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Geekery, Life, Me

when death comes knocking.

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“First you have to give up, first you have to *know*… not fear… *know*… that someday you’re gonna die.” – Tyler Durden

Murder… suicide… aids… cancer… heart attack. I’m reminded of the ways people I know have left this place.  I’m reminded of death and I think, wow, that sounds like something out of a movie and yet, this is what has happened with great people that have touched me in one way or another at one point in my life.  Another great one over the weekend has left.

What are your regrets if you were to die today? What would you wish you’d done?

I don’t have many. Mine would be that I never had a child to call my own. That would probably be at the very top. Other things are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things:

  • A dog, man’s best friend. Lol I know weird, but a dog will love you unconditionally, no matter what.
  • Seeing the world. I’ve seen quite a lot, but still microcosmic to the vastness of the world. If I could do it full time, I would. One day…
  • Working with children. I’d love to be able to work with children. Young children, whose innocence and curiosity is just so pure. Right before social conditioning gets a hold of them. If I can inspire some kids for the better, that would be awesome. Its something I’d love to do in my later years.

But really, that’s about it. I’ve loved, I’ve lost. I’ve been beaten up, and it wasn’t the end of the world. I’ve tried my best and failed miserably, and I’m still here. But I know, that my time will come, and your time will come, so instead of fearing it, why not embrace the inevitable? Such a liberating feeling it is to know that today quite possibly could be your last, so why not do the things you love to do? If I were to go today, I’d be content. But I’d love to stick around, because there’s just so much to feel, so much to experience, so much to contribute and be a part of.

Speaking of contributing, check out the awesome idea of Tim Ferriss.  What a great and easy way help a worthy cause.  Social Media for the betterment of all.  I like it.  All you have to do is follow him on twitter, and money gets donated!! I like.

By the way, I hope you guys are checking out my Tumblr stuff, I usually post funny pictures and goofy stories I find around the net.  I know its silly stuff but hey if it makes me smile, maybe it’ll make you smile too 🙂

Oh and check out this awesome poem.

Life, Me

Persistence paves the way.

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My hands are shredded.  Blisters on most of my fingers from a hard day of climbing.  The agonizing pain of climbing, for the first time in my life, a 5.11 wall.  I did this twice, on two separate walls.  Finally, after all that hard work, I broke the barrier to the next level.  I remember being lowered down after climbing that second wall, that amazing feeling… “I did it.  About time.”  The onlookers congratulated me as I was untying myself.  “Wow, you were determined.” said one fine young lady.  Determined?  Probably.  Persistent?  Most definitely.  Washing the chalk off of my hands with soap, felt like acid burning through my skin.  But man was it worth it.

After a year being stuck in the same level, I thought I had plateaued.  I thought I had reached the limits of my abilities, but mentally I wasn’t convinced.  And so I plugged away at it, and plugged away, and plugged away.  Somebody at the climbing gym jokingly said to me, “Its the devil inside of you, that makes you keep on trying.” and I would say that there’s definitely something inside, telling you to keep on trucking.  If there wasn’t, we’d still be living in caves hunting for food with our hands.

You know the story of Thomas Edison?  He failed at making the light bulb like 1000 times.  But he kept on trying and trying and trying and he eventually got it right.  Can you imagine if he quit, what our world would be like today?  Then there’s this guy named Ghandi, you may have heard of him.  Him and his followers were able to single handedly convince one of the most powerful army’s to ever grace this Earth to withdraw from his country and grant their independence, without the use of violence.  How did he do it?  Basically, he kept on nagging them and nagging them and nagging them until they eventually got so annoyed they left lol.  Now that is persistence.

Go out, take what is yours, and if you can’t get it, try again.  Keep on trying.  Spend the hours and years working to your full potential, and put your heart and soul into it.  Let yourself fail, but don’t let yourself stop trying.  Yes, you’ll be on the plateaus more than you’ll be on the peaks, but don’t let that slow you down.  You are a locomotive, and you can’t be stopped.  You are a menacing lion hunting for its prey.  You are awesome, and you are persistent.

As for me, what comes after climbing a 5.11?  Plug away, plug away, plug away, and aim for 5.12.  Like I keep saying, it never ends, and its the journey that counts.  There is no why.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Life

be a (wo)man. do the right thing. have integrity.

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I looked it up.  Integrity means moral soundness.  Its about staying true to yourself, of having strength of character.  Its very easy to spot a person of integrity.  You just feel it.  You know what that is?  That’s their energy blasting out at in all directions.   The rules of integrity include:

  • Follow up on your commitments
  • Keep your promises
  • Always pay back your debts
  • Love  what you see in the mirror
  • Keep your word
  • Be honest
  • Do not compromise your values

Sometimes it can be very hard to do.  Sometimes the right thing isn’t the thing you want to do.  People with integrity don’t bend these rules to fit their needs.  Integrity is not something that blows in the wind.  But that means you have to live by your rules, and not the rules of other people.  People with integrity need not the external validation of others, only the satisfaction of living life.  To love and be loved.  To experience and feel every second of every moment of this life they have been blessed with.  Its not about taking advantage of  friends, or about lacking the guts to tell somebody you like them and instead showering them with gifts, hoping one day they’ll just magically fall in love with you.  Its about telling people to step back when they’ve gotten in your space, its about having the courage to do what’s incredible, even if nobody knows you did it.  Especially if nobody knows.  It’s about being awesome.

“Live so that when your children think of fairness and integrity, they think of you.” – H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Life

Patience is a virtue, indeed.

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“He that can have Patience, can have what he will.” – Benjamin Franklin

I read somewhere that Ben Franklin invented bifocal glasses when he was 78 years old. That was a patient man right there. Patience is a lost virtue. The obsession with getting things easily and conveniently have taken precedence. Because of this, people have spent a lot of time, energy and money on things they do not need, barely will use, and that have not contributed to their quality of life. Mastery at most things requires a lot of patience. I recommend the book, Mastery by George Leonard and you will know what I mean. Most of the time spent doing something will require a ton of patience, not just to get good but to become a master. Many people simply don’t have the patience to get to mastery. Patience is an absolute requirement to live to your full potential.

If you aren’t exactly where you want to be in your life, just be patient and it will come as long as you are taking action. Patience is not passively waiting around for something to happen, that’s laziness. Patience is working your way through something even if its difficult, and its slow and you feel like you aren’t making any progress. Remember Mr. Miyagi telling the Karate Kid to do all that “wax on, wax off” stuff? Patience. Besides, what’s the rush? 😛 Life isn’t a race to the finish line, whether you are on the planet for 1 more day or for 100 more years. Have faith in the journey and in the direction you have chosen and let the universe do its thing. Something to remember, the universe doesn’t make mistakes. Got it?

Have patience with other people whose opinions differ from your own. Have patience with children, and with your family and friends and with your lover. Have patience with that slow person walking in front of you, but by far the most important person to have patience with is yourself. If you have a fit of road rage and feel silly afterward, be patient with yourself. Learn from the experiences that make you feel silly, its ok, laugh it off if you can. Don’t beat yourself up over not being able to accomplish certain goals you may have set for yourself, just keep at it. Without patience, there is no hope, no faith, no dreams that can come true. Have patience, it’s good for you.

Life

focus your energy

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”If I want to be as successful as I want to be, I have to be thinking about it all the time.” – Michael Phelps

I used to believe that multitasking was the way to go. I could juggle 7 or 8 things at a time and felt I was being rather productive. I still do this from time to time, however its not my method of choice. I prefer single tasking now. Complete focus on what is in front of me. With complete focus, you actually get more done with single tasking. Not only that, but what has been accomplished has been accomplished better then if you were to multi task. Also, with multitasking, the focus is divided and there is the tendency to do too much at once. Focusing let’s you achieve what’s important, not everything.

There is only so much time and energy we have in a day. Thus, we have to choose appropriately. This is extremely important in whether or not you’ll succeed or fail. If you lose focus while doing something chances are it won’t be done as effectively. Whether you’re playing a video game, reading a book, working out, cooking, without hyper focus on the subject at hand it just won’t be as good. We live in an age like no other in the history of mankind. We have too many distractions. We have meetings which take up time, we have phone calls which take up time, we have emails to respond to, as well as text messages, as well as instant messages, as well as wallposts, as well as snail mail. Each one of those slowly sucks up your time, some take immediate attention, others can have delayed response times. All of it distracts you from focusing on what’s important! However, if you can focus on what’s important, you can seriously turn into a jedi master at what you are focusing on. It’s a matter of trimming the fat and finding what’s important to you, and then going forward with that.

Life, Me

Fall Hard in order to Fly…

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I hope you all had a great 2008. 2009 looks like it will be a difficult year, according to economists, but with tough times comes GLORIOUS opportunities. To steal a direct quote from Tim Ferriss’ blog:

To bring in a wonderful 2009, I’d like to quote from an email I received today from a mentor of more than a decade:

While many are wringing their hands, I recall the 1970s when we were suffering from an oil shock causing long lines at gas stations, rationing, and 55 MPH speed limits on Federal highways, a recession, very little venture capital ($50 million per year into VC firms), and, what President Jimmy Carter (wearing a sweater while addressing the Nation on TV because he had turned down the heat in the White House) called a “malaise”. It was during those times that two kids without any real college education, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, started companies that did pretty well. Opportunities abound in bad times as well as good times. In fact, the opportunities are often greater when the conventional wisdom is that everything is going into the toilet.

Well…we’re nearing the end of another great year, and, despite what we read about the outlook for 2009, we can look forward to a New Year filled with opportunities as well as stimulating challenges.

That’s right, keep an open mind and aim high, and look out for the opportunities to present themselves. But you have to know that you will, at one time or another, fall. You will fail and it will suck and there will be self doubt, but you have to keep going. You have to muster up the courage to try again. Last month I was catching up with a friend I hadn’t seen in about a year. She mentioned to me that she doesn’t know what it feels like to fail, because she has always succeeded at everything she has done. Oh, poor soul, I thought. Wait, just wait, it will come. The older you get going through life without failing, the more it will hurt when it happens and the less you’ll know on how to deal with it. And it will happen. Take your licks now, because that is how you grow. Or you can shrivel away, and avoid life, and become a peon. Its up to you.

Last year I started something in late spring I called Project Social. What an epic failure. I started out as a nightclub promoter and lasted all of three nights. Yes, three! It wasn’t because I wasn’t good at it, it just felt like work. Going up to pretty girls making sure they are having a good time and getting free drinks all night sounds like a lot of fun, but it wasn’t jiving with me. I felt pressure to succeed and the whole point of Project Social was to have more fun. So I stopped. There’s nothing wrong with calling it quits when something isn’t serving you and your life ambition. Plus the promoter I was working for was not somebody I would conduct business with again, but we’ll leave it at that.

The City Bee is live now, and to be honest I have no idea how its going to do. It could be a fiery ball of doom for all I know, but I had to try. Obstacles came up, lots of them, but I barrelled through them with the help of my talented partners. Some things didn’t turn out exactly as planned, but I made workarounds and compromised with my partners. The website itself is not something I am entirely interested in at this point in my life, but I bet it has the potential to bring tremendous value to many people out there. But who knows, maybe it was all a big mistake. And I am ok with that. The journey to create it has been incredible. I built a website from the ground up. It was a conversation with a dear friend over dinner and drinks and turned into something real in a matter of 3 months. How cool is that? There are still things I’m learning about what I need to do. I had to take a few steps back in order to make a few steps forward. My partners don’t really have any idea the type of work I had to put into it to make it the way it is, and I’m ok with that. I’m not doing it for glory, I’m doing it to learn. And learn I have. From that knowledge, I’ve got something special coming down the pipe. Super excited but for now I have to remain hush on it. Time is my biggest enemy here. Juggling priorities is my most difficult issue at the moment. Right now I have a big fat issue I have been neglecting for far too long; the GMAT. Its now or never so I am going full deluxe overdrive mode for the next little while. Who knows, maybe it will be a miserable failure. That’s cool, bring it on.

“It was great just watching you, every day was like a privilige. Then the time come for you to be your own man and take on the world, and you did. But somewhere along the line, you changed. You stopped being you. You let people stick a finger in your face and tell you you’re no good. And when things got hard, you started looking for something to blame, like a big shadow. Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain’t you! You’re better than that!” – Rocky Balboa

Life

A Fight Club Moment…

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“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your f*#$ing khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.” – Tyler Durden, Fight Club

Today, we talk about identity. Something everybody struggles with. As much as I’d like to say men struggle with it more, I’m inclined to believe that women have just as much trouble with it, but in a slightly different way. There’s a lot of pressure out there, tons even, on us from all of these bullshit constructs. A movie like Fight Club or The Matrix comes out, and its supposed to shake stuff up within us dudes. I really don’t know how somebody could watch a movie like that, or read the book, and not have any inclination or realization that something is amiss with the way they are living their lives. And yet, they do nothing about it. They don’t even try. Their identity was FORCED upon them by societal constructs.

Your parents do this, so you must do that. You are of this race and this gender and of this income level, so you cannot be any more than this, and according to our computers…. You are going to be this for the rest of your life. HORSE SHIT. As you go through your teens, you struggle to find yourself. Some people go goth, others like myself turn to video games. But something happens as we age, we never really grow out of that identity, or we jump from identity to identity, not knowing where we fit. As men, we never had a rite of passage, like our ancestors before us. So we age, but we never actually grow up. As women, they’ve never had so much power, and thus are as lost as we are. And we give up on life, we have our identity that people have bestowed on us and we stick through it, just hoping to fit in.

There are glimpses of freedom every now and again. That adrenal rush you got that one time you went skydiving, wearing that santa costume and having women lynch you as they try to sit on your lap (good times, gentlemen), finding that special someone who is supposed to complete you. But still, there is a strong lack of identity among us. That leads to false social interactions, frustrated families, and really pissed off people.

We are confused, and we consume more, hoping that more will satisfy our hunger. But it never does, and yet there’s always something new to grab your money, something you believe will satisfy that hunger. It never does. There really is only ONE solution to all of this madness, and it was figured out thousands of years ago by a really smart Greek dude. “Know thyself.” – Plato

Fight Club (Widescreen)