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.

Lets take a moment to define “going with the flow.” First, this statement acknowledges that there is a flow and a direction to things. Also, it is important to note that if you just sit there and do nothing, the flow, like in a river, will take you somewhere. While that journey may be interesting, chances are it may not be what will make us the happiest. So I think “going with the flow” is effective as a mantra only if we swim with the flow and help guide it. Just make sure you aren’t trying to avoid or swim around the unavoidable. You might just need to fall over a few waterfalls, hit a few rocks, and swallow a few gulps of water on your way.

Use the momentum of life to engage yourself and invest in opportunities. And, for those seeking all the options in the world or holding onto too much, a valiant futile attempt to swim against the flow is just a waste of energy.

You sit on your couch watching TV. Thoughts start filling your head about what you could be doing instead. You also take a moment not to think about much at all, which would seem to be more of the point of sitting there in the first place. Now, depending on how you look at it, thinking about nothing is a very selfish act. You are putting your non-thought, your personal resources, into doing nothing, except maybe consuming a commercial. This is selfish. Don’t you have the right to experience this? With how busy things can get, doing nothing is many times a recommended vacation.

This doesn’t bother most of us because most people accept this type of behavior. What seems to matter most for voters is the person they will vote for not necessarily the policies they support. How often has a friend said, “I just vote the one that looks good?” If you swear you don’t have friends like that, think again. More than you might like to believe, voting decisions seem like well intentioned educated votes, but we know that many Americans vote on a single issue (See: Single-Issue Voters: Will they make a difference on November 2nd?). We support individuality, personal growth, and independent decisions. If we fantasize about committed relationships then we are ignoring that we are constantly exposed to positive images of the “single life” and mainly negative, although sometimes hilarious, ones about settled committed relationships. All that struggle can’t be fun. Plus, if you want to ignore yourself and others to watch TV or vote for the hot one you are less likely to offend someone if you aren’t connected to or with others.

So why not stay alone? I speak from experience and can say that people don’t always impede on your life and to think like this is just living in the future and ignoring the present. People can enhance and help you grow faster in your experiences. Even if a free-spirited person who “does her own thing” and “goes where the wind takes her,” this experience must include people, even if in their absence. Every individual person is a part of our social web, meaning that we can’t exclude their affect on ourselves.

What am I trying to say? You must put yourself first, alongside others. Put yourself first and get to know yourself, take some time away. Watch some TV and forget but don’t forget that your absence has an impact on your social web too. This is where you need to begin to focus not on how many friends you have or don’t have but on what friends or significant-others you have or don’t have. Meeting someone new is at the cost of getting to know someone you know better. What is more valuable? You have to weigh the two, the value of a particular meeting vs. the value of knowing more about an existing connection. These people are both variables in a decision, to ignore the human side of an equation is to ignore 100% of the value/dis-value that may exist. The impact of everyone around you and in contact with you is unmeasurable. Don’t think too much, focus, and invest wisely. You need to recognize the value in non-value. If I were to lose a friend, I would feel emotion but forget to recognize what changed because of it, which is change, or value, from something of seemingly non-value.

If you have a infinite desire for friends + significant-others then you have no one trained in being close to/with you. Infinity value becomes a total near zero. If you focus your desire (focus is not an exact number in this case but a direction of thought towards the best total value) for friends + significant-others by acknowledging other people and spending time on a previous connection, there will be ups and downs but a significantly larger net value.

The journey toward a core interpersonal discovery:
Putting yourself first, with another.
Putting yourself first, alongside others.
Putting yourself first, alongside everything.
Being first and selfish (in a good way) because of and with everything and recognizing it.

I wish you the best of luck in discovering your social core. Whether it’s significant-others or great friends and five or thirty core individuals, stop thinking big and focus small. Surround yourself with a number of mental live-ins, they may live on the other side of the globe or in your bed, but with everything you know they are there to stay, one way or another.

Like climbing stairs, writing for me is just one step up after another. Once I break the momentum I create a landing to live on convincing myself that the stairway leads to nothing.

I fear, am apprehensive of, tiptoe around doing more than I fear, am apprehensive of, tiptoe around the actual doing of something.

Swallow distraction and internal guilt for a moment and go do. The doing seems to allow for the easy digestion of initial fears, apprehensions, and tiptoe sensations.

Share an example of a time when you just got up and did something recently, starting the momentum up a new set of stairs.