Taking a Hint?

I noticed something tonight.

I'm the lone moderator of the Accountability Forum in the Better Than Your Boyfriend Forums.

Now, I'm not trying to rub this in. I didn't ask for this responsibility/privilege. Tynan promoted me without my asking, I think in preparation for his departures.

And I'm not sure if he intended for me to view this promotion as I have. It may have been an offhand gesture to him. But, I think he's more aware and really, caring than that.

I, probably more so than most people who view this forum, have been completely unaccountable for my actions of late.

I moved home in mid-September to accomplish a few things.

I wanted to get my life back on track. Get a job to pay off my debts, find a steady source of income, find some, any, direction in my life.

But, to be honest. I've accomplished very little.

Not to say I've accomplished nothing. I've figured out some major things, like that I need to write to be happy, for instance.

But aside from that, I haven't really done much. I'm in more debt than when I left Austin, because I haven't paid off any that I had. If anything, I'm more depressed, I had what was probably the worst day of my life a few weeks ago. And I've really moved my life very little towards a direction I want.

I don't know if Tynan meant this as a "Dude, I've seen what you've been doing. You're more than that," promotion. I can't speak for him. But I think he did.

The touch of responsibility, however little it may be, in the great scheme of things (whatever that's supposed to mean), hit me. And, though I've had a bottle of wine tonight, I thought it better to post this tonight. Thanks to his most recent post about not waiting for the perfect moment and just plunging in, something that also struck me personally, as I've always been someone who waits for the right moment. Like his friend who wanted to move to LA, I've always waited and let life pass me by.

I don't know if this is yet another of my epiphanies that amounts to nothing. They never start that way. But, I'm hoping you guys will help to keep me honest. And I'll do the same.

I'm going to post at least twice every day in the Accountability Forum. Once in the morning for the things I want to get accomplished that day. Then later, as I complete those things.

Hopefully my action will spurn everyone else to act on their own daily goals. It's been over a month since anyone posted in the forum. And I hope to change that, beyond just me posting in it.

We're all capable of amazing things. I've seen that on these forums in the almost two years I've been a part of them. I only hope that I can spurn just a small bit of action in everyone else.

Let's keep each other honest in our goals.

Thank you Tynan. Add this to the long list of things you've done for me.

Lean Into It

First off, I want to apologize for the no post on Thursday. I was with with my family since Wednesday and forgot to write ahead.

Chalk it up to taking a Thanksgiving holiday.

I also want to apologize for the length of the previous post. I went off on a tangent without realizing it.

So, without further ado:

What does the dip mean for me?

Right now, I'm more or less (mostly less) working on several projects.

In order of appearance:

Poker

Website

Writing

Guitar

That's four things that I've started in the last two or three months. Four things that I would really like to succeed at.

Poker and Writing Republic are almost exclusively for money making purposes. With enough effort, they would both definitely be successful ventures.

My current big dip for poker is that I still don't have any money to back it. I'm still in the skill dip, but I'm much improved. I won some money in a tournament a couple weeks ago and quadrupled it fairly quickly before steadily losing it all again over the next few days.

I let my emotions get in the way of my play, having a rough couple days, and made stupid moves. Lesson learned.

The easiest solution to the money dip is through winning more and more free tournaments. But I don't think that's really a viable way to get out of the dip. It'll be very difficult to build up a bankroll in small chunks like that.

Possible, but probably not worth the effort.

The dip for Writing Republic is learning to code. I'll need to learn several languages to accomplish what I would like for the site. Being a perfectionist, there aren't really any shortcuts here, I wouldn't want to shortchange the site for production's sake.

I'd want it to be as close to perfect as I could get it.

The problem with this is that I've lost a lot of interest in creating it. I'm not entirely sure why, possibly because I've taken to writing more so it's fulfilling the desire I had to interact with words and writing and language.

I went straight to the source, so to speak.

Writing and guitar fall more into the personal satisfaction department than the money making department.

At this point anyway.

My biggest dip for writing is being able to write something I'm proud of when I'm not particularly inspired.

I can produce something, but rarely when I'm forcing myself to get something on paper for habit's sake do I read it later and say “Damn, I wrote that.”

But that's a problem that is it's own solution I think. The more I write, the more I'm going to understand how to create something I can appreciate. Whether I'm struck by lightning or not.

The dip for guitar lies in practice. I found a site that, thus far, I'm really happy with. I'm working from the ground up. Learning where the notes are on every string and such, so as to have a more complete understanding of the instrument.

If I'm going to learn it, I want to learn it right now. Not in two years when I realize I need to understand theory better so I can write more complex music.

But I'm still inconsistent with my practice, I don't have a schedule or program set up. I need to set one up. I was thinking about starting a three lesson system. It'll be a rolling system, so on day 1, I'll practice lesson A. On day 2, I'll practice lesson A and B. Day 3, A, B, and C. Day 4, B, C, and D. And so on and so forth.

Depending on the time it takes me to complete and fully comprehend each lesson, I could work more lessons into the mix or work on the same ones for more days in a row.

So where does this leave me?

I really liked my friend Tynan's method for narrowing out your choices based on the dip, so I'm going to use it. It's simple, first, can I be the best in the world? Second, do I want to?

Poker(Yes with tons of effort, No)

Writing Republic (Yes, No)

Writing (Yesish, Yes)

Guitar (Yes, Yes)

I say yesish because talent in writing is largely objective. But, like all things, it's dependent on what I define my world as.
It'd be really cool to be a poker pro. Basically only for the money though.

I was reading an editorial that briefly talked about the World Series of Poker and an email asked the writer, “My roommates and I were trying to guess how many women the guys at the final table had collectively slept with. You got over/under 30?”

Or something to that extent. There are 9 people at the final table, so that puts their guess at 3.333 women each. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but in guy speak they were saying: “These guys are fucking losers.”

I don't want to ever be in a situation where someone judges me negatively for being good at what I do. I pretty much decided when I read it that poker wasn't for me in any seriousness.

I'm still going to continue to play, I play almost daily with a couple friends and I really enjoy it. So I'm going to keep doing that, but less often and less seriously.

I could definitely have the best social writing site. The few I'd seen were pretty bad as far as general design goes. Looked cool, functioned poorly. And the features I would include would be unlike any others out there.

But I just don't have any desire to work on it right now. The coding dip is a big one for me. I really dislike learning coding languages and the idea of learning three or four doesn't appeal to me in the slightest.

If I still needed the site as an outlet for writing, I might still have more motivation, but as it is, it'd just be a way to make money and I know I can work on things that would be more fulfilling that could lead to making money.

Writing is something that's still really important to me. No matter what I choose to do in my life, I'll continue to write.

I'm mostly writing songs and poems right now. A few short stories, something I want to do more of because I really enjoy it.

There's no question that this is something I'm going to keep working on.

I'm keeping with guitar as well. I'm enjoying learning it and I want to make music. Music is one of the few things I care about and am passionate about.

It's also one of the only dreams I've ever had, to be a singer/songwriter/in a band.

And I realized recently that I've still got a dream that I can feasibly accomplish. Why in the name of everything I've ever held dear wouldn't I go for it?

So this is what the dip means for me.

I'm going to continue to write and learn guitar (probably piano too, working on acquiring my grandmother's) with making music being the compass that guides these ventures.

It's going to take a lot of work, I know. I won't immediately stand out. I won't immediately be able to write and produce music that I'd be satisfied with putting my name on.

But it will be work I'll enjoy. Every aspect I can think of is something I'll enjoy. Writing, singing, performing, designing the album cover, going on tour, on and on and on.

Sure I'm looking a little ahead right now, but that's what I'm defining my world as. I'm not going to stop until I'm the best at this. Maybe not the best singer or best guitarist in the world, as in Earth. But the best at what I decide to do. Genre-wise, style-wise, etc etc.

Music is objective. It's going to be fun to get people to see from my perspective and get them to enjoy my style, whatever I decide it will be.

The biggest dip that I can see coming up (outside of the one's I'm in) is deciding what kind of music I want to make.

I like too much music.

I can't wait to hit that dip.

The Dip

Not to copy my friend's post...

But that's exactly what I'm doing.

The Dip is a (short) book by Seth Godin. It's short because, like a good self-improvement book should, it gets right to the point. It doesn't flirt with what it's trying to say. It just comes out and says “Hey, if you do this or this or this, your life will be better.”

Because of it's straightforward approach, it didn't take me long at all to “get it” and understand that I had to take the advice it was offering.

There were a couple things I really got from it, and these things are hugely important:

Be the best in the world.

Seek out difficulties.

Do what you're best at.

Quit as often as possible.

First, be the best in the world. If you aren't going to try to be the best in the world at whatever it is you're doing, you're wasting your time. The minute you say, “I'm happy with where I'm at,” you resign yourself to your current position and are pretty much just waiting for death at that point.

He doesn't define the world as the planet Earth. He defines it as whatever it is you want your world to be, it's adaptive. The best in your world could be your city, county, state, country, genre, product, or anything you want it to be. But the key is to strive to be the best at whatever it is.

The ability to define your own world, allows you to always be able to improve. When you reach your goal of being the best magician in the country, you can then reassess your goals to be the best in the state.

Because you make your goals manageable, you're able to engineer your own dips, which leads me to...

Seeking out difficulties. The idea here, is that difficulties, or The Dip as Seth calls it, is what sets apart the good from the great from the best.

The dip is where most people get stuck. They reach a point where a task is no longer producing the same good results as it was when you started and so they quit, because it's not fun and it's not producing what they want.

The good and great and best push through these difficulties. They are able to see past the dip to their goal and say, “If I give up now, I'll never reach my goal of being the best magician in the state and all the glory and title that goes with it and all these illusions will have gone to waste.” So, they push through.

So you know what these dips do to people. Big deal, anyone could have told you that accomplishing anything you want is going to be difficult.

But, not many people use these dips as an advantage. And that's exactly what it is. Every dip you reach is a filter. It sorts you out from the rest of the people trying to do the exact same thing and every time you make it through one of these filters, you set yourself apart from the rest of the world.

The key to using these dips is to expect them. “I know I'm going to have trouble sawing a woman in half when I get to that point, but I can't let that get me discouraged. When I get there, I'll be prepared to push through and saw that damn woman in half.”

How can you possibly be caught off guard when you're expecting something?

And because you're expecting something, you'll be subtly be preparing for that eventuality. Because you know that you'll have trouble sawing the woman in half, you'll be getting ready for it long before you ever make it there, making it much easier when you are actually ready to take on the task.

By seeking out these challenges, you prepare yourself for them unlike your competitors. You won't get bogged and discouraged when you hit the dip. As the author says, “You'll lean into it,” so that you'll get out of it as fast as possible.

Next is to do what you're best at. Pretty simple.

A lot of people don't though. They spread themselves too thin, trying to do a number of things they're good at. Thereby dooming themselves to mediocrity in every venture.

In The Dip, he uses an example about how a new CEO of GM came out with the new hard line of “If we're not number 1 or 2 in that division, we're shutting it down.”

But why would you cut something that's profitable? Because it's detracting from your most successful ventures. What little profit you're making is detracting from the possibilities in your better goals through time and effort.

Sure, you may be making a profit of three dollars with A and B, but if cutting B allows you to make four dollars with just A, doesn't it seem like that's the way to go?

Finally, quit as often as possible. This seems to contradict the idea of pushing through the dips. Don't give up, push through the difficulties!

It's not a matter of quitting when the going gets tough. It's a matter of recognizing what does and does not work and quitting what doesn't work.

Recognizing the dead ends in your goals for what they are, will prevent you from wasting a lot of time and effort and money. If your goal is to be the greatest theoretical physicist of all time, you have to recognize that goal for what it is.

That's something that can't necessarily be trained, like throwing a football. It's not something you can just realize you want to do, your mind had to being shaped for that sort of comprehension at a very young age.

Not that just anyone can train to be the world's best football player, but having the physical prowess for football could lead you in many directions. Whereas, having the mental prowess for physics, the options are a lot narrower.

So, when you decide your goals you have to take an honest look and question whether or not it's a venture you can really succeed at.

Likewise, when you get to a slow point, you have to ask yourself whether it's just a dip or if it could possibly be a dead end. Not “this is too hard, I don't want to,” but “I can't possibly go any further.” If it's the latter, you have to quit.

So that's what I picked up from the book. On Thursday, I'll talk about what decisions I've made because of what I've learned from The Dip.

Live Through This

First off, sorry for the lack of post on Tuesday. Could think of nothing to write about they few times I had the motivation.

Yesterday, was probably the worst day of my life.

I'm not saying that to be dramatic or because my phone crapped out and then i got into a fender bender and then found out I bombed a test.

I'm pretty sure it was the worst day I've ever lived through. Never before have I had to continuously remind myself there were reasons to live the way I did yesterday.

NOT that I was planning on killing myself, but I had to keep saying, "Well you've got X or Y." But, it seriously went on like that until a couple hours before I went back to bed.

Luckily a friend offered a few kind words and it knocked me out of it.

It was just a scary and miserable day. Trust me, you never want to be in a position where you have to tell yourself that living is better than dying outside of a philosophical discussion. Meaning it seriously.

I'm not suicidal. I just want to say that. Like most everything, I've reasoned out why that's such a stupid idea. But, I think most people think they would rather be dead than alive at some point. Yesterday was just a rather intense example of that for me.

But I lived through it. I'm still here and that's a big something, to not see any reason to live, at times, but keep on.

Yesterday was my rock bottom, I think. And I don't want to be there again. At one point, a friend showed me a video of these cyborg wheel chair things, that I knew was funny. I was laughing. But laughing made me cry.

I can't go back there. I hope that was my rock bottom, because from there I can only go up.

If I can live through the worst day in my life, I can live through anything.

I am still here.

Word Becomes Song

It's amazing how much you don't know about something until you actually try it.

For about the last month, I've been writing songs. Up until that point I'd written one song. Which, I'd mostly forgotten and rewrote anyway.

At this point, I've written ten complete songs, with two more partially done. It's astonishing how far I've come in about 25 days. I listened to the one I wrote first and the difference is laughable.

I never realized I knew virtually nothing about what makes a song compelling to listen to. I still know pretty much nada, but I'm getting better at faking it. I'm writing stuff that's a lot more complicated and dynamic than when I started out. I'm improving and that's always a great feeling.

I'm still trying to find my voice as a singer, how I want to sound. So I'm writing a range of stuff, this week it's been more poppy stuff. It's really fun to actually listen to music with the intention of creating some later. What's good and what's bad about songs. I tried listening to a band the other night that I used to have a huge boner for, but I couldn't make it through a single song because generally every aspect was terrible and not something I wanted to recreate.

I haven't really been able to write much when I'm not particularly inspired, but I'm still writing something everyday. Whether it be poem or song or short story.

My poetry is definitely becoming more dynamic and my latest short story was one of my best ever I think. Exactly the style I wanted, loved it.

I'm reading a fair bit too most every day. Finished Dharma Bums by Kerouac over the weekend and I'll probably finish The Road by Cormac McCarthy tomorrow. Both of which are highly recommended.

All in all, I'm loving words right now. I'm loving reading them, working with them, singing them, being inspired by them, and finding great ways to make them mean something when there may have been nothing before.

Cortizol Shmortizol

Huzzah and sweet action on fire!

Went to the doctor today and got some good news. Well, not good like, "Nothing's wrong! Hooray!" but good news like I know what might be wrong.

Hooray!

So, apparently, my cortisol levels are absurdly low.

It was tested at four different times throughout the day, 8 AM, 12 PM, 4 PM, and 12 AM. The normal range is 13-25nM, 5-10nM, 3-8nM, and 1-4nM of cortisol, respectively. You want to be somewhere in there.

Mine however, were 2nM, 3nM, 4nM, and 2nM...

Respectively.

18% of the lowest range of normal when I wake up.

He seemed fairly certain this was why I have such low energy throughout the day. It's a sign of adrenal deterioration, so my body isn't producing what it needs to in order to jump start every day.

That's what I gathered anyway, I realized I didn't ask as many questions about it as I should have and most information online is about too much cortisol, which can also a factor in depression.

But: "Low cortisol results in cell receptors failing to adequately receive thyroid hormones from the blood, and can explain certain emotional and behavioral symptoms even when a patient is on thyroid meds, such as the need to avoid leaving one’s house, seeking peace and quiet, unable to tolerate stress, low tolerance to loud noises, rage, emotional ups and downs similar to bi-polar, panic, obsessive compulsive tendencies, hyper sensitive to the comments of others, phobias, delusions, suicidal ideation,and more."

I definitely have several of those symptoms.

So he prescribed me a cortizol supplement and said I should start to see improvement within the month and I might even able to start curbing my intake of the supplement when I do.

If I don't see improvements in three months, then I'll report back and take it from there.

So some good news finally on that front. Hopefully it'll provide the boost I need.

Bittersweet

Tuesday was a wonderful day for Americans.

Our first black president was elected. It was a(n)historic day. Hopefully, Obama will inspire millions to be all they can be, live up to his promises, and incite real change in our country when we desperately need it. I'm pulling for him.

But.

Tuesday was also a terrible day for Americans.

In California, Proposition 8 passed.

For those that don't know, prop 8, once again, made it impossible for gay and lesbian couples to be joined in holy matrimony.

For little more than four months, couples were able to fulfill their dreams and be joined as one. And now, it's been shattered.

Not only is it forbidding couples from getting married, it nullifies the EIGHTEEN THOUSAND marriages that have taken place in the short time it was legal.

18,000 couples.

36,000 people.

Think about that.

36,000 people had a life's dream fulfilled. Only to see it taken away.

I never thought I would be upset as I am about this. I have literally had to wipe tears from my eyes a number of times today. I didn't even think too much about it before last night.

"Oh, there's no way that will pass. Especially not in California."

Florida and Arizona, where a similar proposition also ran and failed (they were to make gay marriage legal), yeah I could have seen that coming.

But not in California...

I can't even say why I'm so upset. As a friend pointed out, "You're not gay. Or married. Or gay married."

I have a lot of gay friends, and I know this is an important issue to them. But I can't say I ever gave it a whole lot of thought.

No, I don't know that it's the issue necessarily. I think it's more my intense disappointment in the people of California and America as a whole on the issue.

I believed people were more accepting than this. That people loved their fellow man and their wishes, no matter what.

This is essentially not only shattering the possibility of happiness for thousands and thousands and thousands of people across the nation. But also, my own world view.

Despite how completely fucked up the world is, I've always thought people were inherently good. That they would do what was right, and kind, and would benefit people the most. I know I haven't had much proof to this theory. But it's still one I've held dear.

But that's not the issue, that's for me to reconcile.

The issue, is that this proposition is cruelty. It's beating up on a minority with archaic, personal, ideologues and fear-mongering. There's not one justifiable reason to not allow these people to be happy.

People are upset because they don't want gay marriages taking place in their church. Solution? Go to a different church. The state isn't FORCING the church to do anything. Every church has the right to refuse a marriage, regardless of sex, creed, sexual orientation, whatever. Do people really think because it's legal now, gays are just going to crawl out of the woodwork to be married and piss all over your beliefs? No, they're going to be married somewhere they're accepted, not in your haven of hate and fear.

People are also afraid it's going to pervert children and they're going to all become gay. Get real. People don't just decide, "WELL I GUESS SINCE EVERYONE ELSE IS GAY, I WILL BE TOO." That's the kind of ignorance that has kept social advancement at a crawl. Yes, children are going to be told it's okay to be gay.

Because it is.

If you, as a parent, don't think it's okay, then it is your RESPONSIBILITY to explain to your child why you think so. It's not the government's job to shield your child from life.

It is not mine, nor yours, nor the government's, nor God's, nor Allah's, nor L. Ron Hubbard's, nor anyone else's place to say what makes a person happy or what is holy or what is sanctimonious.

Nor should it be a democratic process that decides this.

Nor should the rights of a person be infringed upon because they are of a different sexual orientation.

Nor should who is and who is not family be decided by anyone other than the people in that family.

All of those things lie within the self. Not the church. Not the state. Not hate groups. Not the PTA. Not anything but the self.

This is not justice.

This is not fair.

And luckily, this will not stand.

But, unluckily, it will take time.

I can only hope that time comes soon.

Please don't get caught up in the historic moment that is taking place, no matter how great it is. Don't forget forget that while we've come so far, we've yet so far to go. Don't stop caring for your fellow man.

It's a bittersweet day for me and I pray I'm not alone.