Looking Back

Have you ever looked back on something you did and thought, “That was actually pretty cool,” or “Where was that guy yesterday?”. It’s a strange thing taking a look down the old road. In many ways, you’ve become a more refined person, but in other ways you found yourself pushed against new corners you can’t seem to find your way out of. Looking back on life and reflecting on what was is both empowering and somewhat crippling.

When I first started writing I was tiny, and terrible at any form of grammar. I don’t recall knowing the difference between their, there, and they’re or your and you’re. I still make those mistakes today but mostly because it’s been overlooked rather then not having any idea a mistake was made at all. Dispite my poor grammar and not the most creative story writing I wrote it all by hand, I still remember thinking about ways to make each letter more elegant with every word I wrote. I didn’t let anything get in my way of creativity. If I wanted something to happened it happened even if it was and exact play by play of a scene in star wars.

Looking that far back seems like a different world bu so does looking just a few years ago. I remember being at amazon wondering if my career was going any further then driving a delivery truck around. It was at that moment I decided I wanted more, and so I began my writing scapadeds with the hope that maybe one day my writing could be more then just a fun hobby. Back then I had a committed heart, it may practival to think I could make a pretty penny on a blog in such a short time, but I was committed to working so it was a possibility.

I enjoy going back and reading things I’ve written. Sometimes I cringe at the spelling errors that slipped through or the sentence that makes no sense at all, or even the storyline pulled straight from the show that I happened to be watching at the time I was writing. I love to see my creativity thrive and really feel myself drawn into the imagination of a younger version of me. I truly hope one day my work is just pen and paper, keyboard and screen. Writing would be the dream, but for now I’ll look back and I’ll sift through the errors to better myself tomorrow.

Blogs

What is a blog? It’s not the same as a journal entry. Journals you can fully and unleashingly reveal all things about yourself and yourlife without fear of repercussion. Its not quite a media. Media pieces I feel are informital entertainment. You read an article to see someones take on certain subjects you enjoy and you get a kick out of your own affirmation or disagreement with the subject matter.

When I started blogging for the very first time I was always focused on a nitch. I started with religious then tried some money saving hacks then moved on to writing. Nitches have never really been my thing. Everytime I start I get burnes out wondering what I can do with this next blog. Is a blog even a blog if its so focused?

It wasn’t till I shed the need to comply to some sort of strange formula that I was able to really sink into my blog. I stopped worrying about consistancy, I stopped worrying about perfection, I stopped trying to create something for the viewer and focused on making something from the heart. I feel better writing a blog when its just me.

Its not journal me because I’m not sharing personal experiances and my thoughts on those. Its my thoughts on things that seem insignificant yet I have thoughts about them. I’m not designing my thoughts for the viewer I’m laying them on the table as constructively as I see fit. My best blogs have always been straight from the heart with little to zero preplanning.

So if you ask me what blogging is, its digging into your thoughts on mundain

Stumped

You ever just not know what to write about. I’m not talking about writers block either. This is the desire to write but just not having anything to write about. It happens when I’m bored, not when I have a lot of time bored but I have a couple minutes and instead of sifting through random social media or playing a mindless game I just want to write.

I know this in itself is ironic, writing about not knowing what to write, but I feel like it happens to a lot of people. Somtimes its visible through a terrible project we forced out of ourself hoping to break through the blank mind. For others I feel like we just dont produce anything because we know we’re writing about nothing.

This is the kicker, its not writers block, at least not in a completely blocked sense. I honestly love writing, I love story telling and creating. I play minecraft occationally but in minecraft I write books others could find. Sometimes I just want to write and I’m stumped because I don’t have enough time to write as much as I want or I don’t have the material to make something.

Ultimately creativity is my go to when I’m bored and I’ve always felt words to be the easiest way to form my thoughts. As much as I see images in my head its the description of what I can smell, taste, and touch that I find captivating. Its what I feel is the best form to express my own mind.

So here I am writing about not knowing what to write about.

Stress

Stress is an interesting phenonminon. You can do something a hundred times, feel good about your ability then add a mixture of stress and suddenly this new found skill turns to mush. Now that in itself sucks, but now that you are struggling your stress peaks even more. Its like a self feeding virus you cant escape.

In my life I’ve been confronted with stress many times, giving presentations in class, performing for choir or plays, basically a lot of performace based stuff. As an adult its strangly easy to avoid performance based stress, there’s always a way out, sometimes its harder then just dealing with the stress but when you dont like stress you’ll move mountains to avoid it.

I’ve realised recently that I’m a mountain mover. Now, the stress I’ve felt recently doesnt compare to what stress I’ve felt in the past, its leagues above but with this intense stress I’ve felt the urge to move mountains to get away from it. Sitting here now its funny to even think about it, considering the mountains I needed to move just to be in this position, especially now the stress isn’t as present as its been the last few days. Thats the complexity of stress for you.

The reality is stress is a complex feeling. It feeda itself in many ways while also pushing us to our limits. Some of the greatest things I’ve ever done I did while pushing through stress. Despite its discomfort coming out if a stressful situation is empowering, if you come out a failure at least you’ve seen what true stress can do. If you come out successful you can take a deep breath and marvel in the path you’ve paved.

Push through stress, don’t worry about failure but don’t go down without a fight.

The New Past

Have you ever been thinking about a movie you watched and thought, “that was a good movie I should find it so I can rewatch it.” Then after an intense search you find it. You get your popcorn ready, get comfortable on the couch, and begin what you expect to be an exciting blast of the past. As you watch the movie you realize it was not nearly as realistic as you though it was going to be. You can recall the graphics being much better, yet here it is in front of you lacking said graphics.

It’s a strange thing how the mind works. How many of us can recall memories so vivid we’re sure their real, the a new tictock shows up with the mendella effect and we realize we were wrong the entire time. The reality is the mendella effect is really just a larger grouping of something that happens in our own heads all the time. As time passes out memories change. Sometimes these changes are for the better, we gain a new perspective or lose something that truly scarred us. Sometimes these changes are for the worse like when we’re so certain something happened the way we remember it happening.

The reality is we all shape memories, whether we do it on purpose or we do it without noticing. I can recall looking back on a memory I had with my wife. At the time I was dating someone else. We were just talking about her situation and I felt really good about our conversation and felt glad we could be so close as to talk like we’re were. I didn’t recall any romantic feelings at the time, but when I first started thinking about the possibility of dating my wife when I looked back suddenly I felt like that was the moment I had started to feel attracted to her as more then a friend. A change of perspective molded my memory. Now looking back I can’t see anything but that moment being the first moment I started falling in love with my wife. I know if I went back now and talked to that kid he’d see it differently.

This makes each moment that much more important knowing that once it passes you’ll lose that moment forever. Even your memories can’t hold to the reality of each moment, because as time goes on those will change.

Note: Because of issues with my internet I started this post over approximately four times after having written the entire thing. Seems ironic considering it was a post focused on memory.

Artistic Chaos

My wife and I are both artists. She is brilliant when it comes to decoration. The other night she showed me a picture of a display she’s made at work and I was blown away by how awesome it looked, then she explained her process behind and I was entranced. I can’t measure up to my wife’s artistic ability but I consider myself artsy as well. My latest canvas, food.

It all started with pigs in a blanket. We’ve been on a tighter budget with moving and a new job, so I’ve been trying to be more creative. When I looked in the kitchen I found hot dogs. We were out of bread and I’m not one for eating straight hotdogs, so I looked up a recipe for pigs in a blanket and made what I’ve deemed hogs in a blanket. Since then I’ve been looking up multiple recipes even letting my kids make their own pizza’s.

After a week I decided to sit down and make a meal list. Now you’d think that’d be pretty simple, after all when I had nothing I was able to think of multiple meals out of the random things we had in our kitchen, but here I was sitting in front of the computer completely blank. I had no idea what I could add besides the things I’d made on the fly over the week.

Later that night I was telling my wife about the incident and her eyes lit up. She also felt like her artistic abilities thrived when she was on the spot rather then preplanning it all out. It seemed so foreign. My favorite artistic outlet is writing and I feel like that is literally laying your ideas on the table to be molded.

That’s the reality of art and artists, we’re all different with varying visions, Some people love our vision some despise it, some are entranced for reasons they can’t explain others don’t like what they don’t understand, and some thrive in a well prepared plan, while others simply live in artistic chaos.

Long Runnings

It’s been a very long time since I last blogged. I remember starting this journey last year. I was so sure then I would stick to it. I wanted to stick to it, but life had a way of shifting things around into a crazy jumble.

Last year I was working for Amazon doing deliveries. I had big goals with work and a lot of things in place that I was waiting for, but despite it all things were stagnet. The beauty of stagnet career is it opens up the opportunity to really stress some of those dreams you have. Mine was writing my book and that’s where I eventually came up with the idea of blogging. Writing once a day to keep writing in my heart.

This all came to a tremendous hault when I was offered a job as an airline dispatcher. Now I’d interviewed for the position so I wasn’t completely caught of guard, but to start this job required moving five hours from our home and doing a lot of at home training. All this extra work pushed out any time for writing. I hoped once training was finished and we got comfortable again I could start up again, but then another opportunity arose.

Years ago I applied to become an Air Traffic Controller. This can be a long endeavor as you have to take a test to show your qualified to go to class to prove your qualified to be placed at a facility to show your qualified till finally your a controller. All that is after getting into a class. So two years ago I found out I was qualified. A year and a half ago I was told I would receive a class, then after a year of waiting, I finally received a class a few weeks away from finishing my training as a dispatcher.

This was an even more intense training then before, and this time even more was at risk. If I failed in class I would lose this chance forever and I’d given up the only other job I really got excited about to start this training. So I put everything I had into my training and finally after about 10 months I’m finally to the point I feel like I have a mind outside of work again.

So it’s been a lot. My minds been completely consumed. I still want to write my book, I still want to keep blogging, but now it’s going to be slow running as I continue to train. I’ll be finished with training hopefully in the next few years and then I’ll be back to where I was a year ago.

Consistency Over Quantity and Quality

Setting a goal is important but at the end of the day if you can’t work at your goal every day you get no where. It’s better to create the pattern in your life where goals can be achieved rather than focus on the highest quality of achievement with every effort. Patterns, routines, habits; the flour needed to make the cake of success.