It's time...

After a couple days back in Chicago, things start to fall into perspective. The flights weren’t bad at all, and outside of a minor snafu with my luggage, everything went smoothly. I got home and settled in. My cat didn’t recognize me at first, but after a couple hours it was as if I never left. She’s sitting next to me right now. I’m usually able to avoid jet lag by sleeping at just the right time on a long flight, but this time around the people around me were too annoying and I couldn’t get to sleep. So here I sit in my room at 6 in the morning, figured I might as well do an entry.

Looking around and meeting up with old friends and acquaintances, it’s made me realize that going to Australia to study and be on my own was 100% the right choice. I’ve come a long way since I left and I think that I’ve grown a lot. I’ve become more independent, more confident, and I’m really coming into my own both personally and professionally. That being said, I think I’ve still been holding back a bit, trying to save a little part of myself in case things go badly.

Looking at where I am now, it’s time. It’s time to stop holding back, it’s time to take all the safeties off, it’s time to give everything I’ve got and fulfill my potential. I’m already set on a path towards what I want to be doing with my life, and succeed or fail, I won’t be satisfied unless I know that I did absolutely everything in my power to work towards my goals. It’s about time I took control and became the hero in the story of my life.

There are a few pieces to the puzzle when dealing with these kinds of situations. The first piece is knowing what you want. In my case, I think I’ve got that pretty much figured out, although now things have become all the more clear. The second part of this is having the drive, confidence, and patience to go for it, regardless of how long it might take or how difficult it might be. The third piece is knowing when to be selfish and knowing when to sacrifice. My self-esteem has always been my biggest issue. I was always all too willing to sacrifice; feeling like my life was worth less than anything or anyone else. Now, while I’m still more than willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of the people I care about, I think I can be a bit smarter about the sacrifice, not quite giving myself in to it as completely as before. As a result, I’ll be able to take better care of myself and survive longer.

At the end of all this, I’m still essentially the same person – my values haven’t changed. Rather, I think my approach is going to be different. By shedding all the chains that had been weighing me down, I’ll be able to fully utilize every part of myself completely, from my full range of emotions, to the absolute raw power of my mind, and even tapping into my darker natures a bit more. Things are about to get a whole lot more interesting. I'm driven, I've got more than enough ability to get where I want to in life, and most dangerous of all, I know it. We’re getting into a whole new ballgame now, and this time I’m playing for keeps.

Nice

The “nice” people. I’m one of them. It’s not always easy, but there is a sense of pride that comes with it. A while back I was browsing on Reddit and I came across a picture with this written on it:

“A woman has a close male friend. This means that he is probably interested in her, which is why he hangs around so much. She sees him strictly as a friend. This always starts out with, you’re a great guy, but I don’t like you in that way. This is roughly the equivalent for the guy of going to a job interview and the company saying. You have a great resume, you have all the qualifications we are looking for, but we’re not going to hire you. We will, however, use your resume as the basis for comparison for all other applicants. But, we’re going to hire somebody who is far less qualified and is probably and alcoholic. And if he doesn’t work out, we’ll hire somebody else, but still not you. In fact, we will never hire you. But we will call you from time to time to complain about the person that we hired.”

Obviously, this was written by a member of our population who let bitterness get the best of him. Our problem is that we care too much. We care about everyone but ourselves. Our sense of self-worth is often diminished, if not non-existent. We don’t know why we do it, and we don’t know how we do it, but we do. We feel alone, but we don’t do anything about it. It’s not that the people around us don’t care; it’s simply that they don’t have to. They can’t see us, and for the most part our existence is usually forgotten. But we’re always there, ready to give or sacrifice at the drop of a hat. Even if it’s something that ultimately hurts us, we do it. That’s just the honor code we follow.

So for all the “nice” people out there, don’t give hope, don’t let yourself get jaded, don’t let yourself get cynical. Keep doing what you’re doing and hope for the best. We may not be appreciated, we may not be noticed, but the world needs people like us. We’re the support that no one notices. We do what needs to be done, regardless of the consequences to ourselves, for the sakes of others. Nice people may finish last, but we go down fighting, we make things better, we give up what we want so that others can be happy, we endure pain so others don’t have to. And for all of you who know one of these people, let them know that you appreciate them if you do. You’d be surprised as to how much it can do to help them keep going.

As hypocritical as it may sound, unfortunately time’s running out for me. My body’s giving out, and the light of hope in my soul is dying. My gut tells me that if I continue down this path, eventually I won’t be able to recover. You know what they say though, in for an inch, in for a mile. Things are going to get harder. The damage is going to be more difficult to recover from. The pain is going to be harder to ignore. I may not be able to pick myself up after getting knocked down. I may not get the chance to fulfill my dreams. I may not be able to keep all my promises. And as much as I hate losing, I may not be able to cover all my bets.

I’ll close this entry simply with a quote I found. It was a tattoo on a dead soldier in Iraq.

“For Those I Love, I Will Sacrifice”

Thoughts on a walk

Well, I had an hour and a half long walk tonight/this morning, and since I’m supposed to be up in two hours anyway, I figure I might as well forego sleep and write. It’s really quiet walking home at four in the morning, and it’s really conducive to thinking.

Dreams, hopes, aspirations. People talk about them, plan their lives around them, and do everything they can to realize them. In my mind, with these kinds of things you have three options. 1) You can do everything you can to realize your dream, hope, or aspiration come hell or high water. 2) You can give up on your dream and find another passion to follow. 3) You give up altogether and settle for something less. As far as I’m concerned, option number 3 is unacceptable. A person can never reach their full potential if they aren’t passionate about what they do. Deciding what to do, and what you want to do, you have to have passion behind it. Otherwise you’ll be miserable all the time.

Don’t seek and don’t expect. A friend of mine told me this once, but I never really put all that much thought into it. But since I had the time, I really gave it some deeper thought and broke it down. Don’t seek. Instead of meaning not to go looking for a dream, it means not to go blindly looking. Don’t go looking for something that isn’t there or can’t exists. Rather, know your potential, know your capabilities, know yourself. By doing that, you can find the best way to realize your dreams. Don’t expect. Basically, don’t expect things to go according to plan. Don’t expect to get what you want. Don’t expect life to be easy. It isn’t. You will be tested, there will be pain, it will be difficult. As long as you don’t let your expectations get the best of you, you’ll be able to find the right path to what you want.

For the most part I’ve got a bunch of my hopes and dreams figured out, but some things still elude me. I’ve been referred to a lot of ways. I’ve been called “my guy”, “the guy”, “Mr. dependable”, “Mr. indestructible”, “bro”, among other names. People depend on me, but few if any seem to really care. I’m an implement – an instrument, a weapon, a shield, a toy. I am a machine. When people need me, they call on me for whatever purpose because they know that I can handle just about any situation. Whatever damage I suffer, I can recover from. Whatever difficulties I come up against, I can overcome them. After they’re done, I’m forgotten until the next time I’m needed. Before, this used to depress me, leaving me questioning my self-worth. I felt like it wouldn’t matter if I wasn’t around. Now though, it doesn’t affect me so much. I’ve come to accept it as a fact of my life. It’s why I tell people not to apologize to me, that they don’t need to thank me, and not to worry about me, whether they care about me or not. Because in the end, if I’m not around or not needed, I don’t exist.

It’s a bit depressing at times because I hate being single – I’m not good at it. Wanting to have someone to love, wanting to devote myself to someone, that’s not a problem. I just hope someone could feel that way about me before I’m damaged beyond repair. So here I sit, sweaty, exhausted, and my leg shot to all hell and feeling like it’s going to explode. But not for a second do I doubt or question why I do what I do. For every second of agony that I endure, it means that someone else doesn’t have to. For every breath I lose, someone else gains more. It’s a fair if not beneficial trade-off, so very little thought has to go into it. Until I've got someone for whom I need to stop taking all this damage and enduring the pain, I'll keep going on doing what I'm doing. In the story of life, I’m no main character. I’m the guy who does much, achieves much, and then is left to be forgotten in the pages.

I’ll close this entry with some lyrics to a song sung by Frank Sinatra.

“Don’t worry ‘bout me
I’ll get along
Just you forget about me
Be happy, my love

Just say our little show is over
And so the story ends
Why not call it a day, in a sensible way
And we’ll remain friends

Look out, look out for yourself
Should be the rule
You just give your heart and your love
To whomever you love, don’t you be a fool

Baby why stop and cling
To some fading thing that used to be
So if you can forget
Don’t you worry ‘bout me”

A Fresh Start

It's been a while since I last blogged. I felt like my old one had run its course, so instead of continuing on there, I decided to make a new one.

The last couple of months have been hard. I've been awash in questions, trying to make sense of my life. I've gotten some things figured out, but other aspects have me ending up with even more questions than I started with.

Professionally, I've found my passion and I've started on the path to reach my end goals. What seemed impossible before has been opened up, and I finally have a chance of realizing what has been a dream of mine since I was a kid. Needless to say, it won't be easy, but for the first time in a long time, I find myself driven. I want to make this happen come hell or high water, and I won't let it slip away without a fight. To that end, I've applied myself to a degree that I'm fairly surprised at. Hopefully, I'll be able to find the strength to stay the course.

Personally, my life is still a jumble. I'm still sorting things out, figuring out who I am. For the most part, things are better than a few months ago, but it's still just not quite right. It's funny how something can seem so perfect and make so much sense and yet not get a chance to happen. At the same time, I'm at a loss as to what I can do. I'm having a really tough time moving forward, and I'm doing everything I can to avoid reverting to how I used to be. So right now, I just am. Trying to make sense of things that don't make sense just turns me around in circles, but with this eating at me, I can't ignore it. All I can do is go day to day.

We say that we don't mean to hurt each other, but we do, and sometimes continue to do so, knowingly or otherwise. We make our choices because we feel that, at the time the choices are made, that they are the right ones. Thus, there is no such thing as a right or wrong choice, we make the choices we believe are right. Now, that's not to say there isn't such thing as a good or bad. We make our choices, and we have to live with the consequences. For some, the consequences may hit closer to home than others, but there is no such thing as a choice without consequence. It's from the consequences where we find out whether the choices we made were good or bad.

That being said, one should never underestimate the power that a single choice can hold. In my case, before I knew my potential and I knew my talents, but all the talk I did had no backing. Most of this was just me living up everyone else's image of me. All around me people had concluded that I was a wash out, that I wouldn't amount to anything no matter how hard I tried. This was really my own fault. I didn't care that people thought of me that way and just lived up to their expectations, which only further reinforced the image. It was a vicious cycle. But then that one person came along who chose not to see me like that. The one person who believed in me, and believed that I could actually become something. She didn't expect me to be anything but me, and she pushed me to find what I wanted and to go for it. And most importantly of all, she got me to believe in myself. She showed me that I knew what I was capable of and that I needed to fulfill my potential, not just for my sake, but for the sakes of those whose lives I could make better. It was nothing short of magic.

I can only hope that I've had some positive effect on her life. She's never really said much about it, but if I've improved her life even by the tiniest amount, if I've helped her out of some bit of loneliness or sadness, if by making her laugh I could give her a bit of happiness, then I'm glad. There's a lot of things I wish could happen, but as the old saying goes, "wishing don't make it so".

So, at this point, as I move between my desk and my cigarette out on the balcony, I'm left with questions. Questions seemingly without answers, or for which I have yet to find the answer. But, questions lead to choices, and choices lead to consequences. Here's to hoping that I make good choices. I'll close this entry with a quote I found while randomly surfing the net. It's about how simple things, simple choices, can have profound effects that you don't always see.

"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around" - Leo F. Buscaglia