Year One

Yesterday, marked the first day at my job. It was a low key event that was celebrated by my coworkers and I out for a simple lunch. Although it was just another day for them, for me it was something very notable in my life, specifically it has been a freaking year already since I last was living in LA. I can't begin to describe how quickly everything has been moving by already.

 I think that every year that passes, I question whether or not I am accomplishing anything in my life. This happens quite frequently around my birthday. Awareness of growing older and feeling helpless to stop aging is something that I have to ultimately get used to. I always think that somehow I will invent a time machine or learn the power to stop time and either relive some of my past or pause moments in my life.

In life there are just a few moments that warrant remembering and are worth cherishing. I think for me the move up to SF and the start of a new life signifies something note worthy. I have finally gotten used to living up here and creating a new network of things to do and people to meet. Hopefully, I can report on my yearly progress and look back at each year to reflect on years past.


Summary of Goals:

Tutoring: Not expanding, I'm only working on one family
Singing: Picked "I've gotta be me" for my final song
Side photo gig: Blogging for their site and creating a social network for it
E-book: floundering!
Non-profit: Still waiting on meeting with city planner, need to convert SI to english units for first house, might have found a marketing/organizer/board member for my team
Fitness: Tennis/Running/Badminton

Life Force

I am one of those people that just need to do a lot of stuff. Having a lot of things on my plate energizes me and keeps me engaged with life. It is kinda strange but having more stuff to do makes me focused and want to do even more. Like a runaway train that gains momentum, I feel more energy when I am at my busiest.  Paradoxically, when I have nothing to work on, I find it extremely hard to start anything or follow through with things.

To quote the great Issac Newton, "An object in motion stays in motion and an object at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by an external force." Newton may have been applying that to physics but it works even surprisingly well with a person's motivation as well. When we do something for the first time there is a lot of initial energy that we have to expend but the more we do it, the less energy it will take in subsequent efforts.

Most of the stuff that I am currently doing has more to do with gaining traction in my life to accomplish great things in the future. I have to see it through no matter how much work I take on because that is how I want my life to be. It is what I need to do right now as I see my mid-twenties as a time of unlimited growth in the areas that I most value. I have to plant the seeds of hard work so that sometime in the near future, I can reap what I sow today.

For me life will always be hard, no matter what circumstances I am in.The reason I say this is because I know that to have a good life filled with meaning, it requires significant sacrifices. It is not enough for me to live a simple life as my past post suggests. But it is a life borne out of continuous growth and hard work. I aim to be engaged fully with my life and do some great things, all I need now is the patience and work ethic to see it through. 

Part-Time Craziness

So what more can I do? Well for starters, I can get a second part time job on the side to work off that extra nagging feeling of a bit lazy for those weekends that I am not doing anything. I am going to see how much work I can take on before I start to feel overwhelmed. I think one of the reasons that I feel okay taking on another job, is because all the new stuff that I am doing, don't really feel like work. It is more like a side hobby that I just happen to get some extra money on the side.

The mysterious new job, is working for my coworkers wedding photographers' business. I will be working their extra add-on photobooth along with any other additional tasks that they require. It is essentially hanging around lots of weddings and taking pictures while enjoying the party. Not bad for a normal Saturday. I think there is also, some van driving involved. All in all, I think that initially there is not to many downsides, maybe a sunburn or two on the longest days.

Sadly, due to the finite amount of time in a day, I am not sure how I can sustain all of my activities simultaneously. I have to just try and squeeze whatever time I can to try and blog whenever I can and work on my side non-profit slowly. I don't want to give up on doing any of the things that I set out to do, but I have to admit that there has to priorities in my life. So maybe instead of putting on the side burner I can blog about it, by putting in mini-summaries at the end of each blog. That way I can keep track on a day by day basis of what I am doing.

Summary:

Non-Profit Business (1m2 homeless shelter): Contacted a city planner and is in the process of setting up a face to face to discuss potential limitations from CA law. Hopefully, I can pick his brain about how I can start this without being stopped by police or regulations

Tutoring: I need to expand my hours and number of students. I have to work on increasing trust with clients and gain experience, likely a long term goal.

E-Book: I wrote effectively 2 pages of this book. I think it will be one of the hardest thing that I will do. Motivation and writing about past experiences will be difficult to maintain.

Blogging: I have begun to slip. I haven't been trying to keep my "blog once per day," for a while. I have to get back to blogging once per day without losing quality of posts.

Singing: I have been cutting class and not paying attention during class. Motivation waning.

Hiking/Biking/RockClimbing/Badminton/Gym: Well, I went once to the gym and badminton.
 

Through the Looking Glass of Opportunity

I am always amazed at how much opportunity there is in life. Sometimes it can present itself in the form of a person, a job, or a finance, there is always something new out there, all we really have to do is exert some effort. I think that if a person is open to opportunity and is ready to try something new then they are ripe to seize it when it comes their way.

I have been plunging myself in all sorts of crazy hobbies in an attempt to make some money on the side. I have tried answering surveys for money, which sucks because you have to do a lot of them before you can get some money ($10 per 10), it amounts to about an hour worth of work. I thought about being a mystery shopper, but those jobs are really hard to get since they are so easy to do and have a lot of applicants. I tried being a freelancer on Elance, which is a odd jobs site for writers and computer science engineers. But I realized that I had to compete with people all over the world for a job, and most of them underbid me to get the job.

I am also in a process of writing an e-book, but that is taking a while due to creative and time difficulties. But I will see if I can get it done by the end of the summer. Most of the time, I have to balance all the things that I am doing in my life and see what is the most beneficial to me in the long run.  I do want to do as much as I can, but forcing me to pick the most important things to do is very difficult. For example, one thing that I am not focusing on as much this quarter is my singing class, it has been on a constant backburner as I do other things. Another is, working as a tutor has cut down the amount of time I can working on blogging or business planning.

My goal is to have a unique set of skills from various different backgrounds. It has/will help me in being as versatile as possible, in the event my primary career doesn't work out, I will be prepared to do anything. I think the opportunity is out there to do anything you want, but the time and effort one puts in is the difficult part. But I think in the end it is completely worth it to gain the satisfaction that you can do anything that you put your mind on.

A Vision

I think everyone has a vision about what their ideal world would look like. We all grow up wanting to do great things in our lifetimes. I believe that all of us want to change the world in some small way to contribute to a greater cause. Our initial vision is what helps shape what we want to pursue in our lives and how we go about achieving it. But, I think somewhere down the line, some people lose their vision or gets put on hold indefinitely. I want to understand why that happens and figure out how to get people back to what they really want to do.

Life is one big grand experiment, with the biggest risk of all, our well-being and future. I can say that each one of us, is a walking science experiment. We are shaped by who we interact with, how we deal with conflict, and what we choose to do with our lives. Only in retrospect, can a person's life be viewed and his or hers impact on the world, accessed. Why do I bring this up? I want to convey to people that they are both the scientist and the experiment, and as such can dictate how they want to test themselves. Meaning, we shape our own destinies.

I have met a lot of people that believe that they have maxed out and cannot become more than what they currently are. For whatever reason, they choose to abandon their dreams or visions for something more practical and easier to do. The common responses I get, when I ask people why they don't do something is mostly self-doubt in their own ability to change themselves. Anything new and risky (Personal or Financial), dictates the need to do something different that they have not done before. We get tend to want to do things non-risky to decrease the chances of being made fun of for not knowing how to do something. It is a crazy catch-22, for people to do something new they want to be good at it before they start it, to try and minimize failure.

I hate to fail at something. Every time I do something I want to win or be good at it. So I know the feeling of starting something new and sucking at it. It is not a good feeling at all. But I have slowly been working on dealing with it on a case by case basis. I know that in order to achieve my vision of the world I need to do as many new things as I can and get good at them. I can't exist in a vacuum and miraculously it good at something without going through all the hard work and effort.

For people to make their vision a reality, I think that they need to see themselves as an experiment, where the experimental outcome can change. After that we can accept that we can fail at certain things and persist until we are better at it. By being able to conquer our own limitations we can achieve any visions that we set out in the world. I believe that anyone can change the world, all they have to do is fail a whole bunch of times. :)

What can One person do?

So I want to help people. How do I go about and doing that? Well, one thing that I feel very passionately about is wealth inequality, specifically how to help the poorest in this country. It goes without saying that there are many people in this country that cannot call a place their home. Many are homeless on the street due to various circumstances beyond their control. There is a huge problem with providing affordable housing for all those that need it. So I want to help them by starting a non-profit organization and build small (1m^2) houses for those that need it the most.

It is a crazy idea, but I think it might just work. I have contacted architect Van Bo Le-Mentzel in Germany, that first designed this house and he has been really supportive of my initial efforts to help the homeless in San Francisco. He is trying to get the word out to people that, this new kind of dwelling is great for the minimalist as well as people that just need a simple shelter for the night. Currently, the plans are completely open source and everyone can build these houses, all Van asks is that he is kept in the loop on what you do with the house, by sending him pictures.

I've always wanted to help people but I didn't know through what medium I wanted to do this in. Providing shelter for people is one of the important things that we can do for those who are in need. What I have learned so far is that many homeless people do not like to live in homeless shelters due to pride or lack of personal autonomy. My plan is to give those people that cannot reach a shelter or don't want one, their own personal "house." This way they can retain their autonomy as well as provide them a mobile home that doubles as storage container and protection from the elements.

I don't know how hard it is to start a non-profit. I imagine that it will take a lot of time and energy before I get to help people on a massive scale. I can only try to do this in tiny steps until I can achieve something great in the end. I want to do this a sort of great contribution to humanity that can help the disadvantaged in our cities and community. I can only hope that when the time comes, all those who are reading this can support me in some small way.

Idea Man

I've been getting a lot of great ideas lately that I want to full fill in my life. It seems that I have a whole bunch of energy that I need to expend on something. There are several things that I am passionate in my life and I want to make the most of my time trying to complete them as best as I could. I think the only problem is that there is not enough time in the world to try and accomplish everything that I want to do.

The thing that I need to start doing is to able to schedule my time in a way that I can do a little bit of my projects each day until I finish them. That way I can stay on task and focus on the little successes along the way. I find that goal setting is a great way to make sure that you actually follow through with whatever you are doing. Most of the projects that I start, I really don't finish. I want to try and get rid of that, or at the very least get my success rate a bit higher.

I don't know how hard and long it will be to see my ideas to fruition, but I am determined to make it a go of it. Like with this blog, it took a long time before I started to get into the habit of posting several times a week. But once I did, the amount of people visiting my site increased dramatically, I am now the ~16,000,000th most popular site on the internet! It may not seem much but it is the little victories that keeps me going.

My goal in life is to do as much as I can before I die and make a positive impact in this world. I may not be able to do everything but I'll be damned if I am not going to give is an honest go. I'll chart my progress along the way in this blog as much as I can.

Discovery Human

I am always fascinated by what we can learn about ourselves through introspection and self awareness. It is a difficult process thqt takes up a huge chunk of time to do it properly. But if we do we find out that our lives are fuller and more complete then ever before. Now more than ever I think that we need to look inwards in a world that is more chaotic and turbulent. 

People always have told me that they are not sure of there path or direction in life. It is a growing problem that inhabits many 20somethings as they are navigating their lives. But I think that it is hard for them to decide on a path without truly knowing who they are. Confidence is borne out of knowing thy self and then being assured the what you are doing is the best decision. 

I have always thought about how to best improve myself and the first thing I do is to think about the actions that led me to my present location. It is not often a pleasant experience as there are plenty of bad decisions that's I have to relive though introspection. But by doing so it has made me conscious of the future decisions that look eerily like past mistakes and correct them. 

I don't believe it is necessarily for everyone as it does get time consuming and depressing on occasion. I mean it is really difficult to question some of the decisions and choices you made from an objective point of view. At the same time you have to be a contemplative state with very few distractions akin to mediation. 

The key is that we are better individuals for knowing why we do what we do. It helps us with future choices preventing past mistakes. It requires a lot of patience, understanding, and love from themselves to be able to accept their own errors in judgment. But if we do practice more introspection and self awareness then we might live happier lives.

Change of Heart

Sometimes all we need to do in life is to have a change of heart. People do it all the time, they change their mind about something or someone and that's it for them. I have mixed feelings about making a decision like that without significant time to explore whether or not it is the right decisions or not, but ultimately I think that it can be seen as a sign of strength.

We all make decisions throughout life, it defines who we are. We are the summation of all our choices. Some are simple and some are exceedingly complex, but one thing it certain if we hesitate and delay a decision we risk, losing out on our ability to choose and get stuck with what we have. There were plenty of times in my life that I didn't want to make a decision because I was afraid of either the consequences or dealing what others thought of my choice.

The thing is, when you wait and think through all of the possible solutions or outcomes, you get paralyzed with "what if?" and you end up doing nothing or worst others make the decision for you. For me that represents a loss of control, when others start to dictate my life.

My relationships have been the epitome of this problem. I have always tried to think through and explore all of the possibilities when I am with someone but, unlike most things logic doesn't work. Emotions are inherently illogical and therefore literally impossible to predict. Many a times, I got burned because I made a decision based on logic and not my heart.

See the thing is, that most women test their guy by throwing rapid fire questions at them expecting an immediate answer to reaffirm their love for her, if they don't answer fast enough it is a sign of indecision and therefore lack of firm commitment. That is where I still stumble... As an engineer, I am trained to look before I leap, it is not a sign of lack of commitment, it's just a school of thought. I mean I have to think through my answers because I want to give the most honest response. Which admittedly kills attraction, because it is so realistic.

Love is almost like a blind faith that you just have to trust with everything you have. How many people can say they do that? I imagine not many, because how sure are we of anything in life besides death and taxes?

I think that sometimes logic must take a step back and we must trust the moment and make a decision to take a risk. I was always a bit slow to show my love for the people that were in my life, I hesitated when they asked me and never gave a strong confident answer. I lacked conviction. But the thing is that I can't gain conviction through thinking or dwelling about it, it must come from a leap of faith.

I realized that neither person in a relationship really knows how it is going to end up, but one person must commit to it for it to have a chance. Very rarely both people commits at same time, usually one then the other, but if no one takes the plunge and commits then no one does. I vow never to make that mistake again, I must take the lead. If I don't, then I lose more than life's version of musical chairs, I might lose the ability to truly commit to another person. All it takes is a change of heart...

Instant Gratification

We live in a world completely dominated by instant gratification, especially in American culture. Everything that we ever could want, with enough money of course, can be had with a few clicks of a button. Companies have made it incredibly easy for us to feed that desire for immediate satisfaction over the years. Consequently, delayed gratification has gone down as well as our savings in the pursuit of the newest and shiniest things. Nobody is immune to this, including myself, but if we are aware of our instant gratification tendencies then we are more likely to control them in the future.

When I was a kid, I loved new things, whether or not it was a toy or a snack; I was enamored with it. I remember asking my parents all the time if they could buy new things for me, it worked about 30% of the time. Although, I knew that my chances were low, I made up for it by asking them all the time (I mean, my probability stayed the same but their willpower didn't ;) ). This has somewhat extended itself into the present in the form of technology, with me wanting to obtain the latest and greatest games and apps. But now the only thing that gets in the way of me getting what I want isn't my parents, its money. I like most people, I only have a finite amount, but the things that I can potentially get are literally infinite.

From about the start of college onwards, I really had to tighten my belt and delay gratification. There were so many things that I wanted but couldn't afford so I had to save up for it most of the time. I made a choice to put those things that I wanted in the back of my mind until I had set my finances in shape. This obviously was a lot easier to say than to put into practice. What helped me was that my peers at the time were in the same situation so it was a lot easier to control spending whenever we went out. But on a whole this was time of my life was when I really bought into the idea of delay gratification and saving for the future.

Now, it is harder than ever to delay gratification, because of the area I live in. It is really hard to save when there are people that are to the left and right of you driving luxury cars and have the latest in technology at their disposal. It brings out the competitive nature in me to try and best them, but alas it is not meant to be. I just don't have the large amounts of discretionary income that others have. I would have to purchase things I want now on credit. I also have to convince myself over a period of a couple of months that something is worth purchasing now. There are larger expense that must be taken care of before I can splurge on something that I want.

There are others like myself that are in more dire need of money, but they cannot seem to be able to control their expenses. They live paycheck to paycheck and never have enough money to be able to dig themselves out of the debt hole. Most aren't aware of the little changes that they can make to prevent them from splurging, such as never going into a store without a list and thinking about a potential purchase for a day or two before buying.But I really think that the key to delaying gratification is awareness of it in the first place, once people are aware that they are spending based on an emotional decision rather than a logical one, people can change their spending habits. Although, I have simplified this to one key reason, there might be several reasons why people spend or want instant gratification. They are mostly psychological and vary from person to person and thus depends on each individual.

Ultimately, I believe that we need to lessen our over reliance on things to make us happy. Happiness should come from internal content and not external material goods. Temporary pleasure is no substitute for long-term happiness and contentment in life.

Stay gratified my friends...

Technology making us dumb?

I have always wondering if the world of today is better than the world of yesterday. The influx of technology has greatly influenced our lives but we live in a world that is so connected and accessible that we are losing independent thought. We have now come to rely on technology so much that I fear we starting to lose our curiousness in obtaining information.

In a certain light, I miss the old days, everything was a bit slowly than today. Maybe it is because of more responsibility and less time to have fun but back in the old days (1990's) the lifestyle was just slower. I like the fact that we had to go to the library to do research and that was one of the dominate ways to find information, unlike today where get the answer to anything with a single click, it loses some of its value. I mean if we traveled a couple of miles and dug around for an hour or two for the answer you inherently value the information more than if it was more easily accessible. We have lost value in the discovery of information but gained speed in obtaining it.

One of the great joys in life for me is figuring out how things work, whether it be mechanical, societal, or psychological. But it takes a lot of time and we need to observe it, study it, and create a hypothesis on it. That usually requires a lot of effort, an effort that we are less and less likely to go through, at least formally. The easier way is to search for it online somewhere and that is mostly likely as much effort we are likely to put in. There are many people of our generation including myself that rely on the internet way too much and use it as a crutch as if, there are no other way to do things without going online. I am not saying that we should ban the net or stop people from googling, but I think we should stop ourselves first and figure out if we can do it ourselves before consulting master google.

It really helps us in the long run if we can problem solve and figure things out independently before we go for the quick answer. It makes us value the process of obtaining that knowledge and it will help us remember it better as well. I see too many people pull out their calculators for easy calculations (I am talking about 10*30=300). People's mind just default to using a calculator when they find a math problem and don't even realize how easy it is just to do it yourself. Math is one of the easiest things to forget when you haven't done it for a while. It is a bit sad and tragic that all it takes is a minute and a pencil and paper to figure it out, we do need technology for something that simple unless you have an excel sheet size project.

While the world is easier with technology we have to be very careful with how we interact with it on a daily basis. We can too easily rely on it for everything and not understand what we are losing in the process. As a heavy tech user myself, I have to stop myself sometimes and realize that I can figure things out myself rather than just googling the answer.

Discover the wonders of your own brain and google less my friends! :)

Weakness Unleashed

We all have weaknesses that we try not to let others see. All of our lives we have been told that we must hide it from the world unless we want the world to laugh and ridicule us. It is often something that is painful for people to admit their short comings because of the uncertainty in others reactions. Most times we lie, cheat, or steal rather than admit our personal failures in our lives. Our weaknesses have such a huge influence over what we do that sometimes we don't even know we are covering up for them.

One of my biggest weakness was/is my feelings of inferiority compared to others. During the beginning days of college and all throughout graduate school there would always be the idea in my head that I was mediocre and didn't belong. So to compensate for a perceived lack of intelligence I would routinely put in more time and effort into what I was doing to mask the fact that I just couldn't grasp certain concepts faster than others. Even when I was doing decent work, I always had the need to appear to be more brilliant than I was. I almost burned out multiple times during school because of my incessant drive to "fix it". To try to allay this weakness, I have been working on viewing things from a proper perspective so that I can be more accepting of myself.

Another weakness has been my lack of eloquent writing and grammar skills. Even taking as many language arts and English classes throughout the school years. I have always had a limited ability to write or write consistently. As an engineering major, I hid my writing skills quite easily as there just wasn't a focus or need to expand in that area. Math was always more important than my ability to compose passages. Although as time went on, my writing skills deteriorated as atrophy set in. Hence my ability to write technical papers also took a hit. It was only recently that I have decided to put a major effort into regaining these skills as now it is more important to me than ever before.

Finally, a third major weakness has been my inability to change certain beliefs or mindsets that I have maintained throughout my college years. As much as I taut and promote growth, there was a huge part of me that has/is constantly resistant to change. It was only when I moved to SF, that my rigorous beliefs were challenged. I have a certain way that I like to do things, as everyone does, and so I falsely believed that people would be the same in SF area as they were when I was at USC. This led me to just wait for people to come to me to hangout rather than me being the initiator. Meeting people is hard when you get into the working world and I was damned if I was going to change myself for others. Now, I have slowly adapted and am starting to branch out and do Meetup groups and other outreach activities. Although, I find this weakness still the most difficult to deal with.

My point is that we all have core weaknesses that we have to deal with in our lives. It can be incredibly difficult to call out and name your weaknesses, and even harder to try and change them. I can't say that I have conquered the mountain of my own weaknesses, I fear that it will take me the rest of my life to mitigate them. But the key is to learn from your own weaknesses and understand where it comes from and how you can work with it rather than ignore it.

Stress free or free Stress?

Everyone has gone through those days where stress is at an all time high. It could be due to one big event or many small little things, whatever the reason is, I think the key to managing it is to keep things in perspective and disconnecting from the world a bit. If your like me then you get a severe case of tunnel vision, that keeps me from taking a step back and looking at something with a fresh approach.

Lately, I've have been feeling more stressed than usual, it is not due to any one thing but a lot of little things that I can't control. So I start to think about these things all the time and that distracts me from focusing on what is more important and immediate in my life. There things that just need time to work through and reflect on, if that time is not there for me then things get a little hectic and frayed. It also usually means that I am running on little sleep and overbooking myself with too much activities. I get so into what my life is doing that I can't sense the stress building up.

One way I combat stress is to disconnect from the world, I carve out some free time for myself and then do something like hiking or going to a cafe and reading for a whole day. It's a good way for me to ground my senses to something more basic and physical. Often I get so wrapped up in being a cog in the machine, going about my day finishing endless tasks, that I forget to be a human. With a focus on simpler activity I can unwind my mind a bit.

I think that is the source of all our modern day causes of stress, which is working in an unnatural environment. Our bodies were not meant for sitting in a chair for 8 hours or other types of work that is repetitive. We were given bodies to survive and thrive in a natural environment and as such we feel more relaxed and happy when we do go outdoors or camping. I think that after this week is over I'm going on a hike and get back to where I/we belong, in nature.

How do you cope with stress?

Inspiration for life

One thing that constantly inspires me is the hope for a better tomorrow. I think that people do what they do because they believe deep down that there will be a better future for themselves and others. I mean what kind of world would we live in if we didn't believe in working towards something grander in life. Sometimes it is big goals such as getting rid of poverty or hunger, sometimes it is smaller like starting a blog.

This blog has become a conduit of inspiration in the last couple of months. I have spent countless hours thinking and crafting about what it will this blog will become. My hope is that in the next few years it will be one of my grandest achievements in the internet age, a personal collection of my thoughts recorded in cyberspace forever. I want to have a my life in little small moments such that when I am 90 years old, I can still see what I was like as a 25 year old just starting out in life. A historical literary file of all my thoughts, ramblings, and craziness over the course of a lifetime. The pictures that are posted will long be broken links but the words I suspect, will last throughout the ages.

I would like to write a least once a day now to try and make this a habit, although I believe I have to do it at least 21 days before it sticks or maybe not. Anyways, it is a lofty goal that I will be hard pressed to accomplish as it is really tough to overcome writers block on certain days. This blog will be a small but significant way for a better tomorrow in the next couple of years.


Inspire your way to a better tomorrow...

Grow Fearless

I want to take risks head on, much like the kid up above. Being fearless is more than just conquering physical challenges, but mental challenges as well. I define fearless as having the ability to stay strong and on course when doubters and criticizers try to tear you down. It is a belief that above all else you stand apart from the rest and follow your own path.

I've had many occasions where I had to defend myself against the onslaught of people that would love to see me fail. They probe, question, and attack me for doing things differently from what "Normal" people do, whatever that means. Sometimes I feel as if people are just plain mean and hate everything that they don't understand. I try to see it from others point of view but it gets difficult when I tell people about what I do and they think that I'm bullsh*ting them. I always get a "yeah right look," when I tell people I sing and blog.

One of the worst thing to go through is when people do not take your passions seriously and dismiss it, whether you do it as a full time job or a side gig. To be fearless is to stare your opposers down and stand firm on your position and not give them a chance to fill you with self-doubt. I won't let others block me on my way to accomplish what I need to in life. I will blaze my own path and be fearless along the way.

Be Fearless.

Blogging for Growth

I was reading a fascinating story about how a person quit their job and started to blog full time and now is making over 100k a year with that blog. Check out www.budgetsaresexy.com it is an amazing blog with a lot of good information as well as some subjects that is normally taboo. He talks about everything in his blog as well his net worth which he updates on a monthly basis. It is a level of disclosure that very few of us are willing to show to others, but yet it works for him.

His blog is where I want to eventually take Growth Unleashed and stuff it full of great content that people are willing to spend their time reading and enjoying, all while providing me with a great way to compensate my time and energy. I think it will be quite a long time before I start to earn anywhere close to what he is getting. The author of that blog has spent the past 4 years getting it off the ground and creating content for it continuously as he writes in it almost daily.

I will set some modest milestones for myself in the near future and continually improve upon them so one day 4 years from now, I can partly blog my way to financial freedom.

Goals for Growth Unleashed
1. Post at least 15-20 times a month
2. Write at least 250-500 words a post
3. Read other blogs and comment on them
4. Establish main topics of discussion and post regularly about them
5. Always spell check and grammar check

Am I missing anything?

Blogs Unleashed!

 

I would have to say the best way to keep audiences coming back for more is to entice them with new content and expand on previous hot button topics. The hardest part about blogging is to post something every few days to keep viewership up. A great blog can die a slow and painful death if there is too much time in between posts. People in this day and age are all for the instant gratification and novelty seeking. I myself was like this way as well.

A while back when I was first researching blogs, I would always go to a few select blogs of people I knew and read weekly or bi-weekly. After a while some people would stop blogging and their blogs would disappear from my mind and I would ultimately forget that they even had a blog. They were not entertaining me and therefore was not worthy of my time. Sad but true. Keeping people's attention is extremely hard! I had to think about this every time I blogged, knowing that my audience is in it for the small boost of dopamine my blog offers. So every once in a while I would think of something crazy to blog about, it is almost like a promo ad for my blog.

What brought about this post, is that I have recently seen a couple of people that I know, create blogs of their own. I hope to see them flourish and gain viewership and hopefully many followers as well. But I must caution them about the difficulties of sustained efforts into a blog takes a lot of time, effort, and dedication. I created this blog years ago under a different name and intent but it sat idly for years before I decided to really work on it.

I blog because I enjoy the experience, and hopefully they will find joy in their blogs as well. Cheers!

The Count of Monte Cristo

If I wanted to base my life on a piece of fiction then, The Count of Monte Cristo would be the perfect example. In a nut shell, it is about a naive man (Edmond Dantes) who gets double crossed and is sent to jail for crimes he did not commit. During his time there, he meets a man that teaches him the ways of the world and helps him discover who his enemies are. Once he escapes his prison, he seeks his revenge on those that have betrayed him and nearly loses his own sanity in the process.

Now to be fair, nothing in my life compares to the extremes that the main character goes through during the often bleak story. Shades of the struggles and hardships that the protagonist experiences can be related in my own life in quite similar ways that I felt a special connection to the story the first time I saw it. What I most saw parallels in myself was the inner conflict and anger that had developed when he was in prison and had finally figured out who had betrayed him in the first place.

There was no person that betrayed me per se, it was more of a collective series of events that stymied and frustrated me as I grew up and forayed into the adult world. I believe it was the jarring realization that the world I was the taught and the world that actually was, were too much for me to handle. It can be summed as such, my expectation of the world was not in line with what I had believed and thus causing me to be disillusioned with how to proceed forward.

To understand me is to understand struggle. There is a need for me to continuously prove to myself that I am able to overcome any and all challenges in my way. With Edmund, his need for revenge against his former friends became an obsession that drove him to plot and plan with every waking moment that he had. I can see parallels in myself, when it comes to pushing myself to succeed and having wildly ambitious goals in life.

The fact is, my motivation to push myself comes mainly from proving to my high school classmates that thought so little of me all those years ago. Kinda sucks being marginalized all those years. It is absurd that events occurring almost 10 years ago could have such a huge impact me now. But as someone once told me, "we are our own experiences." Edmund spent 13 years in jail, learning and planning for the day he gets outs and starts his revenge. Likewise, I have spent most of the 10 year learning and gaining status so that one day I might come back and prove my worth.

I have thought about what this blog has helped me done in the past couple of month, which is to catalog my thoughts but also to grow as an individual. But part of that growth is to also realize that I must learn to eventually let the past go and look towards the healthy prospects in the future as Edmund finally did in the conclusion. Until then, the need to be better than my contemporaries is fueling the fires of success, but I must make sure that I don't get burned in the progress.

Taking a Chance

Life is all about taking chances and hoping for the best. The picture above is the best visualization for this, once the fish leaves it's bowl it does not know whether or not it will make it into the next bowl, but still tries. I wish that I could have the ability to take more chances in life and risk it all. It is harder than it seems to put yourself into a situation that you know very little about and even less about how to navigate through it.

I may talk about this risk taking in a general sense but the it applies to all facets of life; school, work, and romance all require some risk taking in order for one to make it through. I truly believe that most people are fearful of the consequences and subsequent embarrassment of failure to take a lot of chances in life. I know this because I have been there on multiple occasions and still fight my fear on a daily basis. It is incredibly hard to put yourself out there and not have doubt in oneself.

This culture is absolutely horrible in fostering peoples' ability to express themselves without fear or criticism from others. I think if people try to do something that is different or difficult they are mocked until they either have taken on a thicker skin or quit due to mounting pressure. It is as if the people doing the criticizing are jealous of those taking risks because they can't do it themselves.

My point is that we all need to take risks in life, that is how we grow as an individual. We can't let others stop us midway or before we take the first steps. It is important to each one of us that we know the pains of hardship and even failure so that we can look forward to and cherish the good times.So go out there and take a chance on something.

The unexamined life is not worth living

"The unexamined life is not worth living"
Socrates, in Plato, Dialogues, Apology
Greek philosopher in Athens (469 BC - 399 BC)

I spend a lot of time reflecting upon myself and how I do things in the world. It has always helped me clear my mind by setting goals and priorities for me to achieve. By looking back upon what I did or didn't do I can find things that help me improve my overall life. For example, if I did something well and got praise from it, I would go through in my mind the event once again and visualize everything that I did well and learn from the experience, vice versa, I would also look at the things that I didn't do so well and try to remember to work on it. This kind of mental exercise has helped me to continue to grow and refine myself as I get older.

I think people on a whole nowadays do not properly have time to reflect on what they have done and how they are doing things. I see people doing things for the sake of doing them and not really knowing why. Such is the case with people working at jobs that they don't like or being pressured by friends and families to do things that to them doesn't make sense. People are very reactive to their environments and others, not many are sure of themselves and their path in life. I believe that if people took a step back and really analyzed why they do certain things in life, they would make changes and better their own lives.

I contribute a lot of my personal success in life on my ability to tune others out. By ignoring certain people and their beliefs about me, I was able to grow beyond what others saw in me. I looked inward to myself and what I had accomplished and used that information to determine who I am. People have a really nasty habit of taking one look at a person and judging them at first glance. It is as if people are writing a personal narrative of who you are as a person in their own head and the rest of the time they are trying to make you fit their story.

For example, my parents has always believe that I was this shy introverted person who loved computer games and had very little outside interests.  I achieved very average grades, so they thought that I was going to average and make somewhat of a decent living. They thought that I couldn't get a high paying job without excellent grades and a Ivy league education. Every chance that they got they tried to reaffirm their beliefs in who they thought I was. They were always telling me that I didn't like books and that I should read more, despite the fact that I did all my reading away from my parents in silence. The point is they were more than surprise with how I ended up and where I am going in my life, but it wasn't possible had I just believed what they thought I was.

I had to examining my life and understand who I was and who I wanted to be, myself. There was no consensuses on what my life should be or who am I based on my past. I determine who I am and what I do with my life, not others. It is empowering to be in control of your own destiny, regardless of what others say. Let's all try and ignore the naysayers in our lives and people who try and fit you into their story of who you are. Write your own story.