Becoming something…

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Naturally, as a blogger, I’m spending some of my time learning or reading up on how to be one. Like any new thing, it’s a challenge. On a blog I read pretty regularly, ProBlogger.Net, there was a post very recently called “Don’t Just Have a Blog - Learn to Think Like a Blogger.” I realized the lessons shared there, of which the author, Darren Rowse, pulled from his personal trainer, can be generalized in a way that can help anyone in any endeavor. It has taken me a while to get into a groove with blogging and I’m still not completely there. The key is that most things that we do naturally were on some level learned. Creating habit out of what you eventually expect to come naturally takes some creative work.

Don’t just live - Learn to think as though you are living

1) Goals and Planning - Use goals and numbers to help quantify the changes you are looking to make or to help acknowledge the life you are already leading. For blogging it’s deadlines, number of words, when I hit publish, and things like this. In life, it might be counting your steps to take ownership over a route you have had trouble taking or counting towards or away from different goals.

2) Structure and Routine - This is the movement from numbers into internalizing the life you are living and hope to live. Finding this rhythm is important. You will meet your goals and plan intuitively by the very nature of it fitting into your every day life. At first it means creating the rhythm for yourself, with the essential elements of your life structured together (including the goals you met before and lessons learned from them). As it develops it will change and morph, but this foundation will provide a blueprint any time life steers you off course. Done right, you can get a sense of going with the flow.

3) Spend time with other people who live life the way you want to live life - The long winded title for how to socialize yourself. We are what we eat and we are who we are with. Since we are the culmination of our social core, cultivate it. Make it representative of your daily rhythm. Find harmonies and combinations that make (1) and (2) easier. If you began with goals that came naturally to you, then this will just seem like an easy boost. Use this as an indicator to see if you might need to reevaluate.

4) Education - Learn who you are. Learn what you want to be. If you surround yourself with the necessary information, you will always have the continued capacity to act. I have an Economics/Business degree, so I have subscriptions to The Economist and Fortune. I write poetry, so I read poetry and subscribe to Poets and Writers. There are different ways to create a learning space. So latch onto a project at work, talk to the right friends, read a related book, and dig dig dig…

5) Experimenting - If at first you don’t fricassee, fry fry a hen. Keep going and keep doing. You won’t make unconscious quick decisions unless you’ve made them a hundred times before. Take everything that you are are getting from the steps before and USE IT! Doing it different makes you more versatile as a human and at a task. What you once agonized about, will become just another trick up your sleeve.

6) Making Mistakes - Do it wrong! I’m not wishing poorly on you, but just recognize that a mistake is a chance to learn. Live in the now, not in the past or future. Hold onto a mistake in a way that you use it as a stepping stone but not as though you are being stoned.

Some of this will be hard! Don’t be afraid to settle and make some decisions.

In time as I did these things (and mainly as I just practiced blogging) my thinking changed. As it did so did my blogging itself.
Darren ProBlogger.Net

So I’ll conclude with,

In the time you live your life, just your everyday life, your thinking will change. As will your life change too.

What a waste of time?

or was it?

Years seem to fly by these days and with each year coming the transition into the next also seems to have much more philosophical baggage with it. I’m holding onto a lot, happy about a lot, and getting over a bunch of things. The new year allows for a big sigh of relief and a chance to motion, with a toast, everything into “that was last year”. It honestly feels like one of the only moments each year where it’s relatively easy to live in the moment. A few drinks down and a count down away from closing a book and opening a new one at the same time.

What is next?
Are we sad it’s over or happy for what is next?

Maybe, most importantly, this is a time to reflect. Treasure the space you have to yourself or the friends that are surrounding you. Time can slow for a moment as bubbles from your bubbly tickle your nose. Nothing else can be a greater lesson in learning how to live from book to book, year to year, and day to day. It’s a great chance to understand how to find joy, or live in the tough reality of a lifetime of transitions.

Is someone not there or something missing?
Who IS there? What did you get out of this past year?

Stop comparing yourself to dreams and actually work towards them. If you are the type to set out some resolutions, let your one resolution be to have none.

Look at your hands.
Look at your eyes in the mirror.
Tell yourself, this is the new year and I have already accomplished what I’m setting out to do.

From the same show:

Aimee Mann/Grant-Lee Phillips- You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch
Aimee Mann/Paul F. Tompkins-Baby, It’s Cold Outside

It was a birthday gift and I loved it. If you enjoy a mellow almost “non-Christmas” type of celebration, then this is for you. You missed the Ann Arbor, MI performance, but her others can be found here. The classic lyrics and volume of Aimee Mann have brought songs such as “One,” where it can indeed be the loneliest number. Not a song she sang at the show but the majority of the songs, were not of the Christmas type. They were about the humble tone that Christmas, and the holidays, can often bring. High on quirky guest performances and a not quite polished variety show, Aimee Mann and friends shine. I laughed hard, loved the culties, newbies, and felt satisfied realizing that you can be and feel big even in a time when tradition can bring upon so much change.

So, get ready for the new year. Things are going to be crazy all over again.

Good luck shopping!

What is different this year come the holidays? (see: The weather outside is frightful…)

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.