December 6, 2009: Been too long.

So things have changed a lot, and by that I mean I now have a completely new way to waste all my time. I got a job at a local lawnmower factory about a month ago, and I put in  about 40 hours every week now. Suprised? I know I am.

Things at home have quieted down for the most part. That’s one of the side effects of working second shift; I never see anyone to fight with them. Things with Daphne have been rocky too, and that I hate. It seems like when I’m off I just get really busy, and other than the occasional late night meetup, we just never see each other. (I’m trying, but she can’t always see that)

Other than the work thing, I’ve gone off and bought a new video camera and have started doing some stuff that actually makes me happy. (www.youtube.com/7u88y74n90) I like being able to shoot in HD, and edit easily. (Flip UltraHD foo!)

I’ll be doing my dead level best to keep this blog up to date, but who knows really? Days blend together for me, so don’t lose your head oh constant reader, if I’m absent from class for a few weeks at a time. I’ll be back someday, hopefully the NEXT day.

Life is good, but sometimes it’s calm before a storm. I’ll keep you posted.

June 6th, 2009: The List

Anyone who followed my old blog knows I’m notorious for making lists, and finishing about half of what I put on them. In theory, I could just load up a list with a few important things, a ton of useless crap, and pray that probability takes over and I come out ahead. I like to think I’m viewing my own life at a poetic distance.  It’s like I can see my own downfall, but I don’t take action to change it. If I were a bit more ostentatious I might say I choose not to change my course because of the beauty of the mental breakdown, but I’m not. I don’t do anything about my situation because I’m lazy, and I’d rather stick to what I know many times than deal with something new.

That all being said, I’m tired of living in a neverending pointless routine wherein I do nothing. I’m never going to blog again about how bad it sucks to do nothing…I’m just going to do something instead. Out of this resolution comes a idea; something simple yet effective, something familiar, yet foriegn. I will make a new list, but whatever goes on it gets done, even if it costs me my sanity.

In  other news…there is no other news.

May 26, 2009: Early Morning Late Night Blues

I think I’m becoming a hermit slowly but surely. I don’t want that to happen, but it would make amazing filler for my autobiography, so I might just commit myself to learning to make a mean Ramen and train my bladder to allow myself to stay in my room for days without leaving. Of course I jest, or at least I want you to think I do.

The more and more I think about life as it is currently for me, the more I see how little I really know about what it is I hope to achieve in life. As a Freshman in college, a professor asked my 2D Design Class what we hoped to achieve with our craft. Some people said fame, others said professional level skill, but I said that I wanted to change the world through my art. This comes off as terribly self absorbed, but one must realize that I had the best intentions. In many ways my dream remains the same. I want to be the guy who makes you consider an idea as you walk down a busy metropolitan sidewalk. I want to be the guy who makes you smile during an animated movie you’re way too oldto be seeing, because you identify with a character, or think something was funny.

Most of all, I want to be the guy who if nothing else inspires the generation that follows mine to dream so, so big. I’m content to be in the acknowledgement pages of a few novels in exchange for my own personal fame.

I want to get the phrase, “the best is yet to come”  tattooed on my forehead in Impact font, so whether I want people to or not, they never forget to smile at my optimism. I mean this in jest, but I want to be that kind of person. One metaphor I find myself returning to over and over again is the one of the butterfly. We go to elementary school and high school and all that jazz. That’s being a caterpillar. After High School, we go to college where we enter a cocoon. Now note that little of the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly happens during pre-college life. While in the social sarcophagus of cocooning, we find out who we are and grow our wings. We develop patterns that will define our appearance forever.

Finally, we graduate college, and get a real job. We get established in a community somewhere, and we eventually pop out of our cocoon and become a butterfly. My biggest question as I travel through this critical stage of development is this: What kind of butterfly do I want to be?

May 20th: From the Inside Out

It seems pointless to set a goal that you aren’t yet able to achieve. If I had no feet, and my goal was to get a foot massage, I’d probably need to focus on getting some feet before I tried to get rubbed.

In this same manner, success is a long and winding road. Any long distance runner will tell you that running a race isn’t something you pick up one day and just do. (at least not if you want to win) It seems that for me to start being successful in the workplace, socially, and generally, I’m going to have to settle some problems at home first.

1. My relationship is my father is a powderkeg suspended over a bonfire. We can’t come to terms on anything.
2. My spiritual base isn’t the sturdiest it’s been. I find that I speak too loudly to hear God’s direction nine times out of ten.
3. My relationships with friends aren’t the best, because every time someone tries to help me advance in life, I let them down. This makes my friends give up on me, or at very least makes them create a recently true stereotype about me.
4. My relationship with my girlfriend seems to suffer, because I am so stressed from numbers one through three that I become someone who people don’t really want to be around.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think my current plate is full. Note that this is but one plate on the multi-coursed meal that is life presently. I have a ton of other things that are less personal, and just as important to my well being going on.

So is it true? Do I need to aleviate myself of problems at home before I set out on a quest for happiness and success? Or do these things come with age/experience?

May 15th, 2009: Success FTW

I had a long talk with my buddy Kyle yesterday about life and how down I am about some things and he made a few suggestions that I really appreciated:

1. Get A planner, and stick to what it says!
2. Start with the first achievable goal you can think of and work your way up!
3. Stop sleeping in till noon!

I really appreciate Kyle giving me some perspective. It’s always good to have friends who can give you a  glimpse of the things that are too close to your face for you to see. Today was day one of my implementing of these rules, and I have to say I failed pretty hard. I woke up at 8AM and went back to bed. 4 hours later I got up and showered. After taking out some trash and doing some dishes, I proceeded to goof around until I got hungry.

Basically, I did very little apart from removing the towers of dishes from my room…but that’s a start?

Progress is a series of events, never a singular thing. I’ve taken a long hard look back at my upbringing. I can’t tell you how many times I ran up to my clique in High School saying something like this:

“HOLY CRAP GUYS! I had a great idea last night…”, before explaining some far fetched scheme to make some awesome happen in the world. It’s no stretch of the mind to realize that few of my plans ever came to fruition. This really had me down yesterday…until I started listing some current ideas of the same sort. I had preconceived that these ideas were all too out there to ever see accomplished…but they’re not at all.

Tomorrow is the blank canvas where the masterpiece is conceived.

—————-
Now playing: Wolf Parade – Fine Young Cannibals
via FoxyTunes

May 8, 2009: The Beginning

I’m going to try my hardest to genuinely commit to getting my thoughts down somewhere. I feel like I have too many ideas and aspirations to let them go unrecorded.

At this point in my life I have a lot of options, but for every door that opens, another seems to close. I feel like I want to do something crazy, like dye my hair blue, or get a facial piercing. I don’t really think I want this stuff because I think it’s neat as much as I realize how soon it will be socially unacceptable for me to do this, and I don’t want to have not tried it.

Life in a small town is crippling to the creative spirit. When all you see in life is the monotony of   non-change, it’s easy to find yourself without inspiration. I’ll sit and doodle for hours, and sometimes I end up with some pretty neat things. My biggest problem I can see at the moment is my follow-through. I can start projects and plan things for days, it’s not even challenging, but the moment it comes time to execute my plans, I fold.

I think I’m going to downsize a lot of my life; delete some accounts, and unplug myself a little bit. At the same time, I want to start vlogging occasionally so I can keep myself motivated to create worthwhile content. I’ve started a vlog on my YouTube channel three times so far, failing every time. I feel like if I started doing it for me instead of because I promise other people, I’ll make better content, and be more pleased with myself in the end.

In short: this is the beginning of the first day of the rest of my life.