The Real Life

I'm not into corny motivational stickers, slogans, posters, or people. What I am into is finding out how to live a life that actually matters. In that context, I read Donald Miller's new book "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years". I started it about this time last night, fell asleep, and then woke up and read it straight through to the end today. It's not often that I read a book that quickly, but I couldn't put it down. I'll spare you alot of the details because you should read it, for your own sake. One thing that Miller said that really stuck out to me was this: he said that if the things you do make for a boring life, you have a boring story. His thesis is that there is no excuse for anyone's life to be boring, in fact it shouldn't be anything less than amazing. Miller is a good writer, so that means that he articulated those sentiments in a far more engaging and exciting way than I did in my pseudo-quote of him. It also means that there was a lot of substance surrounding those claims that clarify their meaning. He doesn't mean that having a family and raising kids is boring, or that having a job is boring, but rather just the opposite. All of those situations are opportunities to either engage the present and get the most out of it or to lazily unplug from reality and float along mindlessly. The point is that his book, and that idea specifically, poured gasoline on the growing desire that I have had for the last few months to live a life that is really worth something and that is interesting and exciting (if only to me). I have some ideas about how to apply that to my everyday life, and I will post sometime in the near future about that. I also have some ideas about the bigger picture of my life for the next few years so here they are:

1. Move to Raleigh, learn programming/business/technology stuff, and find work doing that.
2. Move to Charlottesville sometime in the next year or two and be apart of the church plant that my home church is doing there.

I know, those things aren't as astounding to you perhaps as moving to Zimbabwe and getting a nipple ring, but its a start, and I've got time for that stuff. Zimbabwe and my nipples aren't going anywhere. I don't know where my adventures will end, but I do know that they will begin on July 12th when I move to Raleigh to start my apprenticeship (am I the only person in continentl America that is doing an apprenticeship?). Here's to the hope of a life well-lived.

Cheers.

Also Putting Up

This is my response to my uncle's article "Putting Up", which made me sound cooler than I am. Friends, countrymen, other people, I studied Greek in college. I know right. If you're a girl and reading this, on paper I'm the kind of guy who causes some parents to worry if you bring me home for dinner. Why? Because I'm some strange combination of idealism, impracticality, and imagination. I did manage to finish something that I started once, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was. Despite all of that, I managed to conjure up enough stones to study something that I actually enjoyed in college. *Gasp*. If you ask me what I'm planning to do with that major, I might consider stoning you. I have no idea. Actually, no thats not true. I do have an idea. My idea is that I want to do something else that is totally different than Greek and be awesome at it. I cringed when I wrote the word "awesome" just then because being awesome at what I am about to start doing (getting my ass kicked by my uncle and learning technology/programming/business/??????) is probably just out of reach for me. That means that the next few years of my life will require much more work out of me than I can probably reasonably conceive of. I'm not being dramatic. Honest. I'm starting from scratch with hopes of making a name for myself in an industry that shows no favoritsm, and which requires a body of knowledge to be mastered that overwhelms me when I think more than one day ahead.
Here are my reasons for not pursuing Greek:
1. I have hopes of getting married/losing my virginity legitimately
2. I don't like having a long beard
3. I'm not 70
4. I don't want to write a thesis on beastiality in the ancient world

Here are my reasons for pursuing technology/programming/business/????
1. My internship at Symantec, doing very loosely related things, was the first job I've actually enjoyed. (I would say that I stayed late every night to work more because of the raw passion I had, but that would only be half true. The other half of the truth is that my uncle chewed my ass out for coming in late one morning to work after a bachelor party and I didn't want to have that conversation again)
2. I like my uncle. This point is important. Not because I hope that he likes me more for what I'm about to write (he doesn't read my blog) but because it's true. My uncle is really good at what he does. He also doesn't put up with any kind of anything that isn't called "productivity" or "progress" (or "snoop doog" or "u2"). Frankly, I need someone that I respect to push me to be really good at something that I want to be good at. I know, right, we are all supposed to be self made men. I agree with 75% of that. The best coaches and professors that I've had are the ones that have pushed me to be better until I wanted to throw up in their mouth (Thats a real thought that I've had before), and I don't see why my work-coach-master dude should be any different. Two things: I'm not looking for sympathy. I am looking for help. Someone somewhere once said that if you want to be the best, you have to learn from the best, or something like that. If noone else said that, I just said, so start quoting me. Anyway, my uncle is the best I know who is willing to teach me for 3 months.
3. Technology/Programming/Business is starting to fascinate me. No lie. I've been reading a book called The Object Primer. Don't read it unless you want to do what I'm trying to do. This book is already connecting a lot of those early, structural, "what does that even mean" dots that I need to know about before I even show up to start this gig with my uncle, and I love it. It's a whole new world to me, but its an amazing world and I've been getting more and more excited the closer I get to actually starting my apprenticeship.

So it begins. My options at the end of the next three months will be something like this:
1. Despondency, coupled with abandonment by my uncle.
2. Some sort of mystical job/work with my uncle that doesn't actually exist right now
3. Some sort of work with someone else
4. An honest realization that this stuff isn't for me.

Sometimes, at random moments, I get scared about what I'm about to do. I'm putting a lot of money and time into something that might blow up in my face and leave me looking like Regis Philbin(I don't know how to spell his name, but you know who he is. If you don't, you're lucky). What keeps me going and gets me excited is this: As crazy as this idea is, it might just work. In reality, theres only a huge amount of work and some pre-existing aptitude between myself and being good at this stuff, and neither of those things depress me. My focus has to be on my hour-by-hour work rate, learning rate, retention rate, etc. This venture, if it works, will work because of the focus and drive I put into each hour of learning and working, and if it does work, well, I'm sure you can imagine the level of my excitement.

It's a brave new world my friends, and I'm off to find my place in it.

The Great Beyond

I don't know why this blog post is entitled The Great Beyond. I figured it would probably grab peoples attention. Speaking of which, I realized this week (after being told) how needy for attention I can be, and so I've decided to write about that this morning. I love attention, and I always have. When I was younger(first year of highschool) I remember that I had to give my testimony in my public speaking class, and I was nervous, so I made up some cool stories to go along with the true ones because most of the true ones were boring. People certainly laughed more. Another time, when I was older, I asked a girl that worked at the bar by my house out on a date (this was last week). She said I could come up there and hang out with her some more, which, when I looked it up in my pocket Girl Dictionary, means "No, I wouldn't like to go on a date with you". I was disappointed. One of my friends saw that I was disappointed, and she said the usual nice things that friends say to each other during such trying times: "Don't worry about it". But then, later, she got in my face about caring too much about other peoples approval and feeling entitled to having whatever I want, in this case it was a girl. She was right, of course, and I thanked her right then for saying it, and again 4 hours later when we were hanging out again. Its funny how, despite having grown up a lot since that testimony flop my freshman year of highschool, I've kept parts of the same tendencies. Approval matters too much to me. Granted, its only certain kinds now. If people don't like my music, it hurts a little bit but I'm ok. If people don't like my ideas I argue with them until one of us is obviously right, and I'll objectively admit who that is, I don't have a problem saying that I'm wrong anymore, or maybe its just less of a problem, yeah thats probably more true. Anyways, I still feel the need for approval in other ways, and the main way is from girls and older people. I know, I know, the older people thing is weird. To be perfectly honest, I just want older people to think that I'm the next badass, just plodding my way through a normal life en route to Olympian heights. That way, when they are even older, they can tell their grandkids that they knew me. I'm sick, I know. With girls, I think its basically the same, except that I want them also to wish they were with me. My mind is a funny place most of the time. One time, on my way to London to sing some songs, I imagined that I would meet Kiera Knightley on the street there and that as she passed me she would notice something deeply different about me and ask me out to tea, after which we would make out in the park and then get dinner together on her boat, which would begin a long engagement where the press would always follow me and I would escape them in the Audi sportscar she would buy me. In case you're wondering, I didn't see her in London. Just my luck. Most of my problem is that I read books and watch movies about people who really love each other, and you probably just thought "oh, he wants the same thing they have, and its just not the right timing and he's making an idol out of romance". That is all probably true. However, my mind has been hovering over a different part of the issue recently. I am not totally sure that I could really love someone. I want to, I hope to, but I have this obstacle. I'm not sure how to describe it except by saying that there are secluded parts of my mind/heart/soulishness stuff that no one else has been able to get to beside myself and God, and I don't see how I can ever be apart of a romantic relationship without that space being understood and found by someone else. Oh shit, sorry, this just got really awkward for you I'm sure. I feel awkward and its my secret place. Sorry about that. So back to my original point. I love attention for two reasons. I'm full of myself, and I want people to affirm me and laugh at my jokes and think I'm smarter than I am and ask me why I'm quiet or down so that I can dump some more of my emotional bullshit on them, and I love attention because I want to find, and the be loved by, a girl who I know understands me and who I want around and who loves the attention that I give to her. I'm only a little bit less shallow than this post would lead you to believe.

Why Twitter Has Changed Your Life (and will continue to do so)

I'm not here to convince you to join the Twitter nation. If you don't use it, I might think that you're an idiot, but I won't say that to your face(well, actually, I probably will). The fact is, many of the people that I have talked to who don't use Twitter have labeled it as the next trendy way to waste time and isolate yourself from the real people that surround us in our everyday lives. I agree that Twitter is completely capable of being used this way, and I admit sometimes it distracts the hell out of me (I still love it). Twitter's critics are, often, missing the point however. What Twitter, and the progress in information technology that it represents, has provided to you and me is the balance that both buyers and sellers in capitalist markets have been craving since they started thinking rationally about the kind of market in which they live. What is this balance that we have needed so desperately? Information. In a Laissez Faire economy, information is at a premium. I know, I know, you economics nerds were just inundated with ten thousand reasons (based on experience, I actually think that thats the number of disagreements that just surfaced in your minds) for why the American economy is not purely Laissez Faire, and I already know that. However, it is true that we live in one of the most open economies in the current, and probably historical, world, so lets operate in true generalizations for a moment. They fact is, government regulations and involvement aside, information is the single most valuable thing in our economy. If you don't think that, I'm sorry, you'll learn that soon enough from experience.
       So how does Twitter fit into this need for information? While Twitter does make it easy to get caught up on all the gossip surrounding Paris Hilton's latest boy toy or Drake's next cd (avoid him like the plague, for your own sake), Twitter also shines a light in all of the dark, scary corners that free markets have (be honest, all you libertarians, you know there are plenty). Twitter, and the programs and systems that will follow it, allows those who might care to access the kind of information that can make them a fully informed consumer or merchant. The easiest way to explain this is this: Scams, no matter what shape or size, depend not only on the scammers being able to keep secrets from the people they are duping, but also on the slow spread of cautionary tales about their practices. Scam artists want the spread of information(i.e. the stories of those who they scammed) to spread very slowly, thus maximizing the number of people that they can scam before the game is up and they have to catch a plane to Turkey or Bratislava. Twitter, however, fixes this problem. If you are qeued into the right channels and following the right people, the spread of this kind of informaiton is almost instantaneous (The Twitter effect has already hit Hollywood in the groin. Crappy movies now make less money than they used to, even on opening weekend, because the news of the movie's suckiness can spread much faster). What I'm not saying is "Twitter will help us catch all of the bad guys right now!". What I am saying is "Twitter, and other things like it, will begin to make scams less and less profitable, and thus less and less attractive". I don't know if Twitter will bring about the death of the scam artist completely, but I do know that it will make the "scam industry" far less profitable and attractive as information technology continues to develop. I don't care if you don't use Twitter. I do care if you aren't grateful for how it will, and has, improve your life.