My first post about a bad day (revisited)

I love technology. That is no secret! With a simple click of my mouse I sorted my posts and pulled up the oldest thing I ever posted. It has been nearly 4 years since I posted my first ever blog post (HERE: http://wp.me/puJD0-q). At the time I was a total disaster. Little did I know that putting those few words on the all but forgotten website called MySpace would end up changing my life. I thought it might help relieve some of the stresses that haunted me... get my pain out in to the world for people to see and not held in anymore. I started that post with hate and vengeance in my heart and mind. I started to post it to strike back but I remember editing it over and over and over again to weed out the things that weren't the real me. It was crude and almost childish in nature and form, but it started a landslide that had only grown as the days and months and now years have past. That landslide has stripped away everything that was my shell at that time. All the layers and walls I put up to make myself look like what I thought everyone expected and what I thought I was supposed to be. It has been a long long road from that day. God, if he exists, may not even be able to tell you everything that has shaped me since then. I know I can't but my blog holds most of that data.

Today wasn't a bad day. Today, I ended up with something on my mind that I was not expecting when I started. A choice, that may determine my future for a long time to come. The choice put in front of me right now wasn't a huge deal when I first saw it because I had made up my mind. I KNEW what I wanted and I planed my day to make it happen. I didn't plan on a choice, I planed on a dictation, a speech, a conversation with only one end. "The best laid plans of both mice and men..." It went as expected in every other way I could imagine, but, this damned choice has become a lot more difficult to process than I expected. So, naturally, I am on this blog working though the swirling thoughts in my mind and trying to figure out what that heart of mine is thinking as well.

I don't know what to do... on one hand I have the possibility of stability and a second chance to try and make something that I have only dreamed of. But possible isn't firm ground to tread on. The second hand provides more tangible unknowns but offers a return to something familiar and solid where potential is plentiful and possibilities are as numerous as grains of sand. Neither road is all glitter and gold and only two holds something of firmness that I can't see down one. But choosing the second hand puts up a Great Wall that can't ever be removed.

For now I have to push off the choice and roll with some of both. Walk the line between the possibilities of hand one without the wall of hand two. Until the more firm facts are available about the unknowns of hand two it will all have to remain in limbo.


So here is to the better days that came from that first post... cheers.
Andrew

the wow

Things are about to get the wow factor added back in for the first time in a long time. The choices I made that I now know are imminent make me nervous. I started down the path of finding who I was and becoming better in the process. I made some choices through that time that has led me to discovering things I wouldn't have imagined coming up during such a journey. Today I know things about myself I would have never discovered if I hadn't made the choices to leave my home and move across the country. To branch out a little and see the parts of the world I thought I was missing. Yes this has led to be understanding some things that are very different than I expected but at the same time it hasn't been the happiest move. The things that happened after making such a move has made me a little gun shy of trying it again. But you only have one life and that life time isn't something to be wasted. There is an old saying, if it isn't broke don't fix it. Well keeping things the status quo is not always the best thing in the world. Sometimes changing what works leads to making things even better. I tried it and now I am trying to get back to my status quo.

Andrew

stupid puzzles

I hate crossroads in life. The times when the choices presented in front of us are all grey and fuzzy but we still must choose a direction. Is it a time to start down a new path or do we just stop and observe the world for a moment hopping for bit of clarity. Making decisive choices has never been my strongest attribute and when I do I seem to pick paths that make sense with the information, details, and state of mind I have at the time. A few times now I have made really good choices. They have brought me great joy. But when looking at the past it is the bad choices we remember because they seem cause the most lasting effects. It takes longer to bounce back from the bad things that happen. We all get a little gun-shy when big choices come our way.

Over the last several years I have been more decisive. I have been making choices far in advance so that proper planning can take place. So that all the puzzle pieces can fall together and make the bigger picture work. The issue I have found myself in several times.. what happens when fate or situations arise that disrupt the puzzle. The picture you are trying to build is clouded and not as clear as it was before. This is something that I find hard to describe in the words that make sense. I am not talking about things that detour your path... I am talking about things that make you question the bigger picture you are shooting for. In all my life I have never really been able to paint a great picture of my future. I have ideas of what it want it to look like. But I have always been missing details. I figured as I move forward those details would emerge and become clear. I have found however that experience sometimes adds to the confusion and blurs the picture. My emotional growth has always caused the biggest changes in my view. Trying to build the puzzle when people keep tossing miss colored pieces in the pile doesn't make for a good-looking picture. So what to do... decide to stick with the original design or change it to include the new additional pieces. Every time to date I have lived to regret the choice I have made. Sometimes I didn't realize it for many years and sometimes I know instantly it was wrong. Some choices can never be unmade, cost dearly to change, or in my case, I am too stubborn to admit I was wrong until it is too late to change.

In the last year situations have forced me to put some emotional things aside because basic needs had to be fulfilled first. Food on the table and roof over head stuff. With that sidelined, I have been able to paint a very clear simple straightforward picture of the future. It is the first time I have had a clear picture in a while. It feels really good to have the basics out-of-the-way and not worried about anymore, to a point. But now all the other emotional stuff is back in play and everything is getting mucked up again...

So the world is bringing me back to one of those directional questions. Stop and take a moment to decide. Should I start a new picture, change to include the new pieces, stay on the path (second star to the right and straight on till morning). What choices we make change the picture forever.


As always... I might just be over thinking everything. :)


Andrew

Words

What is there to say... words makeup everything we know and believe. Most of what we share in this world is in the form of words. This blog is nothing more than words on a screen. That was read from coded words that only computers can really fully understand. The words you are reading have been created by one mind, added to a computer as codes, decoded and displayed to the creator to verify they are correct, re-coded to save the data in a format that the computer can remember, decoded by the retrieving computer for the reader, then, readers decipher the words, and meanings of the words. So in reality is anything we read real? The only real idea is the one at the beginning the one that started the reasoning and the notion of putting that idea in to words. This is a hard idea to grasp even for me. And I live in the logical world nearly every day all day.

So, no idea we read is complete. It has been changed not only by the reader's perspective but by the limitation of the words to express the writers idea to begin with. With that in mind... as I start thinking about everything I remember writing over the last years... it too has been altered by me just trying to put it to words to begin with. Just like right now the limitations of the words themselves can't express the ideas that I have about them because they can't express it completely.

OR...

Because we have developed 'the word' have we as a species changed our thinking patterns to match the words we have created. Have we bottled ours minds in to the limitations of written word. Is it possible we have created our own catch 22. Has expanding our knowledge and sharing that through the vastly inadequate words we have created caused us only to think within the confines of those words and thus restricted our own progress of evolution. Can we ever exist outside these confines anymore. Is it possible that the human race has created its own endless loop in to eternity.



Who knows... I don't. I enjoy expanding how I think by asking these very startling and unanswerable questions about the ideas that exist in the world we have today. Because of this worlds creations, can share data so easily now. And data availability has become an issue. If we has a human race do not stand up and protect the ideas we have about data and the ways we wish to use it then the world will slowly become censored. It will not happen overnight, it will not happen and show a startling contrast to the day before. It will happen slowly... bit by bit, one little word after another, until there are only meaningless words left.

Data is an idea that most people can't grasp. I am not talking about mass levels of information being passed from individual to individual... I am talking about the idea that, data, the information you are reading now will have no meaning because words themselves will have no meaning to anyone because they will not be used without first being changed to fit some pattern. Just as I have created a pattern of words to translate an idea from my head to the words you read.

I believe, information is the key to us as humans existing forever. If we as a species decide to make information gathering and knowledge growth our sole reason to exist... think of what might happen to the data we have stored right now. Having it freely shared, worked on to increase it, and distributed as 'common' information. It could change our entire species from being the greedy, self-centered, segregated people we are to the Utopian existence so many writers of words have described. This is an old idea. Many of the historical empires and civilizations were created in this way. All have fallen to one of the forms of human greed for some reason or another.
The idea of utopia is not a hard thing to imagine if you think about it. We all work hard at creating it. Within our homes, our workplaces, and even within ourselves. We strive to create harmony, or balance if you will, with everything we interact with. The information we share, store, and lock away has a lot to do with that. How many times has keeping secrets turned out good for you?



I started to write some random thoughts about words today and ended up talking about Utopia. Sounds logical to me... :)


Andrew

Cheating for the post numbers

I am cheating... making a post to hit my goal of posting 120 blogs. I set this goal for my self a long time ago and forgotten all about it. Lucky WorkPress doesn't forget things like that and it recently let me know I was getting close. I still took my time getting there... but was only one post away so I figured I would just ged'er'done right now and cheat a little. :)


Insta-gratification!

Andrew

Chocolate - reviewed

I just finished watching this movie from Thailand called Chocolate. It isn't the Chocolate with Depp in it, ok. It is a martial arts movie. Like most of the movies I like to watch to kill time... it wasn't a great movie. The action scenes were really good overall. Better then most martial arts movies... Back story.
I really like the really B and C rate movies. I don't' know... the just catch me as you are always watching the underdog trying to make something great. And a lot of them have awesome ideas and stories that go with them. Most don't get to realize the full potential of the story. It may have something to do with being able to imagine the greatness that wasn't able to be made. If they put all the frill in to it then you would have a true crap move with no story at all, AKA, the move commonly known as Transformers 2.
Back... the scenes were good. They didn't look fake just a little stiff and very b rate... at least I thought so. I watched the entire movie and there is a scene where someone falls several stories from a building, hitting a few things on the way down. Very cool little fight scene over all. Slow but had some great simple and fun stunts.

The movie comes to a close... or so I thought. The credits show some of the bloopers from the making of the movie. It is worth watching the movie to see the end of it. It reminded me of the early Jackie Chan movies where they show the stunts going wrong... this was worse. SO, The guy that fell from the building... REALLY did fall from the building!!! The rest I will leave un-spoiled.
You can find it on Netflix insta-queue



So here is my first movie review...

Chocolate (2008)
9 on my B martial arts film category

Andrew

never enough time

I feel the need to blog. However, I also have the physical requirement of sleep to deal with. If only there was more time... I imagine all the things I could get done. If I had more time... would I really use it to get those things done? Would I not feel the urgency to do the things I thought about because I can always get more time.
I have a feeling my time is running out on some of my imagined things I want to do. My sense of urgency and corresponding anxiety is growing by the day. But a lot of my life stuff is 'on hold' for so many great and perfectly logical reasons. I feel more trapped now than I have ever remembered feeling before. That makes me feel 'not good' at all right now... and all the outside stresses haven't helped much these last few months. When I see a glimmer of the light at the end of a tunnel for an issue... than, I start thinking about the tasks in the next one and that glimmer isn't all that great anymore. It is still good to know things are behind me but just getting past steps A and B doesn't make C-Z any more simple or easy to work though. The tasks ahead of me are bigger than just me. I can't deal with them alone and that scares me enough to make me want to stay in the 'on hold' state. Will anything ever really be easy... does life always require this much fighting spirit to traverse?

So to answer my own question... I am glad there isn't enough time at least then the biggest challenges are still 'in the future'.

Andrew