I am a worrier, a pessimist, and a worst-case scenario kind of person. As a result, I live in a nearly constant state of fear about what might happen, and I make discussions accordingly. Anxiety and self-doubt keep me from doing a number of things I’d really like to do, but I’m worried about what might happen. I’m worried about failure. About what other people think.

It’s that last one that really bugs me. I like to think that I’m strongly independent. That I can survive solely on my quick wit and boyish good looks, but really, I’m constantly thinking about what someone else thinks or perceives about me, and that’s where a good deal of the fear comes from. Not that I think I can’t do it, but it’s almost like there’s some invisible expert on <insert topic here> standing over my shoulder, measuring me up. It’s ridiculously paralyzing.

Well, I’ve decided to take a stand against my own cowardice, and while that does not mean I’m going to throw caution to the wind, I am going to make a more concerted effort to do things that scare me. I started this journey yesterday.

I bought that, a Piaggio MP3 500. It’s a scooter, not a motorcycle exactly, but close enough, and they’re tons of fun to ride. I’ve been wanting one for years, but I’ve always been too scared to actually do it. What if I crash? What if people make fun of me? What if . . . For years I’ve been playing that game, but it’s over now.

So, I’ll be getting my motorcycle license soon, and then it’ll just be me and the road. Me and the road and a million people driving multi-ton death machines trying to run me over. I mean. Me and the road. Definitely just me and the road. I’m a responsible individual, and I know I don’t need to worry about myself going out and trying to do anything stupid, or driving too fast, or whatever. I am also aware that there are irresponsible people out there on the road, and I must pay attention to them.

The fear lies not in me, but in what people are going to think as I’m learning to ride better. Will I accidentally corner too wide, and look dumb? Will I have to slow down a little too much before a turn? Will I be a little over-cautious and look silly driving a little under the speed limit?

It sounds stupid when you write it down, but that’s what’s really been stopping me FOR YEARS. Is how silly I’ll look, even though I don’t really imagine there’ll be any problems. It’s just irrational, but it’s similar to how I approach almost everything I do.

So this is step one of a long and difficult journey out of fear and reticence to try anything new. Who’s with me?

I don’t know about you, but I have a socket set out in my toolbox that’s missing about 2/3s of the sockets, and the wrench itself only about half works, and the sockets I have left are the super huge ones and super tiny ones for which there are no bolts made by man. As a result, it’s more or less useless to me, but you don’t want to throw it away because OMG WHAT IF I NEED TO TIGHTEN A TINY BOLT!

In any event, there’s a fix for that solidly planted in the future. But at least we’re a little closer today. The geniuses over at MIT have made some pretty significant strides in creating what I like to callSmart Sand, but they call it “self-sculpting” sand.

The idea is pretty simple: tiny individual grains can be given a command to switch their magnets on or off to combine together to make –on demand– nearly anything. A hammer, a perfectly sized wrench, socket, screwdriver. A jack, a lug wrench, a – well, you get the idea.

Combine this with the glasses technology from my last post, and you’ve got a virtual bottomless toolbox anywhere you need it. The glasses can transmit information to the toolbox about the task at hand, automatically measuring bolts and screws, so you can reach in and pull out the right tool every time, easier than “Accio Screwdriver.”

Imagine having one in your car. You never have to worry about whether you’ve got a jack, or the tools to change your tires. Have them for astronauts so they can always have the tool or the part they need without the need for large and heavy sets of tools.

This is just another step forward, and while the researchers at MIT are a long ways from having small enough component pieces to actually form many useful objects, the fact remains that they’ve made great strides, and it’s just a matter of time before the technology gets small enough to make their dream a reality.

I’ve always been one to look forward to the future, often to a fault, but it’s exciting what’s out there. What we can do. What we have already done to reach such feats of technical and scientific skill and prowess. Often people look to nature to find the beautiful and the wondrous, and I don’t mean to say that we are wrong, but it is not arrogant, it is not prideful to also look at the works of man and stand in awe of our ingenuity, our creativity, and our penchant for solving problems. The natural world has its many marvels, and I revel in those as well, but from time to time, I feel we ought to pat ourselves on the back. We’ve come a long way in an exceedingly short amount of time, whether you want to count time on an evolutionary or creationist scale.

Over the course of a few thousand years, we’ve gone from caves, to farms, to written tablets, to bronze, to iron, and so on to today, the silicon age. It’s mighty satisfying to know we beat continent-wide epidemic, 2 world-wars, the thread of nuclear annihilation, and we’re still going strong inventing, dreaming, and making those dreams reality. Helps me feel good on days when I feel like I’m just spinning my wheels anyhow. How about you?

I have been overweight and lazy about it for far longer than I care to admit. I never much liked it, but I never much wanted to do anything about it either. Like I said. Lazy. My weight stayed more or less in check through middle school, when I was pretty active playing Basketball, but when I got to high school, I stopped playing basketball, started playing golf, largely with the use of golf carts. We’d walk occasionally, so it wasn’t terrible, but nothing near the activity level I had when I was playing basketball.

The drop in activity level, plus an increase in junk food and increasing amounts of TV led to a pretty major increase in weight, and then came college. OH GOD. College. With the unlimited fried food in the cafeteria, the long nights munching snacks, drinking soda, and let’s face it: beer. My weight ballooned. I went from a pretty solid 250 to 300, then when I finished school, I spent 10 months unemployed, eating too much frozen crap, and I ended up around 330 by August of last year.

I started having chest pains in early May, sometimes pretty severe. And while the symptoms weren’t exactly matching heart attack symptoms, it was pretty scary. Scary enough, in fact, I left work and drove myself to the ER. After a series of blood tests, EKGs, and chest x-rays, they decided to keep me over night to run more cardiac tests the following morning. I was easily the youngest patient on the cardiology floor, and it was, to say the least, embarrassing. Being wheeled around, heart monitors attached, at 24 years old was a wake-up call.

After I got a clean bill of health, I went home with a very real motivation to actually lose some weight. After looking at a number of options, I decided that just plain old calorie counting was probably the best way to go, so I signed up for a site called My Fitness Pal. You can input foods and it will track calories, protein, carbohydrates, etc. It’s pretty great, and they even have apps for the iPhone and Android, which make it even easier to track your calories.

Through calorie restriction and exercise (Walking, a little jogging, recumbent bikes), I lost 40 pounds between May and August. It was decided that my chest pains were a result of a non-functioning gallbladder, and I had surgery to remove it. With the recovery period, some ridiculous situations at work, and some added stress due to some other family health problems, I fell off the wagon. between August and January, I went from the 291 I had dropped to back up to 317. When I discovered how much weight I had gained back, I was pretty discouraged, but my wife and I decided to get back to it.

So here we are again, counting calories, and exercising. I’ve already lost 12 pounds of that, and will soon be under 300 again. I can’t wait. I was looking at a few things on the MyFitness pal site, and I noticed they make progress banners. like this one:

Created by MyFitnessPal – Free Calorie Counter

I’ll be adding this banner to my About page, and I hope you all will help keep me honest. It’s a long road, but eventually, I’ll be hitting that 220 mark at the end of the banner.

This one, I think, deserves discussion more than most things. I know that many of you are in similar positions, though maybe not quite as extreme. So let’s share some ideas, some thoughts, some encouragement, and let’s all get healthy together. Every so often, I’ll post an update, and maybe some particularly good recipes I come across. I hope you’ll do the same.

So let’s talk. How healthy are you? Could you stand to lose a few pounds? Have a story of fantastic weight loss? How’d you do it? What could we all learn from your journey?

After 7 years of being online as the pseudonymous “Thursday’s Child,” I have decided to do away with anonymity, because, let’s face it, I wasn’t that hard to find anyhow. And, well, I guess I’ve just outgrown it.  While it was fun, and I’ll still be keeping the other domain, I’ll likely just use it for email, since I have a number of things attached to that email address.  I’ll be posting here.  And with new focus.

My blog has always been about me. But it’s becoming readily apparent, that road has been trod a few too many times, and the pickings for posts has grown perilously thin. Indeed, I have come to accept that I am not an interesting individual, nor will I probably ever be. The only thing I’ve got going for me, in the regard of interest, is my brain, and well, I guess I keep that to myself.  But not any more.  My brain is filled with all manners of fantastical, mythic, and ridiculous thoughts just like yours is. That’s what makes brains so special. They’re grey and squishy, and all look about the same, but they contain within them infinite worlds.  Words and pictures and smells, all different, all new and novel to anyone else but you.  And then there’s the internet.

Websites all look relatively the same. There’s some flashing something, some rectangles, some words, some pictures. But they’re all drastically different. You’ve got photo blogs, news blogs, science blogs, personal blogs, fiction blogs, artist portfolios, Facebook, Google Plus. All of them the same, but all of them unique and novel to anyone who hasn’t been there before, and each one novel every new day when you log on, filled with the brain matter of other people. So let’s all put our brains to it, and see what we might do to help each other out, eh?

We’re all good at something. So we all have something to contribute. Some of us are good at contributing boring, but necessary, things. Some of us are good at contributing exciting, but unnecessary, things. Some of are good at contributing boring, but still unnecessary things. And the world goes on.  Me? I’m a problem solver. I look at problems and try to break them into component parts, and solve a piece at a time. It doesn’t always work, and for that, I’ve got other people who are good at other things to help me along.

So let’s talk. Let’s talk about money. About credit. About debt. About investing. About cooking. About that nasty English paper you’ve got coming up. Let’s talk about photography and poetry. Let’s talk about love and about hate and about that mean guy two cubicles over.

Maybe, just maybe, together, we can get through this big ole nasty world together. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll be all the better for it. I’ll offer what tips I can. You can correct me if I’m wrong. I will often be wrong. I will often be right. There will often be no right answer.

For those of you who know me, you’re probably wondering who’s taken over my blog, and what they’ve done with the real me. I assure you, I’m of sound mind. I just want to try something new. So bear with me as I work out the kinks. Go ahead and help if you like. That’s the idea.

This will continue to be my blog where I make posts sporadically about any number of things. But I want to experiment with it being your blog, too. When you want to say something that doesn’t fit on your own. Or that you can’t fit in 140 characters.  Go ahead and send them to me. My email is in the about page.

I’ll go through them, post them either alone or smashed up with others, giving credit if you want, or leaving it anonymous. I’ll respond to each one here, so that maybe someone else having that problem might benefit. Let’s see what we can do.

When it comes down to it, what do you have you lose? Besides. Trust me. I’m from the internet!

*NB: The thumbnail image you saw is a painting by a Cuban artist who painted three of those, as commissioned by my father. They’re a representation of the scripture which says to bear one another’s burdens. While I may not really be a religious guy, it’s a pretty good way to live, and is kind of the idea of this experiment.

I am a young man. Impetuous, a true idiot, and far from wise. I say this not to be self-deprecating, or to garner any specific sympathy or support. I say this so you may forgive me if I come across as glib or overly morose. I also say this to make it clear how obvious this situation is.

10 years. A milestone for myriad occasions. High school graduations, marriages, employment. A nice round number: long enough to have seen many changes, not so long as to make you forget where it all began, so you can still recognize change. 10 years since two planes flew into NYC skyscrapers, one into the Pentagon, and one into Terra Firma, PA. Truly a turning point for our nation, but in retrospect, it seems like we may have made a wrong turn.

Historically, tragedy has been a force of growth and definition for our country. Pearl Harbor, for example, galvanized a nation to war, proving beyond doubt our military and economic prowess, which netted us global dominance in many arenas. Granted, we already held international respect for many of our accomplishments, specifically our burgeoning trade and industry. WWII, though, showed the world that we meant business, and while the attach in Hawaii was tragic, it slingshot us to greatness. At least for a time.

Countless regional disasters have also served to gird the loins of American prosperity. The Chicago fires, the major earthquakes in California, etc. Each of these led to a reanalysis of laws, policies, and they were expanded–sometimes created–to create a better place, safer and more conducive to our lifestyle. And after these, we succeeded. We became wealthy, successful, and respected. Not by everyone, of course, but what country is? Then came 2001. We were coming off of a largely economically successful presidency (and there are always arguments on either side of that issue), and hopes were high that it would continue. Then came September 11.

The events of that day plunged our country into a panicked frenzy. Mobs were attacking any brown person around. Merchants were gouging consumers, who were equally scared. Our people were hurting our own out of fear, and maybe even a little greed, but even with that, we eventually learned to quell the violence. But many never learned to quell the hatred. Our news media, the purported voices of reason, spread fear and hate for ratings, and what’s worse, there are people who take the pundits at face value. They spew hatred and intolerance, and people just eat it up. Internalize it. Realize it. As a result, our reputations has become that we are the pulse of intolerance and ignorance. And, simply, it’s repulsive.

It’s now 10 years later, and a lot has happened. We entered two unending theaters of war, we found and captured one dictatorial leader, who was hung amidst celebration by his mistreated people. Then, we actually found and killed the man believed to be behind the very attacks that happened 10 years ago. We killed him, too. Amidst these military victories, we have also given up a number of civil rights, and pieces of our sense of decency. We’ve allowed our disabled and elderly to be humiliated at the hands of under-trained and overzealous airport security guards. We are as confused and scared and flummoxed as ever, and this is after 10 (T-E-N) years.

The media will be talking all day about how we should be honoring the memories of the people who died. But we’ve done a pretty poor job of that in the last decade haven’t we, then? Our grand memorial at ground zero has barely been started, largely due to money grubbing and squabbling amongst contractors. We have let fear take over our media. There is still wide-spread and unilateral hatred of anyone with brown skin. What have we become, really?

We have not honored these peoples’ lives. And we won’t ever, not until we step back and reprioritize. We are losing money hand over fist to two wars, despite our crippling debt, which is made worse by inactive political leaders, too powerful corporate lobbies, and corporations grabbing for every last dollar without giving back to the communities which fostered their grown from their infancies. It’s made worse by desperation and frustration of the millions looking for jobs. It’s made worse by helplessness and hopelessness in change. We really need to just step back and look at what it means to be American. To be us, not to police the world, not to tell any other country what government is good and what is bad.

We need to just “do us,” for a while, at least until we’re back on our feet and not still reeling from poor decision making and a sucker punch that happened 10 years ago. We need to regroup, refocus, and look at what we lost. Then, we need to move forward. Build from that loss, and do what we’ve always done: come back better and stronger than ever before. But how?

I don’t know. How do you get out of the wars we’ve started? How do you step back and regroup? I have no idea, but something’s got to give, and it cannot be the already flagging American vigor and livelihood. The successful plan is the plan which brings us back to our roots. The plan that reignites the ingenuity and sheer force of will that brought us through so many tragedies in the past. That’s the plan I’ll be looking for.

**NOTE: I understand that not everyone who will read this is an American. I am, though, so please excuse me when I say “our country.” I do not mean to imply that you are included in the collective, just me and the rest of the Americans.

(An on-going project to discover truth in and about ourselves. See the others here.)

Day 09 → Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.

I think this is how I have lost every friendship I have ever had. Who wants to let friends go? Who ever wants to have to start that over, find new people, build those relationships? It’s hard, and it’s always better to just keep the ones you have. But that almost never happens. At least not early in life.

Nearly everyone I knew in high school is now scattered across the state and the country, and we are each of us too busy with our jobs or school or whatever to really keep in touch. Travel is expensive, and it’s hard to find the time or money to get together. So you just drift. Sure, these days, we don’t have to write letters or whatever. We’ve got AIM. We’ve got Facebook. But all that ever happens is some witty comment on a picture here, a happy birthday prompted by the side bar there.

It’s not that we’re ambivalent about staying friends, it’s just that we never get to see each other any more, and as the years pass, so too does the friendship. Of course, there are some friends with whom you can not speak for months or years but pick back up as if there was never a day lost, but these are few and far between. I have a couple such friends, but even conversations with them are getting more and more rare.

It’s difficult, finding yourself in a place where you have almost no friends. And no real way to meet anyone new. When you spend all your time at work, finding new people is difficult at best, impossible in most cases. But you do your best, try and find someone you can connect with. This becomes even harder as a couple: you then have to find two other people who really mesh with you and your significant other.

But I see the friendships that my parents have, and I know that I’ll some day have friends like that. Who are always around, and have been for 20 years or more. I look forward to those kinds of friends. And I know I already have them, we’re just separated by states at the moment. But it may not always be so.

Maybe that’s another goal for 2011: Find friends.
 
 

With a new year comes the opportunity to change ourselves. To start over with a clean slate. It’s always a bit refreshing, and always a bit unnerving.

I mean, in some ways, it’s just another day. Nothing changed. Still headed off to work. Still trying to figure out what to do for dinner. Still the same old crap, But at the same time, now you’ve got a whole year to reinvent yourself. To change the same old crap. To take new risks. Have new adventures.

But sometimes, it’s just good enough to survive. Just good enough to keep your head down and get through it. In some ways, I feel like that’s what happened in 2010. We had some opportunity for growth and exploration (I mean, we DID go to Disney), but for the most part, it felt like just recovering from the period of unemployment I had in 2009. And you know what? That’s okay, because we needed to recover. We needed to regroup, and just get through it.

So what does 2011 have in store for the wife and me? I have no idea. New job? New opportunities? Who knows! And that’s exciting. Hopefully we’ll be able to pursue some of the things we have been hoping for, but if not, that’s okay too. We’ll at least be a step closer to those dreams.

In this mixed-up crazy world, sometimes progress is all you can ask for. Achievement can be delayed, and it may never even happen, but constant progress is galvanizing. It keeps you going, keeps you making that next step. And that’s what I intend to do. Just keep moving forward.

That’s my New Year’s Resolution for 2011. Just keep moving forward, not worrying about setbacks in the past, just onward and upward. And I’d encourage you to do the same.

You were quiet. Smart, but quiet. But even still, you backed me up when a teacher tried to teach us about simile and metaphor wrong and I called her on it. I never said anything, but I pretty much thought that was the coolest thing ever. Even if she didn’t much like me after that.

We never really spent any time together, with few small exceptions. But you were a pretty cool guy. Just quiet. And at the time, I didn’t know what to do with that. I had not yet reached that point where silence was understandable. Even a good thing.

We progressed through high school, never being much more than just acquaintances, despite that we were always in the same classes. Seeing each other, never knowing each other. I’m sorry I wasn’t more open and didn’t pursue more of a friendship. I was kind of a jerk back then.

I wonder where you are now. How you’re doing. What you have made of yourself. If you ever became more assertive. Will I ever find out? I don’t know. I hope you are well, and I hope we run into each other sometime.

This video is long. I’m sorry about that, but you should watch it. It happens to focus on classic music, but it really applies to every piece of media. Books, music, movies, etc.

Sit back and let your mind get blown by the genius of this man.

(An on-going project to discover truth in and about ourselves. See the others here)

Day 08 → Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.

I moved from a private Christian school to public school in 8th grade. I left all my friends behind, and set out into the “real world.” I knew several people, those who had also gone to the private school, but left much earlier than I did. But little did I know that these were not, at all, the same people.

I hung out with them, because I thought I knew them, but really, I was just a piece of scenery. Someone to crack jokes about who wouldn’t fight back because he didn’t know anyone else. Was always left out of group events, never invited out.

I thought it must have been because I was fat. Or because I was, in some other way, offensive. But I have since realized that the problem was not with me. The problem was that they were all jerks. It’s unfortunate that it took me close to 3 years of feelings like shit to figure that out.

When I got to college, I had learned this important lesson. I refused to be tread upon. I refused to be the butt of the jokes. I refused to be treated like an outsider. I found good friends, and these have lasted past college, though we a scattered across the country. So they may have been jerks in high school, but at least they taught me that I deserve better.