Remember when you pondered how it would feel to grow to be as tall as your mom or dad?
You feared that one night, while you were sleeping, you would be attacked by some rabid growth monster and forced to dawn blue jeans and dress shirts and begin to complain how your coffee wasn’t damn near strong enough
Your fears never truly came to fruition, but somehow you still find yourself not only wearing blue jeans and button up shirts, but you still face the same monster that you only though came for you in your sleep
These are growing pains
As you make changes in your life, from something as small as turning off the faucet when you brush your teeth in hopes of passing some more H2O to your hommies in the ocean, to something as in depth as following a workout regimen that makes you want to kick Jillian Michaels square in the vagina, it is painfully awful to mix up your daily routines
These growing pains do come to an end however, when you are two feet under and bitching about how they served chicken fingers at your funeral. Only then will you be free from the growth as a human being
Satire and sarcasm aside, everyone is staring down the barrel on these pains at any given moment, including yours truly
Recently I have begun production on my second website. After acquiring the domain name and going through all the basic website prep work I was finally faced with my biggest fear
A blank website
For the last few days I have developing, redeveloping, and practically shifting the time space continuum in an effort to develop content and design the new website of my wet dreams
While my efforts have not been in vain, they certainly have made my interest in reading a travel blog written almost entirely in German skyrocket to no man’s land
But I continue to push forward and work on it every day for exurbanite amounts of time, because I damn well know that anything you want in life is worth fighting your ass off for, and maybe even losing your leg in the process
It’s important to realize that everyone goes through growing pains their whole life, and while many people might stick their tail between their legs with a faint resemblance to an erotic act, the true badasses of the world will keep moving forward
Push right through your pains in life, and I promise that you will either do something amazing or at least have a kickass story to write about on your blog
Keep on truckin’
Gabriel
I am so glad to be finally writing this post, it has been on my bucket list of things to write about for a long time
I always got caught up in the heat of the moment with some new idea, and often found myself neglecting the powerful insight that I received when I first thought about the power music has over us
But before I get all hot on bothered, let’s get on with the damn content right?
Remember when you watched the movie fantasia?
If you are to young to remember this epic Disney adventure, allow me to paraphrase
The movie is essentially a visual and audio based thrill ride that covers all the peaks and valleys of a person’s ever shifting moods. While this may sound like the career of Mel Gibson, it is in fact a beautiful ensemble of music and characters coming to life in a seemingly drug induced endeavor
There is one aspect of the film however that shines above the rest
The music
The orchestral notes in this film will break down a badass hell’s angel into tears and cause the biggest hippie vegans ripe with anger
Don’t even bother watching the film on mute, or any film for that matter, as all the dramatics will have the effect of a neutering job on a cast member of the real world
Music is one of the oldest forms of art, from early cave men creating flutes out of hollowed out bones to Kanye West and his painfully overused Auto-Tune
Music has withstood the test of time for many reasons, but one anecdote shines above the rest
Music has the profound ability to affect our moods
Whether you are depressed and want to continue feeling that way or are looking to amplify your high at a club, music is like heroin straight into your veins
Why is it that rich parent rejecting Goth kids love to band their heads to death metal and European’s who have a vigor for drugs and alcohol love to trance out to DJ Tiesto?
It is because music has the most profound and penetrating effect on every human being on the planet
It’s ability to amplify our feelings, or even change them completely makes music one of the first true drugs of society, a drug that anyone and everyone should use to their benefit
The most amazing sidestep behind this notion is that you already know this to be true
Whether you wanted to feel sad and you watched a sad movie or listened to a cranberries album, you set out to amplify you state of sadness by further immersing yourself in misery
Likewise when you were getting ready to go out on the town with your friends you didn’t find yourself jamming out to Marilyn Manson typically, but rather bobbing your head to your favorite rapper or new top40 hit
The beauty of music lies in the ability to use it to your will, you can use it equally as much to feel melancholy as you can feel jubilee, it ultimately comes down to your choice on how to use it
Consider this, the next time you are stressed out and are two steps from taking an ambient to relax, crank up your classical tunes and mellow out to some Moonline sonata by Beethoven
Likewise, if you are having trouble pushing yourself at the gym, consider turning the volume down on your rap and blasting some techno or death metal instead
As the hippies often say, “music has the power the change the world”
Amazingly, they got something right
Rock on
Gabriel
I recently met up with some old family friends who were in town and in between gorging out on delicious Italian fair, we had a few discussions about life, love, the pursuit of happiness, you know, the usual, “I haven’t seen you in too damn long so what the hell has been going on in your life” chat
At some point during our discussions it was pointed out that no one at the table, save the children, had to endure the sufferings of a public education system in the coming weeks when the world’s future heads back to school
I relished in the fact that I am likely done with school forever (in the traditional sense), and raised a glass with my drinking buddy to celebrate no more teachers, no more books, dirty looks!
It was at that moment that my jubilee was called into question, “What about a master’s degree? That could open a lot of opportunities for you, I know it did for X person”
I nodded my head and shifted the conversation to clubbing baby seals or something far more entertaining and less threatening
Now, if you keep up with my ramblings, you know where I stand when it comes to the general education system, but that’s not what this post is about
I became interested in the notion of how perceptions change over time, as there is a lot of truth to the idea that a master’s degree can do a lot for creating opportunities in one’s life. For most people though, in most walks of life, this held true over two decades ago and not today where it is often believed to be common knowledge that a master’s degree is nothing more than a more expensive piece of paper than the one you already hold in your possession
Maybe the MBA’s are printed on cocaine incrusted Woodrow Wilsons?
But I digress, the fact remains that things change over time, and perceptions are not immune to this all powerful force
With a personal preface, I have seen myself go through such polar changes as a computer geeky engineer wannabe to a seedy night club manager with dreams of Vegas club ownership. From a animal petting overzealous china study health Nazi to a ravenous zombie that craves meat flesh.
Everyone goes through this in some capacity in their life, it’s like the ying to the yang I talked about when I said some things never change
The key to this melodramatic concept is just the same; embrace that fact that how you feel about X thing now has a chance of being perceived as the bubonic plague in a few years or even months time
No need to fight it, this is the essence of learning and growing as a person
I mean, if we all wanted to hold onto our perceptions from childhood then we would likely still think that girls had cooties and were never to be allowed in the same fort and that mac & cheese and hot dogs were all that one needed to survive
Now we have grown up, gotten out ass kicked a few times, and learned that not only do girls not have cooties but if you don’t bring them back to your fort at the end of the night then you will likely suffer carpal tunnel. You also quickly learned that the zombie apocalypse was upon us and you were relinquished to mac & cheese and hot dogs without the hop of steak tartar or coffee flavored ice cream, you might just jump on the brain eating bandwagon
So don’t fight it, don’t fight with others about it, learn to love the fact that tomorrow you might develop a taste for sashimi and never want to touch a hamburger again, or maybe your pig headedness about proper child rearing or career opportunities might get thrown into a tornado of uncertainty.
Life will not only be so much less stressful, it will be a hell of a lot more fun
Prepping for the apocalypse
Gabriel
So I recently had the pleasure of rereading The Catcher in the Rye and of course I will pass the same sediments along that most book critics will offer, this book Is a must read for anyone who loves a great fiction novel with strong messages that one may or may not interpret as a general increased in angst towards all human beings
But I digress, this book really does kick ass with its great insight into the human through process and had me laughing out loud at many appropriate and inappropriate moments
I mean seriously, what’s not to love about a book where the main character is constantly saying “goddamn” and “phonies” every other sentence?
One of the passages in the book had me so intrigued that I placed one of my hell bank notes bookmarks on the residing page so I could refer back to it and write a lewd and controversial blog post for all of you fine people to enjoy
Our boy Caufield is walking through central park making some new insightful comments about life when he says,
“I kept thinking about Phoebe going to that museum on Saturdays the way I used to. I thought how shed see the same stuff I used to see, and how she’d be different every time she saw it….Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.”
This statement really struck a chord in me and got me thinking,
Are some things best off staying the same?
To summarize my general thoughts on this, the answer is yes. If you don’t like that cliff notes of this post than I suggest you read on brave knight
Anyone who knows me, stalks me, reading my blog posts, or even has a passing conversation with me that is never to be continued again knows that I am a vessel for change
I enjoy changing nearly every aspect of my life, from where I live to what I do and all the fun little details that are sandwiched in between all that. Simply put, I am the type of person who thrives on constant change in their life
That being said, there are certain aspects to my life that should never constitute a change even if it meant getting more of the things I want in my life
Some of these things are: the love in my family, close friends, my passion for learning, my near sickening positivity about life. These things should go unscathed like old homes in a historic district of a city
How do I know these things should never change? I don’t. I do not have access to a changeoranger 2000 that measures effective levels of in ineptitude in one’s life and makes precise calculations about what aspects of my life should remain stagnant and what others should be pushed out of an airplane
As much as you might drone in front of your computer screen in a moment, I know in my heart that these are things that I never want to see changed in my lifetime
You and I both know that there are some things that you just instinctively know. Call it a gut reaction, call it faith, call it bullshit, but we all have experienced this feeling in our lives at some point
You may have not thought about it, but there are thoughts, feelings, and ideas in your life that shouldn’t shift when the wind blows, things that are more important than life itself
Its not going to be crucial for you to write this stuff down, nor Is it important to spend hours pondering this with a bunch of your friends while drinking mocha lattés at Starbucks, and you already damn well know where I stand on making some stupid self help exercise for you to do in order for this to, “permeate your soul and drastically impact the quality of your life”
All you have to know is that sometimes, on some things, things can be damn fine staying just the way they are
Feeling good doing the same
Gabriel
Ever see those kunfu movies from the 70s and early 80s? You know, the ones where the lip synching makes the actors sound like they have a speech impediment akin to Slingblade?
Those movies were damn awful, except for the ones with Bruce Lee because he is quite awesome
There was one cool aspect to those movies though, there was always some older drunken master who would train the hero of the story and impart some radical life changing advice that would empower the protagonist to feel like that much less of a loser and that much more of a kickass ninja. This of course would lead to the inevitable defeat of his enemies and him scoring the potential hottie in distress
These masters of the kunfu arts, if you will, were always talking about having honor and being worthy of being called a hero. My recent closet thoughts of Green Hornet episodes and a completely un-shameful admittance to watching the Bruce Lee documentary spurred some serious interest for me into the world of worthiness
What does it mean to be worthy anyway?
Does being worthy imply that you too can master the art of tae Kwan do and head to your local YMCA and offer obligatory beat downs to your childhood bully?
Maybe
Does it mean you final have the validation necessary in order for you to move forward in your life?
Check please
More often than not, I find that many people in the world are fighting for their right to feel worthy. They want to feel just like their favorite superhero when they venture forth into the unknown and try to attempt new things in the personal, business, and Bruce Lee fanboy lifestyles
It is commonplace to witness a person come up with a great idea but never truly act on it because they don’t have the validation from the people close to them
Even worse than that is when people crave the validation and obligatory seal of approval from people they barely know, and even strangers
Taking a Zen moment and reflecting on this predicament might cause one to realize that they should call their mother and blame them for dropping them on their head as a child. The problem with this is that nearly all the mother’s in the world would take the lion’s share of the blame for a problem that is not theirs to bear to begin with
Before you send your mother into a guilt trip of epic proportions, think about the fact that most people require this type of reinforcement because they are hardwired to believe that they are not enough
Want to become the next Mr. Universe? Well you need to get your hand held in the manliest way possible by a personal trainer, nutritionist, and pose instructor. Also don’t forget that you will likely need to strike a conversation with your friendly neighborhood crack addict in order to procure some needles for your “natural” supplementation
Want to start a new business for ipad holders covered in Hello Kitty stickers? You need to get an office, hire a sales team, get engineers in order to properly adhere those stickers to the cases and even fly to Japan and meet the president of the Hello Kitty franchise and wipe their butt in hopes of gaining an international franchise license
It becomes painfully obvious that people think you need all of these steps because it relieves the pressure from them
If they need X to do Y and C is no where around to make sure X had proper protection, then you might as well say you can’t do it and call it a day
Not being responsible and feeling worthy to complete the goals you want to achieve not only leads to teen pregnancy, it also prevents you from trying out the next big thing
So what the hell can I do?
I could give you a cheerleader speech and just tell you how everyone should feel worthy because they are, but most people would read it, get on some personal development high for a minute, than do nothing
Instead what you should do if you do have trouble feeling worthy, is simply take some action
Got a big project or idea burning in the back of your brain with the force of a thousand suns?
Or maybe just something you saw on TV and thought it would be cool to give a whirl?
Take some small step towards it
If you want to be the next Mr. Universe, instead of jumping the local druggie for some supplements, go to the gym three times this week
Want to be the next foul mouthed British cooking champ? Instead of flying to Hollywood to try to recruit Gordon Ramsey as your personal trainer, head into the kitchen and try cooking something you have always wanted to make
These little steps, which will grow into bigger steps, will prove to you that you are indeed worthy of the next big thing, and send your presumptions about everything from your need to have your boss think your idea is the greatest idea ever, to your mother’s disapproving scowl (even though she dropped you on the head as a baby) running for cover as you plan for world domination
You are worthy my noble student
Gabriel
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