My current mood while going through bills is as follows:
The Month of June was very kind to me. Last month I was writing from an awkward place. This month I’m all good.
Let’s hope I can keep the ball rolling and if so the rest of the year will be mine.
Three years. It has been about three years since I touched this blog, hell I even forgot about it. In the time that I have been absent from this blog my life has changed in a multitude of ways. Yet reading what I wrote three years ago has woken me up.
The past 7 months, have not been kind to me. Let me rephrase that, I have not been kind to myself. To blame anyone other than myself is foolish. The stress, depression and feelings of emptiness has been caused by none other than me. Why was I even doing this to myself? To blame reverse culture shock would be the easy way out and I refused to do so.
Until the start of May I wasn’t able to shake it off. (T-swift lets go!)
Reflecting on this blog reminds me of the beliefs I hold dear and why I originally did what I did. Certain aspects of my life have made me afraid, while my own greed has tormented my body and mind. While abroad I was able to just be me. Back in the states half the time I am me the other half I am someone I don’t even know. Either I kill one half, or find the balance between the two. My life struggle at this point in my life is not to find a job, be rich or world domination. But to come to peace with who I am.
Solid song for your enjoyment.
After traveling through the Philippines (leaving days before the typhoon) and getting comfortable with my new temporary home in Southern Thailand I was finally ready to blog again. But a problem occurred, my computer crashed and I felt bummed out. For my readers that don’t know me well, I am not great with computers, so all the thousands of photos, Ideas for this blog and many of my past papers are now forever lost. When it first hit me that my computer crashed and that it may never work again the first thing I thought about was my pictures and papers. As the hours and days added up I realized, “the hells wrong with me”. Through my travels It seems I have grown attached to my computer, it being the only friend that has traveled every inch of the globe with me. My computer in my mind had become a friend that I didn’t want to lose, the memories he kept and allowed me to share with others and eventually myself when I grow old and grey.
However it shouldn’t be like that and although many times I have talked about “living” and not being attached to things I realized I was attached to something, my computer. Luckily it crashed and helped me realize my delusional attachment. It may sound weird but I have yet again developed and learned something new about myself and the world I live in. Now I will be blogging again, maybe without pictures maybe without the ideas I had previously written, but none the less I will blog again. So to my readers (mostly my future self) be ready for crazy rants, radical and irrational opinions and more.
Does your life flash before your eyes the moment before your death? Well I’m not sure, but after my near death experience I can share my two cents.
Death can come at any instant. You can be walking, driving, sitting in a chair or even eating. Death comes for us all. It has no emotion or racist prejudice. No matter how hard you fight that asshole will get you. There is no reason to fear death. If anything embrace the inevitability of it.
This mindset on death I have always had and after actually almost meeting Grim nothing has changed. Don’t be afraid to live because you fear death. A life lived in fear is worse then Death itself.
As humans are main mode of communication comes from gestures and language. Through my travels so far I have been surprised to find English used in such abundance. It is the language used by many foreigners traveling and by a vast majority of the people living in each place I have been. Although not all are particularly great at speaking english it is enough to get a point across. I am not saying that English is the best language but it is definitely one of if not thee most dominate language on the Planet. So is this a good or bad thing? I do hope that the world eventually has one global language or some sort of accurate translating device, not Google translate. However I fear for what will be lost, the beauty each language posses will be gone, forever.
After college the majority of people seem to go into some sort of job or career in the hopes of either making money or gaining “experience”. Draining prime years of life doing something you don’t want too, with the illusion that the experience you obtain will lead you to something you like. Yet if you continue to do things you do not enjoy then you will only get better at a job you hate. Day after day getting farther and farther away from what you really want to do. It is true that some people are constrained by loans, family issues, physical problems and so forth. You may even have a combination of all the problems in the world, shut up, fuck your excuses
Fear, is what truly holds people back. Being afraid of living uncomfortably or not having the status, wealth or any other sort of label you want from society. The vast majority of humans have become afraid to fail. To grow people must make mistakes, they must be constantly learning everyday. It is very hard to let go of so much and chase something that requires years of sacrifice. But if you are content with staying the same and living your life as a drone, I respect you. I could never throw away my quest for knowledge, freedoms and happiness
As college students we have been fed this linear path or formula for success. We were told that if we obtained a college degree getting a good job and becoming successful would be easy. This is no longer true, although outliers do exist, obtaining vast amounts of success will only come from a combination of hard work, luck and connections.
People believed that getting a college degree meant they could start at the bottom of the work ladder and could build up. Now people assume that students start 6 feet under that ladder and have to work even harder to reach the first steps…
However in my opinion the ladder analogy is not accurate enough and shouldn’t be applied too the current generation. College graduates are no longer on the linear ladder path; we are not starting near the first step or 6 feet under it. Now we are swimming in an ocean, dropped right in the middle. Today there is no shore in sight; any hope or promising place to begin does not exist for the majority of us and we are swimming in confusion. At best most of us are just trying to stay afloat. We must stop floating and propel ourselves using our own self-determination and refuse the urge to just float. After swimming for so long college graduates think an island should be in sight, however it was all a mirage in the sea. There is nothing wrong with this; people just need to start accepting the facts. Stop thinking you are entitled to success and work for it. If we stop swimming now we will drown. The only option left is to keep pushing; life is not worth living without a struggle.
Hi, my name is Charles”
“Hi Charles, my name’s Bill, where are you going today”
As I introduced myself to this old man I felt that he had a strong resembles too a Morgan Freeman like person, old and wise. Little did I know that the conversation we were about to embark on would be so inspiring. Although he did not change my life, Bill like many others around me had reaffirmed my confidence to continue following my own dreams.
“Every building does not just spring up, it is built. The first step is to pick the location to build upon, from that point you can lay down the blueprints. The end result of the building is already foreseen, the size and basic structure already given. However a vast amount of work is needed to complete any particular building. “
This all makes sense to me; obviously it takes a ton of work to build anything. So I just continued listening to see where he was going with this.
“To build your own successful career or enjoyable life a persons path is similar to a building in many ways.”
Oh, I said to myself, this is where he is going, interesting.
“In every facet of life, infrastructure is needed, each step builds upon the last. The stronger the foundation you have built around yourself the more resilient it will be. The intricacies that go into constructing a building apply to life. All the time we are strengthening our building, when we develop new social relationships and by our acquisition of information on a daily basis. It is all complemented by hard work; people just have to be willing to put in the effort. Today people expect to have the foundation and BOOM the rest of the building will spring up on it’s own. But that’s not how it works, and similar to constructing a building. Life has many obstacles and your end results may vary from what you originally designed. The world changes and the building you are creating must adapt.”
In my head I contemplated what he was saying and put it in a much simpler saying, aim for a goal and work your ass off towards it. In the end you can get there it just may not look like what you expected. As he continued talking I began to get lost in my own thoughts. Bill was right, I could understand his foundation/structure theory being similar to building ones career, yet to me it could be more. The foundation that a person creates in my opinion is a way to create your own reality, a world of your own. People are caught up on the infrastructure of the people around them and the one that society attempts to put on us. Yet why? We should all focus on ourselves our own foundation and instead of the world being created around us; we could be the masters of our own world. One can’t fix or benefit the world around them until they can fix themselves.
After awhile Bill stopped talking and parked the car, being lost in my own thoughts I had not noticed I was already home. I told him thank you for the wisdom shook his hand and left the vehicle. As I reflected on our conversation I realized people like Bill exist everywhere we all have the opportunity to meet people that could benefit us everyday. People just need to get off their cell phones, ipods, computers and whatever else we are attached to and go back to good old random conversations. Stop being afraid of the unknown and embrace it. It may surprise you how much a Toyota Shuttle driver may know.
As a 22-year-old the world stares at you in an obscure way. What is the meaning of life, what is my purpose, along with other “life questions” your mind starts to become a deep dark whole. These questions begin to appear more and more constantly attacking your mind. Yet is there a purpose to life or is it a facade we have put upon ourselves? In answering these question one must pull from past experiences and overall upbringing. It is up to individuals to figure out life, for themselves, stop trying to be given the answer, find it and begin your own adventure. Or like so many others you can work behind the modern cage, the cubicle.
At the moment I am trying to answer this question myself and once completed I can work towards a goal with my heart and soul. These thoughts are not something new for me, I have always thought deeply about what to do but being in school I have pushed them aside. Once the illusion of college begins to fade the noose around your neck, the shackles wrapped upon your limbs, begin to tighten, quicker then ever before, hindering the wings upon your back and dragging you into the deepest part of the abyss to be societies slave. However not all is lost, our wings can never be clipped or taken away. At anytime a person can change their life, all we need is the will to fly.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/frameri-one-lens-many-frames
A project that could shake the glasses wearing community. Being almost blind myself I wear glasses all the time, these would add much more variety to my everyday life. So if interested help them get off the ground.
Madziontist 