... in short, you know the context. now tell me, does the newspaper *EVER* get it right? even if what they report is factually correct, the whole story is missing between the lines. it's just not there, words and pictures can only capture so much.

or think of a story you've told that makes you laugh every time you think about it. have you told that story to other people before and then at the end they're just standing there with this dumbfounded look on their faces wondering why the heck you're about to pass out with laughter and all you can do is say, "well, i guess you had to be there." yeah. exactly. you had to be there. it makes all the difference in the world when you see it in those terms now doesn't it?

fourth, my car really should be replaced. it needs to be ushered on to car heaven, or to some needy poor family who could do with some basic transportation to get on their feet but just can't afford to buy a real car. my car has been good to me, it almost never breaks, and when it has, it's never left me stranded. i could always at least limp it home, albeit with a little help sometimes.

i've bought a couple auto traders to see what's out there in my potential price range. i started with looking at what's available at the price that one of our town cars would cost me. i've been looking at a range of cars, certain makes and models i'm partial to for various reasons, a range of years that fall within certian prices, the ranges of those prices and the reasons for the variances. say for example that i see a 1996 bmw 325i for $4,000. how many miles does it have on it? within the same series of years for that model, what is the range of miles the ones for sale have? does this car typically only seem to sell when it has less than 80,000 miles on it or do you sometimes see ones with 150,000 miles? what about a few years older? how does the mileage compare there vs the price? i'm trying to do a bit of a seat of the pants analysis to determine which particular models and years of cars fit with what i'm looking for, within my desired budget, and appear to have the longevity that i'd want etc. i mean face it, if you only see a particular model of car for sale for the first 8 years of its life, then chances are you'd end up with a car that's typically good for 8 years. if you never ever see a particular model for sale with 180,000 miles, but only upwards of 105,000 miles, then chances are you're buying a 100,000 mile car, after that you're just pulling the arm of a slot machine every time you turn the key. if you see a car that was always on the road when it first came out but you haven't seen one in 5 years, chances are they were pieces of crap and none of them lasted. if you still see them all the time and a lot of them are in nice condition, chances are you've got your car. at least that's my reasoning. so i've been looking through auto traders and seeing what patterns and trends i can spot. i think that should help me pick something that should be pretty good, at least empirically and statistically.

i really did have a couple posts i wanted to make in the past couple weeks that would have made for interesting reading i think, but i can't remember what those posts were. not entirely true i guess, one of them was about change and taking things for granted. i might still write that one if i get time. the other one... i'm afraid that one is lost. i've tried a few times to remember what i was thinking about that inspired me to want to write, but i haven't been able to recall what it was. wish i could address that somehow sometime, i'll keep trying to find a solution but when i'm busy, heh... well, i'm just busy. not a lot i can do save for modifying the way my brain works so i'll remember things like that. then again, i was thinking that perhaps that very trait is what allows me to come up with what i think in the first place. maybe it's the constant freshness of ideas that allows me to break out of the mould and think outside the box. because every few moments, i really don't know any better than to think of something else, i've forgotten why i shouldn't be able to. so yeah, i guess you have to take the bad with the good. what can i say? i'm me. :)

hope everyone is doing well. may you all be blessed and have a great day/week/month or however long it is before i get to tell you again.

oh hey, why not enjoy a few nice lightning pictures i took a couple of days ago while you're here. here are the links. there are 12 of them that really worked out. i think i took like 350 or 400 or so trying to get good ones. ok, to be fair, 270 of those were from a different night when the lightning was striking much further away and there were trees in the way and it wasn't striking that often and i was doing more playing with my camera than taking pictures trying to find the optimal settings to do it. a lot of those came out blurry. these 12 were all from the second night when it was much closer and not below the trees where you couldn't really get anything. and they were not all blurry either. ;) so without further ado, ENJOY!

DSCN2003.JPG (natalie.lostmypants.net)
DSCN1996.JPG (natalie.lostmypants.net)
DSCN1987.JPG (natalie.lostmypants.net)
DSCN1981.JPG (natalie.lostmypants.net)
DSCN1970.JPG (natalie.lostmypants.net)
DSCN1954.JPG (natalie.lostmypants.net)
DSCN1947.JPG (natalie.lostmypants.net)
DSCN1937.JPG (natalie.lostmypants.net)
DSCN1930.JPG (natalie.lostmypants.net)
DSCN1917.JPG (natalie.lostmypants.net)
DSCN1906.JPG (natalie.lostmypants.net)
DSCN1900.JPG (natalie.lostmypants.net)

Monday, June 5th, 2006 - 19:58:10 MST - as it stands today

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 00:03:39 GMT

life is so dynamic. When I posted last I was having a really hard time with life, several aspects of it. As it stands today, those things are still there in my life but not in my face so much, I'm getting back into my routine and my routines comfort me. That's probably one reason why I don't seem ambitious in my pursuits, pursuing change means discomfort and a lack of stability and I'm just not ready for that yet.

One day maybe I'll be there, but right now I'm still taking steps, baby steps probably but over the last few years they've become pretty significant when I look back at where I was vs where I am now. And when I look ahead I see a long way left to go, but I can see myself somewhere in the middle now which means I'm on my way and I've made progress and I have some actual hope of getting to my destination. Some may look at the changes I've seen in myself and not see what the big deal is, and that's fine because for most people it isn't a big deal.

When I first moved to where I am now, I never thought much about dating or girls as anything but the other half of the population, and I certainly had no belief that I had anything to offer someone in a relationship so I never pursued one. Enter one very special young lady who thought that I did. She did the pursuing and made all the effort and even though I still didn't believe in myself, it awoke a part of me that I didn't know I had. Suddenly there was color in the world around me, suddenly I was an individual in the world rather than a secondary part of everyone else's reality. Suddenly I mattered to someone and suddenly I was confronted with what it meant to be an active part of the big picture of life and to matter to someone.

That's not to say that I never mattered to anyone before or that I wasn't a part of life before, remember this is my life from my perspective, the way I observed the world, the way I saw things and reacted to them. This was an entirely new experience for me, as though I had only just been born and was having to learn to see and listen and talk and walk and everything else.

To that special someone I owe a debt of gratitude for giving me my own life and waking me up to the possibilities of life and giving me a reason in my own mind to exist and be and experience and feel and love and care and do. To that special someone with whom things weren't destined to work out, I'd like to say thank you for all of those things and more, without you and what you did for me, I would not be who I am today. I'd still be nobody to myself and I'd still see myself as the same to everyone else most likely.

Since that time years ago, there have come many other special someones, none of whom I've really ever shared the same kind of relationship with, but still equally important in my life and still big parts of the reasons why I've made the progress I've made over the last 8 or 9 years.

To all of you I say thank you for being there and being a part of my life and helping to make me who I am.

It was one of those special someones that I was feeling troubled with last time, not through any fault of their own but because of the way I was interpretting things, and that was a huge turmoil in my life. I can say today that I'm feeling much better about things at least on this front, because I've had some time now to reflect on it all and consider not just how I was feeling but also why. I still don't think I really comprehend what went so catastrophically wrong but I do think I'm clearer on things. I think I just have a lot more things I need to clear up in my head yet, but being aware of that fact will make it a lot easier to work on.

Today I had a chance to talk a little with my friend and straighten some of those things out, and I feel much more calm and relaxed about that now that I know where we stand and what's what. One thing is for sure, I have a much better friend than I was fearing before I had the chance to talk about things.

Things are not the same as they were before, which has made me feel bad, but I'm not worried about it anymore because I think we'll get past this and in spite of the changes, I may just learn that things will be better than they ever were before. I guess it's a trial by fire if you will, where some of the excess burns off but what's left behind is more beautiful than what could be seen with those excesses still there.

To my friend, I'm still there for you, and I hope to always be. It's people like you who prove what true friendship is all about, and how valuable it really is. Thank you for the years you've been there for me and with me, the things we've shared, and the future whatever it may bring. I love what we've had, I love what we have, and I look forward to what we will have.

As a side note, work is slowing down a lot now, it's bloody hot already this year too. We average 10 days a year over 110 degrees, and I think we've had 4 so far this year and June has barely just begun! Also, I haven't decided for sure what to do about that dinner, but I've offered it to my roommate, and I might give it to my other friend and his wife but I'll discuss that with my roommate next time I see him. I'd really love to go myself but I just don't have anyone to bring and it isn't likely to change before it's too late, so I don't know. Maybe another time. *shrug*

To my other friend whom I haven't heard from in going on 2 months, where are you?!?! I miss my kitten, and I hope you're all right... I'm worried about you. I hope graduation was nice and that you got to take that trip with your friends. I also hope your new job is awesome if you've started it yet. Hurry back and get in touch with me already!

Mood: serene
Saw: hard times and beauty
Said: I'm sorry
Felt: a rainbow of things

it's been an unusual week, tell me when it's over

Mon, 22 May 2006 05:15:09 GMT

This is not a joyful post. you should not read it if you don't want the raw me!

It's the week of my nephew's graduation and it's been highly unusual for me. His graduation has been great, I've had a really nice time visiting my family and being there for him and seeing him pass this milestone in his life.

But the other side of things has been rather bad for me. A lot of things seem to be culminating right now and it's been somewhat (understatement alert) overwhelming.

A lot of it has to do with my own past disappointments and negative life experiences, and the way I observe things as they are "supposed to be." and still more of it has to do with this stupid dinner at a 5 star restaurant I won last year in a charity raffle.

This dinner has already been a sore spot with me all year, and it's become basically a slap in the face and stark reminder of my own regrets in life.

It's a dinner for two you see, and features a gondola ride after dinner all through the beautiful hyatt gainey property. And I don't have anyone to take with me. I'll have to schedule this when I return from graduation to be able to use it before it expires, and it's way too much for a first date. I've had friends tell me to just go with a friend, but the only females I know who live in Arizona have a nasty habit of not showing up and not returning my calls. Now think about what this dinner is, and tell me it wouldn't be tacky as hell to bring another guy with me.

There are a ton of other things that have been compounding my problems this week but I'm not going to get into those now.

I've put one of my best, dearest and closest friends through absolute hell the last few days and I won't blame them if they lose a lot of respect for me or just don't want to talk to me for quite a while. I have no idea how long it will take to be forgiven or if it can ever truly happen. It was the worst possible timing for my friend and I didn't have any alternative because all of my other friends seem to have gone AWOL or already given up on me or been inundated with problems of their own in which case perhaps I was the one who abandoned them, I don't know.

I wish I could bury my head in the sand and have someone grab my ass and yank me out when this is all resolved but that isn't life. I'm left to deal with this scrapheap I've created on my own and to find my own way out, that's the way it's always been and because of my personality that's probably the way it will always be. Because if you can't find someone to nail you to a cross you can always do it yourself, and then hope that you didn't do it so well that you can't get yourself down when you're through being your own personal martyr.

What can I say? I've filled my life with regrets and I've had to live with those regrets, I've cut off my own nose to spite my face. And what that means to anyone who doesn't speak in metaphore is that I've done self destructive things which have led to the very regrets that are torturing me right now simply to get back at people who've done things I didn't like. And what sense does that make? Those people aren't losing any sleep over my choices, they're living their own lives that haven't been needlessly filled with regrets, and I'm the only one whose had to suffer. What the hell must I think?

I suspect that I'm not nearly as smart as people think I am, that I'm just very good at pretending and fooling everyone through subtle manipulations, because if that weren't true then how can my life be explained? At the very least I am not a rational human being.

I don't know anything anymore and that's the story I'm sticking to. I'm taking a break for now, to stop and breathe as several of my friends have advised me to do several times in the past.

Just please remember, I have been and shall forever remain, me. I am me. For better or worse, this is who I am. I have no power to change that. I have power only to alter what I do about it. Because I am me regardless of the choices I make. It is me who makes my choices and it is me who lives with them. I cannot escape that fact.

Mood: perplexed and upset

Saw: so many wonderful happy things, so many painful reminders

Said: a lot of awful things

Felt: broken, abandoned, alone, sad, bitter, jealous, unwanted and uninteresting. also happy and joyful and excited and proud

Smelled: a flower Tasted: bagels with cream cheese

Did: took hundreds of pictures and probably damaged a fantastic relationship

what happened to february?

Thu, 02 Mar 2006 09:27:52 GMT

carpe diem! seize
the day! (but if
you're me, not too
suddenly or that'll
turn out badly too)

Mood: very disappointed
Saw: pretty girl of my affection
Heard: pretty girl of my affection say she's studying bio-engineering
Said: i'm going to ask her out
Felt: really really bummed out
Did: actually attempted small talk with a girl i was interested in!
i'm still alive and well, february flew by, i don't really remember any of the significant things that happened except one.

there was this girl at the airport working at the information booth at one of the terminals, i'd been noticing her quite a lot (well ok, every time she worked :P) and decided i should talk to her.

so one day the opportunity presented itself, i had to pick up a fax for a last minute arrival and she was working that night. i went over and said i was looking for a fax to come through, and while i waited i talked to her about the book she was studying which appeared to be some kind of advanced math book just from glancing at it. i asked if she was going to ASU and she said yes, and i asked what she was studying and she said she's studying bio-engineering. silly girl, what i had actually intended was to find out what SUBJECT she had her head buried in at the moment, so that i could wax eloquently on its merits, but ok. i told her that sounded pretty cool, and about that time my fax came through so i paid for it and had to head right over to wait for the client because it was supposed to be on the ground already, or close to it.

i decided that i should ask her out, so i figured the next day or the day after or at the latest the next weekend when i tended to see her working a lot i would try to think of a nice way to ask her out.

...time passes...

she wasn't working the next day, or the next, which wasn't unusual because she tended not to work that often, maybe just a couple times a week that i saw her. so i didn't sweat it, it gave me more time to think of a good way to ask her anyway. the weekend came and went and i didn't see her, so i figured maybe i wasn't there at the right time, or they had moved her to another booth in the terminal because from talking to one of the other people there, they get moved around now and then.

...more time passes...

by later the next week, i decided to be proactive and come in early the next time and check all the booths in the terminal, and i didn't see her. so i started coming in a few minutes early whenever i came in and check all the booths... still no pretty girl of my infatuation.

i thought maybe she'd gone on vacation or something due to exams, and valentine's day was coming up so i rethought my strategy and decided the best way to ask her would be to inquire about her valentine's day plans first. this would tell me if she had any other prospects or a boyfriend etc. and help me with the next step without letting on to her that i was interested. but then valentine's day came and went and i still hadn't seen her again.

a week later i started to worry, so i finally just stopped in and asked one of the younger girls who worked there who i thought would probably know her or be a friend of hers there, and i said that i hadn't seen her there lately and does she still work here?

...time stops...

she said no, she doesn't work at the airport anymore. ARGH!!!! I HATE YOU FATE!!!

so what i have at that point is, i know what she looks like, i know she worked at the airport but doesn't anymore, and i know she goes to ASU studying bio-engineering. in my fluster the last time i had seen her and talked to her, i had neglected to notice the name on her nametag and i didn't think to ask, because i thought i still had time! so i asked helpful girl what her name was and she said it's kelly (no idea of the spelling). so now what i have is, she's an asian girl, not the kind of asian girl who everyone tends to think is drop dead gorgeous, but i happened to think she was beautiful which is all that really matters, i don't care if anyone else does. she goes to ASU and studies bio-engineering (no idea what year), and her name is kelly (of some spelling or another).

so do i stalk her so i can ask her out or not?

i asked a girl friend of mine and she, in typical female style (and one of the reasons i love her) gave me a perfectly fine answer that was absolutely no help whatsoever.

"it depends. if there's some chemistry then it would be really sweet, but if there isn't any chemistry then it would be pretty scary."

my computer monitor saw me looking at what my girl friend had typed like this: o_O

so do i stalk her so i can ask her out? i thought about this and it was basically just the same thing i thought before i asked her, but at least it validated my analysis. so it boils down to chemistry or no chemistry. how the hell would i know??

obviously i felt some chemistry or i certainly wouldn't have gone to the trouble of trying to make small talk with her, it's just not something i've done historically with girls i'm interested in. if i'm interested, you'll know because i pay attention to you when you're not paying attention to me, and otherwise you'll feel like i don't know you exist. ah, the burden of being painfully shy around girls! so yeah, she was at least something special to have broken me out of that shell.

but whether it's sweet or scary to track her down and ask her out has nothing to do with whether *I* felt any chemistry, it has to do with whether SHE did. again, how the hell would i know??

so i turn to historical, empirical evidence and conclude "no," there was no chemistry, and tracking her down at school weeks after the last time i'd seen her (and the first and only time i'd ever talked to her) to ask her out would fall into the scary, rather than sweet category. ARGH!! I HATE YOU FATE!!

so that's my february as i recall it. how was yours?

time to play catchup again...

Thu, 02 Mar 2006 09:24:59 GMT

Tuesday, January 31st, 2006 - 23:13:45 MST - yes it's late but what can i say?

Happy Chinese new year to those of you who celebrate!

I went to the Chinese cultural center here for an hour or two Sunday to see what they had going on, and it was pretty fun. :)

Lots of rampant commercialism, or rather capitalism, and a lot of people having fun together and even some various shows and songs and dancing and stuff that I had to miss out on because I only had a little time between clients and wanted to see all that was there first. I bought a place setting with chopsticks that looks really pretty and a couple pieces of art to decorate my place a bit. I'll see about taking some pictures to show it off sometime when I have time and a camera.

Work is keeping me busy lately, I barely get my days off, and when I do they're filled with errands and things. On the positive side, it means I still have clean suits and that my car might actually be fixed!

Yes, the infamous leak of transmission "food" seems like it may be cured now after examining things again recently after it had gotten worse and spotting a bit of braided hose where some fluid appeared to be percolating out right in front of the radiator fan which also explained why nobody could figure out where it was leaking from. The best part? It cost $1.07 including tax and took two sockets and 15 minutes to fix and didn't even require a jack! That's awesome!

That's all for now, maybe I'll post more when I get another chance. I still haven't replaced my phone and both messengers I had on the work one have expired so I can't chat on it anymore... Still working on that one.