100 Day Challenge: Day 43
I hope everyone's week is off to a great start!
Sorry there's not video post yet this week, my internet crapped out last night (well it's either the connection or my modem died). So I'm writing this while I'm in my Public Speaking class learning about debate.
A thought just occurred to me about how cool it is that I can take my netbook almost anywhere and there's a connection to the digital continent.
Something big this week for me has been the need to find out what I want, something to shoot for. As Mr. Smith puts it: I need to find my soul purpose.
I'm working out a plan to go spend some time by myself for a couple of days. I'm thinking I'm going to go outside of Cache Valley, get a hotel room, turn off my cell phone, and sit in silence for a couple days.
Time for focus on class, everyone make it a great week this week!
100 Day Challenge: Day 41
There's been a reoccurring theme of entitlement that I've seen the last few days.
I'm not sure how it applies to me, but "When the bell tolls, it tolls for you."
My baby sister (by baby I mean 20 years old) works at one of local restaurants, it's one of the most popular places in town. Every Thanksgiving they put on a free Thanksgiving Dinner for the community. It was originally done for the older/poorer people in the area. For a number of years people who clearly aren't in need of a free meal have been showing up. A lot of times in groups of 10+ (this year a party of 30+ showed up).
That's all well and good, the restaurant has turned it into a total charity event with a donation bowl for a local cause.
What I find funny/disgusting about the whole situation is what people expect from a free meal. My sister would tell people that for beverages they had choices of: Coffee, Hot Chocolate, and Soda. Simple enough right? A number of people got bent out of shape because my sister wouldn't swap out their drinks for shakes and other things like that. Or there were complaints about not getting refills and things like that.
I feel like I should restate the obvious, this was for a free meal!
I'm not in their shoes, so I suppose I shouldn't judge them.
The light of hope I saw in this whole thing was my sister talking about a group of people with some mental disabilities coming in. They got sat down and my sister took their order. She said they asked for Lemonade, she said she wasn't supposed to. But she gave it to them anyway, because they were happy and grateful. The best part she said was when they asked her where they could donate money. They tried to hand the money to my sister but she just pointed at a fish bowl. Apparently it was enough money to more than pay for all three meals.
(I need to vent about my job a little here, but it's along the same lines I promise.)
One of my favorite things to deal with is people with businesses that are pulling down "thousands of dollars a day" and the entire linchpin in their operation is a service they pay a whopping $6.95 US for even better is a domain forwarding service clients in the UK pay a whopping £17 a year and they forward it to a photo account. Then they expect us to compensate for "lost" revenue.
I'm somewhat stuck here, I understand that we are all at different points of development in life. But really where do we draw the line between development and "You need a lesson in manners." Are there that many people whose lives are so out of control, the only measure of control they have is to try to exert some imagined authority over a complete stranger?
I could extrapolate a number of lessons for myself from this, which is really what this is all about. The biggest is probably that I let people 's attitudes affect me way too much (see: more than not at all).
I know there's a part of me that hopes that someone who yells at Customer Service/Technical Support/What have you, will read this article and understand that we're people too. The people I know from working in the field have been very nice people who just want to do their job the best they can. I myself really like helping people, but I understand that people get what they pay for.
100 Day Challenge: Day 39
Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving!
A few things I'm thankful for:
- Being able to spend time with my nieces and nephew
- Spending time with my family
- Eating tasty food
- Have a warm blanket to cover up with
- Being able to come up with ideas and pursue what I want to
I was thinking about the idea of using the fact that I hate my job as motivation to push forward and get done with school quickly. I was reminded of a movie I saw a while ago: Run Fatboy, Run! What really came to mind a scene toward the end of the movie where the main character is faced with what seems to be an insurmountable obstacle. He stares at the obstacle and looks as though he's about give up, then he starts thinking about his life. All of his past mistakes, failures, and areas he's just plain not happy about start flashing through his mind. As he thinks about them suddenly a new resolve shows on his face and he pushes through the obstacle.
The real idea that comes to mind is to become dissatisfied with life, meaning: don't spend time living in the past or being comfortable with where you're at.
I had a conversation last week about getting stuck and really how easy it is to let time slip away. We were talking about production jobs (there are a lot of production facilities in the area I live in). It's easy to get a job in one of those places, the starting money is pretty good for the area especially as unskilled labor. So someone gets a position in one of these facilities, thinks: "I'm going to buy a car, I can afford it." So they buy a car and keep working there to pay it off, during that time period they get married and buy a house. Before they know it, they've been working a temporary job for ten years and don't have many marketable skills. Then it's not nearly as convenient to get more training to move into another field.
This situation hits close to home for me, for a while I worked at a cheese plant and made what I thought was decent money. I almost got a permanent position there, but luckily it didn't work out. That was after I spent a few years installing hardwood floors for a living, something I'm glad I know how to do. But I'm glad I don't do it for a living anymore. Then there was my stint at an electronics manufacturer, I ended up getting laid off there. That was really the best thing that could have happened. From there I went to the local tech school for a couple years. It was because of my interest in programming and being in the right place at the right time that I got a job testing robot at Autonomous Solutions. I ended up getting laid off from there too, now I'm at my current job which I hate. But really I have this chain of events to thank for making me dissatisfied with my situation.
Getting laid off from the electronics plant gave me motivation to say to hell with menial labor. Then working at ASI helped to intensify a love of technology. Which really brings me to wanting to push into a job where I can let my nerd lust go wild. While my current job is in IT, there's really nowhere to go with it. I have acquired another set of useful skills, but lately it feels like my only real challenge at work is keeping my boss off my back (See the movie: Office Space). I really don't have any motivation to improve at what I do there.
Become dissatisfied with life and if "difficulties" come up remember they are ultimately for your benefit to put where you want to be.
100 Day Challenge: Day 36
I should probably be sleeping right but I don't really have to go to Math tomorrow morning. I turned in my assignment that's due tomorrow, today. So I'll just go to my other classes tomorrow after sleeping in and call it good.
Something that's coming up for me right now, is that I have this feeling of anxiety or something. I'm not quite sure what it is. I feel like I should be doing something but I' not sure what it is.
After having only Math this morning, I've been studying programming all day. It feels great, I'm taking some advice from a beginners guide to game programming and I'm going to write a full fledged text based game. I've started working on some code for it, a basic input message pump. I'm realizing how rusty I am at dealing with data types (I think playing with PHP has made me soft). Specifically I'm having problems with comparing strings. Trying to write a loop comparing input to see if the user entered "quit".
It feels good, I'm actually enjoying programming again 
Well I guess this will be a short post tonight.
Something interesting to keep in mind everyone, pay attention to what you do and how it makes you feel. If something makes you feel energized and can do it all day, you really should make time to explore what you're doing.
Everyone make it a great one!
100 Day Challenge: Day 35
Starting into week 6! Holy crap!
Big wins:
- Time Organization/Time Management
- Taking a negative emotion and using it to fuel something positive
- Thanksgiving!
- Almost the end of the semester
Using the dislike of my job as fuel to keep pushing forward and get things done quickly!
Lets see, oh yeah! I cleaned up my room, got things a lot more organized and I have a space I can retreat to when I need some time by myself. Nice and comfortable
I also let my nerd lust go and I overclocked my netbook. It's a 1.33 GHz Atom and right now I have it running at 1.5 GHz which has made a noticeable improvement in how quickly things load. I also let it run for the whole night with Prime95 pushing hard on both threads. It did just fine, I'm debating about pushing it farther. But I'll see.
I'm also looking at building a Home Theater PC. Really just for fun and to store video on, it gets my nerd juices flowing. I also enjoy building computers, don't know what it is about putting things together. It feels very fulfilling. Maybe I can find a job putting them together somewhere here in town
Okay, everyone make it a great one!
100 Day Challenge: Day 34
Been a few days since my last update.
Some lessons learned this week: Be active in how you spend your time and have specific goals. I put those lessons into play today, by making a to do list. I ended up giving myself a dozen tasks to do and I've completed all but two so far. (This post is one of them so when I'm done here ) For a while I've had a negative association with to do lists. That happened after listening to the program: Focus by Stephen Covey. I did like what they had with priorities and understanding what is really important. As far as budgeting my time goes, I've started devising a method to keep track of all the things I have to do, as well as prioritize them and to make sure that I get a lot of things done from various areas of my life.
I'm thinking that I'll break my life down into areas such as: School, Work, Homework, Teaching, MA Practice, House Cleaning, and Play. With categories like that in mind then I can budget my day around what needs to be done. Such as having school for an hour on Monday. Then figuring out time for Homework, which I can budget to a specific block, say something like 10:30 - 12:30. Then repeat for other things that need to be done. The priorities would come into play like: 1st Priority: School, 2nd Martial Arts, 3rd Work, 4th House Keeping, etc. The priorities will vary from day to day. As on day like today, both Play and House Keeping are about the same priority level. While Homework comes after those.
Something else I've been doing this week is spending time listening to myself. In my last post I was asking for help with finding Durable Fulfillment, I still haven't found it by any means. But thanks to a comment from Nathan, I've been stopping and listening to myself and to life. It's been interesting. I'll write more about that as I have more experience with it
Alright, well I'm going to call it a night and just spend some time relaxing in my freshly cleaned and reorganized room. It is interesting to not how much of an effect the arrangement of space can have on your mood. Or at least the cleanliness of space. Actually there was a quote I gave to Mr. Smith earlier this week when he was talking about doing a deep clean on his office at home. I got it in an Insight of the Day e-mail: "Every mess in your life is an obstacle to abundance." It really seemed to hit home for him. My own experience of having my closets pretty well organized, my bed made, and I rearranged the space in my bedroom so it seems a lot more functional/inviting. Essentially, I've created a space I can retreat to and shut a lot of noise from life out of. Now I'm realizing I need some more things to hang on my walls, there's a lot of empty space that can be used for inspiration/soothing things
Everyone have a good night, I'll post a video tomorrow.
Make it a great one!
100 Day Challenge: Day 31
Well here we are day 31
I just got done with an interesting conversation, my mind is reeling after realizing the load I'm still dealing with on a daily basis. My days are still about 12 hours long most days, and Saturdays are still busy. That's without taking into account the couple of hours or more of studying pretty much every night. A mental fog is creeping back into my head. Still deal dealing with mental exhaustion.
I'm really looking forward to the month long break coming up, I really don't know how much more my mind can take.
Okay enough with the negative aspects of my life.
Well with my workload in mind, the lesson that comes to mind is about having a goal or specific purpose. I'm hoping this all pays off. Well actually I know it'll pay off. But that's only if I have a specific purpose in mind.
Which brigs me to my next question: How do I create Durable Fulfillment in my life? I'm really not sure right now. With school I'm getting excited to get into my classes for my Major. I'm also taking Japanese again next semester. That will be good Although my schedule looks like a continuation of hell, with Math 1050, Math 1060, Japanese 1020, and I'm taking a Billiards class to to bring the grand total for next semester to 12 hours. I still need to figure out what everything looks like with work and karate. My work schedule will probably still be Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. With Karate interspersed.
So anyway, one of my intentions this week is to find what will bring me Durable Fulfillment, another is to find a way toward smooth sailing next semester. I'm soo tired. Really what I need is a source of income that will allow me focus on school and allow me to enjoy Karate again.
Anyone have any ideas?
100 Day Challenge: Day 29
Wow, starting into week number five!
Used the webcam on my netbook for the first time tonight, I forgot that most webcams have a warm up. So that's why the color shifts part way through.
I noticed an overall lesson on pride this week. After a thought about "empty your cup" while I was watching a video on pride I can't look at pride the same way. Really pride seems to make us unflexible and brittle. Brittle things break. It's really that simple.
The really interesting thing is in seeing how much pride plays into life. Trying to "take control" of life is prideful, control is all an illusion anyway. That's why it's best to let go of the outcome. It's good to have an outcome in mind (which was a lesson for me this week as well), but it's best just to trust, and let go and let God.
I feel like my thought processes were a bit broken while making the video, I apologize if they were. I make the videos and theses posts pretty much on the fly. But then again for me I find that's best, that way I don't get stuck in over analyzing things.
My big intention for the week is really to understand myself better. Just like Martial Arts, I need to have a strong base with understanding myself so that I have a good foundation to build on. I have a feeling that once I understand myself better and can create a clearer image of myself in my mind things will come together much more smoothly.
Well everyone wish me luck and make it a great one!
100 Day Challenge: Day 28
Another delayed reply, sorry.
Actually I should really apologize, I've been having difficulties wanting to write an update everyday lately. There are some days I don't see things on a day to day basis, but I have seen things happen over a couple of days.
I can't point to things over the last couple of days that I've been learning (I know they're there, just can't recall them exactly). I did have a big win the other day.
I have a couple of new roommates: Glacius and Cobra Commander. They're only about 9 weeks old and they're brothers.
They've been a lot of fun to have in the apartment over the last couple of days, they're both very sweet and have lots of energy.
Lets see, oh yeah, I got my whiteboard up next to my desk finally! It involved using a drill and hammering in sheet-rock load sleeves (or whatever you want to call them). Is it sad that's one of the highlights of my week? Meh, I'm glad it's up so now I have an easy place to write notes and ideas down (or things like lessons learned).
So I've been thinking that this site is great, I really like writing about my 100 Day Challenge progress. But I'm finding it difficult to come up with topics beyond that right now and it's getting a bit boring writing only about that for about a month now. So I'm going to start writing some other articles about things. I've mentioned video games before, I'll probably start with some older ones that have a lot of nostalgia value for me (Finally Fantasy III/VI, Chrono Trigger, Mega Man, etc).
As well I'm also thinking I'm going to put my experiences during this process and prior to into an e-book. I'm not sure what will really make it different from a lot of "self-help" books out there, other than it will be written by me. Of course I am seeing that the majority of my life improvement involves Martial Arts so I may approach them from that angle. As well I have some other ideas to mix in there.
Now that I think about it, I keep seeing the idea of specific purpose coming up in my life. Perhaps it's because I still feel like I'm floating and just waiting for something to happen. Part of me has no idea where to begin with trying to figure that out. I keep coming back to writing video games. But I don't know if I want to program them or design them. I really should start a project and work on some short ones to see what I like I guess. Things I do know: I love story, good back story that make characters and places more vivid. Maybe I should star there.
Then again, not to sound like a cop-out, I'm probably going to leave a majority of this to my upcoming break. I have over a month off and I intend to use it. I'm going to try scheduling my free time though. So it'll be more fulfilling rather than just "end up" watching YouTube for a month. Really I think that realization in and of itself is a good one (needing to set a schedule for myself). Hmmm maybe that's something I'll have to try this week with my time. I'll see how much it helps to have a clear schedule of what needs to be done.
Something else that I would like to do is to write more interesting articles. These journal entries are fine to get my thoughts down, but I don't do much in the way of a writing process. Just sort of type things up as they come to mind. I'll proofread a little bit and call it good. But I think I want to try writing some actual articles on things. I guess now I need to come up with some subjects to write about. One thing at a time
Everyone make it a great one!
100 Day Challenge: Day 25
Yet another midday post
I'm enjoying writing these during the day a bit more than right before the end of the day. So here we are now
Yesterday I remember thinking about letting go of the outcome of things. This became really apparent when while I was writing a speech for my speech lab and practicing for giving it.
The thought flashed through my mind: "There comes a time in every project when it's necessary to shoot the engineers." Meaning take what you have and run with it. As it's impossible to account for every variable, you should think through an idea and spend time preparing, but eventually just go with it and trust that you'll be able to handle any problem that comes along. From a military perspective: No plan survives first engagement. (Not a quote as I don't remember it exactly and I don't know who said it.) Once you actually throw yourself into something, there will always be something unexpected.
Flexibility...
On the subject of Public Speaking. I remember years ago, a teacher telling me that the more time you spend getting ready for a speaking engagement, the worse you are likely to do.
My experience yesterday would seem to support that theory, at least for me.
I think I spent about 45 minutes to an hour getting ready to give my speech. But when it was all said and done, I feel like it was probably the best speech I gave as far as keeping nervous gestures in check, maintaining eye contact, I had a good opening and closing, I spoke clear, and I felt like the flow of the speech was very logical.
So what does this have to do with letting go of the outcome?
Well while I was getting my speech ready, I was worried that I was going to be unprepared and my speech was going stink. There was a point where I realized the negative thoughts weren't helping me move forward. So I let go and just thought that I'd be fine. The above description was the end result. Better yet, talking with one of my classmates, he said it was probably the best speech I'd given.
With letting go of the outcome, there is also the thought of focusing on the end result.
Yesterday, my roommate got some good news. His boss was just offered the job of being the kitchen director for all of the schools in the Logan school district.
My immediate thought was that my roommate was going to be getting a promotion soon. After that I was thinking about how he had gotten to that point.
A few weeks prior we were talking about jobs and moving up. He had said specifically that the next step on the ladder for him is to go to a kitchen director. He said he'd been taking steps up from pretty much every job he'd ever had, with the exception of his first one when he was working for his father.
Well here's hoping for you Tom!
Everyone else, keep focused on what you want and don't stress on how you're going to there. Just relax and enjoy all the wonderful things that life has for you already and eventually you'll get there