Letting Things Slip

For all the positivity and seeming boundless energy in my last post, it is of course natural that my lazy has not accomplished near to what I wanted in the two weeks since writing and posting.

I always forget the incredible weight and challenge of inertia. Last year, when living in Korea, I decided that I was going to start studying the Korean language in a very real way- study a minimum number of hours each week, with a goal and a test to wrap all things up. However, being out of school for years at that point made the transition surprisingly difficult- I wasn't used to studying, nor was I accustomed to having to subject myself to any sort of personal discipline whatsoever.

It took months- two or three entire months- to rev my engines up to the point that I could actually treat studying like it was a daily, expected activity. Plugging it into my routine was incredibly difficult and a challenge that I constantly failed. I don't understand what it is about my lazy-ass personality, but I just don't like doing things, apparently. I loved how busy I used to be in school and how challenging it was to balance a schedule of work, school, work again, volunteering, an active social life, and even- god forbid- exercise and healthy living.

But now, years out from that, I can only look back at that time with the longing of a washed-up has-been. At twenty-six, I know that I'm way too young to look back at those 'glory days', but that's really what has been happening. It's embarassing and I don't understand why even getting myself to study a few hours every week is such a challenge... let alone eating healthy, or exercising regularly.

After that initial challenge period, I moved into a nice groove of studying about twenty hours a week. That was a bit excessive, but I had the free time back then so it was not only a nice way to fill my time, but I also benefitted a great deal from the increased focus on my brain and active intellectual pursuit. It worked wonders for my confidence and I even began to work out somewhat occasionally, and moved towards a healthy, regular sleep cycle.

There are days lately where I come home from work, getting in around 1 am or so, and I just sit in front of my computer and do nothing. I surf the web for hours, maybe chatting lightly with a friend, and I think about all the things that I'd rather be doing or that I would be better off for doing. Sometimes I have to mentally fight with myself to even push myself to play a video game or watch a movie- because even THOSE things would be more productive than the shitload of nothing that I am doing at the time.

I'm still not sure how to overcome this, but I'm getting back into the swing of studying. 10 hours a week minimum, 15 hours a week as my goal. I'm studying computer/nerd stuff, trying my best to learn and hopefully to prepare for taking some classes at a community college next year (if I can swing it financially). I love studying and I love learning, so I'm not even sure what the difficulty is.

Is inertia really such a challenge? I've been moving at a glacial pace for a long time, and I want to be flying again. I know I'm headed in the right direction these days, and I'm even finding some satisfaction in my work- which is new for me- but I'm moving too slow. I need the thrill of challenge again outside of the office, and I need to know what it means to be legitimately busy again.

So how do I do that? How do I speed up from crawling to flying again?

Missing Me

A few years ago, I decided that I wanted to be a diplomat.

I guess it's been almost more than a few years; it was back in 2006. But now at twenty-six years of age, perhaps seven years past really is just 'a few years'. My oldest brother turned thirty a few weeks ago, and my younger brother is twenty-four soon. Is it strange that watching their ages go up makes me feel older than watching my own?

So I decided that I wanted to be a diplomat, and of all places, I wanted to be a diplomat in Asia- South Korea specifically. So I studied Korean in school, got a degree in linguistics, and did all sorts of other stuff to prepare me for this amazing career that I was without a doubt romanticizing into oblivion. I wanted to change the world; I wanted my actions to positively impact everyone around me.

When I finally got there, it wasn't what I expected- 'it' being both South Korea and the world as a whole. I met some amazing people, and also some very bad people. I was lied to and taken advantage of, and I didn't really understand half of what was happening to me. So like my typical, stubborn old self, I put my head down and tried to power through. I needed to succeed, on my terms, and in my own way- through grit and perseverance, just like all my childhood stories always told me.


Well, naturally, that didn't work. I wanted to believe for so long that simply working hard and staying positive would be enough to bring me the sort of grand success that I had always dreamed of. When I discovered that that's really just not how the world operates, I spiraled into a long, drawn-out emotional flinch that last almost a year while I 'recovered' by living at home and working as a barista at a local starbucks. I met some great people there, too, and will always look back at that time with fondness.

I went back to Asia, energized and ready to succeed in a whole different way. Gone again for another year, I found the sort of adventures that I remembered from my last trip and a new sort of sadness. Again, my time there blew up in my face because of some awful people making some really awful decisions, and I left bitter, angry, and broke.

Now, more than six months returned to America and settling into a comfortable and productive place, I look back at the things that are gone, the things I missed while I was 'gone'. Even when I was back in America living at home, it was such a challenging place that I never felt like myself- I never felt content or satisfied, only wanting more and never really reaching out to people like I used to.

I've had these moods before, and now I'm finally beginning to realize the cost of missing myself. I missed my father's wedding to my wonderful stepmother, and I missed my brother's wedding to my new sister-in-law. I missed the pregnancy and new motherhood of a very close friend, and the blossoming of so many people's romantic and professional lives. My family grows larger, and I still feel so separated by my own choices.


I'm growing tired of missing things, of missing me. My grandmother sent me a birthday card recently that reminds me of how excited and happy I was as a kid. Reading it stopped me for a moment because there is not part of growing up that necessitates bitterness and cynicism.

Maturity isn't born from misery, and success doesn't come from asperity. I've always compensated for my lack of discipline with harshness towards both myself and the people around me, but that's never been a good solution.

So let's trade asperity for temperance, and grimness for fortitude, and see if this next leg of the adventure doesn't come with a bit more success than the last.

November

Has it already been a month since I last posted here? Good lord.

I guess it's kinda hard to want to update since I a) feel like I have so very little to report most of the time and b), I don't think that anyone really reads this here. I suppose it's hard to build any sort of readership when I don't post, or at least don't post anything insightful or interesting, eh?

November has for, several years now, been a pretty significant month for me. In 2009, I took the month to participate in the National Novel Writing Month's competition to write a (relatively) short novel in the short 30 days of November. It was a big stress to me at the time and I fretted the entire time over the purpose of it, wondering what could possibly be the benefit of doing such a silly thing. After all, who could really develop anything useful or interesting or well-thought out or well-constructed in just 30 days?

It turns out that I was both right and wrong. Although I participated (jumping in 5 days late, sigh), and I won by exceeding the 50,000 word minimum given in the pseudo-competition (50,294), the story was not of the greatest quality. In fact, it was far from my best writing or my highest capabilities. Although it was really only 4 years ago, reading back through some of the novel that I wrote is nearly painful for me.

Yet, I have a novel to go back and read. In fact, I devoted an entire month to writing. I thought daily about my characters and built an entire world up out of nothing. I got to know the imaginary people and began to see how they would fit in with my real life. I wanted to know them better; I wanted them to be real. Even though they were just figments of my imagination, I started to imbue parts of me into their little fiction-encased bodies.

And it sparked nearly two years of intense creativity that I haven't seen the likes of since. Part of me looks back at that time and remarks: "Oh, to be 22 again and not have had to pay any school loans back", or "Jeeze, I miss having all that free time and no car to do anything." I think realistically, a big part of that year of intense 'creation' was sparked off by the success I experienced in NaNoWriMo and the after effects of having my head constantly up in the clouds.

I miss that- that feeling. That knowledge that I was something more than myself, that I was building and creating, that confidence that I even could create. A few years of some difficult work and some very unfortunate life experiences sometimes makes me feel like all of that positivity and creativity was just stomped out of me.

But it hasn't been, and it never will be. Like blood, I have what I need to generate more of those positivity components. I never lost my 'creative marrow', I just forget that it was there. Maybe this November is a good time to search for those essentials again.

Nightsweets

In response to a recent trouble Ive had with thinking about work too much at home, I've started listening to music before sleep again.

I did this a lot in Korea, when insomnia would hit me real bad. Turn off all the lights, turn on a fan and lay down with soft and light music flowing lightly through my big headphones. It became a routine, a comfort. I've never been one for counting sheep; my brain doesn't do very well on something so cottony.

Insomnia or not, I feel change coming this fall. I am slowly moving my work schedule to first shift, though it's probably months away from happening fully. Yet now having regained two evenings during the week, I find myself at a loss. Leaving work before 10pm is foreign and it's hard to not worry that I'm doing something incorrectly. I come home and just lay around, accomplishing little and worrying about the lack of productivity.

But work and effort aren't productive if they serve no purpose, if I gain nothing from them. I can busy myself to death, but even I can't trick myself into believing that something useless I do is beautiful or purposed unless it intrinsically carries those properties with them.

If Object A <> quality X, even projecting the imagine of X upon A will all my might is only a further lesson in tilting at windmills.

So this fall, ostensibly a few weeks in already, is less a search for stability and instead should be redirected at at a grand journey to find purpose. Motivation. Reason.

And I lie in bed, eyes closed and body still, soaring through the clouds over sonic waves of anamnesis. Incorporeal and unshackled, ethereal as a sea of breath, I fly like a falling star in reverse, and somehow make my way off to sleep.

Deus dormit [the god sleeps]

Et liberi ignem faciunt [and the children light a flame]

Numquam extinguet [he never dies,]

Ne expergisci possit. [he can never awake.]

Omnia dividit [the dear and]

Tragoedia cara [lovable tragedy]

Amandamque [divides everything.]

Et nocte perpetua [In the endless night,]

In desperatione [in desperation]

Auroram videre potest [you may see the aurora]

Manet tempus expergiscendi. [it's just the time to revive.]

Nostalgic Insenstience

Music has always been something of an intense experience for me. Putting on a pair of headphones and turning on nearly any song can instantly summon forth a sometimes overpowering set of emotions that seems to take total control of my 'mood'. I instantly remember all these details about the song- when did it first find it, and why it is significant for me. What did this song mean to me, and why?

I can never seem to forget it. I remember the first time I heard most songs in my library, and exactly how it made me feel. Turning on songs from high school or early years of college is like downloading an entire set of emotions and memories from another time- like restoring a backup into my memory. It's overwhelming, and even today I found myself nearly out of breath when taken off-guard by a particularly poignant song.

Be it a loud dance-oriented beat or something quiet and calm, any sort of song can take its place in my catalog. It's amazing how easy I can sometimes manipulate my emotions and mood into feeling pumped up or sad, just by turning on a particular set of songs. I remember these things so specifically that like ghosts of the past, I can summon them all back without much difficulty.

It feels stupid, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this. It's just something that hits me very hard from time to time- be it a song from the radio when I was little, or a particularly reminiscent from a significant scene in a favorite video game, there are just a lot of songs that bury themselves so deeply beneath my skin that I could never itch nor shake them loose.

Lately, to combat the heavy and unending thoughts of work, I lie down and listen to old music, letting the memories roll over me and carry me like soft tidal waves into slumber. Nostalgia my captain and memory my ship, I sail gently to tomorrow on the current of all my lives wrapped into a single, blue ocean that stretches in all directions.

It may be cheesy and it may be trite, but it's hard to sleep without the song lately.

Separation Anxiety

I've always prided myself on being a hard worker and being very thorough with any sort of project I'm working on. I believe that I commit well to my tasks at hand and have a very strong organizational intelligence that allows me to balance a wide variety of projects/tasks at a time, properly triaging the most urgent and handling everything in a time-sensitive manner.

I'm typically able to accomplish this be expending an enormous amount of psychic energy, completely devoting myself to the task list. It's a great if tiring practice at work where all of the mentioned skills, and more, are required to do my job well. Today, I walked into work and was bombarded by one thing after another that all required my immediate attention, needed to be finished ASAP, and no one else could address it.

I got through the day successfully, meeting my goals and (ideally) pleasing both clients and company. I've reached a point where many of my coworkers have grown comfortable trusting and depending on me to do a very high-quality work, and that makes me extraordinarily proud.

But lying down in bed at 3:30 am, I discover the cost of committing so strongly to my job: I can't leave it behind.

This is an issue that has slowly been creeping up on me lately and I keep brushing it under the rug, but as I laid in bed and listened to some old music from years and years ago, I found my nostalgia interrupted time and time again with visions of work. Last night, I fell asleep on the couch after a long shift and dreamt I was right back at work, back in the trenches, never having left.

It's driving me crazy. I can't seem to leave it behind me. I've memorized account numbers and names of all sorts of people; I could probably do half of my work blind-folded since I seem to have memorized it all so thoroughly. I just want to separate from it, but I can't.

When I was younger and I'd obsess over video games, I'd memorize all sorts of little things from them, to the point that I can comfortably play through same entire games in my head (I've done it, too, on long flights or something). Now that same freaky-weird memory is biting me in the ass because I can't seem to shut down the part of my brain that is 'work'.

How do you do that? How can I 'just say no' to thinking about work when I leave? All I want to do is sleep without worrying and worrying and worrying... I don't even work tomorrow.

How can I cure myself of this daily dose of separation anxiety?

Sharing isn't always Caring

In 2009, I traveled to South Korea for the first time as a part of a really cool trip run by an NGO in DC. I spent a month traveling through the country and meeting some really amazing people, including ambassadors and generals- big, decision-making sorts of people. I made friends who were radically different from me and learned about the world as well as myself; it was a wonderful trip.

Naturally, pictures were an important part of the experience. We all took hundreds and hundreds of pictures, the course of the month filling up harddrives with thousands of photos from our group of just-under-fifty people. Responsible for organizing a publication to memorialize the month, I got to sort through quite a few of those photos, reliving nearly every place we went and every thing we did. It was that beautiful, bittersweet nostalgia that we always so cautiously crave.

There was something that bothered me about it all, though. We spent time at ancient palaces, remnants of cultures and kingdoms that no longer existed, and from a similar period, we traveled to several old and beautiful Buddhist temples. But whereas the palaces were political and tourist traps, the temples remained alive and breathing, and we had the pleasure of witnessing live Buddhist ceremonies. Out of respect, I chose not to take pictures of any part of the temples, but I was alone in the sentiment and even mocked for such silliness. Why not take pictures? Why not use flash?

Now, in 2013, with smart phones everywhere and instagram/twitter/tumblr/facebook/etcetcetc being used by everyone and their mom, the idea of intentionally not taking pictures while doing something interesting or seeing something beautiful seems almost foreign. We all continue moving towards creating a live, never-ending personal news feed and technology does nothing but enable my generation's desire for every person to star in their own personal movie.

Don't get me wrong- I love what technology has to offer. I love that I can take a picture of something silly and send it to a friend that I share an inside joke with, or that I can communicate in real-time with my old pals who live across the world. That's amazing and we should all take advantage of what our technology has to offer.

But sometimes I don't want to share. I don't want every moment of my life to be plastered on the internet.

I remember my time at the temples fondly, and the quiet peace of a ceremony that I know nothing about. I don't regret not taking pictures; I don't feel shorthanded at all. I'm happy that I have that memory to myself, that the images and the smells and the sounds are mine and mine alone, stored away somewhere in the archives of my mind to be taken out and enjoyed when I want it.

Over the past few years, I've grown more and more desirous of these 'selfish' memories. While so many people around move closer to sharing every waking thought and every meal and every sunrise, I find my own memory becoming more and more precious. While I'm amenable to taking pictures for some moments, more often than not, I seem to think "I just want this one for me", and I leave my nice, 8 megapixel cell in my pocket.

And the memories I'm holding in my heart seem sharper than ever. I still take the occasional photos for my records, or for shits and giggles, or to share something particularly poignant, but I like that everyone on my facebook feed doesn't always know what I'm doing or have done. I don't need them to know; I don't want them to know. I know, and I can tell them later, if I want.

Maybe it's just the story-teller nature of my personality, but there's something just aggravating about trying to share an experience with someone and hearing them say "oh yeah, I saw that on your wall" or "I know, I follow you on Twitter." I love the satisfaction of sharing my life with someone directly, of feeling them react and knowing that they know because I like them enough to share my stories with them. It's warm and it's personal, and maybe it's a bit outdated to some people, that's what I like and that's what I choose.

It might be silly; maybe it's even selfish. It's hard for me to say exactly, but there's something very sweet and comforting knowing that my memories can remain precious and rare. I may live my life as if I'm staring in my own personal movie, but I don't really feel the need to share the script with everyone- only the people that matter most.

So. Tired.

I've never had a job that allowed my to take on overtime before, and it's sort of addicting.

Due to some serious staff shortages, my company is basically on approve-all-OT requests at this point, especially for last minute cancellations. Between my financial need and my insatiable need to be everyone's friend, I've been picking up dropped shifts and filling in for gaps that coverage is needed. It's exhausting and frustrating, and I wonder if it won't be long until I'm burnt out.

Yesterday, I worked 8 AM until 12AM- a 16 hour shift. It was intense and a little crazy, and by the end I was ready to get the hell out of there. 10 hour shifts are becoming more and more common as I stay a little later here, come in a little earlier there. I just need the hours badly, especially as my other job seems to be falling flat. There is such a big need, but the job itself is exhausting.

In a lot of ways, it's the opposite of Starbucks. I never see any of the callers or clients in person, and so there is a very strange sense of confinement and almost 'other worldliness' to the call center. It helps to establish a great sense and environment of comradery as we all struggle and handle irate callers, angry people at every turn, and broken accounts that leave us in the lurch. The people I work with make the job doable; with a different crew, I imagine I probably would have quit in anger at some point already.

On the other hand, the company suffers from some very serious structural and organizational issues. Communication between customer service and IT is terrible, creating massive inefficiencies in solving client or account-related problems. I work in IT for a few hours on every shift and see no end to that frustration anytime in the near future. Unskilled or lazy workers cause issues for every agent in the company and slow progress down to a grinding halt.

It's definitely not a job that I can see myself staying at for the next ten years. I'm exhausted after even a four hour shift of taking calls, and although the IT work is certainly more interesting, it is no less frustrating. There is a lot of great talent at the company, without a doubt, so at least I can get through day-by-day.

Breath deep, and always keep the goal in sight. Always.

Sabotage

I had an English teacher in High School who once described me as ‘incredibly self-destructive’. She believed that I was an intelligent and capable person who actually was scared of success and performing in life in a way that would lead me towards a great and exciting life/career. She commented occasionally on my tendency to take actions that would directly hurt my ability to achieve my goal, and finally she asked me why I did it.

I never was able to think of a good reason for it, but it is an unfortunate habit, or possibly series of habits, that has carried over into my adulthood far longer than it should have. After living overseas, after a multitude of attempts to try to whip my body or my mind into shape, I manage to often fall back onto the same set of excuses and bad decisions that lead to me failing to achieve whatever I had intended to do.

There’s always something that seems to get in the way- maybe I get busy, maybe I start to date someone, maybe I find a new project or a new TV show to obsess over. Maybe I start to go out more and maybe I start to binge read books or maybe I decide that it’s time for me to pick up that other old habit that I had tossed aside. Maybe I just can’t focus.

Maybe it’s just a lack of discipline. I often chafe at the idea of having a good schedule but the reality is that in the times that I’ve had a good, regular schedule for work and for school, I’ve always managed to balance my eating, sleeping and exercise habits along with many of my personal hobbies. Those times are rare and easily disrupted- that sort of circadian homeostasis is delicate and beautiful. I miss that taste of productivity.

When I first moved back to Columbus, my first week was filled with exercise and writing. I accomplished a great deal even as I applied for jobs, but by the time week two rolled around, I was back into some unhealthy habits- sitting around all day, binge watching TV while attempting to also sort of enjoy playing a video game on my PC. I did it automatically, barely tasting any of the media I consumed and gaining nothing from it other than glad to have something to fill the schedule.

Building up that discipline- setting realistic goals and things to achieve- is difficult. It’s far from easy but especially for someone that has historically been so scared of success, the idea of discipline and an ordered path to personal achievement can be frightening in and of itself. Discipline is a sign of commitment, the desire to achieve something so bad that I control my baser emotions. It’s the subjugation of my distraction and inattention, the willingness to work.

As I’ve gotten older, my natural desire to self-sabotage has certainly attenuated, but now I can’t help but when if that’s because I’ve matured or simply because I’ve stopped taking any real risks. I’ve moved overseas and live there twice, and I recently set myself up for another move and am doing well. I can’t help but wonder, though, if I’ve set my goals a little lower than my capabilities. 

Masculinity

As I get older, I wrestle more and more with what it means to be a man. It’s different from when I was a teenager and full of weird hormones and splattered with acne- rather than questioning what a man is physically, I wonder more and more what it means to be a man in the day-to-day doldrums of life.

I interact with a lot of people from a wide variety of walks of life on a daily basis. People much older than me and people much younger; Americans and foreigners alike. Having spent time overseas only pushed me to question classical American notions of masculinity more than ever, and now that I’m back in the generally conservative Midwest, I find my notions once again challenged.

What is a man?, I ask myself. What does it mean to be a man at 25 years of age, with no family to support and wholly single? When my father was my age, he had three children and another on the way. My grandfather had lived many lives by this time, married the love of his life, bought her a house and began having children after his service in world war 2.

Insecurity most likely plays a part in my questioning. I look around me to those that I care about and inevitably measure myself up against them. It’s natural that I’ll pay closest attention to those things that I’m already aware that I’m failing in- if failing is even the right word. It’s all so gray and cloudy that I barely even know how to put the search for a satisfying answer into words.

As a gay man, especially, it’s difficult to answer the question sometimes. I’m comfortable with my sexual orientation, though not everyone is, and somehow their discomfort is something that works to make me feel bad, insecure, and inadequate as a man. Logically, I recognize that as bullshit, but of course I can’t help but feel bad at times. I know how I sound when I talk, and even if I’m not running around with make-up and tights on like a stereotype out of Hollywood, I still get called ma’am on the phone, and the knee-jerk is always to just feel… sour.

I can’t help but wonder how many of the mannerisms are natural and how many are accidentally manufactured. I’m gay, sure, but I don’t meet a lot of the other stereotypes. Mostly, I’m a skinny nerd who likes to read and play video games, eat a lot and drink beer with my friends. But still I can’t shake this feeling that I’m not butch enough, I’m not man enough, and I just begin to feel awkward as hell around people that ARE butch enough- according to some strange and Byzantine standards that should be irrelevant, but somehow aren’t.

It’s not something I spend hours agonizing over every day, or every week. It’s just a question that runs through my head from time to time- something that I want to understand about myself and my society. Especially as I try to prepare myself for the future, I can’t help but want to know where I am so I can build a good path to where I want to be.

But that’s a whole different story.

Everything

Everything is a very big word. It means all of it, without exception. Each and every one of those things, minus none. Everything.

It’s not uncommon for me, and others I’m sure, to use this word liberally. I’m a story-teller by nature and I like to pepper my language with strong and vivid language. I like to embellish and exaggerate, to paint a picture for my conversational partners and the word ‘everything’ is indeed a strong word. Every single thing.

But there is an unfortunately common usage of the word that , for the very first time, seems at once both alien and categorically untrue.

“Everything is going good.”
“Everything is going bad.”

There is, of course, the negative form of this (simply replace ‘everything’ with ‘nothing’) but let’s stick with this for now.

I used to use this sort of language a lot. Very often, even. It’s a very easy picture to paint; a very clear and easily comprehended black and white. Everything or nothing, all at once, without reservation. My entire life’s energy is somehow, all at once, entirely positive or negative. It’s all good or it’s all bad, and never anything in between.

Time and possibly even some maturation leads me to wonder if maybe my penchant for using such strong and extremist language is helping to contribute to a very alarming personality trait that worries me for my future. I love to devote myself to things and commit great amounts of energy to my projects and passions, but I often get such an extreme case of tunnel vision that I can only really focus on a single track, and the second my eyesight wanders, it becomes abandoned as I focus on a new road.

It’s a common behavior in teenagers, but that’s not what I am anymore, or who I want to be. Balance and self-administration are very important and attractive qualities. They do not exclude or stultify passion- rather, they direct and guide that wonderfully positive energy that otherwise is wasted when the path is eventually abandoned for something new. I’ve worked hard in recent years to practice more discipline with this.

Similarly, I should apply the same ‘grayification’ of my tendency to overuse everything. It’s over-reaching and creates damaging simplifications of complex issues. Sure I sprained my ankle a few days ago, but I also managed to get a ton of cleaning done at home. Today, I may have been extremely productive before I went in for work, but then I was in a bad mood at work all day from a few bad callers.

I guess my point is that rather than wrapping myself up in a mood that can create depressions (‘everything is so bad right now…’) or prepare me for to be crushed after crashing from an unrealistic high, I should seek a form of restraint in my thoughts. When things are good, acknowledge it- but use realistic language. “Things are going great for me” is reality; “everything is going great for me” is fantasy, at best.

By managing a balance of thoughts, I believe I can increase my overall satisfaction and productivity in life. It may take a while, but it can all begin with a simple change in the way that I communicate, both externally and internally.

My MOOC

MOOC is an acronym that stands for ‘massively-open online course’ and in recent days it’s become an important word to me.

As a part of my effort to grow and develop professionally as I look towards graduate school in the near future, I want to make sure that I’m not just coming home from work every day and planting in front of the TV and watching old Sci-fi reruns- I mean, I did that on Saturday, but I think it’s okay every once in a while.

A friend tipped me off to Coursera.com, a website that offers free online courses run by actual professors at some of the top universities in the US and Canada. A big frustration of mine in recent years is that although I wanted to learn how to program and there is a ton of information on the web available for me, it’s hard to jump into such an intimidating and ‘big’ field without clear structure or guidance. At my friend’s advice, I surfed around Coursera and found an intro to logical programming and signed up for the course to begin on June 3^rd.

As someone that has never taken an online course before, I was a little unsure about it, especially since these classes had the ‘MO’- massively open- attached to the front. An introductory video mentioned that there would be thousands and thousands of students in some of the classes on the website and I felt like I’d probably abandon things after a day or two. I felt like the class materials would probably be subpar and shoddy and that I wouldn’t gain much from the class.

But to my pleasant surprise, I was wildly incorrect. Each class comes with a wide variety of video lectures to be watched each week along with practice and homework exercises, typically followed by a quiz each week to check in progress. A lot of the lectures are made by the professors themselves and actually quite engaging- much better than many of the instructors I had in classes that I myself attended in college. I actually look forward to some of them.

So in addition to the programming course, I decided to sign up for a few more classes- one on the history and development of the internet to help me understand modern telecommunications better, an introduction to Finance course since I don’t really understand business or money, a course on Models and Model Theory to help my understanding of the world and as a potential aide in data analysis, and the programming course. I’m learning straight from professors at universities like the University of Michigan, University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto- all fantastic schools.

It’s four courses and each expects between 5-7 hours of work a week and it’s thus far been a great way to spend my after-work-hours doing something both interesting and productive. I may not be a student, but I’m really thankful for the learning opportunities that our modern world can provide to those who are interested.

So suffice to say, it’s been nice to keep busy J

The Big Adjustment

Moving from two months of unemployment immediately into working full time has been a great deal more physically exhausted than I would have expected.

In terms of movement and physical toll, my job is actually really easy. It’s all done in front of computers so I don’t have a lot of moving around to do- switching work stations, moving floors or going from the training room to the IT department, or down into the call center itself. It’s not at all a difficult job, except that sitting for hours at a time can make my padding-less butt hurt.

But for some reason, I’m always exhausted when I get home! When it hits 4 or 5 or 6pm or whenever I get off for the day, I come home, stuff my face from hunger and want to go to sleep almost immediately. Today, after only six hours, I came home and crashed, unable to stay awake through some of the video lectures that I typically watch at night.

A big part of this adjustment is reprogramming my body’s circadian rhythm. Before I started working here, it was difficult to get myself in bed and sleeping before the sunrise, and suddenly I find myself waking up around 7AM every morning, moving around, eating, and getting ready for the day. In a course of days, I have flipped my schedule around completely. I was so worried about being unable to do this that I set three alarms on my phone and one on my computer every day just to ensure that I don’t arrive to work any later than fifteen minutes early.

In addition to getting my sleep cycle back into a healthy mode, I’ve made some other big changes in my life. When I was still living overseas, my diet was based entirely on my mood- if I wanted to go gorge on Korean BBQ, I would find someone to go with and then sit for two hours, eating and drinking to my heart’s content. Whether it was the BBQ or fried chicken or some other amazing part of Korean cuisine, I chose what to eat for taste and convenience only, thinking nothing of health or my body.

Now that I’m back in a comfortable home with a good kitchen, I decided to take control of my diet again. Starting around May 1, I stopped drinking alcohol entirely, only have a small drink to celebrate getting my job and not even being able to enjoy it because the ‘dry’ life has been so pleasurable for me. I stopped drinking coffee, worried that I would quickly grow dependent on it with my early mornings.

Not only with my liquids, but I’ve cut meat out of my diet, officially a vegetarian for over a month now. As part of an effort to clean out my system and move back into healthy eating, I’ve decided on these rules as a method to take control of my diet and aggressively pursue a healthy, active lifestyle. In the past, I have found that managing my sleep cycle and diet are the keys to finding a good, healthy balance in life.

Of course, all of these changes in such a short period of time haven’t been easy. I’m tired a lot and still feel something like a zombie when I lay awake until 3am but wake up at 7 to get ready for work- but it’s been getting easier. I’m snacking very little at this point, and am back to eating breakfast and packing lunches to work every day. It’s far from anything fancy, but it’s a lot of really positive steps.

I’ll keep this up for the indefinite future, but man- I am looking forward to becoming a morning person again.

The Velocity Of

I chose the name of this blog for a specific reason- ‘The Velocity Of’, with the tagline ‘Finding the velocity of success.’ I intend for this blog to help me in the effort of forging my own path for success.

A lot of times, people talk about the future, and success, like it’s some sort of an accident that we happen upon in life. It’s something that we’re both with, or we achieve success by luck. When I was younger, I bitterly believed in same lines of thought- that since I wasn’t born into some sort of TV-worthy success story, that it was either luck, or the gutter for me at best.

Of course, the reality is that being born into a loving and, though at times difficult, supportive family in the United States of America is being lucky, and is being born into success, and I don’t want to discount those advantages and privileges by any means. I only mean to say that when I was younger, the reality of my own privilege was largely invisible to someone as self-centered and egocentric as an intelligent teenager.

I’ve come to understand that success is something that we make with a combination of hardwork and talent- but even a lot of talent comes from hard work. As lazy and despondent and depressed as I was during the last few weeks of unemployment, and even before when I was living miserably overseas because of money issues and my unpleasant work environment, I let all of my talents and hobbies go fallow, unused and wasted.

The last week has been incredibly invigorating. Things finally began a turn around when I got a call on Wednesday asking me to come in the following day for an interview at a call center downtown. I was wary after interviewing a few other places, so I accepted without letting my hopes get too high. I did well in the interview, and went in for a group orientation the day after the interview. I had been offered a job after two months of miserable unemployment.

Things have been snowballing since then. My first day of training, I was asked to take a logic test after expressing interest in their IT department. I managed to score so well that they put me into training with their IT department immediately, along with a modest raise and skipping the usual 2-3 month waiting period for adjustment before moving agents into departments.

I also have an interview for Kaplan, the world’s gold standard in test prep for a part-time position teaching the GRE. It’s the final, third interview with them and I’m both nervous and excited. I’m feeling excited and enthusiastic, and I’m going to ride this wave of enthusiasm into a really positive and exciting success.

Since the first interview with my call center, I immediately felt buoyed. I finally started this blog, a project that I’ve wanted to begin for a while. I started my personal writing up again, began some non-fiction reading and signed up for a bunch of free Massively-Open Online Courses over at Coursera.com. I feel great, and the more steps towards positivity that I take, the further I want to go.

It’s all a fantastic reminder that in a lot of ways, we build our own futures. This blog is dedicated to my journey. I’m no longer searching for the path to success- that’s something I build myself, out of my own blood, sweat, and tears. Instead, I’m searching for the velocity of success- not the road, but the rate.

Success is my state of mind, and I may be crawling right now, but it’s a hell of a lot better than no movement at all- and it’ll be no time at all before I’m running, and then flying.

Finding the Velocity

Along with this blog, I recently decided to undertake a big project to help me figure out where I’m headed in life over the next while. After working abroad and then coming back to the states to spend nearly a year at Starbucks, then back abroad and back again, I’ve grown tired of the constant moving and the total lack of stability from year to year. I haven’t lived in the same home for more than a year at a time since I was in High School; I haven’t stayed focused on what I wanted to do for a long-term career hardly at all since elementary school, if ever.

I’m a smart guy and I know it. I breezed my way through my early years of school, stressing out more about the drama of high school than focusing at all on my studies while still earning nearly a full ride to a fantastic university in a challenging new program in their engineering program. Without a minute of studying for either the SAT or ACT I scored well; with a great effort of studying for the GRE, I scored in the 97^th percentile. This isn’t a vehicle for bragging; I’m just trying to paint a picture.

But for all of my supposed intelligence, I’ve always allowed myself to be lazy. I never liked working hard or appearing to put any effort in anything. I mocked my high school classmates for caring too much about their grades and college apps, and bragged about the little effort I put into anything. I wanted to be that ‘cool’, effortless smart kid who never worked hard and wowed everyone around him with his natural strengths and talents.

It all failed for me eventually. Now attending a good university in a difficult program, I quickly realized that my lack of discipline and study skills was no longer something to brag about. Within a single term, I was forced to switch majors because I couldn’t keep up with the work, and by the end of the first year I had to switch away from the sciences altogether because I lacked any sort of ability to organize my life, attend lectures, or even do my homework. I grew nervous and anxious; I lost my scholarships.

Back then, I almost laughed at the whole thing because I wanted to remain that sort of ‘effortless’ genius, but internally I grew worried. I eventually graduated with poor grades with a double major of Linguistics and Korean. I finally began to take things seriously but couldn’t help but look back at my previous years as a sort of failure, a secret disease of indolence that I didn’t want anyone to know about. Though it’s been burned into my head, I don’t think I’ve ever spoken my college GPA out loud, my shame sewing my lips shut.

And now that I’ve been out of college for more than three years, I find myself in the same city, only a few minutes away from my first apartment back in 2007. Earlier today, I walked around my old school, remembering all of the adventures that took place on campus. When I go jogging through the streets surrounding the campus, I remember who lived in what apartments and what parties I had attended where and when. It’s stuffed full of good memories, and I’m torn between nostalgia and embarrassment.

You see, there’s a part of me that sits here and feels like I’ve failed. I’m back in a city that, upon leaving in 2010, swore that I’d never live in again. I feel like I’m in the same place that I was three years ago except I somehow have less money than before, more debt, and am 25 years old. I’m still unsure of my future and what career to pursue. It feels uncertain and awkward, and I still balk and telling some of my more obviously successful friends what I’ve been up to.

But then I’m reminded that things are, in fact, not at all the same. I’m fortunate that in the years between then and now that I’ve matured a great deal. My time abroad pushed me to develop true independence- physically and emotionally. I take good care of my health and pay attention to my finances more than ever before. I’m a great deal more practical than I used to be and have learned how to avoid a lot of the old traps that I used to fall into so easily.

So now that I’ve examined the present and compared it to the past, it’s time to think about my future. More on that in the next entry!

Overindulged Expectations

One of the things I’ve come to notice about my short time back here in my new city is that I tend to build these really high expectations- not only for myself, but for the friends and acquaintances that I knew from before or have met since. Having high expectations for yourself can be a really beneficial thing, but when in a transplant, expecting too much from your peers or friends can be a dangerous thing.

Like I wrote about in my last entry, sometimes a micro-cataclysm can be a good way to shake things up in our lives so that we can get a fresh start or even a new burst of energy to help us power through some of the humdrum of everyday life. But the tricky thing about these micro-cataclysms is that they’re often very personal and internal motions and rarely directly affect even our closest friends.

A transplant is especially tricky. Everyone who knows you’ve moved and changed locations is aware of what your big change is but they can be unsure of exactly how they should be reacting. For myself, I’ve been in the city for just a little over three weeks- not very much time at all, in the long run- but due to my unemployment during that time, it felt like a very long time indeed. In fact, it felt almost like an eternity as I sat around, all day, sending in job apps, mulling over my future, and waiting for some sort of hero to come in and save me from the doldrums. I began to grow frustrated by my friends for not contacting me and offering to help me out or celebrating my big return to the city, shades of bitterness holding me back from even wanting to contact them at times.

But this is a very inaccurate and selfish manner of thinking. You see, although I may have an open, free schedule because of the transplant and the on-going search for employment, the people who are already settled in with routines and obligations and slews of responsibilities that I know nothing about certainly lack the free time that I do. For many of them, my return may have gone unnoticed due to their busy and hectic schedules, yet I sit on my couch, surfing Facebook and growing annoyed that no one is coming around to save me from my boredom.

It’s pretty stupid and immature of me to act that way, but I think it’s a natural reaction to the mini-cataclysm that recent months have thrown at me. Of course my move back to the United States from Asia and then to a new/old city has been huge! Enormous! Life-altering! to me, but to anyone else, it may be good news indeed but nearly as impactful.

And because it lacks the same sense of urgency and appulse to anyone else as it does to me, my overindulged expectations will naturally fall flat as they run around with their lives, unable to abandon all of their responsibilities to indulge my boredom and frustration. As always with unrealistic expectations, it can be toxic to a relationship when you begin making demands, even if they’re internal and voiceless.

All of this is another reminder that if I want to live an adult life, I need to act like an adult. Assertiveness has often been difficult for me in the past but if I really want something, why not attempt the more proactive route? I need to be the one scheduling lunch-dates or tea-times with people if they’re significantly busier than me, regardless of what they’re busy with. It’s an okay thing to do. It’s an adult thing to do. 

Micro-Cataclysms

Continued from ‘Enervation’.

When we get caught up in the negative and unhealthy cycles that can come to rule us, it can feel like an impossible task to derail ourselves. Like a highway with no exits, it becomes a wait for that pre-built path that leads us away from perdition. We wait and we wait as we continue driving in the blackness of night, going forever on the highway with no street signs.

But the fact that we wait is nonsensical in the first place. This highway may lead us to a place that many others have gone before, but the road we ride is one that we build ourselves. A psychic journey to our own personal misery, the trail we take is always one created from our own choices and decisions. If we can’t see an exit as we drive, it’s because we didn't build one for ourselves. There is no exit because we didn't give ourselves one.

And so the wait becomes increasingly illogical the longer that we take this highway. But that doesn't mean we’re doomed, it just means that we have to find a way to get off-road on our own. If you hate the one-way road you’re on with no exit you’re on, sometimes you have to steer into the sidelines and pray the vehicle survives.

I like to think of this action as a sort of ‘micro-cataclysm’. It’s a bumpy, tumultuous event that shakes up pieces of our world into uncertainty and moves us far into the unknown. It’s a scary process and at times can be extremely painful, but the movements that we take are sometimes necessary to lead us away from the land of misery that we dread entering so much yet have lost any idea of how to avoid.

A micro-cataclysm can be finding a new social circle to surround ourselves with in order to get away from friends who hold us back. It may be moving to a new city or changing jobs. It could be ending an unhealthy relationship with a significant other. The strange thing is that we can often see the shackles that hold us in bondage.

In tarot, there is a card called ‘The Devil’ in the cycle of the Major Arcana. It is a frightening image of a great demon that has apparently enslaved two naked humans.

The Devil card as shown in Tarot [Source: Wikipedia]

What is interesting about this card and what it represents is that the bondage is often willful on part of the humans. Whether or not they walked into the demons grasp willfully, the idea is that the shackles around their necks are loose- they could be removed if the two slaves made the choice to take the chains off. It depicts an image of fear and fright for those who are unable to leave behind that which is unhealthy and damaging in our lives.

So even if it is shocking and difficult to leave behind our demons, even if it means that we have to experience a mini-cataclysm, sometimes that’s the only way to shake ourselves out of the negative cycles and habits that we’ve allowed ourselves to continue living with.

Instead of living in such negativity, why don’t we take those steps? Like the slaves on the card, let’s throw off these shackles and move towards a greater future of health and positivity.

Enervation

Perhaps one of the most dangerously cyclical negatives of my recent unemployment is the enervation that comes hand-in-hand.

I’m usually a pretty active person. I enjoy work and working hard. I like spending hours every week cooking and experimenting in the kitchen, and to devote as much energy as possible to exercise and staying fit. I like being busy and to have a full agenda that keeps me rushing between activities. I’m more productive than ever in my writing and my reading, my personal projects and my hobbies, when I’m already so busy that I have to reference my schedule every time that someone asks for even a cup of tea.

It often seems like I live in a positive feedback circuit with my moods and energy levels. When I expend energy to accomplish a task, I look to future tasks more eager and willing to continue expending more and more energy. Practically, this results in me working as a higher-functioning creature when I have more that needs to be done. As I feed the cycle, I want to continue feeding more and more, resulting in periods of extremely high industriousness.

A feeds to B which feeds to A which feeds to B which... [Credit: Wikipedia]

Unfortunately, the positive feedback circuit runs both ways. In the absence of energy expenditures, I feed the cycle a cocktail of anxiety and indolence. The circuit loops back onto itself just like above, producing more of the cocktail that feeds future iterations of said cycle. Each trip through the circuit leaves me feeling more nervous and a great deal less productive.

For some reason, the pathways in my brain for mood management work the same whether I’m feeding positivity or negativity. I’ve been unemployed for nearly two full months now, the longest I’ve gone without some way to pay the bills since I was in high school. I look at my bills and debts and feel the anxiety rising like bile in my throat and struggle to calm down.

Further, in the absence of a feeling of ‘positive productivity’, indolence sets in and I find my inertia reaching nearly zero. I no longer feel capable of doing or accomplishing anything at all. My hobbies begin to slip away, my desire to spend time cooking and exercising slowly fades to nothing. I want to do everything but feel incapable and impotent, powerless in the face of the looming future ahead of me.

The whole circuit has left me feeling completely enervated, like an empty cicada shell. My life force has drained away and I’m just the remainder, the pieces left behind. I feel drained of confidence and enthusiasm, incapable of succeeding at anything that I want to try.

But thankfully, there is a way to shut down the cycle. More on this in the next entry.

Unmotion

He sat there in confusion and bit his lip, a grimace and a smirk fighting to paint themselves across his eyes. While usually a fan of self-deprecating humor even at inappropriate times, Boy just couldn’t accept that the humor of this irony would be worth the story it would spawn, at least not in the short run. It had actually happened; he didn’t get the job. Wanting to somehow believe he had misheard it, Boy decided to listen one more time to the message.

“…sorry to inform you that we’ve gone with another qualified candidate. Thank you for your interest in working for [Health Food Grocery Chain] and good luck in your future endeavors.”

The message was as curt as it was damning. Suddenly Boy realized that he had actually been denied a job working at a grocery store, a joke he’d been making in the weeks since he first sent in his application. “Wouldn’t it be hilarious if they rejected me? Could you imagine how terrible you’d feel if you couldn’t get hired at a f***ing grocery store?”

It feels this terrible, he thought to himself, the smirk winning out, tinted with self-hate. It feels exactly like this.

Not wanting to be idle, Boy immediately begin sending in a flurry of additional job applications, sitting on the one piece of furniture in the apartment he’d just secured. Girl is going to f***ing kill me, he realized when he checked his bank account to see if the check he’d written for rent and deposit cleared. It had, and the double-digit balance remaining was all the more terrifying in the shadow of the voicemail he’d just heard. ****ing **** ****-****, ****.

It wasn’t the end of the world, but it felt like it. Boy’s face was flushed and red, and he began to sweat, but it wasn’t because the laptop was beginning to overheat his lap.

***

This begins a journey into the world of rebooting my life. Stories of a twentysomething who helps not only to vent his own personal woes as he attempts to claim his stake in society, but to give a space for voices of anyone else who wants to learn, to speak, or to be heard.

Instead of a page with a thousand flashing gifs mocking the life of us twentysomethings, maybe it’s time someone provided a space for some actual development. Let this be a journey to discover the velocity of success.