Works in progress

Sometimes it seems most of my posts have been me looking at my previous post, regretting what I said, and then saying something else I will regret later.  I don't like to dwell on regret though, instead I'd like to think of my posts as building on one another, crushing the bits I don't like between the posts.  I finished my last post saying that life is about being vibrant and feeling alive for as long as you live.  That's really far too self-centered to be the point of life.  The point of life is to love others as God love us.  But we should spend every day trying to experience our lives to the fullest, because that is God's gift to us.

I wrote more to this post, but like a good writer, I crumpled it up and threw it away because I didn't like how it sounded.  Now I have time for no more, but I will write more another day.

Feeling the music

I'm writing this post on my phone so please excuse grammar mistakes and random words that were suggested but don't make any sensual. I thought I'd talk about dancing today. I was having a discussion the other day about my blog and how I stress that I need more structure in my life. She countered my theory with one of her own about how exercising at the same time every day can cause your muscles to become used to the exercise and not work as hard. You may be asking yourself what this has to do with dancing.  Well at the risk of sounding cliché. ..

Life is like a dance.

A good dance has a structure and form to it, but no two people will do the same dance the same way. Furthermore, you never dance exactly the same twice. Most importantly there's no wrong way to dance, though admittedly some are better to watch than others. The point is that life is a balance between freedom and form. There's no correct balance that everyone must meet either. The right balance is different for everyone.

I have been inspired to learn to shag. I want to learn how to dance and I want to do it as long as I live. I saw some elderly dancers the other night that were amazing and I've decided that I want that. I want to feel vibrant and talented for as long as I can. I think that's what life is about

Fun Stuff

I have been painfully honest in this blog, but I've also just been writing what I feel.  Sometimes the things I feel one day betray the things I believe all the time.  The point of this disclaimer is that, if I say something stupid here, please don't hold it against me.  That being said, I don't see why I shouldn't be painfully honest and expressive.  We put on faces all day to protect the people we care about and our own emotional interests.  I think everyone should find an outlet to be completely honest where they can share how angry, lustful, bitter, cynical, hurt, depressed or worthless they feel.  Those were examples by they way; I don't feel all of those and certainly not all the time.

Yesterday, I was discussing the things I'm putting behind me to improve my life.  If you take things away from your life without putting anything back in, you wind up with those same things filling you back up.  That's what I think anyway.  So I'd like to talk about the things I'm going to fill my time with.

• Writing (blogs, etc.)
• Reading (including scripture)
• Listening to music
• Learning to play the ocarina
• Working out (especially rowing, trying to get ready for kayaking)
• Rediscovering my love for "Go" the board game

The above items are things I can pick up easily and mess around with.  They are just for entertainment.  I also have some projects I want to work on to further my career.  First is video-game development.  I have lofty ideals about video-game development and could talk about it for hours, but I have very few games I could put in a portfolio.  I want to change that.  I want to make games to call my own even if they are small and unimpressive.  Secondly, I want to become more familiar with Linux-based server technologies.  I'm not sure anyone really sees the writing on the wall.  I think Linux is the future of operating systems.  Everyone knows Windows and everyone knows Apple and they think that they'll be the top dogs forever, but Free and Open Source Software is going to be the mantra to live by in the future.  I said it first folks.

I've been thinking more about my personal appearance lately.  I've always been laid back and worn clothes that were comfortable and affordable.  I think that if I wind up making more money in the future, I'd like to buy a suit for entertainment.  Something classy but fun.  That's enough for today though.  My most pressing project is to get my apartment tidy.

Another Resolution

My continued lackluster performance in my journey of self-improvement has prompted me to analyze the obstacles that keep me from reaching my full potential.  I think the most prevalent obstacle is my lack of self-control.  I have decided that I am addicted to entertainment.  There's no single culprit that I can blame because I'm certain if I eliminated any one element I would make up for it with one of the others.  I would just vow to refrain from overindulging in these activities, but I've tried that.  As pathetic as it is, I can't help myself.  Because of this, I'm treating my overindulgence as an addiction.  I think it will best help me resolve the problem.  So first and foremost, I'm admitting that I have this problem and that I cannot control it on my own.

My second step is to eliminate my indulgences so that I cannot continue to abuse them as I do.  I'm not saying that I won't allow myself to ever enjoy these things again, but not until I'm satisfied with the life I'm living.  I have to remove these things from my life so that I can get to a better place.  Here's my list in order of importance:

• Netflix (and other television)
• Video-games (especially online games like League of Legends or Halo)
• Internet entertainment (YouTube, DeviantArt, Webcomics, net-surfing)
• Beer, wine, and rum

Not so long when I write it out, but these things have been consuming my time.  Flushing my life down the toilet.  I plan on reducing my Netflix account to the lowest DVD plan they have.  No Instant.  This won't save me much money-wise, but it will help me to control my urges.  I plan on reducing my internet to the most affordable plan.  This actually will save me a pretty penny and it will make playing online games painfully frustrating, virtually preventing me from playing them.  YouTube will also be difficult to become hooked on with lower speed internet, but I will simply have to exercise some fierce will-power to prevent myself from these temptations.  Lastly, I'm swearing off alcohol for a time.  Yeah, I'm going to be that guy.  I don't have a problem with alcohol, but I'm afraid that without the other pleasures I'm denying myself, I could easily seeing myself picking up a habit.

Instead of doing the above things, I'm going to fill my time with healthy habits and entertainment that I'm not prone to overindulge in.  I'll describe some of my new healthy hobbies in a post tomorrow. 

Thinking Straight

Wednesday's post was clearly written by a man delirious with exhaustion.  Yesterday, I came home after work, ate a small dinner, and then laid on the bed just to relax a bit.  Later that night at 1:00 AM, I awoke realizing my nap had turned into a full 6 hour rest.  Still feeling tired, I decided to get ready for bed and finish off the night with another 3 hours which turned into 6 more.  That being said, I am now fully rested.  Cleaning a closet isn't my ideal Friday night activity, but I think I'll work a little on it tonight and then save the rest for tomorrow morning.

I'm always searching to find out which computer knowledge is most important to companies these days.  I can spend months becoming a master of C++ only to find that nobody needs C++ developers unless you move to California.  I was looking on Craigslist the other day and I noticed the desire for someone very familiar with Drupal.  I like Drupal.  I do not know how to use Drupal.  I think I should learn Drupal.  Also, I was visiting the blog of a very talented artist I follow, Francesca Buchko, and I noticed her page was done in the heavily advertised SquareSpace.  I'm thinking that it might not be a bad idea to become familiar with what could be a rapidly growing SquareSpace development environment.  I'm not sure which to start on, but I'm leaning towards SquareSpace since it's newer.  Maybe I'll get to know both before I dive too deeply into either one.

I just hit on a girl in a bar a while ago.  I was shut down immediately, but that wasn't the point.  I'm not really the hit-on-a-girl-in-a-bar type.  I was sitting there just enjoying a beer and I noticed her walk in all by herself and head straight to the bar.  She was pretty and I was alone, so I thought, "Ask to buy her a drink, what can you lose?"  I hate feeling cowardly and so I continued to waste my time asking.  Other guys will tell me all the time that I ought to be out every night trying to hit on college girls in the Vista.  Chasing tail.  Getting laid.  Well, this experience said something to me.  You see, after I decided to "go for it" every moment felt wrong.  It wasn't like me to hit on random girls.  I was relieved when she said 'no' because it was the answer I was expecting.  I think we often feel pressured to fit into certain social stereotypes because we feel abnormal otherwise.  I'm not abnormal for not wolfing it up all the time.  I've always felt that I should focus on making myself better: stronger, more attractive, more wealthy, and more spiritual.  Then I'll find the girl that really works for me.

I think one day I'm going to write a book.  "The Bachelor's Survival Guide"  I should probably check to make sure that name's not already taken (which it probably is), but the point of the book would be to give advice on living alone, making your own success, and of course, helping find nice girls.  Basically, learning from all my mistakes.  I better wait til I get it right before I start writing though.

Yard Sale

Accountability.  Right.  Okay.  I got this.  I have a closet/entire apartment that is filled with junk.  Well, not literally filled.  Okay, the closet is literally filled with junk, but that's not the point.  The point is that I've been promising myself I would clean it out.  I don't need junk, it makes me look messy and I don't use it.  Some of it might be sell-able like old textbooks, but I guarantee that over half of it could be stuffed in the garbage or dumped at Goodwill.  So I'm writing it down in black and white.  April 10th, 2014.  Tomorrow.  I will clean my closet.  I will post the results.

I wonder if anyone else ever fantasizes about being a hobo.  I know in reality it's probably terrible being destitute, but somehow I have this vision of it that just sounds amazing.  Traveling from town to town, walking, hitch-hiking.  Taking odd jobs to make a living.  Running scams to earn some fun money.  It's such a freeing idea.  Camping out in a cardboard box in some woods next to the highway doesn't sound so bad.  Eat a can of tuna and dream about what's at the next mile-marker.  I think there's a better way to feel those feelings, but the fantasy comes back every now and again.  I think if I ever make it big, one of the first things I'm going to do is go backpacking across America.  Just leave all the stress and expectations behind and walk away.  I'll go into the cities and talk to people not fortunate enough to have my freedom.  Ask them what their city is like and discover my country on a personal level.

I've got one last thing I want to rant about tonight.  Today at work my boss was lecturing me on how I tie my cables.  That's no problem.  I can take criticism and to be honest he did it in a very instructional way, but I guess I didn't look very enthused.  He says, "I guess you're telling yourself you don't need to learn this because this isn't what you really want to be doing, you really want to code.  Well, you got any job offers for being a programmer?  I didn't think so.  So in the meantime you might want to learn this stuff."  I felt insulted.  I still feel insulted, trying to tell me that I'm not good enough to be a programmer.  I used to let this sort of stuff get me down.  I'm not going to let that happen anymore.  I'm going to use his spurn of my dreams to move me towards my goal.  I do want to write programs.  I do want to have a career doing what really interests me

and I will.

Over-Share

A friend from high-school posted her approval of my blog today and it got me thinking very meta.  I want to know why I'm writing this blog.  It's not just a journal, otherwise I could have just written it on my computer via Word or something.  Still, I'm not really writing for an audience, just myself.  So then why am I posting it online publicly?  My rationalization was that I wanted to be able to share a post if I thought it was particularly inspired or could be helpful for someone I know.  "Fair enough."  However, I think there may be another reason I didn't realize at first, something that was initially subconscious.  I think I want to be critiqued or at least to feel critiqued, exposed.

Events in my life have been causing me to re-evaluate the way I live it.  I've been having a few financial troubles, some health issues, I'm involved in some complicated relationships and I might be drinking just a little too much.  I'm lucky, really.  It could be a lot worse and people constantly remind me of that.  Still, I think I need to feel a little bad about it.  I need a wake-up call.  I need to feel responsible for my actions, accountable.  Not that this blog is meant as a digital confessional or anything.  It just helps me to reflect the things I do and the things I think back to me.

Sometimes I find myself laying in bed in my apartment or standing on the street corner and I'm not sure what to do next.  I can think of all the things I don't want to do.  "That's too much work and I'm tired." or "I don't need to waste my time playing games."  I just don't know what I want to do; I don't know what I want.

Maybe my struggle is a religious one.  I've believed in God, sin, Jesus and his salvation since I was a teen.  Sometimes I have trouble feeling it though.  I can stand in a crowd of people, sing praise hymns, know the lyrics are true, want to feel God, and then wind up feeling empty.  I'm a Christian, a believer, and sometimes I do feel it, but I struggle.  I struggle with my faith.  Sometimes I really miss my college church.  We'd have groups that would get together at somebody's house.  We'd sit around with coffee, read a few passages and then start asking hard questions, real questions.  We'd ask the kind of questions that would get people mad and we'd give our opinions, argue, and wind up praying that God would give us all the answers we needed.  You don't get that kind of discussion at big churches or little home-town churches or any kind of family church really.

I think I'll pick up on this another night when it's not so late.  Need to stave off fatigue a little longer.

Video Game Ideas

I wanted to list some video game ideas that I would like to work on in the near future.

Square Dance
In a country made entirely of basic geometric shapes, a small town of square people live a simple life in harmony with nature.  As a parody (tribute?) to the farming/drama/dating simulation known as Harvest Moon, this game will feature a rich story full of broken pasts, troubled friendships, and happy endings.  I would like the game-play to feature many elements of the new "idle" genre like such games as "Cookie Clicker" and "Farmville" where the only real challenging is how long you can wait.

Taz Run
A cartoonish game featuring a photo-realistic Tasmanian Devil named Taz and the evil Dr. Wallaby.  The game-play will be of the "running game" genre alongside games like "Temple Run"  "Robot Unicorn Attack" and "Canabalt"  The focus of this game will be the comic-book like cut-scenes between levels where Taz and Dr. Wallaby engage in comedic banter in a style similar to "I Am Weasel" from Cartoon Network.  Taz plays a confident, over-dressed, and uncannily skilled Tasmanian Devil who can do no wrong while Dr. Wallaby is a bumbling, ill-tempered, and moronic villain who's somewhat well-planned schemes always wind up failing often to Taz's benefit.  Inspired by my sister, Bekah.

Runic Revolver
An action packed adventure in a Western/Fantasy setting with game-play reminiscent of the early Zelda games.  Players can explore a vast world of cowboys and witches, saloons and castles, coyotes and kobolds.  This game will be a large project.  The goal is to create a procedurally generated world so that the end result has more content than my puny human mind can create.  The story will be very simple and use fundamental motifs.  This will create more of a literary atmosphere, letting the player fill in the details with their own imagination.

Helping us, help you, help us all.

Looking back over my last post, I noticed that it seemed very self-centered.  It was all about self-improvement.  Sometimes I feel guilty thinking like that, but when I think about helping other people I feel weak and useless.  The point of getting stronger, living a better life, is not for your own satisfaction.  Well, not entirely.  It's so you can support others.  I want to try and live better and be more productive and eventually make more money not for my own needs.  I want to cease being a burden on other people and instead support them.

I have a friend who likes to ask me hard questions.  How do you feel about giving?  What do you do when your friends think they know what's best for you (and don't)?  What's keeping you from working on the thing you really enjoy working on?  I love those questions.  I hate the way I stammer and pause and often times give up on an answer, but those questions stay with me and force me to answer them however long they take.

I surprised myself at how hard it was for me to answer the question about giving.  Of course I want to give to people in need, but what about my family, my friends who also have needs, and my own well-being.  Am I willing to sacrifice those to a stranger for the sake of "giving"?  Should I give to someone who "appears" to be in need only to have my hard-earned money swindled from me?  How do I know that they will wisely invest my gift in their life and not simply waste it on petty desires or addictions?  I still don't have all the answers and the question still nags at me.

"Money isn't everything."  My mother said that to me recently when I was worried about my own financial situation.  My mother's advice is correct 100% of the time.  It's eerie, it's frustrating, and I rarely believe it despite the insurmountable evidence.  Getting money, having money, doing the right thing with money are all important, but they aren't nearly as important as how you act toward other people and how you feel about yourself.

Grand Re-Bloggening

Wow.  It's been a year since I tried to start this blog.  Lately I've been feeling bad about the way my life has been stagnating.  I started this blog over a year ago with the same feelings so...  I guess I haven't made any progress.  But I'm ready to try again.  Family, friends, and even people I don't really like have all been telling me pretty much the same thing lately.  I shouldn't let my failures get me down.  I just need to get up and try harder this time.  Persevere.  I'm dusting off this blog for my own personal accountability and motivation.

So, what's my game-plan for becoming a better me?

1. Faith
2. Health
3. Wealth
4. Fulfillment

First I need to improve my spiritual life.  My relationship with God and my time to reflect on myself and my own actions.  This blog is part of that process.  Strengthening my spirit with God's promises will help me to restore faith in myself as well.  That's what I believe.

Then I need to focus on my health.  My sleep habits, my eating habits, my exercise habits, my cleaning habits... I'm a mess really.  I can't expect to make any progress in my career or other parts of my life if I can't even take care of myself.  This statement bums me out sometimes and other times it inspires me.  It gives me a realistic goal to reach.  I can't save the world in a week, but I can clean my apartment, go to the gym, check my budget, etc.

Next is wealth.  I don't need to be fabulously wealthy, but let's be real.  Money is important.  There are plenty of more important things, but being able to have a stable income and pay all the bills is good for happiness.  However, I have decided that I don't want to rely on someone else to pay me.  I do, currently, but I don't like it.  I want to make my own cash and my own destiny.  Again, I need to start small though.  I keep going back to the ideal of crafts lately.  I'm not an artist.  Not a good one anyway.  Although I do enjoy expressing myself in art, its very stress-relieving.  What I am good at is writing computer code.  I've toyed around with, talked big about, and generally did nothing with video-game design.  I think I struggle with it's contribution to society.  I'm now resolved that I don't want to make video-games because I want to make a career out of it.  I want to make them because I enjoy the process and I think I can make money on it.

Fulfillment is my way of saying "what I want to grow up to be."  I have many things I'd like to do with my life right now.  Most of them are pretty weird, but hey I'm a little out there sometimes.  I've been writing this for a while now so I think I'll go into the details later.

I'm restarting my journey to self-improvement and it feels good to be writing again.  I missed you blog.