Becoming something…

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Like how Iraq was mission accomplished 5 years today, I too felt accomplished. I was just about to finish high school and I hadn’t even decided on a college. I was though flying high, mission accomplished. I had recently regained trust by my parents and summer “adult” freedom was ripening on my tongue.

I forgive Hilary for voting for the war. If was voting on mis-information too. Grownup had arrived. Today I know I have a lifetime of growing up to do.

So I am reemerging not to fill the spaces of the pages but to fill some parts of me that I too often look elsewhere to. I know that my mission isn’t accomplished and that I’ll consume lots of coffee to get there. The reset button is close by, could you push it? No, just a soft reset. I don’t want to lose everything.

Lets not fault Bush for calling a war or even calling it to a close super early, lets fault him for not listening to the experience and learning from it. Get out of there!

It is hard. It is what defines his stay in office. Victim to simple quick fixes, time is a difficult illusion. The longer you stay in it, the further you fall face first into reality.

I have spent a lot of time recently on MBA applications. It has been a while since I had to so craftily praise myself in front of others; it was never this specific. I am defending passion and my future career plans. In definition, I have gone through a transition. Unlike the addictions of war, I have turned the red tide. What are you surfing on when you need something else to keep the momentum?

We are not alone for a reason. Use your developing intuition and growing heart in sync to determine self-motivation. Look to those you know to be real sensors of your being. At the very least there is a technique that is simple to surf through the rougher and lonelier times.

List accomplishments of your day, w/o your minds side commentary; if any slips in, you are forbidden from making further note of it at all.

Today:
•  Entry to baited blog
•  Made progress on scholarship guidebook at work
•  Speedily organized home office
•  Felt reemergence of China-fondness
•  Large Mexican latte instead of small

Find your coastline and ride…summer is coming whether you want it to or not.

“You emerge victoriously from the maze you’ve been traveling in.”

Life sure does feel like a maze, does it not? Wandering looking for the right direction, knowing at any moment we might walk right into a wall. The worst part is that we are often doomed to back-track. At best, we find ourselves busting through the wall but only to find ourselves lost again, with little frame of reference. It is part pre-determined and part under your control.

There is no alternative to being yourself. I think mostly it has to do with your attitude along the way.

You have experienced parts of the maze behind you, but not all of it. Has it shaped you? A product of our experiences or not, we have got to start listening to the scale to which we define ourselves. The confusing reality is, often the walls are miles apart and filled with millions of people. Life isn’t long enough to assume you can deduce the way out through guess and check. The cheese might not be as close or as far as you think. Without tangible walls to give a sense of direction or a map to the maze ahead (or the one being built), why are we full of this concern. You can define ‘this’ how you like, but even if the concern is not to have one, what is it in context to?

We often look to our most local of mazes through which we see ourselves traveling, forgetting the immensity of the one we are actually in.

Leave your home, find your car (or the nearest bus stop), and think about how well you seem to navigate the most local of mazes. You are probably doing just fine along life’s maze. Stop looking for the walls, looking for the end, and fearing the retracing of steps. Otherwise, the cheese won’t have a smell anymore and your sense of direction will be localized to the smaller of life’s mazes. Because the local maze you might be stuck in, is the one inside your head.

“You emerge victoriously from the maze you’ve been traveling in.”

Don’t create context, walls to define yourself against. Self, defined, is limited to the scale of what you define it against. There is no alternative to being yourself, amidst walls you can’t see and contexts you can’t begin to define.

Are adults made? A recent article by Kay Hymowitz from City Journal suggests something about young men today in our society:

Today’s single young men hang out in a hormonal limbo between adolescence and adulthood.

Child-Man in the Promised Land by Kay S. Hymowitz, City Journal Winter 2008

The suggestion is that for various social reasons, we are bypassing the previous generations’ milestone of marriage and a family when we supposedly begin our adult lives with the start of our careers. That first main job and first step now equals independence. Am I socially stunted, stuck in a culturally locked puberty (video games, the internet, and career changes)? I’m not in college anymore and much of that activity has gone by the wayside. There isn’t much like the structure of a full-time job, other personal pursuits, and a growing long-term relationship to have other things take favor. Yet, I still long for the long nights, long papers, and long haphazard days.

My relationship and new job is the cornerstone to a growing foundation that I think is moving me beyond this immature middle ground. Priorities change and whether or not I like to admit it, I’m heavily invested in both. This is by choice. This implies that this stage is under our own self-control. Is it important to take action?

Action would be contrary to what is rewarded in our culture; action which requires forward thinking loses to the many short-term excited battles our cultures supports. How can the weekend (or even every day) be one of exciting battles if you are settled into a life track, one long battle with something or short ones with quick feedback and results? Immediate gratification is clearly our cultural winner. It usually takes an event or emotional commitment to be able to recognize the importance of the former, long-term action, possibly to just return back afterwards.

Even today, they say SYM (Single Young Males), Hymowitz’s term, or this millennial generation in general is distracted by many new things, a world of instant gratification. Take your college life for example.

[Jones, S] (2002) indicated that 72% of all students check their email daily, and 26% of college students use instant messaging on an average day. A similar survey in 2005 found that 83% of adults in the 18-29 age range participate in online activities [Demographics of Internet Users] (2007 ).

Digital-Distractions

We learned in and with this environment. Conveniences have become crutches.

So what of women? I don’t necessarily think they are excluded from this phenomenon but they sure are talking about it. The child-man article continues,

In Internet chat rooms, in advice columns, at female water-cooler confabs, and in the pages of chick lit, the words “immature” and “men” seem united in perpetuity…Men feel threatened by female empowerment, these thinkers argue, and in their anxiety, they cling to outdated roles.

Child-Man in the Promised Land by Kay S. Hymowitz, City Journal Winter 2008

The CEO phenomenon is one example of the ever growing worth and exchange value of a single individual. Females with this power, on this scale, is historically rare; they have a right to enjoy it, even in the face of the above mentioned masculine uncertainty. It would be wrong to not point out that only twelve of Fortune 500 companies are headed by female CEOs, which debunks Hymowitz’s argument above.

I’m not sure if I see it as gender specific because I feel like many women face the the same cultural pressures that us males do.

Are these trends any different from the activities of young women who are often unwilling to surrender personal freedoms to be “shackled” by motherhood? The Sex and the City generation who see marriage as an anchor and drag on their personal lives, who embrace disposable relationships and are obsessed with designer clothing?

Editorial: Beware the Child-Man?

I’ll admit my cravings and notice that I see many peers expressing their freedom. I even would go as far to say, because of a different social experience in my youth while dealing with my sexuality, I am even more immature in certain areas. My immaturity is supported. More than ever we are rewarded for growth of self and not of family or relationships if it is in the way.

So, do we continue because we can?

We all may need to read more, converse more, and look at how thin we are spread in our social world (especially if it’s virtual). I keep wondering if I should be focusing harder or caring less? I am not a SYM, the relationship disqualifies me of that title, but the cute voices on my shoulders are both telling me that the SYM life is calling. Most of us now have the freedom to develop in the context of something, say a relationship, or develop outside of that structure.

The child-man, gay-infant, and adult-girl are real. Stuck playing video games, exploring deep relationships for the first time, and keeping time with image and power, we are our own segment of society. We will become a generation around it. It feels good, but I feel detached. Our 30s will come soon, but should our goal be to cum as much as possible before it does?

Adults don’t emerge. They’re made.

Child-Man in the Promised Land by Kay S. Hymowitz, City Journal Winter 2008

Muddle muddle…

I’ve been twiddling my thumbs recently and not much has come of it. As I’m sure you have seen on here, so few posts. So now I’ve exploded, tension abound. I’m hoping that it is a good thing.

I spent months at work trying to claim my space, make it a 40 hour work week. Now with the new year, I’ve added, added, and added. For me, it feels like the only way I’ll get some of the important things in my life done (apply to grad school, etc). First it was working out regularly (with my man), then I volunteered for an extra Chinese tutoring session (now twice a week), picked up a project at work that I didn’t have to get involved in, volunteered my efforts to a friend’s local community record company (soon to be non-profit), and on top of it it all shit hit the fan at work and I’ve been handed a bunch of new supervisor responsibilities.

Deep breath…

So now, oddly enough, I feel like I can get things done, life back on track. This was the same for me in college, the busier I was (for the most part), the better I performed.

How do you build into doing something? Do you prefer the empty plate approach or do you try to teeter on insanity?

What pushes you?

Looking for a great moment of traveler’s glory? Always forgetting your books at home? Look no further than Amazon’s Kindle, the new electronic book reader.

At 11:59 (EST) p.m. (notice post time) my mom ended a long labor, thanks mom!

Why does twentysomething (even 22) feel old when we know it isn’t?

There are a lot of us who probably wish life was more of a trip. Less like the one you take to your next interview or conference but more like the one where the sky swirls above your head. Tonight I saw “Across the Universe.” It was good. It could have been a bit more polished but totally worth a big thumbs up in my book. There you go, review done.

It might make some of you go crazy, but I wouldn’t mind a bit of my life to be cartoonized, exaggerated, and stretched. This is because it feels this way everyday anyway, so it would be nice to know it’s normal.

Our life and the each characters’ lives in the movie seems to have many present-day parallels. The continuous rhythm of war, fighting, love, confusion, and passion ring as strong as the Beatles songs used in the movie. “Across the Universe” does a great job of exhibiting the tug of war between life, reality, life, and more reality. To learn that life is not only an individual experience but one that is shared with others.

So I need to ask you…do we settle? When does the fight that we each feel for freedom end?

Since school have you crossed the universe or stayed closer to your own shores? In short, since then, what have you fallen for? Interpret how you like.