Livin' Like A Freebird

All Things Must End

2010-02-10T18:51:00.000-08:00

Alas, this is sad but true. This blog ends. My other blog begins. It'll be roughly the same content, the same philosophical perspective, but with a bit more thrown in and done a bit more frequently. More details on the new blog.

So alas, goodbye blogger...because you suck and wordpress rocks!

Chaos Theory

2010-01-25T14:51:00.000-08:00

"Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?"
-Edward Lorenz, American mathematician, meteorologist

DISCLAIMER: This post is going to start off pretty cliche, but stay with me. Just like me, you have no idea where this post is taking you when you start.

What is the purpose of life?

I haven't meditated on this question for a while, but it definitely bears being referred back to, lest we get lost in the day-to-day trials that we end up not fully appreciating. Is our purpose just to be? To accomplish goals? To procreate and simply prolong the existence of our species?

I think our intended purpose changes day to day. For me, from my vantage of my current purpose, I'm pursuing a way of life I want to live day in and day out. Am I working toward this goal? Toward this supposed "ideal"? As I'm progressing toward this horizon, my day-to-day actions have far-reaching effects - effects I cannot begin to realize.

What effect have you had on someone's life lately?

Did you cut someone off this morning on your way to work?
Have you inspired someone today?
Did you not tip your server well this past weekend?

The way I look at it, we have three different types of effect on people: direct, indirect and "chaotic."

Direct effects are the most obvious ones:

You made a quick move into the left lane, knowing it's a bit close, but you can't be late for another meeting or you're fired. You see the guy behind you flick you off and think to yourself, "another casualty of war." Shouldn't have been out so late with your buddy last night.
Your friend got dumped a couple weeks ago and can't seem to get over it. You take him out to the nearest watering hole, have a few drinks and let him get it all off his chest. You toss him a few motivational words, then suddenly the next day he's a little more optimistic.
You're in a rush at the restaurant and take off as soon as you give your server a $20 on a $19.45 check. You don't leave any more cash on the table. Gotta make it to the bar to meet your buddy - he's feeling a little down since he got dumped.

Indirect effects can be traced back to the source, but would require a bit more research than any of us really cares to do on a given day:

That guy you cut off on the way to work got so frustrated that he snapped at his girlfriend on the phone when she called a few minutes later to tell him he left his lunch at the house. The shock of his outlash made her cry. Their relationship had been somewhat rocky in the first place - she ends up leaving him a note while he's at work and is gone before noon. She feels free for the first time in years and decides to head to the park with one of her favorite books.
That friend you inspired had a little more bounce in his step the next day. Around noon he goes for a walk in the nearby park. He sees a woman reading a book on a bench and recognizes the author on the cover. Feeling a little more confident in himself, he initiates conversation. After talking for a couple hours, they agree to meet up for dinner later that night.
That server you didn't tip was short on her rent payment by just a few bucks and doesn't have anybody from whom she can borrow money. The next day her landlord kicks her out of the apartment, as she is already two months late on rent and is short for this month, even though it's only a few bucks.

And finally, we have the chaotic effects:

The girl who finally feels free has a date later that night. Someone approached her in the park and she's smitten. She's running late and gets a phone call from an old friend she hasn't talked to in years. She needs a place to stay because she couldn't pay her rent. The girl, being too nice to refuse, offers to let her stay on her couch for a few days. However, she has to go pick her friend up who is on the other side of town. She calls the guy she's meeting at the restaurant and tells him she's going to be an hour late.
Your friend you inspired is excited for his date later that night but gets a phone call from her saying she's going to be pretty late. He decides to go back to his house to wait for a bit and makes a U-turn. He didn't see the F-150 before it T-boned him.
Thankfully, the server was able to get in touch with an old friend who is going to let her stay on her couch. Her friend comes to pick her up and when they get back to her friend's place they find that her house was in flames. Apparently she had been in such a rush she had left her hair-straightener on and, being perched on the edge of the sink, it fell into the garbage pail, lighting the contents on fire, which quickly spread throughout the house. The server, after making sure her friend is OK, decides to call up her mom, who she hasn't spoken to in years. Her mom comes to pick her up and they quickly reconnect and reforge a strong, lasting bond.

And because the effects don't stop there, your friend who got T-boned was paralyzed from the waist down. The girl he met at the park visits him in the hospital and they begin to date, falling fast in love. They end up getting married and your buddy ends up walking again in time for his wedding a few years later. He writes a book called "My Journey" and it becomes a best-seller, inspiring millions. You attended your buddy's wedding and hooked up with a bridesmaid. You got AIDS.

All because:

You cut someone off on your way to work one morning
You inspired a friend
You forgot to tip your server

And all you may have been doing was pursuing a way of life you wanted to live day in and day out. In short, you caused:

A break-up, a marriage, a fire, an eviction, a car accident, a strong mother-daughter bond, a best-selling novel, huge profit margins for a publishing company and inspiration to millions. Not to mention the fact that you contracted AIDS.

To answer the quotation from the beginning of the post - personally, I don't think it's impossible. The actions that may at first seem to be most inconsequential, the most insignificant...those are the ones that may have the most far-reaching effects. In short, the "butterfly effect."

The Inevitable

2009-12-21T13:36:00.001-08:00

"Have the courage to live. Anyone can die."
-Robert Cody, American performer

Why does everybody always get so distraught over the one thing that is certain to happen in life? It's inevitable. We're all currently rolling inexorably toward it. Face it now or face it never in all your ignorance: one day, maybe soon, maybe 50 years from now, YOU WILL DIE.

Kick the bucket. Keel over. Croak. Decease. Expire. Pass on. Sleep Eternally. Perish. Blink for an exceptionally long period of time. Push up daisies. Terminate. Curtains. Pay a debt to nature. Feed the worms. Check out. Demise. Cash in the chips.

However you want to phrase it, it will happen to you. But how?

Burn to death. Drown. Get shanked in prison. Get shanked on the streets. Shot. Stabbed. Sliced. Diced. Drive your car off a cliff. Choke on a marble. Impact death. Cardiac arrest. Overdose. Surgery gone wrong. Alcohol poisoning. Suicide. Poison. Cancer. Bleed to death after being bitten by a shark. Tapeworm. Swine flu. Bee stings. Eating shellfish. Electrocution. Carbon monoxide poisoning. Emphysema. AIDS. Blunt object to the face. Child-birth. Eaten by a bear in the woods.

However you want to phrase the means to your ends, it will happen to you.

Brittany Murphy died at the age of 32. The country is mourning. If you don't think it is, click here. Why?

She was so young
She was such a great actress
She inspired me
"It's so tragic!"

I see two problems with the story I linked to: a.) was someone honestly paid to go interview "fans" of Brittany Murphy and get cliche answers regarding her age and family? And that story ACTUALLY appears in my Google feed? b.) Everybody is so damn sad.

People die all the time. Babies die at birth. Soldiers die in war. Millions of Africans die of starvation and poor water quality. Haley Joel Osment gets stabbed outside his school (Pay It Forward reference, just in case you mistakenly thought he really did die...give it time, though). Why does everybody get so damn sad?

The samurai had it right (for the most part). They embraced death. Even welcomed it. They didn't rush toward it in hopes of finding it, but they also didn't run from it out of fear. They believed, and rightly so in my estimation, that the true test of a man's character is faced upon his deathbed. Granted, they also committed a heck of a lot of seppuku, which I don't particularly agree with; but regardless, there was no big mourning process. No crying out in frustration. They accepted their fate and so did their peers.

We need to learn to do that. To accept death for what it is: an inevitability. Brittany Murphy is dead. Let that sink in real nice and deep til you know you won't forget it. Michael Jackson is six feet under - feel that, experience that, let the concept of his death flow through you until you can no longer deny it. Someone close to you died - everyone close to you will eventually die.

Here is a quote from a fan from the site to which I linked about Brittany Murphy:
"This is just tragic. I'm sick of everyone dying. 2009 is the worst year! I am saddened for her family and for the world of entertainment. Brittany Murphy was a find."

If I thought it appropriate to drop the f bomb on this blog, I would do it like this: You are a [f-bomb]ing moron! "I'm sick of everyone dying"? Seriously? Let the fact that "everyone" is dying remind you of your own mortality! Cherish it! Everybody WILL die! To say you're sick of that is akin to saying you're sick of everyone breathing. You're sick of everyone drinking water. You're sick of the inevitable.

Next time you're at a family function, whether you're sitting in a kitchen or living room or playing ping pong in the basement, look at the people around you and imagine them as corpses. Imagine their funeral. Imagine burying them in a cemetery. Imagine them gone forever. How does that make you feel? Once you've felt sad and gotten a little teary-eyed, realize that they are still there. They are still in your life. For the time being, they are alive and well, laughing and full of vigor. Joking with you. Talking with you. Yelling at you. Smiling at you.

But after all the smiles have faded, after all the tears have been cried, after all the songs have been sung, they will die.

Don't tear yourself up over it. Don't mull it over in your head for extended periods of time. Accept it. Embrace it. Love the fact that we're all mortal and our time is limited. If we were happy ALL the time, happy would be the new sad and we would need something more fulfilling.

Death is inevitable for a reason. Discover for yourself what that reason is and you'll find yourself a whole lot happier.

Tiny Indulgences

2009-11-30T16:57:00.001-08:00

"I can never bring you to realize the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumbnails, or the great issues that may hang from a boot-lace."
-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I bought a 12-pack of Mountain Dew at the grocery store today. Exciting, isn't it? Just stick with me on this one...I normally don't like to drink pop anymore (or soda, whatever you want to call it), but I felt inclined while strolling through the aisles of Giant Eagle. I picked it up about halfway through my aisle-filled adventure, so I had the other half of my shopping spree to ponder my impulsive choice. I hadn't bought a 12-pack of the Dew since college. So why now?

A large part of my evolving philosophy throughout my life has been to notice the smaller happenings, the minute developments throughout any given day; to appreciate the moments that can in no way be replicated by anybody else in any other situation via your perspective. When I graduated high school, and even college, I was not ecstatic. I didn't jump for joy. I stayed on my even keel of free-spiritedness and rolled with it. To prove my small point, here's what I specifically remember from my graduation:

The drinking fountain was out of water
Not sitting next to Barnes because the usher messed up the count
The smell of the girl sitting next to me (she smelled good)
The first bad joke of a great keynote speech
A soon-to-be co-worker I saw right after I walked
Not standing on the right spot when my picture was taken
Not moving my tassle over because I didn't want to...it's the small victories that count :)

For those of you who are married (or divorced), what are the things you remember most about your wedding? For those of you with kids, what do you remember most about them growing up? For those of you that have served in the military on the front lines, what do you remember most about a battle?

Sure, you'll have a recollection of the major events in your life, but chances are the major share of them will be lost in the wheel of time as your brain keeps turning and your body keeps moving forward. You'll remember the look your soon-to-be life partner gave you before you kissed on the altar. You'll remember the fear you felt when your kid rode his bike without training wheels for the first time. For the soldiers, you'll remember the first cigarette you smoked after your first gunfight. It's not the grand affairs that you'll vividly recall, but rather the small occurrences that happen within them.

Every day at work, one of my co-workers comes into my office and performs two back kicks. Weird? Maybe. Awesome? Quite. It's a small inside joke between the two of us, and it never gets old. Because one day one of us will quit, get fired or switch departments to where our offices won't be close enough anymore. But the back kicks, for as long as they're there...now that's a memory that will stick with me.

The real memories we make, the important, lifelong ones, belong to the unexpected, to the roll of the dice.

My 12-pack of Mountain Dew is something I remember from my college years. It was a small comfort, a tiny indulgence, and still is. It brings me to a place, much like a song can, that I can be content, if only for a moment, or a few minutes, or an hour.

What's your tiny indulgence? Your distant memory upon which you can reflect and smile.

Live Like We're Dying

2009-11-12T20:22:00.000-08:00

"We only got 86, 400 seconds in a day to turn it all around or throw it all away."
-Kris Allen, "Live Like We're Dying"

(I knew where I was going when I started this blog post...just not sure where I ended up. Enjoy!)

One of the most prominent themes in my life, paraphrased at first by Tim McGraw when he spoke those words I first heard at the intersection of Lorain Road and Great Northern Boulevard: "And he said 'One day I hope you get the chance, to live like you were dying.'" Now brought back to light by Kris Allen in his first single. When compared according to quality, we're talking apples and oranges. Funny how two totally different things have the same end-result.

I wrote a short (very short) poem a couple weeks ago:

Live wild, live free
For what has come, let it be
For what will come, will be
Live wild, live free

Is this what it means to live like you're dying? I think it pitifully scrapes the surface, but it's a start. The way I look at it, you just gotta let it go. This is impossibly hard sometimes, but that's why we have the likes of Muhammad Ali to let us know that "Impossible is nothing!" Seriously, just...let...it...go.

It reminds me of a post I wrote more than a year ago: here.

Most anybody can understand the concept of living like you're dying. However, very few REALIZE how to do it. There's a very distinct difference. In order to realize how to live as if your life might end literally any second, I firmly believe you have to achieve Nirvana. But for us unenlightened fools, we can take a look at eastern philosophy (Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, etc.) for a start. You don't have to buy into it all, but trying to understand it is a good first step.

If you don't want to bother with eastern philosophy, go ahead and try this one for size:

Breathe the stale, breeze-less mid-afternoon air. Watch the cold, naked branches of trees caught in the clutches of February. Feel the cotton sheets as they stick to your sweat-soaked skin while you toss and turn during a sleepless night. Read a terrible book. Smell the worst gas you're significant other has ever emitted. Feel the itch of two-day-old sunburn in the middle of your back. Bend a fingernail backward. Listen to a baby wail in Denny's after you get cold food that turns to ash in your mouth because you're terrified of a phone call you have to make later that day. And above all......

......revel in it. For it won't happen again. You are alive. For such a brief interlude in time. A brief flicker of a candle among a roaring forest fire. That's all you are. Just make sure to burn.

With desire, with passion,
with your hatred for fashion.
With purpose, without answers
no one to help when your hands hurt.

With freedom, self-reliance,
with painstaking compliance.
With direction, with strides,
that stretch a mile wide.

Be powerful. Be humble. Be present.

A Little Creative Spirit

2009-11-01T20:11:00.001-08:00

"The opposite of war isn't peace. It's creation."
-Mark, from the musical Rent

We all have a little creative spirit in us. Whether you consciously or unknowingly tap it, it's there. The hard part is learning how to foster it. How to cultivate it. How to nurture it and watch it grow. And because it's hard is what makes it so worthwhile.

Of one thing I am convinced - you will never accomplish anything noteworthy unless you tap into this creativity and listen to the voice that speaks to you and you alone. This creativity can manifest itself in countless forms - literally countless.

A campaign slogan
The Post-It Note
A marketing plan
The light bulb
A stand-up comedian
A one-liner you create on the spot
The cotton gin
A new filing system for purchase orders
The comb-over (I mean really, who thought of that?)
A dick in a box
A simple sentence, with all its commas, prepositional phrases and direct objects
A dance routine
Mathematical equations - bringing to mind the concept of creativity within a set of rules
A different way of saying something that's been said a thousand times before

Clear your mind of the useless mental chatter. The creativity will flow through you if you can do your best to stop unconscious thought. It sounds hard because it is. You must learn to think literally of nothing, or at least of nothing besides what you're creating (and even then, limit the number of thoughts).

When I write, I let the pencil guide my hand. I'll begin a scene and have a general idea of where it's going to end up, but the details along the way are decided by the characters, not me. I've had a scene change its course entirely because of one hand motion from a minor character. I've had a good character turn out to be evil because of something she said. And I've had one minor character take on a leading role because I discovered, during a battle scene, that he was in love with the main female protagonist.

Messed up, I know. But each twist and turn happened when I let the pencil in my hand move of its own free will; when I started the idea and ran with whatever popped into this ol' brain of mine. Only because I was able to clear it and focus on nothing but my writing. On nothing but what I wanted to create.

The greatest minds are the ones with original thought. But originality requires creativity. And creativity represents part of the essence of what defines us as human.

Different Paths

2009-10-26T07:47:00.000-07:00

"There are many paths to enlightenment. Be sure to take one with a heart."
-Lao Tzu, Chinese philosopher, author of the Tao Te Ching, founder of Taoism

This past weekend I made a big decision (please note I will not tell you what it was - get over it). I made a phone call, did the deed and hung up. That was supposed to be it. I was supposed to be able to walk away from what I did with no cause for alarm. But for the next two hours, my stomach wouldn't stop twisting itself into knots. I was helping a friend of mine assemble a futon and I couldn't concentrate during the simple act of screwing in a bolt, I was in such a daze. Something in my gut was telling me that I did something wrong, that this was something I would lose sleep over, that what I did was not the way things were actually supposed to be. For two hours I let this gut-wrenching continue until I decided to do something about it. I called back and undid the deed. I then proceeded to sleep like a baby.

For some reason, this brings to the forefront of my mind the concept of fate vs. free will. Which line of thinking is the truer?

Are we predestined at the moment of our birth with no way to alter our course?
Do the decisions we make along life's road alter our destiny, with different paths leading to different end-results based on our actions?
Or is there no such thing as predetermined results? Maybe free will, coincidence and luck govern our lives, all actions and reactions based solely on chance.

It's an age-old argument, and one I doubt this blog post will settle.

Why did I get that gut-wrenching feeling that I did something wrong, making me call a second time? I've said this before, but I'm a guy who goes with his gut. When faced with major life-altering decisions, many people make pros and cons lists, debating the benefits and drawbacks of one course of action over another. That's all well and good for the analytical sort, of which I tend not to be. If my gut tells me I should do something, I do it - the same goes for the negative form of that statement. This past weekend, my instincts were screaming at me that I had messed up. So I listened.

I'm a believer of the second above bullet point, myself. I believe there is such a thing as fate, although not necessarily holding to any religious, dogmatic perception of predestination. However, I think you can change your fate when life-altering turning points are encountered. Think of it as a path through a forest. You start off on one singular path, but along the way many paths branch off of that singular one, and even more off of those. The small, everyday decisions don't necessarily turn you down another way, but the big ones can change your course as surely as you were born: what college you attend, what jobs you take, how you treat your body, what friends you associate with, who you date, who you marry and so on and so forth.

The gut-wrenching feeling I got after I made that first phone call was an indicator to me that I should not have done what I did. That I pissed off the cosmos and altered my fate, but not for the better. Hence, the second phone call.

I am meant for something, just as you are. Maybe I'm fulfilling that "destiny" as I write this blog post, or as I drive to work every day, or as I talk to my girlfriend at night. Maybe I'm just ambling along toward it, not having fulfilled my full purpose. Regardless, I'm going to listen to my gut/heart/instincts - whatever you want to call it - and trust them to guide me along my journey.

And during the journey, I must continue telling myself to "be present."

Why So Serious?

2009-10-21T17:30:00.000-07:00

"Get stuck in the never-ending drama (worrying about what irrelevant people think) and you'll never get anything done."
-Seth Godin, author, marketing expert

We all need to lighten up. We take ourselves way too seriously for our own good. Half the things we freak out about don't mean shit in the long run. So it begs the question...why so serious?

I read a blog post by Seth Godin the other day that talked about high school, explaining that the "winners" (which I took to mean the popular kids) were the ones who didn't take high school too seriously. Now some might argue that the popular kids weren't the winners - the whole idea of how the nerd in high school will one day be the football captain's boss in the work world - but I disagree to an extent.

During my tenure in high school, I found myself somewhere in the middle of the nerd and the popular kid. I had one large group of friends (my posse) plus smaller pockets of friends scattered across the social spectrum - from the nerds and bandos in the AP classes to the jocks and punk rock princesses in the general - so I feel I had a pretty wide range of social interaction to give me a fair vantage point. Thus, I will conclude that the popular kids were the winners, not the nerds who buried themselves in books and got a 4.2 GPA. Why? Because the popular kids successfully lived in the moment, at least moreso in comparison to the bookworms. The popular kids, the winners, made the memories on which they can look back fondly.

A microcosm of this theory: One night I was nose deep in some 800-page, hard-bound book studying for a test in God knows what class. I got a phone call from four of my closest friends saying they were going to drive around town playing strip padiddle and wanted me to come. I respectfully declined their tempting offer, choosing a pedantic night over their joy-riding. Looking back, you know what I remember about that test? Nothing. Not the class, not the grade, not the teacher. Not even the night of studying. What could I have remembered from that night? Dave, Katie, Jacquie and Shannon half-naked in a minivan driving around North Olmsted for no other purpose than to prove to ourselves that we were alive...yep, not sure I would have forgotten that. To this day I can still tell you who was in what car seat when they pulled up to my house to coerce me into joining. I remember who was more naked than the others.

They were the winners that night. Not me.

Now I'm not saying "Don't ever study. Go out and have fun every chance you get." There just comes a time where you should say, as I often tell my students, "Fuck it." Recognize what matters in the long run.

If you find yourself overanalyzing everything, take a step back. If you find yourself a little too OCD for even the most catatonic schizophrenic, chill out and go sit in your favorite chair.

But the next time four of your best friends pull up in a minivan half naked and laughing hysterically, think about what you'll remember five years down the road...and get in the damn car!

My Mentor: Experience

2009-07-06T21:08:00.001-07:00

"We must all fear evil men. But there is one evil that we must fear most...and that is, the indifference of good men."
-Priest, Boondock Saints

Does everyone suffer from overpowering fits of apathy, or is it just me? There are times in my life, albeit few and far between, where I just feel...well...nothing. I don't give a shit about anything. I had about a three-day spree of that pretty recently. I didn't want to write. I didn't want to go out. When I did go out, I didn't want to talk to anybody. I didn't want to listen to music. I didn't want to learn anything. I saw the negative in absolutely everything. For the first time in years, I was actually bored. And I never get bored.

I always preach about appreciating the small things in life. So when I don't practice what I preach, when I don't realize the very things I write about in this blog and talk about during my daily life, I become a hypocrite. And hypocrisy is one of the worst sorts of crimes.

But right after I came out of this atypical fit of apathy, a strange thing happened. I got a Facebook friend request from someone I met this past winter. When I went to check out her profile (I always enjoy reading people's quotes) I found a quote that summarized the exact reason that helped me snap out of it. Odd timing, but fateful maybe? Please excuse the cliche feel that is about to overcome you:

"The grand essentialls of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for."
-Allan K. Chalmers

The cynic in me can find many things wrong in this quote and can pick it apart, demonstrating why it is invariably false. But the idealist in me accepts it wholeheartedly. And at the moment I think I'm an idealist...for now, anyway... but I'm a happy cynic when I am one (NOTE: please ignore the contradiction inherent in that statement).

What helped me snap out of my apathetic state was that I came to realize what it is we all must fight during our daily act of living - we must combat boredom. Above all else, we must avoid being bored at all costs. Find a way to stay active, to stay mentally fresh. This is not a new concept by any means. In fact, when I came to my realization regarding apathy and boredom, I looked up the concept and found hundreds of quotes on the topic:

"The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes."
-Saul Steinberg, cartoonist for The New Yorker

"Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings."
-Soren Kierkegaard, philosopher

"Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top."
-Virginia Woolf, novelist

And so in this last quote we have the reason for the inducement of my apathetic state - I needed to come to this conclusion on my own...the conclusion that boredom is my enemy. Something to be combated. Something to avoid. Something to stomp the life out of lest it permeate all aspects of your life.

I have something to do. I have something to love. And I have something to hope for.

Your best teacher, your best mentor, your best coach, is your own experience.

Before, After and Thank You

2009-06-02T18:12:00.000-07:00

"It hurts up to a point and then it doesn't get any worse."
-Ann Trason

Notice the hat at the end there. I ran the entire 26.2 miles with that horseshoe haircut, so I wasn't showing it off a second longer than I had to after the race! You probably can't tell too much of a difference between the before and after besides the hair, but I was absolutely exhausted after the race.

The first 13 miles went swimmingly - aside from the bowel movements at mile 5 :) - then between 13 and 18 I was just trying to keep my mile time under 10 minutes. Once I hit mile 22 I felt like death was coming for me....no, not really, but I was hurting. I was essentially waddling at mile 24, no lies. Then just before mile 25 I got a burst of motivation (not energy - motivation), and took off, running an 8.30 pace for about the last mile and a half. My time ended up being 4.20, while my goal was 3.40. But after the race I didn't give a damn what my time was - I was just glad I had finished!

The ending was incredibly inspirational - running about a quarter of a mile with people cheering you on from all sides (even if you did have a bad haircut). The journey to the end was just as inspirational as the finish, though, with more than 30 people donating to autism research, raising a total of $1,074.82. Our own group within the Organization for Autism Research raised more than $10,000, the best out of any OAR group in the marathon. Woot!

Thank you to everyone who donated, and everyone who offered moral support throughout my training and fundraising. It was very neat to see the outpouring of support via Twitter, Facebook, phone calls, text messaging, and at the marathon, itself. People offered advice when they had no vested interest in my marathon, whatsoever, and for that I thank them.

But most of all, a big thanks to my sister Jessie. While she initially tried to dissuade me from doing the full marathon, she and my dad were the initial catalysts that got me into training and helped motivate me to keep putting one foot in front of the other. If she wouldn't have formed our OAR group and essentially ordered me to come to the first meeting, I probably never would have helped raise more than $10,000 for autism research, nor run a full marathon. So thanks sis!

And once again, a big thank you to everyone who helped me along the way. Without your support, there never would have been a young, dumb 22-year-old running his first race longer than a 5K with a horseshoe haircut.

Marathon Training and Hairstyles

2009-05-04T20:57:00.000-07:00

"Life is an endless struggle full of frustrations and challenges, but eventually you find a hair stylist you like."
-Anonymous, and definitely more for women...but that's OK

The smallest donation helps. As little as $5 goes a long way toward helping further the cause of autism research, helping scientists prescribe better treatments and giving parents more resources with which to learn about their child's syndrome as well as how to cope with and manage it.

Visit my donation page here to donate or click on the widget at the top right of this screen. And just for review, here are the categories of hair styles:

Up to 20% - comb over
Up to 24% - Nick Carter
Up to 28% - mohawk
Up to 35% - cowboy hat
Over 35% - horseshoe, just like Papa Hirz featured in the above video

Follow me on Twitter @JHirz and stay tuned for more updates and a couple more videos for your viewing pleasure. Thank you for your support.

$2100 In 21 Days

2009-04-26T20:30:00.000-07:00

"Impossible is nothing."
- Muhammad Ali

Can it be done? You have to decide...

I am raising money for the Organization for Autism Research (OAR) by running the Cleveland Marathon on May 17. Recent statistics tell us that autism strikes 1 in 150 children born these days. Four years ago it was 1 in 166. Fifteen years ago it was 1 in 500. Twenty-four years ago it was 1 in 5,000. The situation is worsening, which is why research needs to match the pace at which this brain disorder's diagnoses are increasing. We need your help - and that's no lie.

OAR is an organization that allows runners to help their cause by obtaining friends' and family members' financial support through online donations. You can see mine at www.firstgiving.com/jeffhirz (or click on the widget in the right sidebar).

Things to watch out for on this blog in the coming week(s):

An update on how I will cut my hair for race day based on how much money is raised
An update on calling out Twitter celebrities to match the amount of money raised at the end (a long shot, but it can't hurt the cause - only embarrass me, which I can handle)
Weekly updates on my "training" and how well it's going...similar to what you just watched

Follow me on Twitter @JHirz for more updates as the weeks progress leading up to the Cleveland Marathon.

Great Expectations

2009-04-07T18:08:00.000-07:00

"Our lives are shaped not as much by our experience, as by our expectations."
-George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright, socialist

Consider...

...your life up until this point. How old are you? 22? 35? 57? When you were younger did you picture yourself at where you are at this moment? Did you see yourself sitting in front of your computer, reading some nobody's blog post only because you're excruciatingly bored? Probably not.

Consider...

...your situation. Are you married? Are you in a bachelor pad? Are you in college? Are you employed? Do you have a friend you could call right now if you really needed to talk to someone? Now ask - is this where you saw your life taking you when you were younger? What did you expect? I know I didn't expect to be back living with my parents at the ripe old age of 22, sitting at the same desk I sat at when I was 10, listening to David Cook and writing a blog post I think maybe six people will read (sucks for you, I know, realizing you're one of six people who read this crap).

Consider...

...the last movie you saw. What were your expectations going in to the theater (or turning on Hulu)? Were you really excited? Did it live up to your expectations and then fall just short, thereby making it a lesser experience? Or did you not expect anything and realized at the end that you were pleasantly surprised?

I prefer to be one of the latter. I go through life trying to limit my expectations. Not out of fear. Not out of cowardice. Out of a realization that you should go into everything with an open mind, and also that life rarely lives up to expectations. And when it does, most times it's just for a few seconds (a kiss) or minutes (a song) or hours (sex...if you have the stamina) or days (weekend vacation) or months (a new job) and then you're back to square one of your emotional rubik's cube. This sounds pessimistic, it sounds depressing, but it's true.

You graduate college. You come off the high of finishing the ride, having lived your college experience to the fullest. You have a job. You go into this job high on life - your life is beginning!! This is it!! I can't wait to see where I go and what I do and how successful I am and who I marry and..........WTF? I'm 30 already? Son of a bitch!

Did the past eight or nine years of your life live up to what you saw as you crossed the stage at graduation, taking the diploma from a man in a luxurious robe whom you've probably never met? Was your 9-5 your dream job? Was it what you wanted to do at the time? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe you had good days and maybe you had bad days. I don't know - but you do.

I would like to share some truths with you that may depress you, but should ultimately make you happier once you come to accept them for the reality they represent:

Life is not one continuous stream of happiness - get used to it
Life is disjointed - you'll be happy one minute, sad the next, then feel nothing. why?
Your mind is your enemy - you must learn to control it or you will lose control of your own thoughts, of your own actions
Your thoughts shackle your heart - free your mind and let your heart be the bellwether of your life

You want to achieve greatness. We all do. But in order to achieve greatness, you have to be working toward it in the present. Each moment of your life is irreplaceable, so be present for it as much as possible.

By telling you to expect less I'm not saying to not chase your dreams and reach for the stars and all that mumbo jumbo. Start small with this, clear your mind of preconceived notions and expectations, and see where it gets you - I have a feeling you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Damn Good Marketing

2009-03-16T18:32:00.000-07:00

"Marketing is what you do when your product is no good."
- Edwin Land, scientist and inventor

For those of you who don't know, I have been working for the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland for just over four months now. In my time there I've done a fair amount of work with the Cleveland Browns, what with them being our next-door neighbors, literally, it's hard not to have interaction. A fine group of people, I must say, and more so after the events that transpired today.

They sent me a free Browns hoodie.

That's the hook. Right there.

I'm not a sports fan. I can watch sports and comment intelligently (unless I'm watching with my cousin or with Barnes - the latter has a blog completely dedicated to the topic), but I definitely do not look forward to Sunday afternoons sitting in front of my new plasma TV for hours on end watching game after game after game. Not necessarily my idea of paradise, unlike others I might name.

So I get this package sitting at my desk first thing in the morning today. Upon discovery of my new-found outerwear, my heart is immediately warmed. BAM! Mission accomplished. That's the best form of marketing I've seen in years. It should be every PR and marketing professional's goal to create that heart-warming feeling within their target audience.

My perception of the Browns brand prior to this - crappy team going through change.

My perception of the Browns brand since this - crappy team going through change...whose games I may or may not attend next season.

OK, so maybe they didn't exactly change my perception of the team, but it did make me feel more inclined to go to a game next season.

Now that's just damn good marketing.

Wild at Heart

2009-03-05T08:12:00.000-08:00

"And die of nothing but a rage to live."
-Alexander Pope

What is the purpose of this exact moment of your existence? Not today. Not tomorrow. NOW!

I know what some of you are thinking - "Oh God, this is so f-in cliche." Some people already probably navigated away from this page. I'm over it...

But sometimes we just get so embroiled in the petty aspects of our lives that we forget to think about the bigger picture...we forget to philosophize every now and then. A little philosophy every now and then never killed anybody...I hope.

I think the new song by Gloriana - and subsequently the title of this post - sums up a certain aspect of what life is. While many of us may not be able to do the things we've always wanted to do - travel to Italy, buy a beach house, marry the man or woman of our dreams - it's important to stay wild at heart.

The way I interpret it is this: Don't lose that child-like quality of reckless abandon. Just roll with it.

Think about the ocean. Ebbing and flowing and roiling with the tides, it never stops moving. Constant motion, not standing for any interruptions, like the flow of time it rolls on. Yet we seem to feel the need to segment it. We've assigned labels to each one - Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, etc. We name currents and can show on maps where they start and where they stop, when in fact they do neither.

It's all interconnected. It's all one giant ocean, not separate entities or stopping and starting points. Each drop of water is just as important as the next. Where one wave ends another begins. When that wave crashes into the Atlantic shoreline, droplets of water are pulled underneath the next incoming wave and flow back out to sea. Maybe those droplets will end up in the Caribbean or move north to freeze in the Arctic. It doesn't matter. It all flows together. As one body. The master of fluidity - in effect being the definition of the word.

That's what we need to be. We need to be fluid. Relaxed. Wild like the ocean. We need to learn to just roll with it. Kind of like this video from a couple years ago - sorry about it being sideways (DISCLAIMER: this was NOT me! haha)-

OK, back to serious contemplation..... :)

When you get mad or sad, it's as a result of something. Something causes you to feel that emotion. When we feel either of those emotions, it's because we wish something wouldn't have happened the way it did. We wish it could have been different so we wouldn't feel that emotion. Someone offends you. Someone doesn't do something you think they should do. Someone ignores you. Someone dies.

Ever present. That's what we have to strive to be. Resist the incessant chatter of our minds and truly, truly live in the moment. As I've said before, it is what it is, so just roll with it.

Because we all need to just free fall for a while.

So stay child-like. Stay a little bit reckless.

Stay wild at heart.

Oh, and don't forget to crank that.

Hit Bottom With Me

2009-02-22T17:43:00.000-08:00

"The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club."
- Tyler Durden

I just finished reading the book Fight Club. Can't decide what I liked better, the movie or the book. Regardless, both have amazing one-liners. The book has more than the movie, although the movie is a bit easier to follow. Lessons can be gleaned from any book you read - whether they're life lessons, lessons on how to build a bomb, or lessons on how not to write a book - Chuck Palahniuk fulfills the first two. Did you know if you drill a hole in a light bulb, fill the bulb with gasoline, plug the hole with wax or silicone, then screw it back in, you've just created a bomb? All it takes is a thrown switch.

But, for obvious reasons, that's not the lesson on which I'd like to direct my focus. The life lessons in this book we call "Fight Club" are pretty all-encompassing. Sure, Tyler takes it to the extreme by killing the protagonist's boss and the mayor's special envoy on recycling (not in the movie), plus blowing up buildings...you know, stuff like that. But as crazy and far-fetched as the man may be, I think he represents a little bitty piece of all of us, lying hidden deep in the recesses of our tumbling synapses, that just wants to say "Fuck it all."

I won't go into my rant on the slaves some of us can be made into by society and its expectations, but I will highlight 10 of my favorite "Fight Club" quotes that I feel represent various parts of our tiny lives.

(NOTE: My end-thoughts on all this are at the end of the post, so if you get bored with the quotes, skip on down to the "In summation" portion.)

Quotes that make you want to quit your job

"You do the little job you're trained to do.
Pull a lever.
Push a button.
You don't understand any of it, and then you just die."
- A little depressing, I'd say, but aren't we all just trained, through education or some other avenue, how to do a job that will make us money that will let us live a "normal" life?

"Advertising has these people chasing cars and clothes they don't need. Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don't really need."
- Do you really need that $300 Coach purse, that $2,500 50" plasma television with built-in digital and analog tuners, or the couch cushions with the strinne green stripe pattern?

"Getting fired is the best thing that could happen to any of us. That way, we'd quit treading water and do something with our lives."
- Think deep and hard about this and ask yourself if this is true of you...

Quotes that make you want to "hit bottom"

"One minute was enough, Tyler said, a person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection."
- This is one of the best lines in the book and happens when the protagonist meets Tyler Durden (he didn't meet him on the airplane). Don't buy into that bullcrap where people tell you "life is perfect." It's not. Get used to it. Even one of the Buddhists' key mantra is "life is suffering." Get over the fact that your life will not be one long, continuous stream of perfection and you'll find yourself a little bit happier more and more often.

"Losing all hope was freedom."
- Don't knock it til you try it. You'd be surprised how true this is. Learn to not expect anything and you'll always be pleasantly surprised.

"If you don't know what you want, you end up with a lot you don't."
- Valid.

"Only after disaster can we be resurrected.
It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything."
- The best quote in the movie and the book, bar none.

Quotes that make you ponder death

"You melt and swell at that moment. For that moment, nothing matters. Look up at the stars and you're gone. Not your luggage. Nothing matters. Not your bad breath. The windows are dark outside and the horns are blaring around you. The headlights are flashing high and low and high in your face, and you will never have to go to work again."
- Stop fretting about the little, inconsequential shit in your life and look around.

"This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time."
- Tick, tock, tick, tock...

"Raymond K.K. Hessel, your dinner is going to taste better than any meal you've ever eaten, and tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of your entire life."
- A very memorable scene in the movie where Tyler takes a mini-mart cashier and threatens his life unless he starts working toward his passions, this quote defines that scene, although a little bit of the quote is changed in translation to the silver screen. Raymond's dinner will taste better because he realizes he might not have been eating it had he been shot outside of the mini-mart. Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of his entire life because he is finally on the road toward doing what he loves, not lying stagnant in a dead-end job where his passions become fruitless and his creativity is stifled, leaving him an empty shell of a human being, whose only signs of life are the fact that he walks, eats and breathes. Our life is one long epic battle against stagnation.

"If people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention."
- If only people really realized that we are all dying and that exact moment may be the last one you spend with the person...cliche, but likewise valid.

"Marla's philosophy of life, she told me, is that she can die at any moment. The tragedy of her life is that she doesn't."
- Just brilliantly written.

Quotes that make you want to tell society to screw off

"For thousands of years, human beings had screwed up and trashed and crapped on this planet, and now history expected me to clean up after everyone. I have to wash out and flatten my soup cans. And account for every drop of used motor oil.
And I have to foot the bill for nuclear waste and buried gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before I was born."

"Project Mayhem will force humanity to go dormant or into remission long enough for the Earth to recover."

"Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you."
- In the movie this turns into the bar scene quote where Tyler says, "The things you own end up owning you."

Other memorable quotes

"Until today, it really pissed me off that I'd become this totally centered Zen Master and nobody had noticed."

"I just don't want to die without a few scars, I say...someday I'd be dead without a scar and there would be a really nice condo and car."

"After you've been to fight club, watching football on television is watching pornography when you could be having great sex."

"Ever since college, I make friends. They get married. I lose friends."

"What Marla loves, she says, is all the things that people love intensely and then dump an hour or a day after. The way a Christmas tree is the center of attention, then, after Christmas you see those dead Christmas trees with the tinsel still on them, dumped alongside the highway."

In summation...

I met a guy at the Westlake YMCA locker room tonight. He works at a nearby Nissan dealership and is serving at his post 6-7 days a week, selling people hunks of steel, leather and rubber all day long. He asks me, "So what do you do? You seem too mild-mannered a guy to be a black belt teaching people how to snap vertebrae." I laugh heartily, thoroughly humored by the misconceptions and Paul Bunyan theories cast upon me over the years. I tell him he knows how to break a neck just as well as I do - the American cinema is a beautiful thing, isn't it?

I tell him he should join. He seems eager to do something more extracurricular and I can tell I've piqued his interest with just my uniform...but he barely has time to make it to the gym as it is, he says - he had just gotten there and had to leave in 20 minutes. The demands of work and a family keep him pretty tied up. He got this look of sorrow and resignation on his face that made me want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him as hard as I could, waking him up to a more conscious life than he's living now. Sounds a bit harsh, I know :). But he can come to my martial arts class if he wanted to - he's just afraid to change his routine. He feels trapped. People like that need to feel empowered to make a change in their lives. We all need to feel empowered. Not power over others, just power over our own actions, over own lives. If we are powerless to control our own lives, we are slaves.

I, for one, refuse to be a slave.

A Progressive Conversation

2009-01-27T12:59:00.000-08:00

Check out my buddy's blog below in response to my previous post, "Progress - For Good or For Ill?" Tune into the comments, as well. Join in the conversation! It can get kind of boring when it's just two people!

Hakuna Matata

Progress - For Good or ill?

2009-01-22T21:34:00.000-08:00

“Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.”
-Robert A. Heinlein

If you're not moving forward, you're moving backward. Isn't that what we're told? Yes, progress is good, or so the American mentality tells us - always pursuing our "manifest destiny," right? Progressive thinking is a mentality that is thrust upon us from an early age. And, I daresay, progressive thinking is many times what separates the intelligent from the obtuse, the achiever from the accomplishmentless (I just made that word up). While this mindset can and should be perceived as a good thing, I think we're reaching a watershed in human history where progress may NOT be such a good thing...allow me to elaborate.

Since the early- to mid-1940s, the world has seen constant improvement in the overall global economy, technological advances and democratic ideals. The people of the world now are richer than we have ever been in our short history (this is stated as a generality, obviously). Broader portions of the population are living more comfortably than ever before and are wealthier than our ancestors in centuries past. Technology has advanced to the point where we barely have to exert any effort to work our 9-5's - I heard a statistic once that the average white-collar worker doesn't walk farther than the length of a football field in a day. Not hard to believe if you really think about it. We have quick-service restaurants that can serve us up our meals in less than three minutes while we wait. We have cars and planes that can transport us hundreds of miles in a matter of hours. We can communicate with people across the globe with the click of a button. And a democratic ideal, brought to modern light by forward thinkers like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and culminating in the formation of the United States (a mere stepping stone), has launched into a full-scale world-view, accepted by the lion's share of present-day nations. The average person now has a say in the governments that represent them, even people who know absolutely nothing of politics or what goes on outside their state's borders (coughSarahPalincough).

So now I ask you: Is this all a good thing? I think as a general whole, the people of the world are far better off than they have been in the past. But certain things disturb me...let's call them "The Byproducts of Progress."

NOTE: I polled 15 people on what they thought the negative byproducts of progress were, and the top five listed here came up in 14 out of 15 responses...there was no margin of error....this was a non-scientific - and non-random - poll.

Byproduct #1: Pollution
This was the first one that came to mind. As was stated before, we have cars and planes that can transport us almost anywhere in the world in mere hours. If I wanted to, I could be rock-climbing in the Urals or swimming in the Mediterranean by tomorrow afternoon. But at what cost? How much toxic fume would my car emit as I drove to the airport? How much thinner would the ozone layer be because of the trans-oceanic airplane I would ride in? We're told not to go running in urban areas in hot weather because the smog is too heavy. Sport utility vehicles blanket the roadways, emitting almost twice the toxic fumes than the average four-person car. Global warming has become more than a political hot-button in the past twenty years - it's became a life-threatening liability...one that will have to be dealt with soon. And what happens when the natural resources we exploit to give us such advanced transportation run dry? What happens when the oil reserves are the ones filling our tanks? Anybody ever seen Mad Max?

Byproduct #2: Weapons of Warfare
The nuclear bomb...I want someone to tell me that is a positive byproduct of progress. Please, muster the balls and the arrogance to say weapons of mass destruction are good things.

Byproduct #3: Social Ineptitude
With the introduction of cell phones, texting, social networks like Facebook and MySpace (and user-generated content like blogging!), and various forms of instant messaging, we have come to rely on technology to do our communication for us. As much as I love social media and the opportunities it represents from a communications standpoint (that is my chosen profession, after all), I feel that in a way it does diminish the effectiveness of our daily interactions. Granted, we can now stay in touch with hundreds and thousands of people who we would have forgotten about years down the road or never met in the first place - no one can deny that as an advantage. But when, instead of talking with someone face-to-face, you have a conversation via text message or AIM, the value of interpersonal communication is greatly diminished. I can't tell you how many times I had arguments over instant message in high school (and maybe once or twice in college...). I think I even once told a girl I wasn't interested in her anymore over instant message - try seeing that person every day in the unforgiving corridors of high school!

But seriously, how effective are typed words on a computer screen? How much more effective would this blog be if I could talk one-on-one with you about these issues? Facial expressions, variations in pitch and tone, hand gestures, the look in the person's eyes when they say something or react to something you say - all of these are lost via text message, instant message, Facebook, etc. How can you really grasp what someone is trying to say just by looking at words on a screen?

There's so many pitfalls with electronic communication that I can't even try to enumerate them. I think Donald Keough, the former president of the Coca-Cola company, says it best in his new book, The Ten Commandments for Business Failure:

"As we continue, however, to transform the nature of human interaction, we come very close to electronic sensory overload coupled with human sensory deprivation. The simple interaction of one human being with another is being lost."

Byproduct #4: Over-reliance
What would happen if every single computer on this earth stopped working tomorrow? What would happen if you went to sleep in the Information Age and woke up in the Dark Ages? Ponder that scenario and tell me technological progress is a good thing. Granted, it’s a “what-if” scenario – but then again, why were we so scared of Y2K?

Byproduct #5: Sloth (voted #1 byproduct of progress by viewers like you)
Who needs to do work anymore these days? Nowadays we have machines to do our work for us. We have computers to think in our stead. We have calculators to do our long division. We have social networking sites that allow us to send someone a message instead of give them a call or see them in person. Taking the time to think is no longer required for daily communication. We have become slaves to immediate gratification. The faster the better. Few things are really worth waiting for anymore.

Byproduct #6: Overpopulation
Ever hear of Malthusian Doom? I just think it's an interesting theory. The overpopulation byproduct is not immediately prevalent except in China where families are limited to one child per couple, but at some point in the far future, if the increasing population continues to grow at its current pace, we may have to think about sending more than Spirit and Opportunity to Mars.

-End list of byproducts-

Despite the recent economic downturn, human history is reaching a crescendo in the new millennium. I strongly feel that at some point in the next 50 years, progress is going to experience a conceptual reversal at every level of society. Because there's something to keep in mind about progress…if two people who are walking come upon a fork in the road and head the same direction, only to discover that to be the wrong direction, isn’t the one who turns around first more progressive?

Radio Ga Ga

2009-01-17T16:30:00.000-08:00

Let's hope you never leave old friend; like all good things on you we depend; so stick around cause we might miss you; when we grow tired of all this visual.
- Queen

In the ever-transient world of broadcast we have seen an increasing trend away from commercial interruptions (this statement should be utterly obvious to anybody reading this that you actually think, if not say, "Duh."). We have Radio XM, TiVo, DVR, Sirius, and numerous other entities that allow the user to bypass any commercial advertising or those frivolous weather forecasts that are only right 70 percent of the time anyway. Thus, we are slowly but surely losing the traditional radio stations with which we grew up. Am I the only one that finds this sad?

I'm not saying we all revert back to traditional radio stations - God knows I've had great times listening to an iPod for an entire nine-hour car ride or being able to pick and choose songs without having to listen to terrible McDonald's or Burger King commercials. However, I think we are missing a certain element to living when we have everything work out so perfectly. We get rid of the possibility of imperfections during our listening experience. And as I always preach, without the presence of imperfection we take the good things for granted. That's just another reason why imperfection is such a perfect thing.

The randomness and imperfection of radio can easily translate to the unpredictability of our daily lives. When we wake up every morning, we can decide on a general outline of how our day will proceed, but we can't pick the little nuances, the tiny, minute details that will riddle our day and change the course of our thoughts and deeds. Similarly, we can turn on a radio station that plays the kind of music we like, but we can't pick the songs the DJ will play. We may turn on our favorite hip-hop and R&B station and hope to hear "Love in this Club", only to hear "Booty Bounce" - do they even play that song anymore? To sum it up: we can pick the station, but we can't pick the song.

Radio XM and Sirius do away with that randomness, that quicksilver feeling of unpredictability. That's a shame, if you ask me (which you didn't). I mean, is it really a good thing to be able to customize everything in our daily lives? Doesn't anybody think that little sense of mystery, of not knowing what's going to come next, is a good thing? I know I'm blowing up radio when I compare it to all these larger aspects of life, but it's all just part of a trend toward customization. Thus, we come to my next post...stay tuned.

To Mentor or Not to Mentor?

2008-12-22T15:03:00.000-08:00

"We hate to have some people give us advice because we know how badly they need it themselves."
-Anon

That truly is the question sometimes, isn't it? We all love to have little proteges and successful mentees who can claim that one of the reasons they rose to greatness is because we helped them. We gave them the advice they needed in order to succeed! We pointed them in the right direction! We provided them with the knowledge! Everybody wants to have a positive impact on the world, and many times that positive impact is made through helping others out who don't have the wealth of information in the countless crevices of their mind that we do. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. We all need people to look up to: parents, teachers, instructors, bosses, older siblings (although that's debatable at times), etc... But where the issue comes up is this: who chooses who is the mentor and who is the mentee?

I was talking with a friend a while back telling them about my aspirations to be a novelist. They asked what I was up to, listened to about two things I said, then proceeded to give me advice on how to succeed.

Whoa. Let's take a step back.

I tuned out almost immediately. This is a person who is not in my field, has no idea about the publishing industry or current trends among readers, and they think they can start giving me advice? They've never even seen my work! (although if they did they would probably want to give me MORE advice!) I was amazed at the audacity of this person. No shame. No self-doubt about their own self-righteousness. Those are dangerous characteristics in any person. Humility...what an underrated quality.

There are times and places when it is appropriate to give advice. I did some thinking and here's what I came up with:

When, inherent in the relationship, it is obvious who is the wiser (teacher, parent, instructor, tutor, boss, older sibling...sometimes, etc.)
Among close friends who mutually respect one another
When someone makes one of the dumbest mistakes you've ever seen - and doesn't realize it
When it's asked for

Yeah, that's really all I could think of (add more in the comments section, please!) . Advising someone is a very delicate issue sometimes. I've found that it helps to ask if you can give advice before you give it. Because in situations like the aforementioned unwanted (and unwarranted) advice-giver, people can react very negatively.

I've been a mentor to a few people throughout my short life. But never have I forced my mentoring onto someone. OK, I won't lie, I have once or twice only because it was apparent the person needed some guidance and they didn't know to whom they could turn. They thanked me profusely afterward so I'm pretty sure I wasn't wrong in my judgment. If my advice went in one ear and out the other, so be it. I'm over it.

That's the conundrum of the mentor/mentee relationship, though. The mentor doesn't choose the mentee. The mentee chooses the mentor. Just because we want to mentor someone doesn't mean they want to be mentored by us. It's almost like a process of natural selection. People go for advice to those with whom they feel most comfortable, and will slowly weed out the "mentors" whose traits are not as agreeable. Mentees tend to be a lot pickier than mentors, and there's good reason for that. Because one component above all else is necessary to a successful mentor/mentee relationship: the will to listen. Not just hear, but really listen.

If someone doesn't want to listen to what someone else has to say, they won't. That's their choice, naturally inherent upon their birth, to not listen to someone. Free will is a beautiful thing, isn't it?

I've been in a couple programs where mentors have been assigned to mentees. It rarely works. Once in a great while a great relationship will come out of the woodwork, but that's too rare to say such programs are successful. Because the other 95% of the mentees who get mentors they're not so agreeable with will lose out. Thus, why I've become a staunch opponent of formal mentoring programs, as one of my friends can readily tell you.

There's too much aesthetics involved in mentoring that you can't quantify it into a formal program. Too many variables, too many personality traits that throw the equation off. In order to succeed, people have to rely on their instincts. On their gut. On their intrinsic sense of the natural combination of logos and pathos.

So don't force yourself on someone just because you want to be a mentor. If you come across an appropriate time and place to give advice (i.e. a blog!), offer it sparsely until it's requested that you give more, or you feel it's necessary to that person's, or the organization's, success...or, as stated before, when someone makes one of the dumbest mistakes you've ever seen - and doesn't realize it. You may not be anyone's mentor until you're well on in your years, and that's fine too! We weren't all born to be mentors. Or you could look at this way: maybe we are being mentors much of the time without even realizing it, only because people take lessons from us on what they DON'T want to do or how they don't want to act or who they don't want to be.

Yeah, try quantifying that.

Loyalty vs. Logic

2008-11-02T12:26:00.000-08:00

"Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul."
-Mark Twain

Loyalty, what a dangerous word. When I think of loyalty I think of blindness. I think of someone who can't see an issue from more than one angle. Or if they do see the issue from multiple angles, they only adhere to the one perspective they find to be most beneficial, for themselves or for the community.

I have been accused numerous times of not being loyal to friends. I've been affectionately dubbed a "dream-squasher", as well as antagonistically called a "traitor" and a "backstabber". I've been told on a couple occassions that I'm not loyal to my friends, not because I talk behind their back or badmouth them, but because I don't stand behind them in certain situations.

For example: A while back my buddy and his girlfriend got in a bit of an argument...and when I say "bit" of an argument I mean a shouting match. After listening for a few minutes to both parties trying to outdo the other in waking up neighbors and inadvertently attracting the police, I came to realize that my friend was being a complete asshole. The girl wasn't exactly the most understanding person in the world, but at the core of the argument, my friend was simply wrong. I interjected a bit and didn't exactly take sides, but I also made it clearly known to my friend that I thought he was wrong, in a logical sense.

Was I wrong in doing this? Maybe it wasn't the best time to interpose myself, alcohol being involved and whatnot, but if a friend is being, to be frank, a douche bag, I'll tell him (or her). I have no problem telling a friend when I think they're acting like an idiot or being unreasonable. And I hope people can tell me, in turn, when I'm doing the same thing. I'm honest to the point of being rude, and those of you who know me best know this all too well.

My friend, in this particular situation, believed me to be wrong as well. This is where the "traitor" and "backstabber" monikers came into play. The next morning there was quite a different reaction to my "Benedict-Arnoldish" actions and motives, but that night I thought I might have lost a friend by trying to be reasonable.

I must admit, however, that loyalty, in and of itself, is not a bad thing, not by any means. When loyalty is taken to extremes is when it can be counter-productive. It has to be balanced by logic, not standing at the opposite end of the spectrum. One thing to keep in mind is that this comes from a man who questions anything and everything...so I could be wrong.

SIDENOTE: I want people to understand that I AM very loyal to my friends and family, I just happen to question actions, mindsets and motives more often than most. Devil's advocate, anyone?

Hand-in-Hand - Death and No Worries

2008-08-25T15:00:00.000-07:00

"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything."
-Tyler Durden, Fight Club

WARNING!! This entry will come off a bit morbid, maybe even a bit suicidal, but I can assure you with the utmost sincerity that it is meant to be the polar opposite. Read the whole thing and see if you can relate (there's a LOT going on in this post)...then leave a comment - I want to hear your thoughts.

I've watched Fight Club four times in the past couple weeks. I was recently reminded of its existence and proceeded to buy it last Thursday. The reminder comes at an interesting time in my life, considering the messaging behind the movie: I've now entered the 9-5 white-collar world of public relations/marketing/advertising that the movie preaches against, sacrificing 40 hours a week to "buy shit we don't need." Makes you wonder...

Secretly I've always wanted to have a near-death experience (well, not so secretly anymore). I want to know what it's like to teeter on that precipice, ready to plummet into the darkness below, away from life, love, videogames, and everything one holds dear. I want to experience the stark relief, the utter happiness, and the settling calm that follow. I want to feel the absolute fear of death, and then perhaps the calming feeling of resignation, and then maybe the sheer elation one can only know in the seconds before death, realizing your last moments are upon you.

What would be passing through my mind in those moments that will seem to last forever and yet comprise only seconds?

Would I feel the last breath of wind on my face? Would I notice the single drop of sweat trickling down my back between the gap of a loose shirt and my skin? Would I think of a beautiful red-haired girl's smile? Would I want to call my parents and tell them I love them? Maybe I would wish I could have published a book or gone skydiving. Maybe I would have been pissed.

When I die I want to die in the vicinity of no one (notice I don't say "alone"). I want to experience the passing of life into death fully conscious. I realize that I would probably be terrified, but I feel that's the ultimate test for the living - put simply, to die well....allow me to readjust the first sentence in this paragraph..."When I die I want to die in the vicinity of no one who is also dying." In that sense I want my death to be a solitary event - like Owen Meany's death. If there are others around me dying I'll be torn between trying to savor my last few breaths of life and trying to help or comfort them. Call me selfish...

Beginning of my junior year I thought I was going to die - and soon. I was sitting at my desk writing when this feeling just came over me. It didn't have anything to do with what I was writing. I just felt something in my core that told me the sand was running out. And you know what?

It felt good.

The most supreme sense of calm swept over me for the next two weeks. I enjoyed the feeling of the warm sun on my skin for the first time in months, maybe years. I loved going to work and exploring who my co-workers really were. I literally remember walking out the door to my crappy, leaning house and onto the porch, feeling what I thought was the most comfortable temperature I've ever felt. I had a dignified ease about me that I've failed to recreate ever since.

I've always had a fascination with the Japanese samurai and the concept of "bushido," a doctrine of living that, stripped down to its bare essence, meant to live every second of your life as if you're about to die. It sounds morbid, but it's completely and utterly refreshing if you can truly grasp the concept. You feel life with every step you take in a dirty subway tunnel, with every keystroke on your computer, with every touch of the steering wheel, with every blade of grass that bends beneath the soles of your feet. Always striving for self-realization and self-perfection. These are concepts that we as a society claim to pursue, but few really do. Very few achieve self-realization, and the most minute percentage achieve self-perfection.

This is what the concept of enlightenment is based around. I think in our society, though, very few of us will actively pursue it until we have that near-death experience. We have to feel life's tentative hold nearly slip before we can really grasp what it is to live. Yes, most people will claim they've been able to truly live based on their past experiences and pre-conceived notions of what it means to live...but have they really?

I don't know. I write this an unenlightened fool, versed in the pampered prose of Suburbia, America, not having ever really known what it's like to come within a hairsbreadth of death. I don't know what it is to be desperate, truly desperate. I've felt depression before and am better off for it, but emotions are relative by nature. For some, every feeling and emotion is "the best," "the worst," "the most awesome," "the strongest" or "the weakest." While I think it is important to feel the extremes at various points in our lives, it's even more important to find Confucius's Golden Mean, or the Buddhist "Middle Way." So I can't really say that I know what it is to feel desperate or depressed, when others have experienced much worse times than I ever will.

However, one important quality I think we must have is the ability to recognize this perception of our personal experiences for what it is - REALITY. Realize that your own experiences are merely one minute perspective in this grand scheme we call life. To be able to identify with other perspectives, you can realize that, in Carrie Underwood's words, "that mountain you've been climbing is just a grain of sand." That's why I'm so laid back - many times to the point that others perceive it as not caring, or as a weakness within me, whereas I realize the strength of it. To have the ability to see a person's problems for what they are:
- something to be laughed at
- something to be appreciated
- something from which to learn
- something to make light of
- something to not worry about because, in the end, it is what it is, making the present moment the most amazing moment in our short lives

As a good friend of mine might say, Hakuna Matata.

Oh what a wonderful phrase!

Did ya know?

2008-08-05T15:09:00.000-07:00

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school."
-Albert Einstein

Just felt like changing it up a bit this time around. Here's some interesting facts I learned over the past couple weeks that I thought you may be interested in...

- there's a government bureau called The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives
uhhh...do we really want to be associating those things with one another?

- PB&J still tastes as good at 22 as it did when I was 7
simplicity in its finest form, eh?

- songs like "It's all for you" and bands like Green Day are on classic rock stations
...yikes

- Steve Miller sings a song called The Joker; one of the lines in the song says "Really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree."
what the hell does that mean?

- there's a city in Pennsylvania called "King of Prussia"
i wonder who they named it after?

- the Northern Lights, or aurora borealis, will occur between 2010-2012
road trip, anyone?

- the name Aurora is from the Roman goddess of dawn
i know what i want my first daughter named.......or not

- one tropical storm that doesn't even reach hurricane status and only "directly" effects a few states can effect the economy more than billions of dollars of spending by the U.S. government in plans that took years to plan and spent even more of the taxpayers' money to just conjure (the Dow Jones is up 331 points..thanks for nothing Bernanke!)
Gracias, Eduoard, para la gasolina baja valora

Hope you enjoyed learning this as much as I did!

Stay sound.

The Nuts and Bolts

2008-07-29T14:38:00.000-07:00

"We rise to great heights by a winding staircase."
-Francis Bacon

What do you dream you could do with your life? Is there something you believe yourself incapable of that you wish you could do? If only you had the time, the patience or the money, right?...Everybody has a perception of fulfilling their dreams and the methods by which they will do so. But when we get down to the nuts and bolts of the operation, it's not as glamorous as it always seemed it should be.

For example: I love music. It's one of the numerous cornerstones of my life. So I decided a while back that I wanted to learn to create it, as opposed to just reaping the benefits of other people's creativity. I was so motivated my junior year of high school that I asked for a guitar for Christmas...and got it! I expected to be banging out a song or two within the month.

I lost my motivation within the week...

I let it sit in its case for a while...a while being a year. Because I learned something as I began to strum my cords and pluck my strings: learning to play the guitar was hard! Switching between cords and playing opening riffs to the "simplest" of songs wasn't all cheese and crumpets! Stairway to Heaven didn't sound so cool when I mis-plucked every string in the intro. When a guy can't get past the first riff in one of his favorite songs, it doesn't take much to get demoralized. It's those nuts and bolts that had to be assembled that took me down a couple notches that winter. Every passion or skill set should come with a disclaimer on the box reading, "Some assembly required."

I knew I had to practice a hell of a lot more if I was going to get as good as I hoped to be. John Mayer looked lonely on that stage all by himself! And I'll have you know, practicing can be frustrating enough, let alone not seeing a bit of improvement. But the perception was that I was going to train hard, practicing all the time until I got wicked good on the guitar! By the time I was 22 I would know every song anyone could name. I'd be able to stand on a stage and jam with the best of 'em, Phish included. And I would own six or seven guitars so everybody who came over could see my passion firsthand!

The experience was a bit different than I anticipated...

That's how it is with almost anything in life, though. Everybody always has this perception of where they want their destinies to lead and who they want to become. But when you actually walk down the road of life you realize it's more a path than a road...and it's bumpy and obstacle-filled...and it's a bit more uphill than you anticipated...

Someone dreams of getting in shape, having that coveted six-pack and buns of steel. Then, after they go to the gym for a couple weeks or a month, they start taking days off - just here and there! But watching the favorite television show they TiVo'd, or going to the bars to have a few drinks with friends begins to take more priority. One six-pack becomes a bit more important than the other, and the goal is lost. They fall off the path.

The nuts and bolts...

How many times have you started a solid workout routine and found that you'd rather be doing something else other than ellipticals and countless sets? Everybody always seems to see what's in the distance before they see what's right in front of them. They see the six-pack but not the 10,000 crunches. They see the song but not the cords and the riffs that constitute it. They see the book, but they don't see the 350 pages that need to be written first...

Perception vs. Experience - we've all seen the battle. We've experienced its effects. I don't want to sound completely pessimistic or downtrodden, though. Because many times the experiences do lead to the previously perceived goal. Dreams do come true. You hear about them all the time. A teenage boy finally catches the eye of his soon-to-be high school sweetheart. Carrie Underwood wins Female Vocalist of the Year at the CMAs. A parent sees his kids go to college and get an education. They've all braved the experience and gone on to what they initially perceived their life could be. Sometimes it meets expectations and sometimes it doesn't. But before you can find out if your dream will measure up to what it could become, you've gotta brave the nuts and bolts. You have to push yourself harder than you ever have before. Because what's an accomplishment with minimal effort? Sure, from another perspective it looks like you've accomplished something noteworthy, but you know the truth. You know what went on behind closed doors. If you put "just enough" effort into it to get by, is that really fulfilling, or are you just playing the role assigned to you?

We can't just lie in wait, stagnant, tepid. We can't wait on happiness - that's not how the often-elusive emotion works. People always tell themselves they can be happy after they've climbed that hill or after they've rounded that bend. They wait for milestones in life and decide that's when they can become happy! To be cliche, the grass isn't always greener on the other side.

"Once I've graduated from college and escaped the grip of my parents, THEN I'll be happy!"

"Once we get married and cross that threshold, I'll be so happy!"

"Once I get a job I can finally relax!"

"I'll be so happy when this is over!" (a common one)

If you live like that, half of your life will be empty. You'll be a walking shell, whether you realize it or not. Do you really know what it's like to live, to truly live, walking around like that? If you ask me (which you didn't, but I'm telling you anyway), happiness is in the nuts and bolts of life. The stuff that normally may not register with your conscious mind until you realize in your old age what you missed...

The small fights a couple has in their first years of marriage.

The mis-steps you take in pursuing your dream.

Getting back up to persevere in your endeavor.

The friendships you make that you know won't last after college.

The friendships you make that will.

An encounter with a complete stranger who treats you with respect instead of mild neglect.

A quick smile thrown your way.

You don't need to have the means of bathing in money to be happy. You don't need to be a hero to be respected. It's the day-to-day living, it's the mild memories, it's the obstacles overcome, big and small - it's the nuts and bolts. These all combine with millions of other facets of "living" that make up your life. Open your mind and don't forget about what's right in front of you. Some of us are too far-sighted for our own good. You never know...what's right in front of you may be the secret to your happiness., whether that happiness lasts 60 seconds or 60 years. Don't be afraid to open your eyes a bit more to the small wonders this life can hold...you may be surprised.

Revelations

2008-07-14T14:58:00.000-07:00

I've decided to start each post from now on with an inspirational/quirky/insightful quote. For no good reason other than I want to, so bug off. Here's the first quote, one that I've found will help me in my profession - even in this cubicle-infested environment - and almost anybody in any profession. It sounds cliche, but you'd be surprised how many people don't live by it or take its advice - on the other hand, maybe you wouldn't be surprised.

"Fortune sides with he who dares!"
-Virgil

Beginning my fourth week on the job, I can't help but be filled with a sense of accomplishment. Today definitely helped lift me to that pedestal, seeing that I was able to get more done today with one of my projects than I feel like I've been able to do for the past three weeks. Perhaps it's a misguided sense of accomplishment, seeing as though I still have three months to screw things up, but a sense of it nonetheless. Here's why:

1.) I was placed in charge of an Hispanic outreach program for one of our major clients, and today alone I solidified three contacts in Florida, Texas and California through which we will coordinate our efforts. After three weeks of zero feedback and zero contacts, this was a major breakthrough. I was ecstatic and treated myself to a Mountain Dew (not that I really need a reason to get my fix, but that's beside the point).

2.) My immediate supervisor is going out of town for a few days, leaving me in charge of another hefty project where we target those crazy Canucks up north. In three days I have to compile a mailer that we're sending to 30 fire stations in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto; this includes writing a press release, a letter to each fire station, creating a redemption code and packaging everything. This sounds incredibly boring, but you wouldn't think so when you realize how much they're entrusting me with responsibility!

That's basically the big theme of the week - more responsibility. And I love it. It shows they trust me. I must be doing something right!
Here's the agency. A nice shot from the front (left) and the receptionist's desk when you walk in (below). You can't see it, but off the left of the first picture is downtown, Columbus and Nationwide Arena. It's a prime location - we're not smack dab in the center of downtown, but we're close enough to reap its benefits of bars, eateries and the oh-so-reliable Arena District.

But the main purpose of this post is to reveal some of the revelations I've had concerning life in the real world...or rather, life in an office setting. White collar workers the country over seem to abide by similar codes of conduct and standards to which they - we - hold one another. Allow me to elaborate...

1.) When you work late, people who leave on time always tell you to go home. Something along these lines, "You work too hard! Go home!" When really they're happy that someone so dedicated is working with them. They'll never tell you to work late, but they like to see you taking time outside of the 9-5 to get some more work done. Either that or they think you're a kiss-ass who wants to be noticed...take your pick.

2.) Someone waking up in Boston is going to work at the same time as someone in Detroit. Is that really fair? People in Detroit have more daylight left at the end of their day than do people in Boston, whereas people in Boston wake up to a brighter morning. Who wins, honestly? That was random...

3.) Proficiency over Efficiency: This is something I've realized crosses all boundaries of work. What's the point of efficiency if you put out a poor product? It's better to take a little bit more time with something and get less done than it is to get more done but do a sub-par job. Think of it like golf. You take your time lining up your shot, taking in all the angles and all the hazards, and then after what seems like hours of agonizingly painful waiting to the brightly clad group waiting behind, you take your shot. That's the difference between a bogey and a birdie. (I haven't golfed since I was 11 so I hope that was a decent analogy for everybody).

4.) It pays off taking the extra time to organize. I spent an hour today alone creating an excel spreadsheet that I now use to manage all my ongoing projects and tasks, as well as writing on sticky notes and memo pads labeling everything. I now know where everything is and can locate old, completed projects, ongoing projects or newly assigned tasks within the blink of an eye, literally. Before, it would take me a couple minutes to discover the note I wrote down a week before - all the while keeping a contact waiting on the phone who becomes impatient and less apt to want to help you the longer they wait.

5.) Waiting for other people sucks...I feel like the agency world is similar to the military in this respect. It's pretty fast paced, but in the end all I do is "hurry up and wait."

6.) When you have to call people to get something and they have no idea who you are, it's better to take no more than a minute to figure out your opening spiel. If you plot out every last word you plan on saying, you'll falter. Because the person on the other end of the line is bound to either interrupt you or ask a question you didn't anticipate. Then your flow is interrupted and you lose your train of thought. Thus, you fall flat on your face. I did when I was beginning that Hispanic outreach project. I felt like I was a drunk OU sorority girl wearing heels on Court Street - for those of you who've walked those brick roads, you know what's going on with that reference. So instead of taking too much time to plot out what I'm going to say, I just call. I rely on my instincts and my knowledge of my job and the product(s) to get me through the conversation. It's worked like a charm.

Those are my revelations. Not very deep revelations, but revelations nonetheless. Hopefully some of you can apply them to your jobs, or even daily living. And just to give you a little piece of my job to take with you wherever you go, here's me at my cubicle on an exhilarating Monday morning filled with research, phone calls and Mountain Dew.

Below is me after the effect of the Mountain Dew has effectively worn off. Yeah, that's more like me on a lazy Friday afternoon...no, not really. But seriously...

So all in all, the summer's going fantastically well. I've had no social life due to working Wed-Sat nights at the dirty bird, but that's OK with me (for now). Making some cash money, catching up on some much-needed reading - I've read eight books since graduation, no lie. And, more importantly, I have officially learned the value of silence!

The Circle of Life

2008-07-07T21:46:00.001-07:00

Friday I got a call from my dad telling me that my grandma had gone into hospice. With fluid continuing to fill her lungs, she wasn't expected to last much longer.

Sunday morning I got another call from my dad telling me she had passed away. I found myself strangely unaffected by the news and fell back asleep after I got off the phone. I mean, I knew that it was coming soon - had actually expected the call. But I didn't feel much of an emotional pull. My grandma and I were never terribly close - outside of Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter I never saw her. If anything, I felt bad for not feeling bad. I know I'll feel more when I see her lifeless form in the casket on Tuesday, but for now what I'm feeling isn't sadness. I have not yet begun to mourn the loss of my grandma. What I'm feeling right now...can only be described as "drive". Allow me to explain...

The death of my grandma has thus far helped to give me a new perspective on death - not completely life-altering, but a unique mindset about it. It has also brought into perspective the unequivocal, and yet so elusive a concept as the circle of life: the never-ending, ever-repeating circle of life to which we are all bound, no matter what god, deity or universal energy you may believe to govern the world.

My new perspective on death is this: yes, mourn the fallen and feel the loss the lack of their presence inherently brings; but let the qualities of the fallen be imbued unto the living, the successors who helped bring meaning to that person's life, the successors who will ultimately become predecessors, themselves. And let that drive them! Let that become a reason for pushing beyond the normal limits of life, for transgressing the boundaries by which so many of us feel trapped! For example:

My grandma's most notable quality (to me, at least) was her indomitable will, her strength of mind. She was a very strong-willed person, unable to be kept down by anyone who had the mind to try. I remember two instances when my grandma most affected me. The first: my mom had told me to take my pillow from the staircase up to my room - I don't remember her saying this because I apparently didn't hear it. Grandma did, though. I was probably 6, and my grandpa was suffering from Alzheimer's, so they had moved in with us for a time. When Grandma took me into the living room and grabbed me by the shoulders, she forced her iron will upon me, sternly berating me for ignoring my mother's wishes. Looking back on that now, I realize her own children must have been too terrified to ignore their mother's wishes! As a youth barely into my first years of elementary school, I couldn't help but break down and cry at my grandmother's old-fashioned form of discipline. I'm surprised she didn't have Grandpa's belt or a 2x4 in her hand.

The second instance: instead of my mom telling me to take my pillow upstairs, she told me at dinner to finish what I had on my plate. I either wasn't hungry or didn't like it - probably a combination of both - but I still didn't finish it. Mom didn't notice, but Grandma did. She took me into the living room, much to the same effect as the first encounter.

While these two instances show a side of my grandma that could be a bit overwhelming, it also shows her raw spirit. Even as a 70-year-old grandmother, she was doing her best to instill her principles - and the 4th commandment - into me. These two stories are not the only instances of her showing her strength. Many more exist that I cannot name. So much spirit. So much raw strength in her core. I cannot let that die with her. Her strength and her spirit will persevere in this all-too-often unprincipled world, if not through her children, then through her children's children...although I can readily assure anyone reading this that her strength has already been imbued into her children more than she could have hoped. No, I do not think my grandma's strength will die with her her. Not a chance.

My grandma's death has also helped me realize the reality of the circle of life. Life doesn't end when one passes away. Many times it begins for others. Case in point: me. I graduated from OU not a month ago and started my first job two weeks ago. My life, in a certain retrospective light, is just beginning. I have officially begun to make my way into the professional world. It's not the beginning. But it is a beginning. And my grandma's death is not the end. But it is an end.

Survivors of death cannot let that void go on unfilled, though. We must fill it with our own passion. With our own indomitable will. Hence, why I say that I feel driven because of my grandma's death. I feel driven to fulfill my own dreams and aspirations with my grandma's strength to help me along. I wish I could have known her better, though. I wish I would have taken more time to get to know this incredible woman. That sounds completely cliche, but true emotions sometimes are.

As I write this another memory comes to me. Two years ago at Christmas my grandma had not been faring so well, having trouble breathing on her own - she carried a small oxygen tank around with her. It was time to leave and she wasn't able to walk out the door unaided. Some of us attempted to carry her in a chair. She would have none of it, though. She made us put her down. Standing up, she proceeded to the door unaided, unwilling to let her spirit falter. An independent woman, her amazing strength carried the day and she made it out to the car with only partial assistance, tank and all.

An incredible woman to say the least. That act inspires me now. I only pitied her at the time, but I realize she wouldn't want that - would in fact despise my pity. Now, though, I admire her for it. Her refusal to relinquish control over the course of her own life...some may say that is weakness. I call it strength.

I will use the strength she has given me through the actions of her life. I will use the beratement I received as a child to toughen my skin and straighten my backbone. I will use the independence she displayed that Christmas night to fuel my own drive for independence, to be able to accomplish it so well and so visibly as she. I will persevere.

Here's one thing I wanted to add on but couldn't find a place for it...I know, awkward segue.

I do not know if there is such a thing as God, such a thing that is ever-present and all-knowing, deciding whether we will spend our eternity past St. Peter's pearly gates or eternally tormented, paying the cost of our sins throughout our mortal life. I couldn't tell you the validity or falsehood of these claims, not knowing enough about it and not having the faith, or lack thereof, to verify any perspective. I do feel, though, that the spirit, even beyond death, finds a way to endure. Whether through reincarnation or some celestial form, I feel that the spirit does not die, cannot die, especially a spirit like my grandma's. Hence, why I feel my grandma's strength and drive in me, coursing through my veins and throwing another log on the fire that is my dreams.

The Perfection of Imperfection

2008-06-30T15:01:00.000-07:00

Life really is an interesting rollercoaster ride, isn't it? Yesterday I slept in till 1 p.m., watched a movie until 3, then proceeded to wile away the rest of my hours reading, writing and playing videogames. Not such a bad day! I was content with what I was doing, knowing that I was doing what I loved (the reading and writing part, anyway).

I walk into the office today and my computer's fried. Hmm...interesting start to the day. I have days of work assigned to me at the moment and I know my day's going to be filled completing the tasks at hand. I failed to realize at that point that my day, rather than completing the tasks at hand, would be filled with trying to complete the tasks at hand. I had two big projects I was working on. I made zero headway on one and very very limited headway on the other. I billed seven-and-a-half hours to work that I didn't even complete!

It's ironic. During training for intramurals one quarter we had this activity called "True Colors." Four colors - orange, green, yellow and blue - represented four different personality types. I can't remember what the other colors were, but I was a green. One of the traits of the greens was that we hated incompetence in our co-workers. It sounds high-ended, but I felt I could relate to that characteristic more than anything else on the board. I can't stand when people I work with don't know how to do their jobs when they should know. Now if the person's learning or in training, that's a different story. But when the person is in the position where they should know what they're doing and don't - whether out of laziness or sheer incompetence - I can't stand working with the person.

And so today, I was the incompetent one. At least I felt like it. More than I hate incompetence in those around me, I despise incompetence in myself. But as much as today sucked and I feel like I got nothing accomplished, this was actually probably one of the most productive days I've had at SBC. I learned a lot about my position and what my responsibilities entailed. And I learned a lot about what I was researching. I never realized how many fire stations were in one city alone! I also realized that I've been living a pretty easy life for a while and I need days like this to try me. For what kind of person am I if I go through my life without trials? If I walked on cake all my life, as many people do, I would be a pampered, ignorant, inexperienced buffoon (what a great word). But because I've faced trials in life, however relatively trying they may have been compared to others, I've turned into the person I am today.

I once told a friend when they were going through a rough spot, "Just remember that the tough times are what really temper the spirit and make you into a stronger and better person, getting you ready for those good times that will inevitably roll around." That's the thing, really. If life was filled only with good and favorable times, we wouldn't know the value of them. We wouldn't really appreciate what they meant. I mean, did we really appreciate when gas rose above $2.00? I know I was pretty pissed, myself. But hell, I'd give anything to get gas down to even $3.00! Well, not anything...maybe one of my testicles - you really only need one - but you get my drift.

It helps you to realize what you have right in front of you. While it may not be perfect, it can be perfect so long as you learn to appreciate it. The perfection of imperfection...an interesting concept. I first noticed this concept when it came to women - should I still refer to them as girls? I mean, I'm 22 now so I feel that my peers are women now....how about ladies? Yeah...ladies. So let's start that over...I first noticed this concept when it came to ladies. OK, now it just sounds like I'm a chauvinist.

ANYWAY! I first noticed the perfection of imperfection in my first serious girlfriend. She was, and still is, an amazing person. She was beautiful, full of vigor and just excited to live life every day. She had a few "character flaws" - I use that phrase loosely - that would normally drive me crazy in other people. But for some reason, her flaws only made me more attracted to her. They enticed me more, knowing that she wasn't perfect, yet knowing that this fact made her perfect. She farted. She burped (louder than I could). She was too shy much of the time. She was blunt to the point of being rude - a quality that I pride myself on now. In short, she was amazing. She had a few physical imperfections that served the same purpose as her personality ones - they only made me more attracted to her.

She helped me to realize that I don't want life to be perfect. I always want something to throw me off and help me realize the stark beauty in the rest of the world around me, and even in the one thing that's throwing me off. When I'm driving in a car, windows down, feeling the wind rush past my forearm and slap the side of my face, I want to get sunburned on my left arm. I want to miss a phone call (I hate missing phone calls). I want to have pools of sweat soak my back and give me swamp ass. Who really wants to use the air conditioner anyway? All the imperfections make life more fun. It becomes a guessing game, one that "Clue" and "Guess Who" couldn't hope to replicate.

So next time your computer's fried in the morning and you lose hours of precious time you could be doing work...next time you stick that stiletto heel in between the cracks of Court Street and bite the bricks...next time you wake up after a night out with the boys and realize you crapped in your desk drawer and notice a strange smell of urine in your laundry basket...learn to appreciate it. It helps you appreciate when everything is in order and on the "right track." Appreciate the small imperfections - because that's what makes life beautiful.

Here I Stand

2008-06-15T23:40:00.000-07:00

Here I stand, a college graduate; a blurry past, a promising future - or so they tell me. Finally, after four long years I've escaped. I've broken free of my bonds and cast them down as I walked across the bright stage with the cameras flashing, the families cheering and the announcers rapid-firing every name in the most monotonous tone one can imagine. I was just another name on a list without an asterisk next to it.

Here I stand, grateful to have finished my four years. Grateful to my parents for lending such a helping hand, enabling my experience at OU. Grateful to the friends who supported me throughout the college experience and who helped me remember the nights I couldn't. Grateful to my mentors who guided me the best they could and told me it would all be worth it in the end. The end...what an interesting and contradicting phrase. I have so much to be thankful for I don't think I could even attempt to write it down - in a blog post, a journal, a book, anywhere. But I am grateful to everyone who has played a role in my life thus far, for good or for ill, because I am who I am today thanks to you.

Here I stand, wobbling on the precipice over the great chasm they call reality. I knew after I walked off that stage that nothing was guaranteed anymore. Yes, I have a "job" lined up - a three- to four-month stint, anyway. But what about after that? After four months is up I have nothing but Red Robin - yes, I'll be working at one in Columbus again. Although this time it's on my own terms, finally. But essentially my life is my own now. A bit scary, I can't lie. For four years I've wanted nothing more than to be on my own, supporting myself and not having to financially rely on anybody. For four years I've wanted to escape the system of college, making my own path without having to pay $60,000 for a piece of paper that says I'm qualified to do a job I could have learned on my own. Well, four years are up. Now what? Less than a month ago I assumed I was going to graduate jobless. I became resigned to the fact, accepted it, and then for some reason got really excited about it! I was going to take two weeks off for no one but myself, then go back to Red Robin and work 30-40 hours, taking it easy and pursuing my passion of becoming a writer. I convinced myself that was going to be the life I wanted to live - at least until I got published. I was happy with what my future held for the first time in a long time. Then I get a phone call Monday, June 2, telling me I've been offered a temporary full-time position with SBC Advertising in Columbus. At first I was ecstatic. I had gotten an offer! What every college kid dreams of getting before they graduate so they can call home and tell their friends and family that it was worth it! That their education was paying off! I was sure I was going to take it. Later that afternoon I came to the slow realization that this might not be what I want.

I would have to take on another job to pay the bills - SBC was only going to pay me hourly. I would be away from my family and best friends with whom I saw myself spending a relaxing summer. Granted, I have friends in Columbus who will be here this summer. But they pale in comparison to what I have back in Cleveland - no offense :). I wasn't going to be able to pursue my passion as much as I had hoped to do after graduation. I wasn't going to be able to get back into the martial arts as soon as I had hoped. And I wasn't going to have as much free time as I had hoped. All signs pointed to declining the offer.

On June 4 I accepted the position. It was my only hope at the time to stay in the field and make a decent living for myself until my writing career takes off. It was a rational decision. I do enjoy the agency and the work I do, but I had to sacrifice much to do it. Will it be worth it? Call me in September and I'll let you know.

Here I stand, my first day of the rest of my life, even though I hate that phrase. The beginning of the end is more like it, haha. 22 years down. ?? more to go. Should be a good ride.

I'm going to try to put up a post a week. Hopefully I can get another one up tomorrow with some pictures and updates about the new job and the new place.

Be sure to keep checkin it out!