What’s Next?

I’ve been thinking about what the next project for me is going to be. I’ve got the house bought, all of the financials associated with it set up on auto-pilot, and am just bit by bit getting furniture in the rooms and pictures on the walls. For the next 30 years or whenever I decide to sell it, whichever comes first, I’ve at least got that part all figured out. So now I’ve got to turn my head towards what to do next.

That’s a good question… what should I be working on next? I mean I’ve always got a small project going, something I’m building or some little self-improvement project like trying to read a book a month for the year, but the big projects… the long term goals… those are the ones that I have a hard time figuring out which to attack next.

My thought at the moment is to continue on with my education and work on my Master’s degree in Computer Science. This will be year 8 for me since graduating from college and even though on graduation day there was nothing I wanted more than to be free of the classroom, I’ve been steadily feeling like I need to get back to it. I’ve long been reminded (perhaps pressured) by my folks that I should get a Master’s degree. To them it’s a pride piece, since aside from me the only other person to finish college in my entire family is my brother. He also has a Bachelors of Computer Science, but absolutely no desire to continue on with anything higher. My stepfather, himself a successful IT manager, has always maintained that I would be on the fast track through the corporate ranks with my Computer Science basis and an MBA. I don’t know about an MBA though… getting a Master’s degree is no small task in terms of time, effort and money, so obviously I want to plan this one out and make sure it’s something I really want to do.

What are the benefits for me of getting a Master’s degree? For most people, the obvious draw might be the financial gains that can be had with it. To be frank, that’s not a concern for me, I actually make a very comfortable living with just my Bachelor’s degree. My degree in Computer Science definitely got me in the door in the corporate world, but I firmly believe it’s my mind’s ability to deconstruct problems and find quick solutions that’s been the driving factor in my success there. While I’m sure that a Master’s degree will further develop those skills, it’s not the major goal.

Truthfully, I want to teach at the University level. Yes, I know that this means pursuing more than just a Master’s. I would likely need to continue on with a PhD to be considered a serious candidate as a professor, but I’ve always wanted to teach at the collegiate level. The prospect of being surrounded with intellectuals of various disciplines and working with younger people who have a serious interest in academia, being able to work on the real problems in Computer Science and maybe even get a book or two published. But also there is the idea of personal enrichment… I am a firm believer in education and expanding the mind through the discourse of higher learning. I want to continue my education as a way of understanding our world better. Those are all very real dreams of mine, some that I’d like to realize sooner rather than later.

First things first however, the search begins for a graduate school to start in the fall.

 

It’s kind of a funny…

… and strange thing, but I’ve been spending less time on facebook and online in general. It’s happened pretty much as soon as I got into the house, as I’ve been spending more time working on things, buying things, waiting for things, and most importantly having friends over for good times in the house. To think that it only took $210,000 to kick my internet addiction? Crazy.

Becoming Superhuman

I declared today on twitter that my new goal for this year is to become superhuman. While I’m generally of the belief that anything I want to do can, and will be done, by the sheer force of my own determination and creativity I don’t think I’ll be bench-pressing any Buicks like Superman anytime soon. In fact, when I say I will become superhuman, I’m talking about the meaning of the word is far more realistic and literal way.

What does the word “superhuman” mean? If you break down its parts, you end up with two root words; “super” (adj.) meaning very good, first rate or, of the highest degree; and “human” (noun) meaning a member of the human race.

Chances are that in your life you’ve come across more than a few superhuman people… I know I have. My grandfather was one of them. He was raised in near poverty and didn’t finish middle school. He enlisted in the army at age 17 and fought in World War II in Europe, first as a paratrooper, then as a tank driver, and then a mechanic when the army realized he had a talent for working with diesel engines.

After the war he took a demotion from Sergeant back to Private to stay in the army to participate in the rebuilding efforts in France. He became a Sergeant again and was in charge of the base’s motor pool where he was stationed. He left the army after my uncle was born, returning to the states with him and my grandmother and became the manager of a local garage. By the time he retired from the workforce he was a director at a regional construction company, in charge of the company’s fleet of cement trucks and construction vehicles.

The man was strong and tough as nails too. I remember him breaking his thumb while working on his car, and after a few choice words set the bone, wrapped it in a dirty rage and kept working. Even well into his 70’s, when you shook his hand, his grip seemed like it was strong enough to crush you. Truth is… he probably could have.

At his funeral there were large collections of photos from his life posted all over the funeral parlor. In fact the photos lines the walls of the parlor, the waiting rooms and the hallways. Everywhere there were pictures of his experiences… images of him in Germany and France during the war, images of him back in Germany and France 50 years later, images of him sailing on the Atlantic, images of him going cross country, and images of him with people I’d never meet in every single one of them. I saw everything that Grandpa had done in his life and suddenly I felt like I was wasting my time.

Comic books and science fiction are one thing, but the real superhuman is the person that by the length and breadth of their experiences, the magnitude of their achievements, and even the grace of their presence invoke in you a feeling of admiration and WANTING to achieve more. These are the sages in our midst, people that sometimes even take on a mystic quality because of the way they seem to both expertly and effortlessly move through and influence our lives. The reason you look up to these people is because they have done things and learned things beyond that of the ordinary human.

The Buddha was superhuman in his compassion for all living things. William Shakespeare was superhuman in his ability to expertly craft words into verses that evoke the greatest of emotional responses. Albert Einstein was superhuman in his ability to see beyond perception and understand the abstract nature of the universe.

There are many more, all of them are superhuman… and I want to be superhuman too.

Great, so what do I do to become superhuman? I struggled with that question for several hours today, trying to figure out what I could possibly do to exceed that of an ordinary human. Some would consider being superhuman based upon a specific skill you do better than anyone else, others would consider it based upon some inherent personality trait that sets you apart from most others. To figure out the necessary step of why I want to be superhuman, I had to think about which of those camps I fell into.

My grandpa was the latter. He had no one skill that set him apart from the rest of humanity. In fact, he was less skilled than most at pretty much everything except for making engines work, and there were those better than him at it as he eventually stopped working on them altogether in favor of managing those that did. Grandpa did have a trait that most people didn’t however… he was so enriched by life and the world around him that he would never settle for any one experience. He fought, he destroyed, he built, he protected, he traveled, he painted, he sailed and he grew with every experience. He could live any one of us under the table, and did.

That’s what I can do to be superhuman… what anyone can do, really. When others say “no” or “why?” I will say “yes” and “why not?” popular opinions, be damned. Endeavor to become fearless in the discovery of life and deriving a meaningful experience from it.

Parts of that mindset had been surfacing recently on their own. When asked by a friend why I had read so many obscure (meaning: boring, to them) books in the last parts of 2010 I replied, “… someone took the time to write them, I may as well read them.”  In the past I never would have even admitted reading them for fear of ridicule. I never again want to let someone else’s opinion sway my decision to do something. The greatest thing I believe you can do to become superhuman is to desire to be master of your own destiny.  That desire is primal in nature, and unfortunately too often given up for the sake of safety, convenience and predictability.

Some people are ok with doing that. I’m not ok with it… not anymore, anyway. I’ll live the rest of this life as well as I can, for my benefit and the benefit of everyone around me… I’ll just have to leave the flying cape on the coat hook at home.

Think about someone that you know, or simply may know about, and how they inspire you to become superhuman yourself. Being superhuman means taking the one chance you have to be more than the sum of your parts. Find out what that is then learn it, love it, do it and live it.

Resolution 2011 – Where I’m coming from (and where this is going)

A year ago about this time I had made the New Year resolution to lose weight. I know it’s cliche but it’s just one of those things that, unless you are a male underwear model or Olympic swimmer, you know that you need to do each and every year. For the record, I absolutely abhorred the gym each time I’ve ever gone to it and still do. Whether it was Gold’s, Planet Fitness or whatever, the gym is the LEAST conducive environment I’ve ever been in to losing weight and getting into shape, and I don’t see forthcoming reason that this opinion will change. What’s more is that I don’t even like exercising. If I wanted to labor intensively on physical activity, I wouldn’t have become a software engineer. Welcome to the nerd mystic.

Still, I knew that I needed to get it done and I also knew that I wouldn’t be able to accomplish it. I needed help, so I got my best friend on board to help me stay on track. My buddy is no gym rat, but he is capable of driving people to keep on track with something by the sheer nagging nature of his personality. While over the years I had grown a pretty tough skin to his relentless pushing, but its something that you never become immune to. I was counting on this relentless attitude of his to get me through my goal of losing 50 lbs. across the 2010 calendar year. Then his wife left him, and going to the gym with me wasn’t the biggest thing on his mind. Needless to say, I didn’t lose my 50 lbs. in 2010.

The sad truth is that I gained weight during last year. On any given day my weight will fluctuate 10 lbs, give or take, so I don’t worry about it when my weight goes up unless it stays up for more than a couple days. With a major project coming to fruition over this past summer coming with about two months of long hours at the office, eating junk and convenience food, then immediately going home and crashing, I found myself at the end of the summer weighing the most I have in my entire life at and even 300 lbs. The weight has yet to come off and now 2011 is my critical year, the year that I need to make something happen.

As I mentioned I’m not a real fan of exercising, it’s just not how this nerd rolls. So towards the end of 2010 I went looking for alternatives. I’ve mostly heard from people (mostly the gym rats) that the key to weight loss is simple… calories in versus calories out. If you want to lose weight you need to eat lots of low calorie foods to effectively fool your body into thinking it has more than enough energy and that you aren’t starving yourself, as well as exercise to create a calorie deficit. This makes perfect sense in a perfect and normal world, however as I’ve learned over time my world is far from normal.

I’ve known since I was a young boy that I’m not normal. I knew that I wasn’t normal when I my teacher pulled me out of class in 3rd grade to participate in a school-run trivia contest comprised almost solely of 6th graders. I knew I wasn’t normal when at age 10 after reading “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” by Jules Verne that I spec’d out and created schematics for the Nautilus as described in the book. I knew I wasn’t normal when in 7th grade they asked me to take the SAT’s four years early and scored higher than the 11th graders I took it with. I knew I wasn’t normal when a few years after college, when I had gained 100 lbs since graduating high school, that my waist was just 4″ larger than it was when I weighed 165 lbs.

The real turning point on the calories in vs. calories out convention came for me when early in 2010 when I subscribed to weight watchers and actually found myself eating MORE with the program than I did before. Obviously conventional means were not going to work for me.

I suspect it has something to do with my body’s structure. Throwing out how much I currently weigh, I’m not a small guy. I’m 6’1″ tall, which isn’t towering, but I have the skeletal frame of a man 6″ or 7″ taller than me. Even at my current weight my ribs can be felt on my sides, and with my arms flat at my sides my shoulders fill all but 3″ of a standard door frame. People have never been able to accurately estimate my weight, from casual observers to the the nurses at the doctor’s office that weigh me. I am by and large far stronger than any of my friends, including the few that are bigger and in better shape than I am.

Each time I’ve tried losing weight I’ve wanted to spend the time investigating all of the methods and theories out there for losing weight in the most efficient manner. Each time I shot these ideas past people, I was told that I “… couldn’t research myself into losing weight…” and that I just had to get to the gym and start exercising. In the past I reluctantly agreed that they were probably right and got to work, and each time I failed miserably. I always thought that there had to be a better way, a SMARTER way to lose weight and getting into shape, a way that would appeal to my nerd sensibilities and my lack of desire to spend countless hours in the gym. What I’ve found so far is, at least to me, a very interesting set of ideas.

I’ve read that a better way to lose weight is to increase your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). Running for 3 hours on the treadmill at the gym is a great way to lose weight in short bursts, because you burn a large number of calories while you are running, but it effectively stops when you stop running. You increase your BMR by building muscle such that your body burns more calories when it is at rest. I think its fantastic if you have the time to run for 3 hours in order burn 500 calories, but I’d much rather increase by BMR by 50 cal/hr so that I can burn 1200 calories per day while doing nothing special besides breathing.

Makes sense right? I think so anyway. So that on a high level is what I’m shooting for and what I’ll be working on. I’m out to disprove my friends and casual observer’s mantras that one MUST just go to the gym and kill your desire to live by working endlessly for minimal results. That’s not how I do things around here… I do the research and develop more efficient ways to do things. That’s what I get paid to do in my professional life and that’s what I am going to do for my endeavor to lose weight and get into shape.

For the time being, this blog will be focused on sharing the tips and information that I find along the way of building a better body using nerd tactics… brains over brawn… that kind of thing. I hope that what I dig up is ultimately effective (for my sake) and informative as a way to blow away the barriers of conventional wisdom constructed by the meatheads at the gym. I’ve started diving into my first round of information, the book “The 4 Hour Body”  by Tim Ferriss, and the Nerd Fitness blog of Steve Kamb.

So Happy New Year everyone, and cheers to 2011 and building a smarter body!

Year in Review – 2010

It’s snowing like a motherf*cker outside, which means that I have time to write a post for this blog, and since it seems that with everything I have planned to do to get my house set up over the next week, this will likely be my last post of 2010. So what better way to ring in the new year with a retrospective on what happened in the previous? Can you think of one? I sure can’t…

• In 2010 I started enjoying my life and my money again. With the whole economic crackdown at the end of 2008 and through 2009, I thought it especially prudent during that time to straighten out my finances. When 2010 started, I had paid off $18,000 in credit card debt, accumulated $15,000 in savings and decided that I would buy a house by the end of the year (more on that in a bit). I also decided I wouldn’t compromise on doing things with my friends anymore when I realized that I could actually accomplish both of those things. At the beginning of the year I had planned to visit Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park over the summer, as well as go to Oktoberfest in Munich with my buddy Rick. I didn’t do any of those things.

• I went to see the St. Patrick’s Day parade and the ensuing shenanigans that comes with it in New York City, for the first time in my life, with my buddy Rick. A couple days later his wife left him. It wasn’t because of anything that happened on St. Paddy’s day, just happened about that same time. I would however spend the next 9 months on “Rick duty”, with a few other of our close friends, helping him through that endeavor. He came out of it a changed man, whether for better or worse as yet to be determined, but he did come out of it, and that counts for something.

• My Aunt Nancy died from cancer. I should say that like my father, she didn’t actually die OF cancer, but it was systemic of her demise. She had actually beaten cancer… twice. The first time was a few years ago when she overcame breast cancer and then shortly before she passed away she overcame Leukemia (per test results) to ultimately fall to an infection that her depleted immune system couldn’t handle. She was incredibly positive and light-hearted to the end. Her death also did something that she had been trying to do for the past several years of her life in bringing the entire extended family closer together. She was like a second mom to me… I miss her a lot.

• When I graduated from college, got a job, got a place of my own and discovered that there wasn’t a whole lot of the life milestones left for me to accomplish, I had a sort of breakdown. This was it? This was what I worked so hard for up to this point? Screw this man, I’m handing my adult card back in. Unfortunately that isn’t allowed, and when I turned 30 this year it wasn’t much better. Year 30 brought A LOT of introspection. Part of it resulted in me buying a house. Part of it has also resulted in me realizing that there is an upper limit on what joy you can derive from life on your own. Partly that led to a realization of real loneliness for the first time ever, but also that my family has become more important to me than ever. I’ve reconnected with my cousins and their kids, I can honestly say that my brother and my sister are my best friends. I’ve isolated myself from the chatter surrounding the people I know as well, making those people of good character, by my own judgement, my friends rather than listening to what others say about them. The end result of that is that the relationships I had with my existing friends were not negatively affected, and those relationships with my new friends have gained strength. I dare say that 2010, amidst the turmoil it encompassed, saw the first true development of my “tribe”, and 2011 serves to bring that tribe closer than ever before.

• I finished a large project over the summer. I literally had been working on this project for the past 3 years. In fact it was the reason that they hired me in the first place as a consultant and then later brought me on as a full time employee. For the record, I build Point of Sale systems for retailers. Its not the most glamorous job in I.T., and I’m surely not making any ground-breaking progress for the field of computer science, however it does give a great opportunity to create software and systems that are used by lots of people to do a lot of business. So with the help of a few vendors, and amidst a seemingly never ending supply of delays, my team of effectively 3 people where I was the technical lead built a system to run the business for around 840 stores and put it into those stores in less than a month. The business now runs its daily operations on it. It’s probably the largest project I’ve done, end-to-end in my career thus far, and I found a number of new and innovative ways to get the job done for the business, some that no one else has. I also learned that anything worth doing is worth doing well.

• I’ve read enormous amounts of literature this year. Mostly that is because I bought an Amazon Kindle. I won’t lie, I absolutely love this thing. Its true that the iPad is also a beautiful E-reader in its own right, along with all of the other completely awesome stuff it does, but the Kindle is far less expensive. Also, Amazon’s Kindle store is the shining example of what digital shopping should be… buy an E-book on Amazon or on the Kindle itself and its available online, on the Kindle, on the Kindle app on your computer, on the Kindle app for your phone, and it syncs in your purchases, places in a book and notes online… forever. Also there are literally thousands of classic literature and other out of license books that are available for download for free. Because of buying the Kindle, I’ve read these books:

1. “The Beginners Guide to Walking the Buddha’s Eightfold Path” – Jean Smith
2. “A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way” – Santideva
3. “The Art of Happiness” – His Holiness the Dalai Lama
4. “Pragmaticism” – William James
5. “The Problems of Philosophy” – Bertrand Russell
6. “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” – Adam Smith
7. “Concerning Christian Liberty” – Martin Luther
8. “Summa Theologica” – Saint Thomas Aquinas
9. “Poetics” – Aristotle
10. “The Prince” – Niccolo Machiavelli (re-read from years ago)
11. “A Brave New World” – Aldous Huxley (re-read from years ago)
12. “Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals” – Immanuel Kant
13. “The Republic” – Plato (re-read from years ago)
14. “The Art of War” – Sun Tzu (re-read from years ago)
15. “The Dharma Bums” – Jack Kerouac
16. “Mediations” – Marcus Aurelius
17. “Henry V” – William Shakespeare (re-read from years ago)
18. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” – William Shakespeare (re-read from years ago)
19. “White Fang” – Jack London
20. “The Picture of Dorian Gray” – Oscar Wilde
21. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” – Harriet Beecher Stowe
22. “Frankenstein” – Mary Shelley (re-read from years ago)
23. “Leviathan” – Thomas Hobbes
24. “Dracula” – Bram Stoker
25. “The Time Machine” – H.G. Wells
26. “The War of the Worlds” – H.G. Wells
27. “Diary of a Very Bad Year” – Keith Gessen

• Oh yeah, I bought a house. When I turned 30 I decided that I was, at that moment, wholly and eternally done with renting. The idea of having people I didn’t know living on the other side of the wall from me was no longer appealing. And so I went to LendingTree.com and applied for a loan. The next day I spoke to a mortgage broker. The day after that I spoke to a real estate agent and an attorney. Two weeks later I took a week off from work and went on a marathon of house hunting with the realtor, seeing around 30 houses in a week. At the end of the week I had found a house and wanted to put an offer in on it. Before I did, the realtor wanted to show me one more house that she had just seen that day and after I saw it I knew it was the right house. Almost exactly 60 days later I closed, 5 days before Christmas. Its taking me a bit of time for the prospect of owning a house to sink in. I own real property… this is the concept that this country was founded on… at last I understand this concept of the American dream. Today as I looked out at the expanse of driveway that I now own and am responsible for, and heard the weather forecast for snow, I went out to Lowes without hesitation and bought a snow thrower. For the first time in my life I have outdoor power equipment. That’s home-ownership for you.

• I rediscovered the philosophies of the far east and probably for the first time really begin to understand them, most notably Buddhism. I make no secret of my sympathies for the Tibetan people and their culture, and of the admiration I have for the personification of their beliefs, His Holiness the Dalai Lama. What I find most remarkable about him and his faith is that it has enabled him to maintain his immensely positive attitude despite decades of exile from his homeland. But Buddhism itself has brought to the table, for me, a whole different way of thinking about our lives, how we are all connected in an expressly tangible way. All livings things are joined in a common desire in life to be happy. The unhappy truth about life though is that life is suffering. One day everyone will get sick, will grow old and will die. Fact. There’s nothing wrong with that but by not coming to terms with that truth, that all things are impermanent, is what causes our suffering. Its far easier to appreciate the beauty and utility of a glass when you understand that the glass is already broken and that the best you can do is use the glass and appreciate it while there is still time to do so. The goal of the individual is the cessation of suffering in oneself. The goal of the Bodhisattva is the cessation of suffering in others, for the benefit of all beings. “For as long as space endures, and for as long as living beings remain. Until then may I too abide to dispel the misery of the world” – Santideva

Those, in a nutshell, were the highlights of 2010. What does 2011 hold? I couldn’t even begin to speculate, but I intend to make good on my goals to travel to the national parks this summer, even if I have to do it by myself. I also will work on my house and build it into the sanctuary for my sanity (and soul) that I want it to be, as well as a place to create some great memories with all of those I care about. Lastly my major project for 2011 is my health. No matter which way I look at it I can’t fully enjoy my life and be the greatest benefit to those around me until I improve my physical self. I’ve spent the last 30 years improving my mind, its time to spend a little effort on my body.

As for the new year, I greet it with open arms from the comfort of my new home and with the company of my good friends. Here’s to hoping that all of you do as well… Cheers!

Home at the Ranch

Here I am… I’m in my house. I closed on December 20th and after grabbing a few necessities from storage (my parents’ house) I stayed there the very first night. The closing itself took almost 2 hours, thanks to the bank attorney running late and a large number of extra forms needing to be signed, because although my house is a very nice (but modest) house on a quiet cul de sac surrounded by friendly neighbors, it qualified for a HUD loan, which I took full advantage of. And so after my first two trips to Home Depot to get new locks, then return the first ones and buy the correct ones, I went to bed exhausted and happy in my new home.

Day 3 here and I’m still having a hard time adjusting to it all. First off, I’m not sure that it has fully sank in that I own a house, or that by signing my name a few times I spent over 200-large in the span of a couple minutes. But I do have a house, and as I’ve always wanted since the day I moved out of my parents house 10 years ago, I don’t have neighbors on the other side of the wall. Its quiet here… very quiet. I both like it and find it completely unnerving.

My first adventure was last night, just as I was settling down to bed when I heard the sound of water running in the basement. This alarmed me because earlier I had turned up the heat on the hot water heater. The previous owners had small children and hence kept the water temperature low. But now with the sound of water rushing out into the drainage sink in the laundry room/utility room and not knowing any better, I thought that something had burst. When I went down there to check it out, the water softener was slowly draining into the drainage sink. Then there was a series of “clicks” and “whirrs” from the thing and it started filling with water again. I looked at the display and saw that words “recharging now” blinking. Apparently it does this from time to time, cycling the water through to keep it fresh. Then, something dawned on me…

I have a water softener.

Seriously? That’s something we didn’t even have at my parents house when I was growing up. I have more too… I have 3 bedrooms, a ceramic tiled bathroom with a cast iron tub and a heat lamp, I have hardwood floors in every room of the house, I have a kitchen with over a dozen cabinets, I have a brand new energy efficient washer and dryer, I have central air, I have an attached garage UNDERNEATH my house, and I have a full unutilized basement that is begging to be turned into some living space. A month ago, I was living in a small apartment where half of the plumbing didn’t work, I had to share a 20 year old washer and dryer with the transients that lived in the other units, and I could never get a parking spot in front of my building to save my life.

I feel like the god-damn Jefferson’s!

When I moved out of my apartment I trashed basically everything I owned that I wouldn’t immediately need. In fact I just have my desk, my bed, and some boxes at my parent’s house to move, which will be done before Christmas. Then I have a week off next week to paint, purchase and furnish the home, hopefully to make it my own. I’ll get some pictures together once I get everything set up. I want to get it done as soon as possible, probably starting on the day after Christmas, just so I can maybe get this place feeling something less like a novelty and more like my home.

A Realization of Failure

“@jeremylyons I cannot believe you gave up blogging AGAIN!!!!”

That’s what my friend and fellow blogger Nicole shot me on twitter when I made that last post on this blog.
When I made that post, I felt that I had failed at keeping task with the fundamental reason I had for starting it in the first place, that I would chronicle on the web my endeavors in living a better life, being the best human being possible and living to my full potential.

Looking back however, I really only used it as a place to write vaguely and whimsically about loose topics and complain about how things weren’t going right for me with buying my house.
What I had failed to do, was execute on my original idea.

And an idea was all that it was. Ideas are not actionable things, they are conceptualized end-products. Plans are actionable, and when I went into starting the blog I had no plan for how I was actually going to do it, what I was going to write about and how it would be of any value to anyone, particularly to myself. It became precisely what I had hoped from the beginning to avoid… a diary.

This blog is not going to die because of my own incompetence and lack of follow-through. The point of it was to hold myself accountable on building a better life for myself and for those around me and it will be exactly that. I will work on this blog for expressly that reason. No excuses.

That being said, project (and priority) #1 is my health. Its something that I’ve been putting off for too long and something of paramount importance. At this point for me, improving my health and fitness isn’t even about vanity of physical appearance, its about the fact that I am unhealthy… that I’m at risk for a large number of weight related, long term health issues like heart disease, diabetes and cancer… and that I have become less active and mobile over the years since the last real time I was in good physical condition at the end of high school. I’ve done a lot of damage to my body from not eating right, drinking and partying too much and its taken its toll.

I can fix it though, this much I know. Others have done it… you see them all over television, the internet and in print, and I believe I can do it too. And why not? I’ve built my career thus far on fixing complex information systems, so surely I can fix my own body’s health and mind’s self-destructive tendencies, right?

And even in the off chance that I can’t, I have to at least try… I don’t have much of a choice otherwise.

(P.S. – The closing on my house is Monday (12/20). One less distraction on the road!)

This isn’t working.

This blog isn’t working out. I’m not doing what I said I was going to do and documenting my steps on living a better life. The blog isn’t what I wanted it to be, and that’s entirely my fault. I’m moving on… thanks for the reads folks!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

“Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow.” Edward Sandford Martin

Removing Negativity

I’m going through a phase where I feel like there is too much negativity in my life. It’s not even really that there are bad things going on to me specifically, but to the people around me and I often times get chosen to hear about and participate in the negative aspects of their lives along with them.

I know that if I were an enlightened being I would be content still to be involved in everyone’s negative lives and feel compelled to help them. I do that, or at least I try to, but you know that old saying that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink? Yeah… these are the people that all talk to me about their problems.

My problem is that I don’t want to be in the middle of their problems. I’m not that enlightened being. I’m not a bodhisattva, though dammit I’m trying. Right now I don’t have the time or the patience to deal with people who’s worlds are collapsing around them.

What really gets me however is that most of the people who are having these problems can make the conscious decision to get out of them. My best friend for instance, who is going through a divorce, often falls into fits of hysterical crying over his situation. He has been going through the separation of his wife for 9 months now. I understand that it was a terrible betrayal of trust between the two of them and that her  unfaithfulness caused him to question a lot about his life and himself, but he always asks me how to make it stop hurting so much.

I tell him only he has the power to do that. His response? That he can’t just turn off his emotions like I can*.

I never asked him to stop being emotional. He comes from a hyper-emotional family… on a day-to-day basis he is either in love with his family or despises them. I can’t even keep up with what it is these days… I think he despises them. But instead what I tried to convey to him is that while he may or may not have any control over the circumstances of his life, he will not progress beyond the pain he is feeling until he decides he wants to. Right now he wants to be miserable, whether he realizes it or not, and wants others to pity him. He’s looking for that approval from everyone, that he wasn’t wrong in everything that happened, and despite receiving it he isn’t moving forward. I try to tell him that he has to want to be happy, but he doesn’t believe me.

After 9 months of telling him that, I think he has to make that step by himself…. I can’t help him, just like I can’t help anyone else with their problems. My family has a saying… if you want a helping hand, look at the end of your arm.

So the only real thing I can do is to take those people that bring nothing to the table but negativity and remove them from my life. I’m not going to eliminate my best friend, obviously, but I’m not going to pander to him when all he wants to do is feel sorry for himself, that’s what his therapist is for. To everyone else, they need to find someone else to unload their problems on, because I simply don’t have the time.

* Note: My buddy believes me to be the most emotional distant and cold person in the world. Its not true… at all.