Self Motivation The Search for Perfect Timing

I’ve been promising myself for months now that I’d get back to writing here. I told myself that I shouldn’t leave this blog, that it needed the most… and I’d also telling myself that as soon as the time is right, or as soon as I decide on the perfect subject to write about, I’d get right back on the blogging.

What I realized after weeks of this same mental conversation is that there is no “right time.” The search for perfect timing is as useless with so many distractions to keep you from your goal— outlaws to control in one case, books to read and work to accomplish in the other—you eventually forget what it was you set out to do. You put it off and you put it off and one day you find yourself dried out, with no energy left to fulfill that goal you once believed was yours.

It might be a bit too deep to image by applying to a blog writing, I’ll admit to that. But I don’t just mean blogging. I mean think about it. How many of us tell ourselves (and anyone who’ll listen), “I’ll have a six-pack by August,” or “I’m definitely going to do some traveling this year,” or even something as simple as, “Today, I’ll go to the bank,” and yet never do any of it?

I’m a Nike and Guess  fan so it may sound unfair, but it’s also true: the best way to start doing something is to stop talking about it and just do it. Take that class, write that novel (another thing I’ve been putting off for years, actually), run that race. Do it before your mind gets the chance to talk itself out of the task with its million and one reasons for delay… because while it’s easier to put off than to motivate, it’s a lot less fulfilling as well.

Where’d I get all of this? Why, a movies that i watched, of course (and certain personal experiences of late, but I’d rather talk about the movie). It’s a relatively old one and already out on film, one starring Leo diCaprio—I’d heard a lot of people say it sucked, but that the original novel version didn’t.    


   
             
The Beach by Alex Garland: a story about a British backpacker who finds himself on a hidden paradise in Thailand with a community of other travelers (not tourists, note the difference). I haven’t finished the movie yet, but so far it’s inspired me to take that trip to Anywhere that I’ve been, again, telling myself I’d go on this year. The line that got me was this:

"If I’d learn one thing from traveling, it was that the way to get things done was to go ahead and do them. Don’t talk about going to Borneo. Book a ticket,  pack a bag, and it just happens."

That’s a good bit of advice if there ever was one for us lazy bums out there. If it’s too long to tattoo on your arm as a reminder, it's simpler and easier to remember: Do or do not. There is no try.

The Super Heroes In Me

 

Superheroes. A concept that has been tackled in so many ways over so many years that I figured no original work can ever come of it again.


But think about it--the superhero genre has gone almost every direction imaginable since its conception in the early twentieth century. Let's start with the classics: we got an orphaned alien humanoid who works as a journalist, some geeky kid bit by a radioactive spider, a billionaire fighting crime on the side with a glorified tool belt, a blind dude seeking justice for his father's murder, a science-experiment victim who goes nuts and turns green when his pulse rate goes too high, a group of scientists who got too close to some mysterious space dust... I could go on.

Then some people tried to philosophize the genre and voila! We have the Watchmen. A commentary-type tale of two generations of men and women who devoted the prime of their lives to becoming "real-life superheroes." The graphic novel tackles the idea of regular people putting on masks and fighting crime in the streets, minus any super-powers. Just the next-door neighbor trying to fight for the good and right, albeit in a costume. Is it possible? Can it be tolerated? What does such a choice do to a person? 


So we got all these different views of the superhero...then Hollywood took it to another level (as it so often does). Movies, sequels, prequels, trilogies, remakes, revivals, spin-offs. There came TV series, films based on the novels and further novels based on the films. Out came websites and fan sites and forums. Merchandising, The Superhero--has now become cliche. The modern superhero is anything and everything: a vampire, a werewolf, a kid with a wand and a knack for getting in and out of trouble. 

Just Keep Swimming

Fact: things don’t always work out. Maybe a situation doesn’t turn out as planned, or someone lets us down, or we find that a goal to be achieved is beyond us at that point in time.

Now I’m a positive person. I couldn’t have had a childhood more helpful to hopefulness, so I grew up in a point to see in every dark cloud and the bright side to every uninteresting situation.
But as we get older, the dark clouds grow and the light that lines them gets slimmer. Life’s disappointments, big and small, tend to do that.

As I approached what the scientific world calls adulthood, I had to adjust my angle to accommodate certain truths about the world—for example, that things don’t always work out (as I’ve said) and that bad things happen to good people.

That fear sometimes gets the best of us and that we are not protected to failure.
And that we cannot always be sure.

And that we aren’t Superman and therefore we can only achieve within the limits of our humanity.
But I’ve also learned something else in my brief and rather uneventful (in terms of suffering, at least) time on this planet: that limitations can be overcome. That despite the disappointments we face every day, despite the mistakes we make and the people we hurt and who hurt us, we can find greatness and success and comfort… as long as we keep going.

We need to learn to forgive ourselves for our failings and be able to move on in order to succeed.
That, says my new adult mind, is what optimism is: being able to say “so what?” to our imperfections and mistakes and pushing forward.

It’s seeing the good and accepting the bad (because that will always be there), and not giving in to the comfort of self-pity. In my case for today, it’s forgiving me for not being able to do two things at the same time, no matter how much I want to give my 100% effort to both.

Those who fail are those who give up because they let their guilt at being damaged drag them down. What a pointless trouble! We’re all damaged. And things won’t always work out.

But so what? Imperfect creatures of what we are, as long as we’re alive there’s hope for success. To stop is to fail. So we’ve got to keep moving.

Happy Holidays!!

And the holidays are back. Ironic that I'm saying it on a holiday, but it's true. November has rolled right on in, and people--well, my friends and family at least, I don't know about yours--are gearing up for a whole another season of joy and having fun.

If you were trying to lose weight in time for all the food and drink of this time of year, then your deadline is coming up and it's time to double the effort. More importantly, if you've allowed yourself to grow weak in the drinking game and find yourself ready to give up after a couple of shots (like me! I've become an old lady in the past few months), it's time to get back on that horse and train that tummy of yours to take it--how else do you intend to survive the high (and strong) spirits of the season?

It's time to focus, people! Whether it's because you wanna celebrate the crap out of life or because you just want this damn year to end, I'm getting the feeling we're all gonna be blowing 2011 right out of the water when it comes to ending 2012 with a bang. I mean Jay Sean's been singing about it for a month or a year now: We're gonna party like it's the end of the world. Do we prove him right or what? :))

Welcome To The Wonderful Of Inside My Head

PHOTOGRAPHS

We live life in moments. I think that's why photographs mean so much to us, they have the power to silently capture single moments that would otherwise be impossible to set apart. Because while we live life in moments, each moment move into another, the way each word I write connects immediately to the next. Individually, there is some meaning; it all comes alive only when you read in full. A missing word, like a missing moment, will represent the whole incomplete. At the same time, it is impossible for us, the value or worth of these moments is to know what each has in store for us, and to what other event it will connect.

Fate is what finds these moments and brings them together. As the writer, I am Fate to the words on this page--only I know where they tend, and what each word's role is in the final story. Without me they mean nothing, just a series of scratches and unclear group together in paragraph form.

Fate, or God, or Karma, or the Force, or whatever it is one might believe it to be: it pulls us together, makes us whole. It may take a day or a year or ten or twenty before we realize what is really going on, but I think every action we do translates into something greater further down the line. And that's why it's important for every moment to stand out for us. We ought to treat every instant, every event in which we find ourselves complicated, the way we would do a photograph--we should put our best foot forward in it, because it will be recorded, and it will come back to haunt us.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Inside My Head--where nothing is as it seems and all the words are pretty.

We Have It Right

Everyone's a hypocrite--true or false?

I've had the opportunity to think about this statement the past few days. The more I think about it, the more I believe that everyone does things they say they hate in other people. Sometimes it's a harmless trait, but other times it can truly hurt.

Think about it: what is it that you hate about a person? Rudeness, maybe? Messy? Do you hate it when someone is critical of them because they talk about other people's private lives a great deal, perhaps, or noisy or secretive or snobbish? Now take a look at yourself--and make it a good, long look. Can you honestly say you've never fallen into the same category to yourself?

If your answer is yes, then I don't believe you're being honest. I've known myself to raise arms against people who cut in front of me on the road, and yet I've also caught myself doing the exact same thing when I'm running late. I say I don't like a chatty talk, but I listen with a my ear when the chismis comes my way. If you're calling me a hypocrite right now, ask yourself if you've ever thought you don't like judgmental people.

So if we're all hypocrites, what can we do to stop ourselves from hurting others? Because we can all be harmless hypocrites. It's when we go out of our way to call someone out on something we don't like about them that things start to get hurt. Especially if we don't know that person; especially if them knowing what we think does nothing for them; and most especially if our unpleasant opinion applies to ourselves.

I've learned that the best thing to do when I have an opinion is to keep it to myself. I can speak and act against anyone I want--that's my right. But saying it out loud and causing damage--and worse, needless harm--to that person when she/he is doing nothing to hurt me is overstepping my limit. And in the end, no one's happy. Not me, because I'd be a negative bitch. And not that person, because they'd have received hurtful judgment from someone who has zero right to give it. So, Let people do what they do and be who they are. As the song goes, "Shut up and let me go."

And personally (and as an end note), I hope I don't ever become that kind of hypocrite.

That's Family, Family Matters

We love 'em, we hate 'em, we can't live with them or without them. No, I'm not talking about men. I'm talking about family.


I think if I ask anyone above 12 years of age about how many times they've lose self-control because of their mom/dad/brother/sister/other relative. It's as if families were built to drive each other insane, to be one another 's cause of ultimate frustration/disappointment. There are times that we feel we can never understand how Mom can be this way, how Dad can expect that of us, how sister and brothers can care so little or be so selfish.


We wish they would understand us, listen to us, make us feel worthwhile more often. We want them to be proud of us, to love us, to care about what we care about. And how it frustrates us that they just always seem to see things a different way, that we actually have to live with them and try to get along with them. We ask ourselves if we were adopted or switched at birth; could this possibly be my family?


And yet.


For some reason, we cannot seem to let them go. We can't ever turn our backs on them completely. There is always something, whether it's the thinnest of threads, forever connecting us to them.


I don't know why it is. All I know is, no matter how much I hate how they are sometimes, I love my family. I will fight with them, argue with them, yell right back at them when I can't take it anymore, but I would drop what I'm doing--even if I was in the middle of making a million dollars--to be there for them when they need me most. Because that's what family does. Family tells each other the truth, even when it hurts; family listens to the truth, even when it hurts. Family holds each other up, especially when it hurts.


That's family, and family matters. My mom always told me that even the closest of friends come and go, but family is there for life. We can't choose family the way we choose friends; we are stuck with them forever. And so we need to treat each other well, more so than we would other people. It is through family that we learn how to forgive and why to forgive, through them that we learn when to hang on and when to let go.


We love 'em, we hate 'em, we can't live with them or without them. And that's just the way love goes, I guess.