Lyrics

If you read this blog, you probably know that I like to talk about religion a lot. I am a strong believer in the Christian faith and I've been following it all of my life. While I'm pretty firmly entrenched in what I believe, there's still a huge unknown element for me that I'm trying to somehow figure out. I'm sure that there are an infinite amount of things that I'll never know about God or about life, but as I talked about last post, I think it's better that way.

So this post is going to be about a part of Christianity, and that part is worship - like through music. I was in church yesterday and it got me thinking about it.

There's this one song that it played in churches and on Christian radio stations that I don't remember the name of or anything about it, except I know that the first line is "I'm at a loss for words". Guess what? The song doesn't end there. In fact is continues on for like 6 minutes. Starting a 6 minute long song by saying that you don't have anything to say doesn't really make sense, and pretty much just makes you a liar from the beginning. Which one is it? Do you not have anything to say? Or do you have enough to say to cover 6 minutes? If the song was 7 seconds long and only had the lyrics "I'm at a loss for words" I'd be cool with it, in fact that would be really funny.

That reminds me of this one scene from The Office when Ryan is talking to Pam and Michael about his time in Thailand. It goes:

Ryan: Do you guys wanna hear about Thailand?
Pam and Michael: Sure...
Ryan: pause... It was indescribable.

Hilarious.

Anyways, now to the serious part. The song that made me think about this had the lyrics:

Your love so deep, is washing over me
Your face is all I seek, you are my everything
Jesus Christ, You are my one desire
Lord hear my only cry, to know you all my life

People got really into that, which is great. But it had a different affect on me, because I knew that I couldn't say the words honestly. Like everyone is in there singing those lyrics but how many of them are actually being honest? For me, I can say that in my life I'm chasing after more than just God. Whether that's right or wrong is a different story and not my intention here, but I can say that I'm sure I don't give enough attention to God and I'm sure I'm hurting myself being that way. My point is to question what good singing words that aren't true really is?

Worship is more than just saying words towards God, it's a whole experience and focus thing, but again this isn't the point of the post. I'm not saying that if you're saying something in a song that isn't necessarily true that your experience is completely empty. There's tons to gain from it regardless. The point I'm trying to get at is that people don't pay enough attention to the actual words they're saying. The ideal situation would be to hear and understand what you're saying, decide if it is true or not, decide if you would want that to be true, and if you do then go try to make it happen. Isn't getting better and growing one of the main parts of Christianity? If you're just saying words that aren't true and you have no desire to make them true, I'm not sure there was much good in saying the words in the first place.

This is as much a challenge for me as it is for anyone else, because I was the one sitting there realizing that I was saying things that wasn't true. I know that I want them to be true, but I'm definitely not 100% confident in my ability to make it happen.

Not everyone really cares to talk about God, much less about worship, which I'm sure a lot of people think is weird, but you can apply this to other walks of life as well. There are always emotional moments in life when we say or feel like we're going to make some kind of change in our lives, but then the emotions go away and then we kinda forget about it and it never happens. You feel good and motivated for a short time, but then that moment turns out to be worthless because you didn't do anything about it when it was over. Getting to the point of constant motivation is impossible, it's not how we work. Figuring out how to get things done without the motivation is the goal, and that's what really separates great people from average people.

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Math and then Everything Else

This morning I started watching Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, which is really entertaining, almost in a strange way. The first episode I watched was with Chris Rock, and right in the middle of it he makes this really subtle but really profound statement. Just all the sudden he says

"There's math... and then everything is debatable"

That's starting to actually feel right to me. The longer you live the more you realize how rare it is for people to agree on things. There are a few things that you really can't debate on, like math (although people will try their best to do that too), but most things are pretty much up for interpretation. But you know what? I think that's how it should be - I think that makes life a lot more worthwhile.

The only reason debate is ever looked at negatively is because people let their emotions get involved and then they get upset and feelings start getting hurt. If everyone had straight and accepting heads on their shoulders, debate would be so much more valuable.

What would life be like if you could figure everything out? If by the time you were 40 or 50 you just knew everything. What would you live for? If you think about it, we all pretty much just live for the unknown every day. We all hope for opportunity and a good future - a lot of people live for whatever they think comes after life. If you knew what was going on and what will go on in the future I don't think there'd be much of a point to anything.

That said, I do think it's important to try and figure stuff out. At some point you realize that you'll never actually have it all together, and if that stops you from trying to get it together then you're a fool. Chasing unreachable endpoints sounds dumb, but there's an infinite amount of value in that chase. The worst thing you can do is go through the motions mentally. I say this in every post, which I guess means that I'm arriving at a theme. Use the brain that you've been given. It might not work as well as other people, it might take you to different places than where you thought it would, but whatever happens it will be vastly more worthwhile then letting the world control you.

Life puts a lot of conditions on us. We're all raised into a way of thinking and living and if you don't take ownership of it you won't be much of a person. Humans can become like animals. You raise animals to do what you want them to and they're wired to (eventually) obey. Life is constantly trying to condition us to do things a certain way, and if we let it determine our lives, how much more valuable are we then animals?

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No Topic (Almost) Tuesday

It's close enough to Tuesday to just go ahead and assume it's Tuesday. I haven't written in almost a week and I've got a few things, so here it goes.

Life's really weird, right? We all have to rely on money to live, so our lives are really determined on how much money we make. It doesn't take all that much money to literally stay alive, but everything is pretty much determined based on what kind of money we do make. If you make a little, you learn to live on a little, and you're still fine. Then you start making more money, and then you start living a little better and your expenses go up, so then you still have about the same amount of extra money. As your income goes up, your expenses go up. Makes sense I guess. It's important to save money, but not taking advantage of the money you make wouldn't make much sense either. Anyways, all of the money we make seems to go towards ourselves, and towards our ever dematerializing lives. Dematerializing is not a word per say, but I think it's cool enough to work here. It just seems like we all end up just studying or BSing our way through education for the first quarter of our life just to get a job so we can work away a third (or more) of our life just to stay alive and have a "happy life". And to me it seems like the word "happy" is sufferingly weak, to the point where all it takes to be "happy" is 3 meals a day, a house, and a couple cars. It's like we're all told at birth what it takes to have a good life and we slave away every day like robots just to reach it. We never really think about what happy is individually. Do I want to work 40+ hours a week doing stuff that doesn't really bring me satisfaction just so I can pay to eat and sleep at night and have some element of cheap fun when I don't have to be at work? Hell no, that doesn't seem like the best way to spend the one life I have. Do I have a choice at this point? Well if I do, I really don't see it.

So why do we do this shit? Why do we just conform to everything that we were grown up to believe? Maybe our minds aren't developed enough to see the other options. Maybe we've fallen victim to our conditioning. Can you imagine being conditioned in the way that a kid in a third world country is conditioned? Living a below average American life would feel like being a freakin King. Yet every day Americans commit suicide because they don't feel their lives are worth living because they'll never make it anywhere; despite all the incredible opportunity that exists just because of where they were born. If you were raised in poverty and then turned out to be 'successful', at least by American eyes, imagine how much hope you'd have? Imagine how much your perspective would change? Every meal you ate would taste better, because you wouldn't take it for granted. Yet we all sit here in our warm houses with our name brand clothes on wishing we had more, wishing to be held up above our peers with no regard for the lack of positive worldly impact you're making a long the way.

I had absolutely no intention for this post to go this route. I haven't even had these thoughts seriously before right now, and it's kind of depressing me. Ignorance truly is bliss. I'm sure God intended human life to be more than what it is now, I know He sits up there and just shakes His head at everything we do and everything we strive for. I'm not entirely sure God has a physical head that He could shake, but that's a different question. I wish I really knew how He would live my life if He had it, because I'm sure it would be a hell of a lot more fulfilling than it will turn out after my stupid ass is done with it.

In other news, I'm selling my Macbook. For the last 6 years I've sworn by Mac products and said I'd never not own a Mac. In a few weeks that probably won't be true. Right now I'm typing on a Samsung Ultrabook with Windows 8 running, and I love this thing. I'm seriously considering buying a Microsoft Surface with the money I'll make from selling my Mac. Couldn't have predicted that 4 years ago.

I had a couple more things to say when I started this but I completely forgot about them... this really didn't go the way I had planned.

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No Topic Tuesday

I used to do No Topic Tuesday on here (alright, so I did it twice... and one of the times was on a Wednesday), so let's bring it back this week. I've got a small smattering of things to talk about.

The first thing is about girls, and one of the large characterizations of their kind. I'm not sure if it's a confidence issue or a preconditioning issue, but it really doesn't seem to like a girl ever goes out of her way to show a guy that she's interested. Girl might react positively when guy reaches her way, but it doesn't seem that girl will ever make that first move. Even with girl and guy are talking regularly the girl always seems to be emit friend only fragrances until guy makes a move. Is that because the girl doesn't want to get shut down? Or is it just because they don't think they're supposed to act a different way? I mean there are exceptions, but really for me only one girl comes to mind. Honestly it's probably better this way because from what I've noticed, guys aren't very selective with girls. Any guy will date any girl as long as she the least bit attractive to him. Fortunately that's never been the case with me, but if girls were just going after guys all the time they'd probably get them a lot of times and a bunch of really shitty relationships would start.

Second thing is about sports and sports writing, again. My boy from the Trib Dejan Kovacevic wrote this article about what to do if you're a young person aspiring to be a sports writer. I really liked this piece of advice from him:

"If you’re interested because you want to write about sports, get out. Find something else to do. You will fail, and you will fail quickly and miserably. The job is about journalism, not about being pals with your favorite teams or athletes. The passion has to be for journalism, for reporting and writing and editing and taking pics and page-designing or whatever your specialty."

It seems to be that the thing young people are most opinionated about in general is sports. You know why that is? Because sports are senseless, simple, and frivolous. Also, a lot of young people are also senseless, simple, and frivolous, it's a perfect fit! I've grown to have so much respect for people that have serious opinions and passion for anything that's not simple like sports - I wish I had more passion for such things myself. Anyways, Dejan makes a fantastic point. You'll never be successful in working in sports if you just have passion for sports. Almost everyone loves sports, and almost everyone can talk about sports to some extent. They might sound like idiots, but they can talk about it nonetheless. If people don't have a unique way to get points across and differing perspectives to look through, they'll just be some other average Joe sitting on his couch on Sunday yelling at the TV.

This applies to more than sports too. If you want to succeed in something, you can't do it like everyone else does. There are almost 8 billion people in the world, and there aren't nearly that many different things to do with life. You can't beat someone by copying them, you have to set yourself apart in some way. Following the trend and aping other people isn't going to get you very far.

I've also decided that one thing I really want to do in my life is speak in front of people. I'm not really sure what I'll speak about or who I'll speak about it in front of, but I've always really loved public speaking. Unfortunately there's really not a career for "public speaker" unless you've done something first which makes people want to listen to what you have to say. I've been thinking about writing a book and then speaking to people about what I wrote in my book, but I don't really have any idea what direction I would go in if I did want to write a book. So there's some definite roadblocks there, but I'm still young and I have time to figure all this stuff out.

Being passionless really sucks. I've done it most of my life and I'm kind of sick of it. I thought I had a passion for awhile but that kind of fell apart. Being 20-something is fun and all, but the whole part of not knowing where you wanna be in 10 years is frustrating. Luckily I have a lot of patience, a lot of confidence, and a good head on my shoulders.

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Philosophy

I took one philosophy class in college, and I pretty much hated it. I think the reason that I hated it was because it was my first semester of college and I was this really close minded Christian kid who didn't like to hear people give their world opinions that didn't match up to mine. I thought anyone who believed in the big bang was stupid and couldn't teach me anything. That was one of the reasons I went to a Christian college, to try and avoid a lot of that stuff, so I was pretty surprised when my philosophy teacher would preach how we all came from monkeys every day. In addition to all that, the class was super boring and we were only graded on papers that were graded way too harshly, so it all added up to me just hating the class and hating philosophy in general.

Fast forward four years and I am a lot different person. My beliefs haven't changed, but my perspective on the world's beliefs has. I don't think less of a person because they believe something different than me. Honestly, I'm probably more apathetic than I should be about other people's beliefs. What they believe doesn't change what I believe, so why make a big deal about it? A lot of people, especially Christians, are way too concerned about conflicting beliefs. They'll get offended and straight up insulted by the passing glance of someone who doesn't believe in God or the Bible or what have you. The worst times are when one extra confident Christian feels high and mighty enough to try to change the beliefs of another person by force. I saw this a couple times in college.

I do think that most Christians that do this kind of stuff have good intentions in mind, the problem is that they lack any kind of tact or reasonable understanding of how the human brain works. If there was a way to prove that God existed and that everything the Bible says is true, we wouldn't be talking about this right now. As long as humans exist there will be argument about the supernatural. While most people prefer to avoid it entirely, I don't think that there's anything wrong with talking about it with someone who doesn't agree with your views. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to hear an opinion that butts heads with your own. However, that head butting can easily result in one or both parties getting really offended and hurt, which then often leads to things being said out of anger and everything just becomes a chaotic mess.

There was one time my sophomore year where someone who didn't believe in God (at least as the Bible describes Him) got into a pretty intense discussion with a pastor's kid who had been homeschooled through high school and had just recently been exposed to differing beliefs. While I don't remember it perfectly, I do remember the end result being that these two were not very good friends after that night. They were both being mature about their discussion, at least in the start of it. The atheist (or agnostic, whatever he was) was asking honest, reasonable questions about the Christian beliefs, and the Christian just wasn't answering him how he wanted to be answered, he was basically dodging the tough questions. I remember the one question was something like "so you think that since I don't believe in God, I will go to hell when I die". Christian kid, for whatever reason, was afraid to answer honestly in the affirmative. By this time I had shown up and was catching up on what was going on, so being the overconfident person I am, I stepped in to try to save myself, being a strong believer in Christianity and not wanting to made look foolish by someone else with the same beliefs as me. I simply said "yes, that is what we believe". I didn't know how the kid was going to take it, but that's what he wanted to know, so I told him. From then on I was pretty much entrenched in the conversation and I tried to do as much talking as I could to avoid my tactless teammate making me look bad. I wish I could remember more, but basically it all ended up how you'd think it would - nobody's beliefs ever changed.

While I certainly didn't have all the answers that night, I was still happy with the way I handled everything. The kid I was arguing against and I had mutual friends, and a few months later one of those friends told me how much respect I had earned by being truthful, confident, and not emitting any signs that I thought less of the person because we disagreed on the subject. The kid didn't have the same good things to say about the person he was arguing with first.

Am I tooting my own horn, yes. But I'm trying to make a point.

Changing the opinions of another person is one of the hardest things to do in life. Especially when the opinions are about things that no one can prove right or wrong. It's almost a waste of time to even try. It's happened before, and I'm not saying that Christians shouldn't try to do as the Bible says and be fishers of men, I just think most of the time they do it wrong. Nobody likes being told they're wrong. Starting with that approach is the same as challenging someone in the same shape as you to a foot race and letting them take a 30 second head start. If someone doesn't respect you, they'll never listen to you, even if you are right. Tact is key in all facets of life, and a lot of people never understand that.

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Thomas Edison's Lightbulb Test

Read this story today, think it teaches a valuable lesson:

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incandescent bulb, was an incessant inventor. When he needed to expand his staff, he employed an unusual technique for interviewing the engineers for positions on his staff. Every prospective applicant who came in for an interview was handed a light bulb. Edison then asked the engineer to determine the exact amount of water the bulb could hold.

Edison knew very well that there were two basic ways an applicant could determine the correct answer to his question.

The first, was to apply several engineering gauges and mathematical protractors to each of the complex angles of the glass bulb. Then, using a slide ruler and applying basic logarithmic formulas, the applicant could calculate the inside surface area of the light bulb which would allow him to determine the total volume of the glass bulb. This approach would take an experienced engineering applicant approximately twenty minutes to solve the answer.

The second method an applicant could use to find the answer was to remove the brass base from the bulb and then fill the bulb with water. Once the bulb was filled with water, its contents could easily be poured into a measuring cup or laboratory beaker mug to determine the exact amount of water it could hold. This method generally took less than two minutes.

Nearly all the engineers who used the first method to calculate the volume of water a light bulb could hold were politely thanked for their time and sent on their way. However, the applicants who used the second method were greeted warmly by Mr. Edison who asked, "When can you start?"

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Life's not always about impressing people with how much you know or how much you can do, sometimes it's just about getting the job done as simply as you can.

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Authenticity

Came across a quote in this Dale Carnegie book I was reading today:

"Nobody is so miserable as he who longs to be somebody and something other than the person he is in body and mind”
I've basically said that myself a few dozen times in my life, but maybe just not with such profound wording. Maybe this blog is becoming just a bullhorn for me to say the same thing in two to three times a week, but I just feel so strongly about this one general topic that it's all I can ever end up writing about. Nothing is worse than someone who lacks originality, to me at least. As far as I'm concerned we are all born with the potential for three things; three things that everyone has somewhere, three things that I believe the utilization of which go a long way to determining what kind of person you are.

1. Human ability to think originally
2. Human individuality
3. Human creativity

Those three things are really the only things that separate us from animals, or even computers in this day and age. When you long to be somebody and something other than the person you are in body and mind", you are eliminating all three of the above things. It doesn't take make much original thought to try and be someone else, nor does it take much individuality or creativity.

I don't think anybody would willingly admit or even realize that they are living their life without much originality. If someone fully realized that their life was trying to be different than the person they really have the potential to be, I think they would stop living like that immediately. It just doesn't make natural sense to not use what we've been given to become our own person. That said, it does seem like there's a shocking lack of confidence in a lot of people that really makes it tougher for them to have the desire to be themselves.

Again, I've beaten this horse to death over the last year. You don't have to conform to the typical American idea of a "successful person" to have a good life. The worst thing that you can do is live your life with no original thought, no individuality, and no creativity. If you can get those three things figured out, you're going to have a happy life and you're going to attract a lot of legitimate people, and that sounds pretty good to me.


In addition to all that, I have a huge pet peeve for people who put the word "literally" into their sentences preceding something that's not actually literal. If it's not literal, just keep that part of the sentence out.

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Unwinnable Argument

I have spent a lot of time focusing on sports in my life. From my last year of high school to my last year of college, a large amount of my free time was dedicated to studying and writing about sports. While it didn’t really get me all that much, it did teach me a few things.

One thing that has recently started to annoy me about sports and sports writers is when they criticize the fans of sports teams.

First of all, I think people that take their sports fanhood super serious are kind of pathetic. While I was guilty of being one of those people in my day, I feel like I’ve grown out of it. Sports really don’t have the power to change my mood anymore. I mean I still love sports and watch them all the time, but I definitely prioritize other things over them. That said, I do think that you should be free to care about anything as much as you want and express that care in whatever way you want without being ostracized. Okay, well I think a little bit of criticism is fair, because some people really do act dumb about sports, but at the end of the day a person should be able to live their life however they choose. It really doesn’t affect anybody but that person, so why do people get so bent out of shape about things they can’t control and things that don’t even affect them in the first place?

This goes beyond sports, which I’ll get to eventually. But let me point you to the origin of this post. My buddy Mike Waterloo is the editor of a pretty successful Pittsburgh sports news website. Mike, being the great guy that he is, will let a lot of different people contribute to the site, and unfortunately for his website, sometimes the guys that submit articles are real idiots. I give to you, exhibit A. I won’t put the dudes name on here to let him save face, but you can go read the article for yourself and formulate your own opinions before I give you mine (Disclaimer: I didn’t even read the full post, I skimmed it and read some of the comments).

If you know me, you know I’m not even a hockey/Penguins fan. In fact, in the past I did my share of bashing hockey fans, but I’ve since matured (as if by magic), and I try to just leave it alone. But this guy didn’t take that approach. This guy saw a bunch of people acting in a way that he did not approve of, and he decided to start talking all kinds of shit on them. Now again, I didn’t read the post so I’m not going to say much more about this particular instance, but it’s a nice segway into my actual point.

Isn’t it ridiculous how some people see people doing something they don’t agree with (wrong or right) and they let them shape their entire view of that group of people? I’ve had people say terrible things about me personally just because I said something about sports that they didn’t agree with. Does that make any sense at all? One slight (and completely irrelevant) difference in opinion shapes someone’s entire view of a person? Isn’t there a lot more to personality and self worth than one opinion about sports? Or entertainment, or fashion, or whatever, fill in the blank?

I think it all comes back to the fact that humans are so incredibly selfish. We hardly even think about other people, much less try to form fair opinions of them. The average person sees a stranger and wants nothing more than for that person to go away and never look at them. I’ve tried to strike up a conversation with a few people on the T going to work and I end up just laughing at how little they seemed to want to talk to me. Maybe I’m just really ugly, that might be the case, but I think a lot of people would agree that getting to know someone new is not on the priority list for the majority of Americans. That’s kind of another topic though.

My point is that people don’t respond to criticism, especially from people that they don’t know. If you tell a random person that he’s an idiot because he’s not cheering for his sports team properly and then you try to tell him how to do it differently, chances are you are only going to more firmly entrench him in his own opinion. One of my favorite quotes comes from one of my favorite authors (aka one of the 3 authors I’ve actually read from), Dale Carnegie.

”You can't win an argument. You can't because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it.”
Basically what he says in context is that if you succeed at belittling someone into getting them to agree with you, you’ve already lost because all you’ve done is damaged that other person while really not doing anything of value for yourself. I should probably post that whole paragraph from that book; maybe I’ll do that later.

What do you have to gain from convincing someone that you’re right about petty things? If you pick a fight with someone over a differing, unimportant opinion, you literally cannot win. It’s time that we grow up and realize that there are more important things to spend our time on than to try and pick petty battles just to win them and get a short term ego boost at the expense of other human beings.

Again, I’ve been a violator of this in the past. I’ve been in dozens of stupid arguments, and I’ve said some really mean things about other people in them, and I’m not proud of it. I have let my entire opinions of other people be determined from a stupid opinion, and I wish I could go back and change it, but I can’t. At least I can say that I learned my lesson and I’m getting better at it.

I wrote this post from a Laundromat, by the way.

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Forever is terrifying

I try to go to church every week, although often times I'm not very successful at that. Through my four years at Waynesburg I could never really find a church I really liked so there were a lot of weeks I didn't go at all. This summer was a bit tough to because for the first four months I was working every Sunday. But now I have a new job and I don't work weekends often and my old church now has a campus in the city, so I'm back to going regularly. The church formerly known as Pittsburgh East is now called Amplify Church and they have services in the Strip District every Sunday night at 6, I highly recommend checking it out.

Anyways, I'm not here to preach, but tonight the pastor talked a bit about heaven and eternity, two pretty common elements of Christianity. I've personally never liked thinking about eternity, because it's horrifying to me. Growing up I've seen my mom always get really excited and hopeful when talking about what happens after we die, she cannot wait to get to heaven, which is probably how I should look at it as well. But for whatever reason I just can't say I'm not scared of the concept of eternity. It doesn't make sense to me. I'll start thinking about it and then I'll shortly realize that my brain doesn't have the ability to think in that way. I can't even control my own thoughts about it, which makes me nervous.


I'm sure heaven's gonna be great, but I still try to not think about it very much. What I'm wondering now is how people that don't believe in eternity deal with life. I'm sure there are some people that don't really believe in heaven reading this right now, so don't take this like I'm criticizing you in any way, I'm just honestly confused as to how you live your life. How can you go through this life knowing that everything you'll ever do or become will just go away forever someday. How can you be okay with working some okay job and doing a bunch of really average things every day knowing that your time here is limited? Do these people just not think about it and ignore the realization of a true end to life? That is even more terrifying, and I don't understand how people can go through life like that. I've never been the kind of guy to come at people for their religious beliefs not matching up with mine, it's not my business what you believe and it would be incredibly hypocritical or me to think less of a person for what they believe. I think I've done a good job with being respectful to people thus far, and I want to let everyone know that this post isn't knocking people who think differently than me, I just simply don't understand. If you could pick what to believe (which I understand that you really can't in a lot of cases), like if you had total control of what you believe, wouldn't you choose to believe in God and heaven and eternity? Doesn't that sound a ton better than just dying and not having a soul that goes anywhere? It seems more appealing to me, but again it's largely irrelevant.

Life's short, that's one of the most overused cliche's there is, but it's true. I feel like people just go through the motions way too much. Doesn't wasting a single day here seem like a horrible idea when you step back and look at how short and irrelevant a human life can be? Yikes.

Imagine you're running and following a telephone wire to get to your final destination. You don't know where the end of it is, but you know you'll get there eventually. Now let's say that the final destination is you dying, and let's say that there are various places to stop and people to meet and talk to along the way. Would there be a stop you wouldn't quit running for? Would there be a single person you wouldn't want to meet and connect with, knowing what you know about the end of the wire? Of course not, because you know you want to squeeze every single moment out of the trip because at the end it's all over and you can't go back.

Why don't we think about life like that? Every second is just another second closer to us dying and being off of this earth, so why aren't we squeezing every little moment out of the short time we do have? Again, super cliche and probably not actually very groundbreaking stuff I'm saying here, but I thought of that analogy the other day while I was running and I figured I'd share it. So there you go.

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Squishy Lemons by Anthony Cooper

My good friend Anthony Cooper wrote this up and sent it to me, and I wanted to share it on the blog. Coop's one of the more advanced thinkers I know, so it might be kind of tough for us weaker minds to get a grasp on his advanced thought processes, but it's worth trying. For more of Cooper's genius, you can follow him on Twitter @acoop13. 

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Everyone has heard the cliche, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." Most people have also heard the alternative saying that was brought to life in the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall, "When life gives you lemons, just say fuck the lemons and bail." I'm of the opinion that there is a lot which can be gleaned from both phrases, but neither necessarily has to be followed outright.  If you are of the disposition from which following the first makes you happy, so be it. If you prefer the second, wake up and smell the roses.

Life's gifts are beautiful in the sense that they under no circumstance should be completely discarded, nor should they get in the way of what is truly important in life; happiness. It's extremely easy to get caught up making lemonade, thinking that the final product will bring a feeling of happiness.  If you are one of those lucky enough to have a job you love, then this may very well be the case. Odds are you, you aren't in that position.  I'm not saying don't try in life, I'm a pretty big proponent of doing something right if you are going to do it, just don't take yourself too seriously in your task.  If you can't step back every once and a while and laugh at yourself, or say "Ya know, this is cool and all, and I really hope it works out, but if it doesn't, I've got friends, family, and a pretty solid life that's all more important," then you run the risk of getting so emotionally involved that anything less than perfection can ruin you.  Or you just come off as a total clown ass. 

Bailing on the life and the lemons is sort of "like [the previous] one's fellow... it's sort of the exact opposite in fact of that - not an evil version but just, you know..." And what I mean by this is that happiness comes first, followed by realistic emotional implosion. It's super easy to be envious of those who don't really do much out of high school, and are having the time of their lives' rebelling against the system, ski bumming, popping molly, anything really other than real world stuff.  Sooner or later, (for most people, there are obviously exceptions to almost everything), reality is going to set in, the person in question is going to look at their socially and economically stable peers, and are going to realize the door to that room is on the other side of a marathon.  

The point I'm trying to get at, is "when life gives you lemons, jump up and down on them and listen to the squishy sound they make, and laugh," because life is too short to take yourself too seriously. Appreciate the gifts life throw's your way, make something of them, but at the end of the day, make sure you are able to look back on what you've done and smile, "don't be no cloud on a sunny day."

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Rescripting

This is another post inspired by the book I'm currently reading, The Seven Characteristics of Highly Effective People. Spoiler alert, the second habit in this book is "begin with the end in mind", although what I want to talk about doesn't directly fall under that umbrella.

What I'm writing about tonight is what Covey calls rescripting, which doesn't really tell you much. A huge part of what this book tries to impress on its readers is the presence and impact of paradigms and paradigm shifts.

Paradigm: a theory or a group of ideas about how something should be done, made, or thought about

Relate that to a theory or group of ideas on your life and how you have been living it. Everyone has their own idea about how life should be lived and how they will live their own lives. A lot of times people know how they should live their lives, but they choose to live them other ways for a variety of reasons. I also see people who really never think about they live their life, they kind of just do it. They have no end goals in mind, so there's really no reason for them to gather a plan to try and get there. They just do whatever they feel like in the moment and don't consider its implications on the future. If you're one of those people, then this post probably won't do much for you.

What we're talking about is rescripting our theories and views our lives and how we should be living them. It requires a ton of self awareness, which is not an easy thing to have at times. Not a lot of people can say that they have the ability to consistently take a step back from themselves and look at their actions, thoughts, and responses and evaluate them fairly. When was the last time you looked back at something you did and realized that it was the incorrect response, and that you would have been much better served reacting a different way. When was the last time you looked a life value or view in general and evaluated it objectively? We don't do that very often, do we? We get so hung up in the constant motion of life and the ever ticking clock to ever really even consider the possibility of evaluating ourselves.

It's not that we think that we're good enough or that we can't improve, it's that our minds never travel to the place where we even think about those types of things. I'm speaking to myself more than anyone here. Self evaluation is uncommon, and just another huge tool that we don't take advantage of.

Can you imagine a person that was constantly evaluating his actions, responses, values, opinions, and beliefs? Can you imagine a person that did that and always knew how to change them for the better? How much more effective would that person be? That person would constantly be getting better and more successful in every way. Can you argue that? I don't think you can.

So why don't we try it? Why don't we have that presence of mind to evaluate our presence of mind? It's weird isn't it? Have you ever thought about yourself like this? I don't think I have, and I think I can improve a ton in all facets of life if I utilized this ability better.

Humans are remarkable creatures. God gave us the ability to think and reason so we can become extraordinary beings, but we consistently choose to leave the ability on the shelf so we can continue to live mediocre lives.

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Confidence

It's really hard to get to know a person, and I think that's both a good thing and a bad thing. On the one hand, it would be really lame to talk to someone for a couple hours and then know everything about them. It would be boring and there would be less reason to continue to pursue relationships with said person. On the other hand, it kind of sucks that you really can't gauge much of anything until you're really comfortable with the other person. I wish it was easier to tell what a person is really like the first time spending time with them. Maybe not completely, but just more.

I think the main reason for all that is the general lack of confidence people have. We live with ourselves everyday, we see the good and we see the bad. But for some reason, our minds automatically focus more on the bad than on the good. If you hear a person talk about themselves honestly, it'll almost always come out more negative than positive, regardless of the person. Humans these days naturally have a lack of confidence and self esteem. That translates into them coming off as boring, bland people when they first talk to new people. I would say that I think this is more true in females than males, but I can't say that for sure because I spend a lot more time trying to figure out what girls are like than what guys are like.

I've been on my fair share of first dates and none of them have been spectacular. They've all been at least a little bit awkward (although I think I do a fantastic job at keeping interesting conversation flowing and avoiding most awkward situations), and the girl has always seemed a bit on the boring side to me. In most cases I have gone on to realize that the girl really wasn't how she seemed, she was just nervous and a bit scared to show her real self because of the lack of comfortability with me. That's completely understandable and probably happens with most everybody. If two people don't know each other and aren't comfortable around each other, there's no way for the true personality to come out.

There are just times when I wish that people could always be comfortable with other people and you could really judge a potential relationship based on its first impression. Again, that would create a shallow base to the relationship and would surely make the rest of the relationship far less interesting. It's good both ways and bad both ways, just kind of one of those things.

I do think that there is a difference between being uncomfortable and being unconfident. Being uncomfortable is natural, being unconfident is unnatural (at least in my eyes it is). Imagine if we could see all the positive traits and only the positive traits we have. Imagine if we looked at negative traits ONLY in terms of how we can improve them. What reason would we ever have to not be confident? What if we came into every new relationship without worrying about the other person thinking negatively about us? What if all the shields were down, because you fully realized that you didn't need them? How much better would that make your day-to-day interactions, and your relationships in general? I think that's how God naturally intended humans to be. I could be wrong about that, but that's how I feel.

For whatever reason, we have fallen so far away from loving ourselves that the majority of the thoughts we have about ourselves are negative and destructive, which holds us back infinitely more than any flaw we could ever have.

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Life Fairness

I've recently become interested in "remarkable human beings", like people that live really interesting/impressive lives and do really interesting/impressive things. So just now I googled and found this website. I didn't get past the first article before I wanted to stop and write a blog post, so here it goes.

Depending on when you are reading this, you'll see the first article on the site is about a 17 year old kid. You can read the full article here, but the jist of it is that this kid started working on a prosthetic arm when he was 14 years old and now he finished it and got to show it off to President Obama at the White House. Oh, and he also got hired on by NASA to work on a robotics team. Dude's 17, not even old enough to buy a lighter at a gas station.

Now here's my question. Is that inspiring or is it depressing? Sure, the kid put a ton of work into it and taught himself pretty much everything he needed to know to accomplish that, but it seems, at leas to me, that most of his success came naturally. What kind of 14 year old has the brain to even want to do something like that, much less have the ability to do it. You can praise the kid all day, but most of that skill and brain power he can't really take credit for.

I'm sure what I just said is true for most remarkable people, and it goes the opposite way as well. Some people just aren't born with the ability to go very far in life. It's just a fact of existence. It's not fair. Some people are born with so much more ability and potential than other people who are in the same situation.

Despite what you may think, I'm not going to segway all of this into some inspirational 'work hard with what you have and you'll be successful' schpiel (is that a real word or can I just not find the correct way to spell it?). I'm just making an observation really. Some people are born with big time advantages and some are born with big time disadvantages, and there's little that anybody can do to combat that.

I suppose it all comes down to finding a way to love yourself and to be happy with yourself. Comparing yourself to others is a dangerous game. If you live your life trying to match up to 17 year prosthetic arm guy, you're probably not going to be very confident about yourself and that'll slowly start to kill any chance you at reaching whatever potential you have. You can't really go anywhere in life until you're cool with who you are and comfortable in your own skin. I've never had any self-confidence issues which I am extremely grateful for. A lot of people have thought that I'm a cocky asshole in my life, but that's their problem and not mine. What you lack in natural ability, try to make up for with confidence (true of false confidence, either of them works). It's not really easy to do, but if you can figure it out it'll sure help you out a bunch.

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Viktor Frankl

This post piggy backs my last post about what I've been noticing about humans and the impact of our attitudes. You can read that post here.

The name in the title of the post is the name of a man that who had just about as tragic of a life as you can imagine. He and his family were imprisoned during the holocaust in Nazi Germany. I read about him while reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I don't really see a point in re-summarizing the story, so here's a quote from the book written by Stephen Covey himself:

Frankl was a determinist raised in the tradition of Freudian psychology, which postulates that whatever happens to you as a child shapes your character and personality and basically governs your whole life. The limits and parameters of your life are set, and, basically, you can’t do much about it.

Frankl was also a psychiatrist and a Jew. He was imprisoned in the death camps of Nazi Germany, where he experienced things that were so repugnant to our sense of decency that we shudder to even repeat them.

His parents, his brother, and his wife died in the camps or were sent to the gas ovens. Except for his sister, his entire family perished. Frankl himself suffered torture and innumerable indignities, never knowing from one moment to the next if his path would lead to the ovens or if he would be among the “saved” who would remove the bodies or shovel out the ashes of those so fated.

One day, naked and alone in a small room, he began to become aware of what he later called “the last of the human freedoms” – the freedom his Nazi captors could not take away. They could control his entire environment, they could do what they wanted to his body, but Victor Frankl himself was a self-aware being who could look as an observer at his very involvement. His basic identity was intact. He could decide within himself how all of this was going to affect him. Between what happened to him, or the stimulus, and his response to it, was his freedom or power to choose that response.

In the midst of his experiences, Frankl would project himself into different circumstances, such as lecturing to his students after his release from the death camps. He would describe himself in the classroom, in his mind’s eye, and give his students the lessons he was learning during his very torture.

Through a series of such disciplines – mental, emotional, and moral, principally using memory and imagination – he exercised his small, embryonic freedom until it grew larger and larger, until he had more freedom than his Nazi captors. They had more liberty, more options to choose from in their environment; but he had more freedom, more internal power to exercise his options. He became an inspiration to those around him, even to some of the guards. He helped others find meaning in their suffering and dignity in their prison existence.

In the midst of the most degrading circumstances imaginable, Franki used the human endowment of self-awareness to discover a fundamental principle about the nature of man: Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.

I'm not sure if I have too much to add to that story, I just thought it was pretty cool that I read that story a day after I wrote the post I did yesterday. Total different scopes too. I mean if this guy can have that kind of willpower and control of himself and his situation in that situation, how can any of us feel justified in not being able to control ourselves and make the best out of such petty situations that get us upset everyday.

The point I'm trying to make isn't the same old "other people have it a lot worse, suck it up" story either. This isn't a "don't be a shitty person" post, it's a "look how much less shitty you could be and how easy it is" post. Viktor understood how much better exercising his innate human endowments could make even the worst of life's problems. We have self-awareness, which a lot of people choose to not utilize, we have imagination, which a lot of people suppress for infantile reasons, we have conscience, which a lot of people will do anything to ignore, and we have independent will, which a lot of people never take advantage of because they let themselves get so firmly entrenched in natural conditioning and expected response.

Long story short, find a reason to be happy, find something that gives you a chance to stand out, and never let a bad or ignorant attitude ruin something that could be great.

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Attitude is Everything

My good friend Anthony Cooper sent me a link to this blog post the other day and it really had an effect on me. The blog author didn't write it, it's actually a graduation speech given by a man named David Foster Wallace. It's a pretty lengthy post, so I'm sure that most of you won't bother to read it, but if you have like ten minutes I promise it's really worth your time. For now I'm going to summarize it and then share some of my thoughts.

The bulk of the article, or at least the part that I liked the most, talked all about human attitude and how a simple change in outlook can have such a deep and far stretching impact. In the speech, Foster set up a situation in which an average American person works a standard 9-5 shift at his white-collar desk job and then has to deal with the frustrations of traffic jams, supermarket lines, and the selfishness and overall annoyance of other people around them. It's a common situation that we all have been through in the past, and that we will all have to continue dealing with as we grow up. The question is not of the situation, however, it is the reaction to the situation.

Are you the kind of person that gets really frustrated with petty things like this? Does someone cutting you off in traffic or a simple task taking longer than it should clearly affect your mood and attitude? Think about this stuff. Look back to a time you've been frustrated or angry in the past week, and try to figure out why you felt that way. Was the situation worth getting worked up about? Did it have any far-reaching impact on your life? My guess is, probably not. I would also venture a guess to say that your attitude made said situation much worse, not only for yourself, but probably for some of the people around as well.

Humans seem to me to be conditioned to get in this robotic state of mind in most situations that present themselves. There is a lot of repetition, a lot of monotony, and a lot of really dull hours in life. That is not going to change, you can't control it. What you can control is allowing personal growth in these situations. In my experience, humans rarely seem to strive for general, personal improvement, especially people under the age of 25, which is who I've spent most of my time around in my life. We want to be successful, we want to feel valued and important, but we tend to not realize that there is rarely a time when we are unable to get closer to reaching those goals. Focusing on being a better person in the dull moments of life can make a huge impact. Not only will it make your everyday experiences better for you and everyone around, it will ultimately make you a more attractive person, a more successful person, and a much happier person.

One huge way that I think we can become more well-rounded people is by interacting with people around us, even if they are strangers. I've been riding the T (it's like a subway) to work since I moved to the city, and I can honestly say that I would rather take the 20 minute commute to talk to a stranger rather than reading a book or listening to music or playing games on my phone. I haven't had much success in doing so, because most people put off this aura that you trying to make a conversation with them would be the worst thing that could possibly happen. I'm sure people aren't really like that (well not all of them at least), and I'm sure I have left that impression on someone in the past as well. Just imagine how much more you can gain from having a real conversation with another human being than entertaining yourself with music or games or what have you.

I always go into these posts with a bunch of thoughts but no real structure for them, I'll just start writing and I usually end up somewhere I didn't really see myself going. So yeah, I'd love to hear opinions from other people.

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First Year in the Real World

So over the last four months I have graduated from college, acquired a full time job, and moved out of my parents house for good. I am approaching the one week mark of being on my own (with two roommates), and I gotta say doing all of this real life stuff makes you think about a whole lot of things.

I've always heard that the first couple years out of college are awkward, scary, overwhelming, and kind of depressing. I've always been confident enough to think that every year of my life is going to be fantastic and everything will just keep getting better and better and better until I die on top of the world. That sounds ridiculous but honestly I think that's how my mind has been working the last 22 years.

However tonight I come to this blog post to admit that I am starting to realize that I was wrong. It took me all of 4 months in the real world to be knocked off my soap box. Don't get me wrong, I still think I'm pretty great and I'm looking forward to where my life ends up, because I'm still pretty confident that it's going to be pretty great, but my morale curve has definitely been on a downward slope this year. It probably all started after I began working 40 hours a week doing something I really never wanted to do in the first place. Then the whole thing about not being around people as much (at least people in your same social classification) which means that you just have more time alone to start talking to yourself more than you talk to anyone else. That might be preferable to some people, but I really do think that's been the worst part about being out of school.

I've talked about this before, I honestly feel like I can put up with pretty much anything that life throws at me as long as I have people that I like around me all the time. And I'm not really even talking about just two or three people, I've always liked to have bigger groups of friends. Right now I'm living in Pittsburgh where I don't have that, and if I said it's not hard I'd be lying.

I also think that being in your mid 20's is tougher for single people, because it's really a challenge to meet a lot of different people when you're working full time. Plus it seems like 90% of the people you see out in public are way older than you. I guess that's not too far off from being true mathematically since I'm still in the first third of my life. I haven't had a girlfriend in almost three years now and I definitely think that's been the best way for me to go. There weren't more than a few days those last 3 years that I've even had the desire to have a girlfriend, but again, once you get out of college things start changing. I'm not saying I'm signing up for christianmingle.com or anything, but it's just another example of how weird things are right now. I suppose being this age isn't as strange for people that are engaged/married already, but I kind of think that they're at a disadvantage there. I've only seen one side of it, but being married right out of college still seems silly to me. I think everyone should have to be poor, confused, and borderline depressed for a bit of time in their life, just to get the gratification of getting out of it.

Anyways this was just a bunch of scrambled thoughts; probably one of my worst blog posts, but maybe it's a base for me to try and extrapolate in the future.

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Average American Jealousy

I get a real kick out of my fellow middle classers and their reactions to the upper-upper/celebrity class. Just a fact of life of life is that we are basically all of the same mental and physical capability when are born. Where things go in the 80 years following that is where it gets real interesting.

People get famous for good reasons, people get famous for bad reasons, people get famous for no reason at all. That's just a part of life. And naturally, all people want to be rich and famous. I used to think that there were exceptions to that statement, but honestly now I'm not so sure. I'm pretty sure that everyone deep down inside really wants everyone to know who they are and really like them. Obviously, for the vast majority of people that doesn't happen.

So where do we normal people turn to work out our hidden or not so hidden jealousy? Well I basically don't know a single thing about anything that happened before like the year 2000, but today it seems that we turn to social media. We turn to social media for a lot of things, don't we? You could talk about that one for awhile... but for now I'll keep it to this topic.

All I see everyday on my Twitter feed is people questioning and criticizing people that are more rich and famous than they are. People that they will never have a personal relationship with, people that they will never actually know anything about. Given, it does not take much of a brain or much of a respect-deserving persona to get famous in today's world, but that doesn't change the fact that it's pretty sad when you dedicate so much of your brain power to trying to criticize people that are so far (societally) above you when all the while you know that a) they'll never hear you and b) they'll never give a shit what you think.

Miley Cyrus got torn apart on Twitter tonight for whatever music/video awards thing is going on. In a democratical (totally not a word) society, that would result in her total worth going down and her having to work a little bit harder to conform more to what the majority of people want from her. But guess what? We aren't a democratical (even more not a word the second time) society. I'm not saying it's right or fair that Miley Cyrus is really famous and rich, but I'm not going to dispute the facts either. Does me sitting here thinking how much better I am than some celebrity actually help me in life? No, it actually does quite the opposite.

Probably the best practice in life would be to just completely ignore that entire scene. Miley Cyrus being an ugly tramp with like 4 brain cells left isn't going to make her any less successful and you thinking she sucks isn't going to make you any more successful. Good for you for having a brain, but you're still wasting your time even formulating an opinion on her.

I've always felt that living your life even remotely through another human being (no matter who it is) is the worst thing you can do. In life you can control one thing, and that is your actions and your reactions. Stick to that. Don't try to control things you can't control, because you're just wasting time, and time is the one thing you can't ever get more of.

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Entitlement and Idolatry

The more you deal with people in the world the more you realize how kind of shitty they can be. I'm trying to not come off like I think I'm a really good guy who nobody could ever complain about, but that's probably what's going to happen.

I'm guessing that most people that get complained about a lot don't feel that they should be getting complained about. You would think that if a person realized that people didn't care for how they acted, they would try to change the stuff about them that people don't like. I mean the logic of that makes sense, doesn't it? But I don't feel like that's how it actually works. I think humans are too naturally full of themselves to ever even CONSIDER that they could be a better person. Maybe it's time we all take a step backwards and try to figure something out about ourselves that we could change to make other people like us more. I don't know, maybe I'm crazy.

That wasn't even really the point of all this though...

I continue to notice that people feel extremely entitled to things. I'm included in this too. Everyone complains about every little thing they don't like in their life as if they feel they should never have to deal with something they don't want to. The vast majority of people I work with are in their first job like I am, and it's crazy to me about how much they complain about it. Like sure, it's not the greatest job in the world, but you accepted it knowing what it was. It's your first job, why would you expect everything to be tailored to exactly how you want it to be? Nobody realizes how small they are. There's how many people in the world competing for things and everyone wants the prizes without the work. Frustrating.

The last thing I'm on today is how people seem to dedicate huge parts of their lives to watching other people's lives. I understand why sports are so big in America, I've been a huge sports guy my whole life. The last year or so I have been falling away from some of that though, because I sit back and see people tweet and talk everyday about sports and athletes as if it's actually influential on their own life. We all want to be one of the people that everyone talks about, and we can't all be one of those people, but I don't understand why normal people invest so much in other people that they don't even know. What does knowing everything about a professional athlete get you? When I was real into sports I tried to use them to make a name for myself instead of just trying to glorify other people. Now that I'm out of it, I'm really not into following sports as much. I have my own life and I want that life to be about my life and the people close to me, not about some person that will never know my name.

I guess this blog is kind of just me complaining about stuff I don't like... but whatever it's better than just keeping it all in my head.

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"Haters"

So I think I've talked about this before on here... but nobody actually reads this blog consistently and this is something that I myself find really interesting so I'm just gonna do it again.

Everyone always says that you should just ignore the "haters" and just do your own thing. I could sit here and explain it all day but you all get it. Ignoring disapproval is a big deal these days. And I don't disagree with that at all, I've dealt with my share of criticism and whatnot, but I'm gonna bring in another way to look at it.

Despite what everyone says, the approval of other people is absolutely important. One of the biggest desires human beings have is the desire to be respected and liked, there's no getting around it, it's a fact. So when someone adamantly demands that they don't care what other people think, I honestly don't really believe them.

If I do something and a few people criticize me for it, I'm upset. I have a human desire to please other people and make other people agree with the things I do and say. Maybe there's a few exceptions, but not many. I just see so many people trying to convince everybody around them that they don't care about what other people say or think, and I don't buy it.

So the point I'm trying to get at is that I wish people would be more open minded. If you do something and there are a few people that are like that was a dumb thing to do, how about stepping back and giving their opinion a chance? What if they're right? They aren't always going to be right, but sometimes they will be. Human instinct is to immediately throw up a blockade when someone tries to criticize you, but that doesn't do much for your self-improvement, does it? Other people's opinions matter, and we don't realize that.

God forbid that you would ever do something wrong or stupid. I understand that it takes a lot for a person to realize that they did something wrong, but life would be a lot better if we had a more widespread view of things, because maybe we'd end up actually agreeing with the "haters" and start doing something positive with our decisions.

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Superbad Inspired

Watching Superbad right now, because everyone should watch Superbad at least once a month. Anyways there's this one line that made me think about some stuff...



"Is this about some girl man? Who gives a f*** she's a f***in girl, what are you gonna do, go out with her for 2 years? ... next time you're pissed off about something, don't keep it inside for 10 years say it like a f***in man."

As ridiculous as of a movie it is to quote, the statement from a young, fat Jonah Keri holds some weight.

I've been through 21 years of the majority of my friends being unmarried. Shit, it's too late for me to set this up all nicely and whatnot. So let me just say this. Dating girls before you're out of college honestly seems like a waste of time to me. Now I'm not for a second claiming this as true for everybody, because I understand there are dozens of scenarios that can happen to make different opinions formulate.

There are exceptions, some girls are really cool and your friends will be all about hanging out with them and stuff, but honestly that's the rarity and not the normality. In my experience, the majority of the time, when one of my friends gets a girlfriend, I never become actual friends with that girl, she just takes away from my friendship with that friend. Again, there have been exceptions (Corey, Markie if you are reading this, you guys are the lone exception I'm referring to).

What I'm trying to get at it is that most of the relationships school-aged kids get into end up, in the end, hurting the people in that relationship. You get further away from your real friends and sometimes you never actually get that real friendship back.

Guys never 'break up' with other guys. If you become friends with another dude, you pretty much stay friends with that other dude. For me personally, I've never actually stopped being friends with another guy that I've been good friends before. I have fallen out of contact with another friend (Brandon Franks), but I've never grown any resent for another one of my guy friends. That's what's nice about being a guy I guess, we aren't too emotional and we forget shit easily... it's easy for us.

So I guess the point I am trying to arrive at is while you're below the age of like 22, it's best to not worry so much about girls and just worry about having as much fun as possible with your boys... because there's no risk there. You have the rest of your life to find a wife or whatever... you only have 22 give or take 3 years to have very small responsibility years to live it up.

I'm sure this post isn't actually reaching anybody in the desired age group... but I stated my peace anyways. Later.

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Post from the real world

So it's my first real life weekend. I went through more than 21 years of my life without ever working for more than like 30 hours a week consistently and last week I graduated and started my full time job as a Proactive Monitoring and Response Center Technician for Remote Database Administration Experts in Pittsburgh - heck of a title, I know, thanks for noticing.

Anyways, finals week and senior week and graduation day was pretty much as expected, and nobody really cares about that stuff anyway so I'll save you the details. What I really want to write about in this post is something that I was reassured of in my first week of working in the real world. Everyone always talks about how important it is to find a career that you can have fun in, because you are really going to be heading down a bad road if you dread the thing you did for like 30% of your life.

I really think that the welfare of your everyday life depends more on your personality than any actual thing you get yourself into. You could have some crappy job that requires work that you really don't like to do, but you could still enjoy going into work because the interaction with other people is enjoyable. For me, at least, I can pretty much get through anything as long as there are other people around who are willing to talk and joke around. Maybe that isn't true for everyone, but that fact alone makes me confident that I'm never going to dread going to work. Obviously there are certain jobs that could suck real bad regardless, but in my line of work I'm not at all worried about hating my job ever.

In addition to that, I want to say that it would really suck to be a person with no personality. That must be hell. Going through life never making anybody laugh or having people not really liking to have you around. I mean I might be describing myself with that, but ignorance is bliss so don't tell me if that actually is true.

I guess my advice to anyone reading this is if you have a crappy personality, get a better one, it'll make real life a lot more fun.

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Sneezing

This will be a quick post, but I have to say something.

You know how people say "God Bless You" or other variations when we sneeze? That all came from way back when people thought sneezing meant you had demons in you, so they would say things to try and get the demons out, right? So now let me ask - why the hell do we still say it? It's pretty apparent that sneezing doesn't mean a person is possessed, right? If you do believe that, please, do all you can to get the demon out of me, but otherwise you don't need to say anything.

What's the difference between sneezing and say, hiccuping? Burping? Flatulating? People aren't expected to say things to us after we do any of those things, but it's almost rude to not say something after a sneeze.

Just another example of things that we do everyday that don't make any sense, and yet people never question them.

God bless you.

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Computer Lab Thoughts

I've got like 10 minutes before class, but there have been a couple things that have happened today that I feel like writing about.

First of all let me reiterate what I have said in the past. While we as humans do not want to believe this is true, it remains something that far too few people understand. People generally care only about themselves. While some are better at faking it than others, most people are primarily conscious of their own lives, and the only reason they'd really have an interest in your life is if you can do something to help them. That's human nature, and there is no reason to be upset about it. In fact, you can use such knowledge for your own good, but people fail to do so because they fail to realize how to take advantage of it. Nobody likes the guy who takes every opportunity he gets to talk about himself. He's that guy that challenges everything you do and say, trying to make himself appear superior. If dude would just realize that his attempts are only painting a negative picture of himself in the eyes of everyone he encounters, he could change his ways and start taking advantage of people that are like himself to get ahead.

See, I've learned in college that the best way to get ahead is to convince people to help you get ahead. You can't do everything by yourself, you need help. How do you get people to help you? Show an interest in them, play to their ego and do your best to convince them that they actually are more important than you, and then they'll be more than happy to help your inferior ass with whatever you're looking for help in. Belittling someone may make you feel better about yourself for a short time, but it's never a good thing to have someone resent you. The person who is liked and respected by his peers is the person who gets ahead, and stays ahead.

The other thing I want to say is that if you're like a 5th string player on a football team who wins a share of a crappy division 3 conference championship, it's questionable at best to be proud enough of your accomplishment to where you wear your championship ring around campus. But hey, different strokes for different folks. Whatever makes it easier for you to sleep at night, right?

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For the thrill of it

It has been far too long since I've written on here, and I can say I've got quite a bit to say this morning.

Let me start with some good news. Last week I was offered a full-time job as an entry-level database administrator. The job is in the North Shore of Pittsburgh, an absolutely perfect location for me, and I am very excited about starting work there and seeing how far I can go. Now that's a good story right? A college kid getting starting a full-time job in his field days after he receives his diploma? Sure it is. What I'm about to tell you is probably going to make that story much less inspiring.

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People always say that if you work really hard, you can be successful, but you have to work really hard. Well I've never really worked hard at much of anything in my life, especially school. And look at me now, one of the only Waynesburg University seniors with a full-time job offer before graduation. People that busted their ass for 4 years of college and have been on the Dean's List every semester don't have jobs. I half-assed assignments, skipped classes, made more jokes than correct answers in discussion, and I'm doing just fine, in fact I'm doing better than almost every else around me. I can attribute that to my major, frankly there are a ton of jobs and anybody with a degree and the ability to communicate effectively can get a job right out of school (there just aren't a whole lot of people that can do that). If I were a bio-chem major or whatever and I didn't work really hard in school, I might not be doing as well. But for now I'm here to say that you don't always have to work really hard to get somewhere in life. It's certainly beneficial to put in the work, but not always completely necessary. I say pick the things that you know will have a direct impact on your future, and work really hard on those things. There's no need to waste entire weekends on research papers for general education classes, just get them done and don't worry about getting A's on everything. Enjoy your time in college and learn to deal with people, because those skills are infinitely more important than knowing how to balance a chemical equation or derive a function in 3-dimensional space.

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The rest of this has to deal with romantic relationships, because I just keep getting more and more ideas about those things. Let me drop a disclaimer in here and say that I fully realize that someone that's not in a relationship and hasn't been in one may not have the most objective views of things. Relationships are driven by emotion, so taking advice about them from someone that hasn't experienced that emotion in a good amount of time probably isn't in your best interest. So just consider this me giving my opinion; I'm not pushing it on anybody. This opinion could change very quickly - I do realize that.

Through high school and college you see more dysfunctional relationships than you see functional ones. That's because our generation is maturing very slowly and we let emotions put a big nasty cloud over a beautiful little thing that is logic and reason. People stay in abusive relationships, they put up with being cheated on, and more crap like that. Then they want people to feel bad for them for being treated poorly. Here's my theory. You only deserve what you choose to put up with. If you don't value yourself enough to get out of a relationship that isn't treating you well, then maybe you don't actually deserve to be treated well. Is that ridiculous? Nah.

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Lots of people have been getting engaged recently around Waynesburg. That's expected, since this our last semester here and people are going to move away from here, where they've been living for four years. People fall in love with other people I guess... I don't know I wouldn't know anything about that. But when they do, they want nothing but to be with that person for the rest of their life. That's good, I have no problem with that at all. What I don't really understand is the apparent rush that everybody feels to get a ring on the girl's finger. What's so bad about dating for a few years until both of you are out of school and have jobs and can actually start thinking about paying back some student loans before being bombarded with the cost of a wedding and everything that goes with it? I suppose you can be engaged for awhile without having to actually get married, but I feel like not a lot of people do that. There's a couple here where the girl is a junior and the guy is a sophomore, and they just got engaged. That seems ridiculous. At least wait until ONE of you is close to graduating or whatever. Anyways I'll just quit talking, because again I'm not in the position to accurately judge this, and I'll probably just end up pissing off someone who is engaged and in college and reading this. If you are one of those people, just take this opportunity to belittle me in your head and feel above me.

Okay time to go to 24th to last college class ever.

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Sports Idolatry

This isn't really going along with the Pirates life lessons thing, but it really could if I wanted it to.

I'm just going to get straight into it. When you step back and look at Americans and sports it's really not far off from straight up idolatry. Skipping all of the basic ideas that are probably obvious just from that sentence, let me say this.

Doesn't getting happiness or sadness from things that people you don't know do seem wrong? Shouldn't the large majority of your life's time and emotions be about things you do, or things the people that you love do? How did we get to the point where people live to watch other people do things? What does a Pittsburgh Penguin Stanley Cup get any of their fans? Sure, they can be proud of seeing a team that they consistently support beat out all the teams that other fans support, there is some element of warranted pride there, but Americans have taken it entirely too far. Sidney Crosby winning the MVP or whatever they call that award in hockey doesn't help you get good grades, a good job, more friends, more money, or anything. All it does is provide a short term happy feeling that doesn't really get you anywhere.

I understand sports and being a fan of sports, I've been doing it all my life. That said, imagine how much better off we'd be if we took some of the time we dedicate to sports and dedicate to something more productive? What if I would have learned a bunch of stuff about computer science instead of spending the first 21 years of my life worrying about the things the Pirates did? Sure, the Pirates stuff got my name out there, and I'll probably reap some benefits of that for years to come, but honestly if I would have focused more on computer stuff the last four years I would probably be on the fast track to having a very successful and wealthy life (not that I'm just in all this for the money... although, hold up, yeah I kind of am).

The fact is that we become more passionate about things that other people do than what we do, and that holds us back. Sure, a 6'8'' LeBron James having a 40 inch vertical leap is definitely more interesting than being able to program a computer or manage a database, I'd rather spend more of my time working on me than worrying about people I'll never have a relationship with.

It really all comes down to the fact that the easier life gets, the worse we are at it.

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Pirates Life Lessons - Chapter 1

I have lived to see 23 different years, so my life is like 28% complete. The whole school thing has stopped me from doing too much with my life, but I'm hoping that changes in a hurry now that graduation is just weeks away. Anyways, the first 28% of my life has been filled with a lot of sports stuff and a lot of attempts to be funny. It has also involved me trying to establish myself as an individual, someone who doesn't think like, act like, or talk like most of the people around me. You guys can be the judge on how I've done at that.

I dedicated a huge part of my college life to writing and talking about the Pittsburgh Pirates, which I can't say was a bad idea, although it didn't turn out the way I had originally hoped it would, but I'm okay with that. For right now, I'm done with that being a main focus in my life and I'm moving on to try and make a name for myself in another field. Despite that, the Pirates will always be a big part of my youth, and I can say that I've learned a lot from being a fan of the team. I want to share some of that with everyone who is wiling to read in a two to thirty-seven post series called "Pirates Life Lessons".

There's no doubt that this is a good idea. However, what I should probably do is stop right here and plan things out so it has some kind of flow and progression to it, but that's not really how I like to do my writing, especially in this non-formal blog. I'm just going to let the unorganized ideas in my mind spill out and see what we end up with. So here goes PART 1.

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While there are a ton of small lessons I can say I've learned (or at least those ideas have been reenforced) from baseball, I think there are one or two that really come through stronger than the rest. The one I'm thinking about right now is the simple fact that life isn't all about being better than the people around you. Over the last 20 years, the Pirates haven't been better than anybody, I mean they have been brutal. But guess what? The Pirates still have fans. They are still in business. I understand that the reason that are still in business is because they are making money and because you don't have to put a winning team on the field to make money in sports, but that's beside the point.

I am probably the least competitive guy I know. Growing up, all my friends and fellow classmates have been so serious about winning every little thing they get into, regardless of its meaningfulness. There really hasn't been a game or competition that I can name in my life that I've been so serious about that I let it get to the point where it changed my mood for more than a matter of minutes. I get over things quickly, and it's easy to get over things that you don't really care about in the first place. Priorities are a big part of life, and a lot of people get held up because their priorities are out of wack.

Being a Pirate fan isn't easy. While I've always wanted to see the team win, I've never gotten to the point where I needed to see the team win to make the experience worthwhile. It's not that I've ever had some special hope that the team will turn it around, it's just that I've never really cared how they ended up doing, I just liked the team because it was a different thing to like, and the game itself interested me. I could be an "expert" about a professional sports team, because nobody else my age really gave them too much of a second thought. Life's easier without expectation or hope for something big. That's an awful way to live in certain facets of life, but it works out quite well in sports. The word "apathy" usually has a negative connotation, but if you apply it to the right parts of life, it can be a beautiful thing.

For example, I play tennis at Waynesburg University. I do it because there's literally nothing else to do in the town of Waynesburg and I get all kinds of free stuff for playing. My lack of a competitive drive probably would have hurt me in a lot of sports, but it really helped me in tennis. I came in not caring if I won or lost any match I played, which helped me to stay relaxed and not think too much, which has led to me having a crisp 28-10 record heading into my senior season, which is actually the highest winning percentage for any Waynesburg tennis player since at least 1980 (apparently Waynesburg didn't record much of anything before 1980).

Being a legitimate fan of a team that hasn't won since 1992 is an incredibly telling thing. In my eyes that means you're personality is deep, you care about the finer things in life, and you have one crazy sense of patience. Caring about the Pirates because you have hope that they'll someday win is a noble trait, and sometimes I envy it. But that leads to disappointment. Not really caring about the Pirates results and just following the team for the non-conditional fun and personal gain out of it is the way to go.

I'm gonna stop here for now.

Pirates Life Lesson Number 1: If implemented correctly, apathy can be a beautiful thing.

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Prerequisites for Enjoyment

College teaches you a lot of things, going to a really small college in a really crappy town probably teaches you more than the average college does. One thing I've learned in my four years here at Waynesburg University is that enjoyability of life isn't about where you are or where you're going or what you're doing, it's all about the people around you.

People, including myself, complain about the town of Waynesburg a lot. There's very little here. The buildings are ugly, the air is dirty, the townies are disgusting; trust me there's no reason that anybody should ever want to live here. But guess what, none of that stuff should have anything to do with how much Waynesburg students enjoy their time in college. They say college is the four best years of your life, and while I can't vouch for that right now, I can certainly see a scenario where that is true, although I think it's more true for people who never do very well in life, and I don't plan on making that the case for myself. Anyways...

It doesn't matter where you are, if you have good, funny, creative, smart people around you, you're going to enjoy yourself. There are some people that I know that I can literally stand in a lunch line with for 15 minutes and have those 15 minutes be the best 15 minutes of my day, while everyone else around me is upset and moping because they have to wait to get their food. I think the younger generation has lost the ability to genuinely enjoy a conversation. I'm not saying that you have to be talking about anything specific, the conversation can be at a 5th grade intelligence level and it can still be very well worth the time. Just talk to people, make jokes, think about things you don't normally think about. Be different. What excuse do you have for not having fun every day of your life? You don't have one. You don't have to be on vacation to have fun. Right now I'm nearing employment in a field that I've never been all that excited about. I'm doing it because I know I can get a job and I'll get paid well for that job. But I'm not worried about it not being the most exciting work because I know that I can make a good time out of pretty much anything.

I think people would go a lot further in life if they could figure out how to enjoy things that they don't naturally enjoy, and that all starts with their brain. If you're original and smart enough to enjoy life no matter where you're at, you're going to be successful, there's no way around it.

All of this is easier said than done, every day at Waynesburg I walk past dozens of people who really just don't seem to have the mental depth to do any of the things I've just described. I don't know what to tell those people besides like go read a book or watch a PBS documentary, I'm just glad I'm not one of those people.

Anyways, more to come this week on this blog, I hope.

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Think

Have you ever stopped to think about how you think? Because it seems to me that a lot of people don't do much thinking at all. It's becoming common practice for a person to hear something and have it just go in one ear and out the other, without giving its truthfulness or usefulness a second thought. People these days are so incredibly predictable and gullible. I say "these days" like I've been alive for more than a couple decades. How would I now how people used to be? Maybe they've always been like this. I need to talk to more real adults about this kinda stuff.

I just feel like college kids don't even know how to think. They may know how to study hard and get good grades and play sports and drink alcohol, but they don't know how to think. There are so many followers and so few leaders... which really gives a huge advantage to the small number of people who know how to lead people and realize the extreme advantage of knowing such a thing.

Another thing that has always bothered me and has been bothering me recently is how people try to turn their opinions into facts. I'm going to use Nickelback here. 95% of people hate Nickelback, and probably 5% of those people have an actual reason for why they hate Nickelback. Some people feel that their taste in music/literature/sports/etc. is so refined that anyone who disagrees with them is straight up wrong. But what makes those things positive or negative? Your opinion of them does. If there was an underlying good or bad with ART, the bad art wouldn't make enough money to stay as art. See how I used a thought process to sort through that and ultimately prove my point? Weird, right?

If you like something, like it on your own account and don't let that affect the way you view other people, because who knows - you might just end up never getting to know who could be your future wife because she enjoys listening to Nickelback.

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It's Wednesday

My mom got me this Pinecone & Lime Yankee Candle for Christmas and it smells awesome when you stick your nose right up to it and sniff it when it's not lit, but when I light it the room stays in exactly the same scent, which is horrible. I've been lighting it for two months now hoping that it'll start smelling good but it's not and I'm just becoming more and more disappointed every time I look at it. It's not your fault mom, but next time get me something more smelly.

I actually have had a few things pop into my head to write about on here the last couple days but for right now I can only remember like one of them.

It's funny that humans seem to feel entitlement at all the wrong times. It seems to me that the easier life becomes for humans, the more they feel entitled to. This thought came to me when we were talking in a class about how defensive parents are of their children these days. If a kid gets in trouble at school, the parents seem to always immediately hop on the kid's side and fight against the person at school that punished them. Because there is just no way that YOUR kid could have possible done anything wrong, and they are always just being unfairly persecuted. It certainly didn't use to be that way, my parents definitely never took my side when I did something wrong away from them. The whole thing really makes sense, once things start coming easy to you, you start thinking that everything should come that easy, and when it doesn't, you get defensive and start believing that you were denied something that you should have been given, even though you didn't necessarily deserve it in the first place. Life works a lot better when you have to work for what you get. For me, I really don't feel like I've worked for much of anything in my life, but I've been given a lot. My parents worked really hard to give me a chance to be successful and for the most part I've just coasted through everything until about now. Things are going to change when I graduate, but I'm pretty glad that I have somewhat of a feel on entitlement for right now, because life seems to get harder and harder with every year that passes.

I've written a lot on this blog about how I feel that being able to deal with people will take you further in life than being really smart and qualified. Recently, one of my buddies got a job offer that he's underqualified for just because he impressed the person he interviewed with, so that backs my point up perfectly. The problem I'm discovering with the real world is that it's tough to even get an interview. I've sent my resumeé to 20+ companies and I've only had a couple calls back. I've only been offered one face to face interview and that was through a company that turned out to be a pretty big scam/waste of time. I honestly feel that if I could have had a face-to-face interview with every place I've applied to, I'd have a couple job offers, but that's not how it goes. My resume sucks, and that actually does mean something. Too late to change it now though.

The last thing I want to say is that it's pretty crazy how much time Americans waste with entertainment. I can't imagine where I'd be right now if instead of watching Pirate games, playing video games, and pissing around on social media, I would have tried to teach myself different useful things. What have I gotten from all those hours watching the Pirates and wasting time on the computer? Very, very little. I could be a programming expert by now, I could have done some big things that really would have helped that resume I talked about earlier, but instead I'm at a disadvantage. It's true for everyone really, unless you're a person that's super passionate about something that's actually good for your future (aka a nerd), you've probably wasted years of your life doing things that had no positive benefit to them besides temporary satisfaction. DUMB.

Humans are dumb, and I am a human. By the transitive property of geometry, I am dumb.

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A few of my life's big questions

1. How can schools give A minuses but not give A pluses? This one just doesn't make mathematical sense. It's a question of balance. B minuses balance B pluses, so what reasoning could a professor EVER have for giving out A minuses but not A pluses? It is legitimately unfair, and this isn't a student crying about unfairness because he wants better grades, I don't care enough about my grades to do such a thing (and most of my grades are B's anyways). It's just really messed up that school's are so blatantly mistreating their students. I understand that you can't really have A+'s, because there should be a clear maximum GPA, so my campaign is just to get rid of A-'s. We need answers. The entire grading system is mathematical, but there is an ugly, bulging, pussy mathematical flaw right at the top of it all.
2. Why do people get mad at me when I look at things mathematically? I try to use reason, logic, and math as often as I can. But I find that most of my friends don't like when I do so. They seem to want me to be more shallow minded and narrow-minded with my thought processes. Why is that encouraged? Isn't that just another way to say that they want me to be stupider? When did stupid become cool? And how can you be "too tired to remember something" that should be common sense? Do some people's brains just shut down at times? Like just because you haven't slept in 18 hours doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to multiply 7 by 8. I'm talking to you Clint Logan.
3. Why do basketball teams take out their players when they commit 2-3 fouls in the first half of a game? I don't usually do sports stuff on this blog, but this legitimately doesn't make any sense to me. Sure, you want to save your best players for the final minutes of a game, and if they get to 5 fouls (6 in the NBA) they are kicked out of the game, but why take your own players out when they don't have to be? Why not just wait and see if they do get to 4 fouls before taking action? You're letting the threat of a consequence hand you the consequence. That doesn't make sense to me. Leave them in and let yourself try to reap the benefits of your players not committing those next fouls.
4. Why do our minds change so much in the heat of the moment? It's happened to all of us, we get worked up about something and then we say and think things that we realize were completely wrong and out of line when we settle down later on. We become so short-sighted when our emotions are going. Is there a psychological reason for this? I think it's just that when our emotions are running away from us we become more selfish. We think that we're right and don't want to listen to anyone or anything try to tell us that we might be wrong. If more people realized that the best thing to do when you're angry/emotional is to just walk away from the situation and come back to it later there would be a lot less hurtful confrontation in the world.

Those are all things I thought about today. I also thought a lot about corn dogs, which was weird.

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