Becoming something…

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Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier
-Albert Schweitzer

And now time to define:

self·ish /ˈsɛlfɪʃ/
–adjective
1. devoted to or caring only for oneself; concerned primarily with one’s own interests, benefits, welfare, etc., regardless of others.
2. characterized by or manifesting concern or care only for oneself: selfish motives.

selfish - Definitions from Dictionary.com

self·less /ˈsɛlflɪs/
–adjective
having little or no concern for oneself, esp. with regard to fame, position, money, etc.; unselfish.

selfless - Definitions from Dictionary.com

Lets take moment to look at both of these definitions. Neither seems particularly great. Both ignore a integral part of the equation, either yourself or everyone else. I’m going to take a moment to redefine and explain myself, but first I’d like to share what I’ve said before on this topic.

As a post-grad wanderer you are stuck negotiating for jobs, fruit, friends, relationships, and your own sanity. You spent all this time getting to know yourself, so be a bit selfish. Compromise doesn’t mean that you don’t get what you want, just that everyone involved gets something.

Getting to yes, negotiation is more than a courtroom skill.

To look at this from a selfish angle, people can and will enhance you. Interact and learn from everything around you. Feed yourself.

Generational babel

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.

Putting yourself first. [discovering your social core]

You must put yourself first, alongside others. Put yourself first and get to know yourself, take some time away.

Putting yourself first. [discovering your social core]

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.

Putting yourself first. [discovering your social core]

Take the two definitions that we began with and blend them together.

devoted to or caring for oneself, without regard to fame, position, money, etc., concerned with interests not only your own.

What can we call this? Above, in the quotes, I sometimes use the words selfish and selfless in their traditional forms. Other times, I’m using the mashed up definition directly above to describe what I think the potential of selfishness is.

Live to learn. Work to live. Live for others selfishly.

I nearly killed myself in college to get straight A’s. Well, almost straight A’s. I graduated with 37 A’s and 3 B’s for a GPA of 3.921. At the time, I thought I was hot stuff. Now I wonder if it wasn’t a waste of time. Let me explain:

1. No one has ever asked about my GPA.
2. I didn’t sleep.
3. I’ve forgotten 95% of it.
4. I didn’t have time for people.
5. Work experience is more valuable.

-This post content is from Jon Morrow as posted on Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist. His blog is On Moneymaking. Read it’s full content here.

Me: (I didn’t get straight As, but my only C was from study abroad. I too didn’t sleep much, but usually thanks to procrastination, or what I called “learning outside of the classroom”)

What are grades? The subjective and objective opinions of professors usually concerning your work for and within the classroom. Sometimes you get lucky (or not) and the professor considers yourself outside of the classroom in determining a grade. We know why we need them, or at least we think we do. Few other alternatives have been accepted, so why care?

From the day that grades were introduced to me (4th grade), partially the explanation of the “fourth grad slump” I learned about yesterday, I saw them as a personal indicator. Before that, looking back at my younger report cards, I remember thinking the higher the number the better (we used a number system before 4th grade). Those 2s, 3s, and 4s out of 5 always looked good to my younger self, the bigger the better. I still remember being placed on a more advanced track, thus the teacher recognized my ability despite my “poor” performance. It wasn’t until Junior year of high school that I detached grades, for the most part, from a system that was grading me as a person. This was good, but not good for my grades. There was a rebound and grades took on a mixed meaning in college as I learned of learning outside of the classroom as well.

So what is it? Doesn’t everyone learn differently? Many of the students that I am involved with right now spend their life in DSA (Division of Student Affairs), many times at the cost of their school work. Yet, they learn and exhibit extreme skill. There has been a trend in college these days to reincorporate “out of the classroom” experiences into the curriculum. Anything from service-learning, externships, to actual work experience counting as class credit. This was the topic covered while attending a conference in Seattle.

I love this trend.

So I say learn on! Yet as a graduate looking at graduate school, thinking of my career, working full-time, and trying to pursue my own interests while trying to make a difference, I still wonder if those grades represent my ability of thinking to learn or learning to think?

A new feature!
Look on the right for the new poll.

It looks like this:

Don’t forget to comment.

When you think negotiation, you many times think of the courtroom or even the Middle East crisis. The thing is, your daily life involves a bit of negotiation. As a post-grad wanderer you are stuck negotiating for jobs, fruit, friends, relationships, and your own sanity. You spent all this time getting to know yourself, so be a bit selfish. Compromise doesn’t mean that you don’t get what you want, just that everyone involved gets something. You might think that it’s a matter of dividing up a pie when in fact you are each looking at different pies altogether. Take a moment, a breather, and remember that you and the bed, the day’s outfit, or the traffic will figure something out. Maybe what isn’t working is actually providing you with an opportunity, you just have to look at it from the un-tucked shirt’s point of view.

There are a few other things to keep in mind when negotiating. This is a bit of a review and summary of a book I recently enjoyed.

Continue reading »

I am the best of what’s around.  This is an oft had thought of mine.  Like the force of gravity pulling a river towards the sea, I can be of pollution and become the worst of what’s around.  Time has deemed something well overdue.  It’s a look back and a look forward.  It seems appropriate for a new phase in my life. Everything around me is different than what I’m used to.

There have been many “looks back” in my life.

A bubble popped, I popped the bubble.  I found capital letters again only to denounce them.  The college experience was very College.  A wave of mixed associations collaborating with the growing assumption that I knew everything.  The degree and graduation marked the completion of understanding that I really didn’t know much at all.  The liberal (arts) skills learned are only broadly applicable to real life jobs.  Knowing something is wrong but not what is wrong or that something is right but not knowing how it worked on a less macro-philosophical level.  I lived in China for nearly six months.

I lived in China for nearly six months.

Ok, so it changed my life.  Much like the night in China at past-bar-closing a.m. when a Beijing expensive but U.S.A. cheap cab ride dropped me off in a old/currently operating factory partially international diplomatic art hub area to reach the meeting of a new friend.  My four U.S. dollar flashlight keychain saves my panicked soul as I wasn’t even sure I was at the right place.  I only later realized that the same keychain was available in China for an equivalent twenty-five U.S. cents.  The light shined on signed that I could only understand because the popular art area had adopted english on their signs.  What was a late night meeting turned into a queer mentorship.  Think metaphorically of this story.

I queered on purpose.

These images are clear examples.  My days are dark, exposing only what I shine my light on.  College had me running towards each light, wanting to be an example of what you could become as I often forgot who I was.

I spoke of dreams.

I tried to live dimly lit and misunderstood dreams.  Life has been and had been hard, all I knew was change in the face of what appeared to be stability.

I came upon pattern changes…Spring ‘06 was post China, which coincidentally was also post finding myself.  This was how I felt.  Repeating patterns caused sporadic grades, a lot of internal study, and a resulting in three roommates for my next year.  Personally, resolute feelings came in bottles, bad movies, dancing, pictures, wasting time, trying to do everything at once, and planning spontaneity.

I planned spontaneity…Two weeks after school ended my Junior year was spent planning my spontaneous trip around the country.  Travel as a muse for my first larger scale creative writing project.  Leaving many of the logistics in the hands of another man, left me at the whim of spontaneity through the eyes of one man.  My pure moments were quickly impure as I lost control of myself.  Left behind was my dream of the project.  What hurt most wasn’t the disrespect from others but mainly the disrespect I had for myself.  Good souls saved me, none of which were my own.

I felt of betrayal and drive…A promised release of my project to everyone involved has only been talked about, mainly because it was real, and reality is hard to release.  I had imagined a lighthearted but intense tail of the goodness of others and the challenges of self driven travel.  What resulted was my own discovery of self truths page after page.  I feared misinterpretations along the lines of many misinterpretations bestowed upon my everyday body and mind.  Finally, life was more real to me and not just a one-directional path towards enlightenment.  I am going to fall flat on my face more often than not.

I felt of falling apart…It is hard to take ownership of a mental game of fifty-two pickup.  There is a standard way to order the cards but then again, what game are we playing this time?  Another painful realization, life continues whether or not you are prepared for the next hand.  I found it hard to live by my own motto of not hanging onto the past, but learning from it, and not living in the future, but look forward to its possibilities.  A physical reason, my body adjusting from the level of activity on study abroad, had my swim results spiking early only to leave months of watching my dreams slip away.  Not only did I not make nationals but my season ended earlier than planned.  It was an unexpected death in my life with limited means to cope.  Swimming still brings tears to my eyes.  I have recognized that there are energies that need to be refocused, but to what? 

Everything new…The job, the relationship, the stability, the non-profit work, and etc. are all things to be proud of.  Not noticing the sympathetic ears to be found.  Am I not alone in thinking that college trains us to make the best decisions for ourselves but we are left without the time and information do so?

I am lost in change…Yet, I am more organized than ever.  Feeling driven gets me through the day but I fear the week, month, and years to come.

Doing everything but accomplishing nothing all at once.

My ex-roommate Kelsey missed her LIRR train in New York City, she sat drinking wine at a Penn Station Bar.  I sat greedily accepting her phone call wanting to make havoc in New York with her. We felt a change in social scenery and…

we remembered that we haven’t talked to our best friends in months.

So I thought at first I would call out, name, the blog’s mission as “becoming twenty-something” but it didn’t fit. You know that deeper feeling where you wish you actually knew what you were becoming? The thing is, most of us don’t know. People mention steps, forward motion, and success. Now, post-grad, the refrain is stronger than ever. I had to think long and hard, painfully and artfully. I opened up to “becoming something.” I knew that expressing this confusion was important, part of the the something. Yet I’m not dumb, bluntly put, because I know in my heart that there is direction, the becoming.

I am becoming something.

Listen. Read. Watch. Contribute.

Where do you become, in what space, what time, what version of you, something?

See the rest of the blog…CLICK HERE

A mix of the old, new, and present:
(Resume can be found here)

Justin Fenwick emerged into the limelight on December 1985, when Mother Fenwick popped him out. Although the event probably wasn’t as big as the hair at the time, it was sure to have an impact on Fenwick’s mother. He was child two, to be the middle of three later on.

“You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have, the facts of life.”

Socially awkward was the title that would capitalize Fenwick’s growth into high school maturity. Fights with the younger brother dwindled as admiration for the older sister grew. Attending Glengary Elementary, Clifford H. Smart Middle School, Walnut Creek Middle School, and Walled Lake Central High School, in that respective order. Friends began to play a larger part in his life as did swimming, soccer, and probably masturbation. Computerized, intellectualized, cell phone enabled, and just as unorganized as ever he took his nearly late college decision and ran off to Kalamazoo College. The year was 2003.

Justin Fenwick, was/still is a swimmer and combined his chance study of the Chinese language with Economics. As an Economics major and Chinese minor he wavered elegantly between not making a decision and not making a decision for post-grad. Fenwick secretly dabbles in writing and a bit of philosophical drawl.

A knack for travel and adventure, time in China and all over the United States leaves Fenwick thirsty for more. Graduated in June 2007, he found his calling for the moment as a Michigan Campus Compact AmeriCorps*VISTA at Eastern Michigan University. Ask him about it later.

Openly homosexual , Justin Fenwick finds himself dating “Double G.” In line with how he views things, it was “moment by moment” and now is partnering up the ladder.

He wonders actually how important are his intellectual ramblings? Open minded enough to know that life is a journey that doesn’t end — that losing the input of others will stop growth and stop a good party.

Throwing the angst of his youth behind him and embracing the recklessness of the 20’s to follow. I’m sure Fenwick wouldn’t mind you kicking up your heels a bit to sit back and enjoy his material. Watch him become something.

“Where do you find yourself today, not tomorrow, and not yesterday? I’m doing my best to live my life in a way that is neither in the past nor in the future.”
-Justin Fenwick-