New Tattoo

It's been a long time coming, but I'm happy to announce that I am the owner of a new tattoo. I've wanted one for a while now and I've drawn a couple of sketches. It was a methodical thing, really; I never do anything like this without a lot of thinking. I mean a lot of thinking.

After months of thoughts and planning, the funny thing is how it finally happened; my tattoo artist, Sarock, called me and asked if I wanted to get my tat today because he was bored.

Worked for me.

It took a while to outline and fill in, but this is pretty cool. I did a couple of things to make things easier:

1. headphones. music soothes the soul. it also makes a good distraction.
2. mouthpiece. instead of crying out when i'm in pain, i tend to grind my teeth. because of that, i took measures to keep my mouth from bleeding. the outlining hurt a little bit, so it ended up being better than a good idea.
3. calming music. i didn't listen to a dance playlist, but a soft one that i use for preparing for bed. the calming music put my mind in a more restful, meditative mood. this also took the edge off of some of the pain.
4. prayer. i prayed. no, not for myself, but for other people that came to mind while being tattooed. it gave me something positive to do with my thoughts.
5. relaxing. i used the mood of my music to keep my body relaxed instead of tense. this helped the process a lot more than one would realize.

In the end, the process was a little less than two hours long and I really like the tattoo. It, like every tattoo I will get, has a meaning and a very special one. This one is about the ones I love. There is subtext for this tattoo, but it will be added on a different day. I will not translate the text, but here's the basic idea: do not touch the things or people that I treasure. Doing so will earn you my unyielding wrath.

Oh, that is a mohawk, by the way. Yes, it is mine.

New Places

Today was a good day to expand horizons. I went to visit the guys at FourAthens and went to a code retreat this morning after handling some stuff after work (good grief that day; a five hour project took 10 straight. Utter bull...).

It was good. I felt like I was in over my head the moment I walked in. Everyone else was well-established as a developer. I just wanted to learn, so I kept that in mind and decided that I would stay in and play anyway. We had to recreate the program logic for the Game of Life.

They had you do whatever you could do to recreate the logic for 45 minutes, then erase it all and start again with varying twists:

• don't use conditional statements
• have a partner test, then add to it
• don't talk to your partner, but work together
• work on the project, then switch with another group's code and extend it. you can't talk to the group that made the code you swapped with

So many things like this. It points out things I've always known: I can get the logic easy and I even know what I need, I just don't know how to ask the program for it. That said, the guys there were all really cool and gave me lots of ideas for how to get where I was going. 

I got further than Morgan did, but even he went up by what I consider leaps and bounds today.

After that (and I was sad to go), I went to Starbucks where Jami said, "You must have sensed I was having a bad day and came to make me feel better." I smiled and gave her my root beer. After that, I saw these cranberry bliss bars, and had to have some. I ordered about $20 worth of stuff. She charged me for coffee, tea, and one bar, but gave me six.

So good omnomnomnomnom......

I walked out smiling, and she was happy with her root beer. I think she needed that.

We all do.

After that, I went from being nice to being mean to the Plan International people on the street. I just wanted to be left alone. I took a kid on and sponsored that kid. I don't know why they don't remember me since I've talked to the exact same person multiple times. I just want to be remembered and left alone to enjoy my afternoon sometimes. If you need help, then I'll help you where I'm at, but asking me to do a million things with $30 for someone halfway across the world is getting on my nerves. Especially when I know that, to you, I'm just another one among the ranks you've asked and not someone even worth remembering.

Moving on, Friday at work was some nonsense, but I had a lot of fun playing Soul Caliber with the guys the night before and then after that, I didn't sleep well. I woke up every 45 minutes and each time after a nightmare. Some of them had my mom. One of them involved work. It's just not a good situation, but I'm ok. Walked into work early and had to wait for everyone to turn in everything last minute.

It's all good though.

I also have a job interview next week. I need to work on that for a bit, but I'm alright for now.

I've also been thinking about God and worship and the Church more. Not a building, but a people. A nation. I bought some music. The fact that it's all Christian music is interesting, but I honestly just wanted to support those artists. I think I bought liek $30 worth of music in minutes. It felt good to buy it, oddly enough.

I'm also enjoying the music I bought. It takes me back and makes me remember and it's just worth listening to.

I need to shake some things off, and shake other things up and I'm good to go.

I'm going to take a little road trip with my roomie tonight so he can be with his family. It's a long drive and I don't want him to go alone. It's going to be a fun weekend and I'm looking forward to every moment.

This day has been clear win.

Let's Get Crazy

Tonight, I want to rip every single poster of my wall. I don't know what to think of that just yet. Impulsive comes to mind, but I'm really not that random. I think there are "reasons that reason knows nothing of" behind this, so I'll go with it, whatever this is.

Past that, even to myself, I will explain nothing.

"Excuses Begone" by Wayne Dyer

To start with, I don't like self-help books, but since I had bought it for friends to read, I thought I would see what I was giving them.

This book started to grate against me from chapter one. I'm uncomfortable with the fact that he tries to include God without actually doing so. The presentation of that is always ambiguous. Either include Him or don't, but pussyfooting around it pisses me off. Using words like "Source" or "Spirit" makes me ill in a way I find it hard to describe.

I found it equally unpalatable to be described as a "piece of God" or having divinity or accessing universal guidance. Is all of this false? Not entirely. That is exactly why it bothers me so; it's misleading. We are not God (even though we are referenced as gods which means we are Godlike to a degree being made in His image and likeness and such) but the fact that this isn't rooted to a relationship with the only true God but with, and I quote, whatever we perceive God as, angers me.

He did make sure to drill many things home that I did agree with, though. As an adult, regardless of childhood, we must take responsibility for our present lives. If we do not have the life we wish, excuses do nothing for us so they have to go. You are a product of your persistent thoughts and habits and those can be controlled and modified. There is never a good reason to continue through life doing things that keep us from living full lives. As such, were should do everything we can to eliminate self-defeating thoughts and habits from our lives.

Contemplation, having a quiet place to be still and take in wisdom from Todd, serving others instead of self and living well in the present time instead of being obsessed about the past or the future, along with a healthy habit of regularly questioning our thoughts with specific questions goes a long way towards uprooting unneeded thoughts.

Because of the God thing I mentioned before, this book was a chore to read. On the other hand, I want to read Lao-Tzu's teachings now.

about that minimalism thing: part 9

I guess we'll start with this quote from an earlier entry:

Also, amused myself with some more minimalism. I took the things I had left to digitize and decided to digitize them finally. I had a whole stack of CDs that I needed to process. Some of them had sermons on it. None of them are even working. I went through all of them already. So silly, right? This is hilarious. Now I just need to work on the things in my book closet and we should be good to go. Now I just need to sort the bills out in my closet and see which ones I want to keep and which I want to trash. Should be fun.

Turns out, it just wasn't Mac readable even on my Windows partition. Ah well. I guess I'll have to speed up that process of getting that PC laptop now. Mind you, I'm not getting it just to digitize stuff. I am a developer for a company that has designed software that only runs on a Windows-based platform (boo!), so I need a computer I can use to do that development work.

Ah well. The things I did manage to get on the Mac are fantastic. I actually listened to a bit of stuff from Joyce Meyer today and I enjoyed it. It was hilarious and insightful and relaxing. I enjoyed it. In my efforts to keep my iPod minimized, I listened to two or three albums today.

• Brian Rhodes, Completely. Listened to as I was sent this by my friend, Miranda. I remember the guy from college; he was an upperclassman. He can sing his tail off, but I was sad because all of the songs were songs from other Christian artist that was popular. I hoped, I mean I really did, that he had written some of his own stuff and that I would get to hear a CD of that. Instead, it was music from a band too small to be able to do the pieces in the first place, some of it was slightly out of time, etc.
  
• Third Lobby, For the Taking. This album was ok. I liked the instrumental tracks most of the time, but the vocals? Some needed to be better blended with the sound levels on the instruments. The girl did not need to sing high notes ever. There was one track I liked with a female vocal, but it was a different singer and very well done, IMO, for that album.
• Joyce Meyer. We covered that one.

I applied the "Hell Yeah" rule to all of it and kept whatever made the cut. Joyce Meyer won by far. I thought about other things in my room as I considered these things.

How to be more passionate and live more passionately and closer to the things that matter most to me, my faith especially. How to both be and do more passionately that which I am at the core of me. Lately, I want to read more and be online less and be alone more and all this. That's part of why I'm excited to be going to the mountains this week.

I'm glad I took the approach to minimalism I did by starting with physical things. It's biblical that when you do something in the physical world, there are echoes in the spiritual world. I've gone from removing unnecessary clothes to wanting to remove unnecessary emotional things, mental things, spiritual things, time-wasters, all kinds of things and I feel that, the more I move forward with the physical side of minimalism, the further my spiritual side moves with it. I can tell you that I want to go to church more now than I did before this project.

My project to make my iPod minimal is also going swimmingly well. Here's the quote on that:

Downloaded some new music, but got rid of more as I'm downsizing nonsense that I don't like listening to so that every song I hear on my iPod makes me excited when it comes on.

The payoff is in small things that are epically easier or more fun. For instance: today, I skipped over some songs on my iPod because they were slow tempo and I needed something more uptempo, but every song I skipped made me smile. Every single one made my head nod. It felt fan-flippin-tastic to feel like that.

It only gets better from here, I think.

about that minimalism thing: part 7

It strikes again.

I'm starting to digitize things. I finally finished typing a story that took up almost ten handwritten pages and published it on deviantArt as a story that the world can now read. It's a small thing -- almost insignificant -- but it is worth mentioning because it was a goal that I set and it is accomplished now. I was trying to combine that with an effort to keep my plate clean, but that didn't go too well -- I just have too much going on, I guess. I have IMs popping up, phones ringing, and people walking into and out of my house.

It makes me think about a lot of things. It may be time for my minimalism to expand a bit. I mean, I think I got the possession thing down and I'm reclaiming space moment by moment and loving everything about it, but I still have social media and blogs and other social stuff to think about.

• I have so many things going on -- Twitter, Facebook, Livejournal (no, I haven't deleted it yet), this blog and two other blogs on varying subjects. It's so much to do and write for and think about and I have all of these things because I want to have them.
• I have friends and family and then I have "friends" and "family". I need to make a distinction between the fans I have and the friends I have. I have some people that I love and that love me. I am sure of that. I am also sure that those people are not every single person that has added me on facebook or twitter. I need to review some things. I'd rather have info and input from people I love and care about than from NASA. I have Twitter for that kind of info (and it comes from epic people), but I don't need that on Facebook. On Facebook, I need connection more.
• I need to evaluate things a bit more and stick to those criteria. Maybe things or people need to be control-alt-deleted for real.

So with that, I continue to dig, to deepen, to ponder.

In other news, I continue to live by the "Hell Yeah!" rule. Actually, because of that, I've dropped a few more clothes. I try to see the things I do and filter them through that "Hell Yeah!" rule and I'm noticing that there are probably quite a few things I am probably going to end up dropping because of that rule. I'm fine with that... Actually, I'm excited about that. :D

There's so much to think about and ponder, but that's where I am on my journey.

about that minimalism thing: part 5

It's an epidemic!!!!!!!!!!1111111!!oneoneone!

Seriously, it's friggin' contagious. It seems that a lot of my friends, hearing and reading about my efforts to downsize are all catching the vibe now. Even better, they are feeling more productive, more free, and more empowered to remove unnecessary things from their lives so they can focus on the things most important to them.

It's a good place to be in, I think. People are asking important questions like: "What is this and how did I get it?" I think we have a lot of things in our lives like that. I have a few in mine. Clutter and all manner of mess here and there and I wonder sometimes where it came from.

Back to my personal efforts, here's some sum up. First off, I finally got all of the things donated to Goodwill! Big burden off my shoulders. I gave James all of his dishes back and they are downstairs in a side cabinet that is hard to reach. We never use them now. Having moved everything out that I didn't want, I took the time to look again at the things I have left. I had some posters scattered about the room and a bookshelf in a corner, so I decided to move them all to the same wall and rotate my desk 90 degrees or so. This is the outcome:

I loved the feel of being creative while making this all work together. Some of this has changed a bit; I hung my hat on the wall. I hung keys on the wall. All in all, it's a beautiful wall and a very unique creative space. I like it a lot. It also clears out a lot of space for photography things since the other three walls are now bare of any material. I feel like I should be drawing comic books!

I went shopping this weekend and bought a few things:

All of them are cool. I'm a big fan of accessories, so that's most of what I bought. Also grabbed some underwear, cologne and scented candles instead of incense. Should be nice. I cleaned out a lot of things from my accessory box, too, so now all of the things in there are accessories that I wear which is nice.

Today, I hung out with Hollie and Brandon for lunch today. Brandon was nice enough to take a completely silly picture of us:

Side notes you'll find funny: my underwear matches this shirt. Other than that, so did the accents on the necklace I wore with this. It's rosary-styled, which I like a lot. Fun to wear and I looked nice.

I might need to think about new dress pants, though.

Downloaded some new music, but got rid of more as I'm downsizing nonsense that I don't like listening to so that every song I hear on my iPod makes me excited when it comes on.

My mood about so many things is changing. I hate seeing people at night at my house now except for like ten people... LOL. Who am I kidding? Most times lately, I think I need to be alone. It's like solitude is calling my name and no one can hear this but me. Ah well, I guess it will take a bit longer before I can get this settled. I've also been drawing more. Working from home is going ok. Getting things done here and there. I helped direct my first podcast. That was fun. Talking to people a bit about a lot of cool things. There's a lot of good things going on around here and I think it's just the beginning of many such things.

More minimalism.

More good things.

Oh yeah, there was some family drama. It made me stabby. No lie. One of my younger brothers was supposed to pick up the other and didn't because he fell asleep. My mom thought he was out on the road. I had to commandeer someone's car and be on the APB for the next 45 minutes and take my brother home from work. Again, this is in a car that is NOT my car. I decided I would be incognegro (thanks, Bracha) for the rest of the weekend. (~_~#)

Talking to Cedric and Davonte has been interesting as well as they are newer acquaintances and moving toward friendship. Speaking of friends, I miss Whit, John, Anna, and Reza. I'm still dealing with and facing realities and trying to be realistic and real and all this. Hard work, honestly. There's so much going on...

Oh, and I'm watching anime, too. ;)

That's about it for me on that side.

mission complete..ish

That, ladies and gents, is what remains of the corner I was cleaning in my room. None of the books or the goodwill items remain. It was a good feeling to get all of that out of my house, but I thought this would be a good time for me to report and for you to see progress because, in my opinion, you can do this, too.

Now, I have a few new tasks ahead of me as I have some other things that need to happen:

• i must digitize a few items
• i must read the stack of books on my desk as they are books are semi-interesting, but i've not read. once they are read, i'll figure out whether to send them off to the library for donating.
• the previous thing must happen this week; i'm procrastinating too much. it's getting to me.

That aside, things are starting to sort themselves out and it feels kinda good. Other people are noticing things and as I talk to them about minimalism, I'm seeing nodding heads and understanding eyes. This is good for me.

about that minimalism thing: part 2

Today is the second day of my journey into minimalism. My first day was spent counting things and thinking about today. Today is the day I don't really like so much. This will probably be the hardest day out of them all.

Today, I have to go through all of my things and figure out which things I am going to keep and which I am going to toss. Some of those things are easy:

• books I haven't read in years and have no intent to read
• clothes i've not worn in months and have no intent to wear
• bedsheets
• brain coral
• a folder of card stock and blank paper

Other things, however, are a bit harder to define:

• the yearbook that came out the year I graduated
• a book with every prophecy that had been spoken to me for years
• a book i recorded my dreams in for months

That second group makes this part of the process very hard.

On one hand, some things are priceless. I will want to remember people, but there's much I have to remember. I will want to have that book or whatever to recall the things I thought and felt at that time...

On the other hand, it is just a yearbook. I have facebook and twitter. Most of the people I wish to connect with, I have already connected with or will connect with at some point if I wish to...

At the same time...

See? It's just a mess. Some of the books are the same. I have two Bibles. Two. I read one a lot more than the other, but for different reasons, each one is important to me. Each book contains more history than this blog could hold heart-wise. What do I do with those things?

Some of the things I have, I use enough for them to not be useless, but I don't use them enough for them to be essential. What do I do with that?

I'll post some more pictures and things when I finish working through some things.

about that minimalism thing

Mind you, I don't think I'm going to be a minimalist in the traditional sense, but as I said before, I think there is something to this and I want to give it a try.

As such, I am here to give you a report on my progress. I didn't quite follow the path explained here, but I did walk in parallel.

They suggested I spend the first way making a "must-do" list. I skipped that and opted to motivate myself in a different way by counting the things I own. I also took pictures. It certainly did drive the point home for me, but we'll get to that later. Let's talk about the things I counted. Some of them, I didn't count because it contains many small things that comprise a unit. There will be a picture of what part of the house I was in and what things I counted there. Here goes:

MY DESK

• folding chair
• cup of writing utensils
• speakers
• macbook pro
• desk lamp
• modem
• router
• ashtray
• bible
• book (borrowed, so i counted those as one)
• wipes
• lotion
• capoeira book (SBAFP)
• file folders (7)
• box of dice
• minipads (3)
• box of paper clips
• mouse
• change jar
• phone (metro)

Total: 28 things

ON MY WALL

• belts (2)
• hats (6)
• lei (2)
• dreamcatcher
• bags from varying stores to decorate the wall (6)
• whiteboard
• calendar
• pictures (2)
• posters (5)
• magnets (3)

Total: 29 things

ON THE FLOOR

• punching bag
• blankets (2)
• air mattress
• pillows (5)
• panda
• phone (iPhone)
• headphones
• air pump
• dumbbells (2)
• trash can

Total: 16 things

IN THE CLOSET

• pillows (2)
• blanket
• toolbox
• laptop case
• suit
• jackets (6)
• hoodies (4)
• vest
• blazers (2)
• pants (7)
• sweaters (5)
• hanging shirts (12)
• socks
• shorts (4)
• boxers (10)
• sai (2)
• ironing board
• laundry basket
• laundry net bag
• sword bin
• swords (9)
• posters (2)
• hats (4)
• xmas stockings (2)
• picture
• portable HDs (2)
• program from musical
• bubble wand
• lip balm
• phones (2)
• cable ties (2)
• memory cards (3)
• USB cable
• thermal shirts (2)
• long sleeve shirt (2)
• wifebeater (2)
• neckwarmer
• scarves (4)
• thai hand wraps
• bandanas (11)
• handkerchief
• jump rope
• buffalo waiter aprons( (2)
• pair sunglasses
• apron
• eye cover
• yoyo
• 316 stake
• 3d glasses
• buckle
• button
• ties (7)
• suspenders
• grip
• gloves
• envelopes
• rent envelopes
• knitting box
• accessory box
• laptop
• ibuprofen
• lighter
• brain coral
• tshirts (26)
• dress socks (6)
• thermal socks (2)
• metal tray
• glass bowl with beads
• chapstick
• bead necklace (7)

Total: 193~ things; I'll recount later, but this is a big enough number to get the idea, yes?

HALL CLOSET

• conditioner
• wrench
• hammer
• screwdriver
• toothpaste (2)
• deodorant (4)
• body wash (3)
• comb
• blacklight
• lint roller
• bedsheets
• vibrator pillow
• tissue
• towels
• clipper sets (2)
• travel size toiletries (9)

Total: 32 things

BATHROOM

• body wash
• shampoo (2)
• loofah
• shaving cream
• conditioner
• shaving gels (3)
• after shave
• lotion
• bump stopper
• cologne (2)
• razors (3)
• soap bar
• floss
• toothbrush
• toothpaste

Total: 21 things

BOOK CLOSET

o_O

• lapboard
• printer (2)
• chinese tea set
• containers (4)
• suitcase
• cups of pencils (2)
• xmas dish set for 4
• sushi set
• books (99)
• plate
• bowl
• pet bowl
• shot glass
• CD case (2)
• planner
• phone box
• ream of paper (2)
• yearbooks
• notebooks (5)
• pads (2)
• geek squad training book
• card
• picture
• meditation ball set
• baskets (2)
• envelopes
• Starcraft 2 box
• bags
• monitor cleaning supplies
• camera box
• files
• bag of CDs (3)
• CDs (47)
• doorknobs (2)
• SNES games (18)
• packet of pictures (8)
• windows vista install disc
• cases (14)
• container
• laptop
• ottoman

Total: 238 things

Oh, and you know those containers and that suitcase I mentioned earlier? Yeah, that's another 101 things. WTF. Ugh. Then I remembered I had to count two more things just when I thought I was done, there was more counting as I remembered I have a downstairs. I groaned, but stuck to the plan.

LIVING ROOM

• chair (5)
• table mat (2)
• table
• box of cards
• xbox
• PS2
• controllers (4)
• DVDs (3)
• video games (14)

Total: 32 things

KITCHEN

• laundry detergent
• bleach
• wasabi peas
• seaweed
• oatmeal
• container
• water bottle (2)
• plate
• silverware (8 set)
• chopsticks (8 pairs)
• brown holder

Total: 58 things

You know, I haven't exactly totaled this, so let's see... That is 647 things... unless I count what was in all of those containers. Then it's 748 things.

Seven hundred and forty-eight things. Really? Wow. Just wow. Just. Freakin'. Wow.

You know what the funny thing is here? More than half of it is comprised of things I keep for sentimental value. All of the pictures are pictures I haven't looked at or two in almost four years. I have brain coral in my drawer. When was the last time I used the yoyo? I don't take ibuprofen. I have bedsheets and own an air mattress. What do I need two doorknobs for exactly? I have paper reams and a printer.

No one here prints anything ever.

All of the books in my closet I have either read or have no intent to read. The notebooks? I don't use them either. I hardly write anything on paper. I have phones I don't use and don't work. Are you serious right now? 3D glasses. Seriously.

Now that this is out here for all of you to read, this is why I am thinking moving to something more minimalistic would be nice. Just saying.

I have a piece of paper my friend from high school drew some things on 11 years ago now. It's been a decade. I don't even know if this person is even alive. Maybe I should just scan the thing if I want to keep it. Sentimental value is not a good enough reason to keep all of this stuff and being a sentimental pack-rat at 29 is nonsense....

I have a bo staff and seven pairs of shoes I forgot to count. That's another 8 things.

Seven hundred and fifty-six things now. Good grief. Revolution is coming for sure. I want something else.

goal update: mid-march

If you remember from this post, you should recall that one of my major over-arching goals -- the theme for the next however-many-months-are-left-this-year -- is to do things that are good for me. I thought I would update you about how those things are going.

In that blog, I had wondered about what social media and other things I could do without and all of this. While I could do without them, I choose not to. They connect me to people and information and I want to be connected to those things. That is that.

More than that, I'm starting to realize the potential that I have to shape the course of my life with the choices I make. The thing that's awesome about being on a man-period is the simple impact it enforces on your perspective.

I care about myself a little bit more and other people a little less. Not lacking compassion, but a lot less concern about their possible opinion about anything. I'm a lot more direct and even forceful at times about what I think and feel and I make no bones about dropping negative influences or energies in my life at all.

I've also become more of a fan of harsher personalities since my emotions are so much harder to get to lately.

Mind you, I've been apathetic about a ton of things lately. As a matter of fact, here's a quote from a month ago:

Whatever.

I feel like that about a lot of things.

Whatever.

Friends? Whatever.
Work? Whatever.
Life? Whatever.
Church? Whatever.

Some of my feelings about those things are changing, though. I don't feel so "meh" about church now. Actually, I've been thinking about that aspect of myself a lot more lately. This could be good and I'm at peace with that. A smiling peace. That's always a good sign, right?

I've been sorting through things, but most of the time, I admit, I've been lazy and slack about doing things that I know would be a really good thing to do and get rid of some much unneeded crap. Some of it is mental, some emotional, a lot of it, however, is physical. I have so many books. I have so many knick-knacks. I have so many of so many of so many and I don't need any of it. I don't even want to sell it; I could care less about the money.

Reading things like I've read today has kicked my tail in a good way. I read some things at this site about minimalistic living and some other cool, somewhat irreverent, inspiring site. Ran into some interesting concepts and took a lot away from it. In those sites I read about:

• people that quit six-figure jobs
• people that did the above with no or little savings
• people that throw TVs off of their roofs
• people that live with only 288 things, or 100 things, or even 47 things
• people that were led by their passions to be free and happy
• people that were determined to live bold, passionate lives
• people that felt they could live with less and didn't need so much
• people that decided not to buy non-consumables for a year

Am I going to start living a life like this?

Nah; I like shopping way too much.

Could I live without things that I obviously don't need?

Now we're onto something.

I think that is the idea. They don't want people to be clones of themselves, but they do want people to be free to do what they love doing and to approach life with passion and fervor and experience the soul and spirit satisfaction from a simple, purposeful life. I applaud them, but at the same time, there is a bit of a burn there. I could be living a similar life, but I'm being a punk and not making time to get rid of things that block my way.

The good news is, I can stop being a punk and just do what needs to be done, so that's what I'll do. If I have learned nothing else this year, it is simple discipline. I have an intention, I make a plan, I follow through.

For the first time, I have money in a savings account. For the first time, I had more than $1K in my bank account. For the first time, I filed taxes early. I'm breaking barriers. I'm better at being punctual (and that has shocked people a lot more than once these days). I even have a regular bedtime.

Is this thing I'm putting off different from any other challenge? Well, only in one respect: I'm still putting it off. The thing isn't even impossible, just difficult. Difficult I do all day. Difficult is just a minor inconvenience.

If you remember this, I was trying to get away from soda and stuff. Well, that's going well. Very, very well. I haven't had a soda in about a week now. I replaced that with Vitamin water. I found out how much sugar they have, and it made me a little sad, but honestly, I think the tradeoff is ok, so I'll work with it a bit longer. I've had three cups of coffee in about two weeks now. I had way too much on Tuesday, but that's alright. I've had more water this week than probably my whole life and I don't miss having soda as much. Fruit juices are helping with drinking flavored stuff when I want it for now and it's not caffeinated either which I'm only just now noticing...

Wow. Win.

Moving on, exercise is getting better. I'm running on Tuesdays and Thursday and I alternate between technique drills and strength training. I've missed a day here or there, but it's pretty consistent now. Pain accompanies the things I don't do as often, and the other things are simple to do so I do them and then move on to other things.

blossoming

That seems to be where things are.

My friendships are blossoming. I got people out of the house. We have new people in the house. They are nice, wonderful, respectful, chill. I like them. The cats like them. James likes them. Reza and I are becoming closer. James and I are making new futures for ourselves. All of these things are nice. I'm shedding a few people here and there, but new connections are forming and old ones are deepening. I am enjoying the process.

My job is blossoming. I am assuming more responsibilities and with that assumption of responsibility, I find myself rising to meet those challenges and becoming an indispensable part of the operations of the company. People ask for my input, leave important tasks for me to do, and even let me lead whole training sessions for the sales team. They want to move forward and want me to be there the whole way. I couldn't be happier.

My love life is starting to take a small seed now. I have a girl I like. This has been a hard thing to work around; they have issues with some of the photo albums I have on FB (the bromance album) and so on. They also know that I have a standing curiosity about relationships with guys. To be clear: yes, I have wondered about it from time to time.

And yes, I still do.

That aside, it's just a part of me that, as I told her, she will have to except. The curiosity exists. It won't be satisfied without experimentation and I'm just going to skip that step. I don't see a need to get into that nonsense right now. She's afraid (although she won't say it) that I'll suddenly just go "okay, I'm gay...." My thing is, I won't know until it happens. No need to flip out about it. For now, I've decided to follow a path to being in a relationship with her. I thought about it... to the point of overthinking it and decided to stop overthinking and just jump.

I told her how I felt, we had a long conversation. And another. She's falling in love and I'll be waiting when the descent is over. We'll see what's up sooner or later.

Finally, my experiences are expanding. I went to my first musical tonight. I went to see the Legally Blonde musical with Whit and Kelsey. I laughed, I compared, I sang along and tried not to dance. I took pictures of the t-shirt I bought during the musical; I'll add them to the post later when I get the camera cable. I love the t-shirt.

In case you think that I'm just romanticizing the experience:

• Vivian could have been played a bit better. She got the flat voice down, but not the snarky personality.
• Someone almost tripped skipping rope.
• Some of the lines were skipped, or changed. Most of it was funny.
• Some parts of songs were held out too long. Others not enough.

They did a good job, though. It was amazing and I loved every second of it.

through the deadline

I finally got the work done that I couldn't focus on yesterday. Got to the office and I'm working on things.

In the midst of things, my dad called. My world stopped.

I. LOVE. HIM.

After a lovely chat with him that never seems long enough, I was back to working on this computer. Hopefully all will go well and I will have good things to report at the end of day today.

Aside from this, I have a few other things to report.

:: Workout ::

It's about time for me to retrace a few steps now that I have weather to support these habits I enjoy, so I'm picking up on all the training I can for martial arts and freerunning. So far, it's going okay. Some things I'm thinking about accelerating for aesthetics.

I have an online rival that goes by Req and I love him to pieces. We're very committed to this training regimen, but we joke about pwning each other a lot. This usually ends up with rather funny conversations that are borderline trash talk, but in the end we respect each other and hope to spar one day. Maybe I'll get into a decent bar fight one day and test my mettle.

Anyways, he posted a new avatar with his aspired body type. Here it is.

Interesting. His metabolism would support it. He and I have a similar build, so we won't get really huge, but muscular we can do. I asked him to find one that he thought I could aspire to and that brought me to mind when he saw it. Here was the first character.

Finding black characters in anime is hard to find, but I told him it didn't matter. After a bit of thought, he decided to find another one. It took him a while to find before he settled on this character:

Bruce from Tekken, huh?

Heartless Angel says:

http://img10.imageshack.us/i/bruceu.jpg/

There get like him!

emocionado para regresar says:

damn son

you think i'm on tht level?

Heartless Angel says:

you can get there

^^

GET THERE!

or if you want to photoshop

emocionado para regresar says:

if you really see that in me

then I'll make it happen

Heartless Angel says:

Then go ahead

Im pretty sure you can do it

emocionado para regresar says:

muay thai style fighter. hm

Heartless Angel says:

That's my favorite

It's nice when you have friends that believe in you and I'm finding out I have more lately than I have in my whole life up until now. To say I am thankful for them would be an understatement.

Lately, the friendship between Rickey, Sanquan and myself is becoming sweeter. I love them more than ever now and that love is returned almost constantly. I'm very glad for them. I'm thankful for anyone that loves me back, but these relationships are a bit above the norm for me in some ways.

That and my friendship with John. We're both strangers in a strange land, but because of that, our friendship is also deepening. We rely on each other more and I find an odd strength in knowing and admitting that and I think he feels the same way.

Things between myself and Pollux are also starting to reform a bit. I'm loving the process. Our friendship is hard-fought for, but it's valuable, too. I lit a candle for him last night and got him to blow it out while making a wish -- today is his birthday.

So much to say about so much, but all summed up, life is hard, life is good, life is beautiful.