Finding the unlikely factors to deal with Writer’s Block

It’s a common theme that novelists, students, and pretty much anyone else that has to deal with the written word has to deal with.

Writer’s block.

Run from it, dread it, it arrives all the same. There is something extra annoying about staring at a blank white screen with one cursor blinking- mockingly of course.

The run of the mill responses for dealing with such a problem are good places to start: do a writing prompt, just write about the first thing that comes to mind, and browse the news/social media for some inspiration (although be very careful with that). Yet some either do those steps to no avail or don’t feel like those steps would work to begin with.

It can reach a point where not writing anything during a writing session becomes the norm. Days turn into weeks into months and soon you’ve given up for the long haul. You’re mad at yourself for not pushing past it, you’re mad at the world for creating such a concept as writer’s block, and you’re mad at being mad.

However, when you do reach this step there will come the odd day where writing is like the inverted brother of writer’s block. There will be some days where the stars align and you’re able to pound out that story or article like it was nothing. Like your mind’s gutter was briefly unclogged and all your creative juices pour out.

Take note of everything happening when this occurs.

It doesn’t matter how big or small the various factors could be. Just take a step back and note whatever comes to mind as being slightly different than usual. Attempt writing with different surroundings to see if something sparks in you.

For me, I do a lot better writing while it’s dark or gray outside. If the sun is out I get antsy to be outside or doing chores outside. I noticed that when it rained out all of a sudden I was like a mini Stephen King, pounding out doubled my word goals. In parallel, after the gym my body is exhausted, but I’m twice as focused on the computer thanks to the fact that I don’t really need to move much.

That is to say there will be factors that you think work, but don’t at all. I thought for a while that I needed to eat before writing to get stuff done. This lead to a weird rush for me to eat breakfast quick so I could write before work and boy did it make my meals horrible. Turned out that it wasn’t about eating that was making me write more, but rather the not being hungry that was helping. Something much more manageable.

My friend has a cat and when he writes the best he claims that the cat is sleeping right between his monitor and keyboard. Is that a sustainable way to get you to write more? Heck no. Getting a cat to do anything is a losing battle. That isn’t to say that having your cat not meowing at your feet every 2 seconds isn’t helpful.

Is this groundbreaking stuff?

Not in the slightest.

Will every factor be helpful/controllable?

Nope.

But each little piece you can add to your arsenal is a step in the right direction. Or dare I say the “write” direction. I’ll take my comedian check now.

The Thing Everyone Misses Most From College

One of the most jarring things about post-grad life is the jarring shift in lifestyle. Now not everyone may have had this, but most people had such a massive increase in independence moving from high school to college. It’s jarring, Now you can go to sleep whenever you want or not at all. You can skip a day or three of classes and no one will stop you (although you are paying thousands of dollars to just skip class). A bag of Sour Patch Kids can be your means of sustenance for an entire weekend and cleaning your bathroom becomes optional.

Lots of kids thrive under all this increase in free-time; the kids who are seemingly doing it all from joining new clubs, getting good grades, and still managing to party every night somehow. Others are obliterated by it. Skipping classes leads to knowing even less about the class, worse grades, and the next thing you know a test is coming up, but it was only announced in the class they skipped. Getting high takes such a priority over everything from cleaning, cooking, and exercise that it’s all you’re really known for. Everyone reacts to this new independence differently, but its an independence that’ll only increase after graduation.

For those who could afford the luxury, the large amounts of free time were the best aspect of college. It goes hand in hand with the increased independence, but this free time disappears after college with full employment. Joining clubs, partying, getting high–they all required that you not only had the independence to do them, but the free time as well. And most college kids have that in spades. You can point to some kids who had to work while at college and it’s a shame that they had to deal with the extra stresses of college without as many of the benefits. Free time was a luxury that not even all college students got. Yet for those who did, it’s a feeling unlike any other. You only had to put in as much work into classes as you felt like and just get up and leave class itself if you felt like it. And then there were all the vacations on top of that.

In college and earlier school, all the vacations were ridiculous. You’d get multiple months off in the summer for finishing a grade level. No other reason. Spring vacation, winter vacation, holiday break; my parents would always be surprised (and annoyed) at all the time I had off. You didn’t have any work to do and its not like you had to use up your personal vacation days to use them. Lots of high-schoolers would start working or bolstering their college resumes with tests and classes over the summers, but it’s a shame that they don’t realize what they’ll soon lose.

In college, its the perfect storm of early adulthood with free time that really lets you start experiencing things that you wanted, or at least stuff you think you wanted. Freshman year is a blitz of hanging out with different people until you find the group you want to hang out with, clubs to try out each week, Greek societies, parties, figuring out your major. You can make some life-altering decisions for the better or worse. It’s wild to think that I made all these choices as an 18 year old. I may have been a legal adult, but I sure wasn’t one mentally.

Free time can be dangerous. You can be as productive as you want to be. Spend all your time partying and you’ll feel the consequences soon enough. Plenty of people will warn you about that, but the inverse is also true. One can spend all your time studying, working, and stretching yourself to the limit. After a point its unsustainable and there’s no one required to stop you from doing it. It’s something I fell victim to and regret immensely. I had so much free time and I used it all to study. Obviously studying is important, but college does offer other services. There were so many people I met towards the end of my college career that I felt would’ve been great people to hang out with, but I only met them once my final classes were more or less done. Clubs I would’ve loved to try were ones I only heard about in my final semester.

Party all the time and your grades will suffer. Study all the time and you will suffer. Both are easy pitfalls to fall into and its up to you and your new independence to find what works best for you.

Free time is a resource and it’s your goal to spread the wealth while you have it.

Finals Season is a crazy time

Finals.

The worst concept ever created. Death is a more welcoming idea. Whoever thought that it would be a good idea to test students on every single class they’ve had in a matter of a week and have each of those tests be worth anywhere from 20% to 50% of your overall grade should get prize.

Like the complete opposite of a Nobel Peace Prize. A Hitler War Prize maybe.

Finals week is where the men are separated from the boys and it turns out everyone are boys. It really makes you put into perspective what important in your life. If you’ve been through it you’d understand and everyone should go through at least one finals week in their life because you can really find what your purpose is.

Just imagine this. You’re 2 finals in. They’ve weathered your confidence. Studying for Saturday’s two tests is looming over your head. Your eyes ache, your head hurts, and you have not moved from your spot in the library for hours.

What would you rather be doing instead? You start bargaining in your head. “If I study later tonight I can game for about an hour” or maybe “If I just study all night tomorrow, I’ll be able to write that novel I’ve been picking at for the past couple of weeks”

Whatever you’d rather be doing is the real you. You find out what you miss most and it can get pretty mundane. At one point, laundry became an escape from finals for me. I hate doing laundry.

Everyone is a little stressed about finals, but some either have such good grades that one C won’t hurt them while others need a 102 to pass the one last class they need to graduate. Semesters are defined in about a week. I remember freshman year I had A’s and A-‘s across the board. I was content. I was cocky. Why study for finals when I could watch some old cartoons I watched as a kid? I knew what happened in the episodes, but they’re still cool to watch. My good grades so far must mean that I already know everything that I need to know for the finals. I never stood a chance. My naivety was my downfall. That and my fascination with superhero cartoons.

I won’t give out any exact numbers, but it got ugly quick. Like 2017 politics ugly.

I vowed to never let that happen again. The pointless slaughter of my freshman GPA would not be in vain.

I started prepping. My notes marked dates and what the finals would cover. I’d figure out all my finals dates and when I should start studying for each weeks before finals reared its horrible mug. I can’t say that finals for me are easy in anyway, but I sure feel better during the week.

I got time to workout and write (with the occasional cartoon thrown in there). I mean sure I could study more to get that 89 on the final to a 90, but as long as my grades didn’t completely falter I’m content.

Other people I know don’t even bother preparing and it works fine for them. The stress finals puts them into some next level state where their sole purpose in life becomes to absorb information and then spout it out at given times during the test. It’s quite a sight. I’d ask them why they did that to themselves. Why hurt yourself for an entire week? It was the only way they knew and it got the job done. I feel like far too many people hold this philosophy and I respect that.

Some people don’t crack under pressure.

Finals affects everyone differently. At some base level everyone is stressed. I feel like I can relate better with other students because I know they’re feeling something similar to me. However, I don’t handle stress well. You can tell from a distance when I’m stressed; I dress worse, my hair is messy because I play with my hair when I’m unnerved, and above all else I’ll get a forehead full of bright red pimples. Don’t let the appearance full you, I’m used to the stress. I am always some level of stress about something and it is a habit I’m trying to fight off. I’m more focused when I’m stressed, hence why my high school baseball coach referred to me solely as “Mr. Clutch”. I stepped up when it mattered, but man do I feel horrible the whole time doing it.

I try to keep to my routine during finals. Try to eat as healthy as always (with obvious failure), workout everyday, and sleep in a regular cycle.

Some people show no signs of change. A girl I know still dresses like its just another day, her makeup is on like nothing is new, and her demeanor is just as happy as if she was at Disney World. It’s sickening. However, when we sat down to study, she broke down mentally. “I am so screwed, I don’t know anything. I should just drop out”. Fucking hell. Finals got to her too.

Finals induces stress which is dealt with in a variety of ways or not at all. It pushes you mentally and that can leave your body in a way worse off space.

One of my friends from back home always posts stories about him working until 4 AM and then starting his day again at 7 AM. It’s both a shame and a marvel to watch. The kid always tries his best, but putting shit up can add up quick. If I had to choose one piece of advice I could tell myself about finals when I was younger it would either be get as much sleep as you usual do (granted that isn’t much), plan waaaaaaaay ahead for finals, or maintain a routine so your body doesn’t go into shock from the sudden 3 all-nighters in a row.

My high school teacher would tell us while studying for the AP exams, “The hay will already be in the barn the day of the test”. You either know it or you don’t. At some point forcing anything else is only counterproductive.

Or at least I think that’s what that meant. Whatever, I should be studying right now anyways.

Dealing with Stress in College

Everyone gets stressed. Or at least every human gets stressed. It’s a good feeling to have, but not exactly a good one to feel. It reminds you what you have to do and the significance of doing it right. Stress is good until it screws up what you’re trying to do.

However, that was more for our ancestors, keeping us alert when we thought predators were nearby. It’s a bit harder to focus on a test when you can barely breath properly. You can sneak by without dealing directly with stress pretty easily in high school. The workloads can be brutal, but at the end of the day classes aren’t designed to potentially give you a 40 (except for my honors chemistry class, I hated that class)

College is the perfect storm of stress though. The difficulty jumps up to a whole new level and its entirely up to you on how to approach the problem. Do you not go to your 8 AM classes so your not as tired? Or do you skip your night class so you can go to bed at a reasonable hour? And that’s just classes. Imagine a part time job, relationships, sanity, all that can really add up.

Stress is as common as the common cold on a campus. Most people just kinda ride the waves, only really freaking out when Finals come and other major tests. Is there a cure doc? Meh, depends on who you are.

I know a girl who would just bounce a volleyball on a wall for a couple minutes and completely simmer down. As her neighbor I could hear every single instance and would shoot out a quick, “What’s wrong?” text until it stopped. I tried something similar in retaliation with a football, but it worked me up more than anything. At one point I was pretty sure the wall was going to give in before my stress. Sometimes all you really need is that small activity once in a while to set things straight. If there is a basketball near me, I’ll throw it up in the air and catch it. Nothing revolutionary, just a nice feeling.

Some find that one athletic activity that gets their mind off things. Weightlifting makes you feel more powerful and in control. Nothing feels better than letting out all your frustration on a barbell stacked with weight. If you can move it, then you can do anything. Running and other cardio workouts can give you the time to either work out what you’re going through or give you that clear head you need to resolve what you need to. Sports as a whole can encompass either of the above and usually include that added social element. Even during finals, my roommates and I would find the time to play basketball. Trash-talk is a great release is all I’m saying and plenty social.

Being social is something I’ve never been good at, but socializing can be that exact mental break one needs. Being around other people you enjoy being around, especially those who are more positive can really alter your perspective on things. Whether it be talking about what is stressing you out or shooting the shit with your buddies can do wonders. Sometimes stress reaches the point where it consumes you and all that is needed is a step-back. People (and animals) are pretty good at helping others out in their time of need.

A more unusual approach I came across in college is meditation. Now I’m not saying you need to give up on all earthly possessions and shave your head. All it really is is taking 10-15 minutes where you sit in silence, taking deep breaths, and not think about anything. It gives your head a little break from a day full of stimulation and constant nagging. It is not an end all cure and it won’t make you some sort of enlightened person, but a little “mind time” never hurt.

Not all stress releases are good though. Some people have a release that works once for them and it becomes their crutch. In the long run they may hurt more than the stress being dealt with.

A vast majority of kids drink and smoke until they don’t remember why they were even worried in the first place. There are plenty of reasons why this is not the best approach, but sometimes the biggest hindrance is stress itself. My friend’s best papers were written while he was not sober. He’d stress over his diction and grammar when he wasn’t smoking, but once he was in the right state of mind, he’d just let his ideas flow out. It reached the point where he required to be high to do homework. God forbid he ran out of weed, the kid would come to a complete halt academically and it was pretty pathetic. Alcohol and drugs are okay if its a one and done kind of arrangement, but reaching the point where they become a necessity is never a good sign.

Others just live with it. Every second is stressful, yet what’s the harm? Yesterday I was stressed so what does it matter if it continues? Riding out stress is a brutal habit I had early in high school. Why deal with the stress if I was gonna get stressed the very next day. I rode the wave of stress and did not do shit to stop it. I’m not going to say it was the worst option, it did get me through some rough patches, but man did it suck. Life was just a blur at the time and the only constant in my life seemed to be the stress. It’s not a part of my life I look back at fondly.

There are definitely other ways to deal with stress out there. I’m sure I’m forgetting a good chunk of methods. Feel free to share your own and who knows maybe I’ll pick it up too. Stress sucks, but it’s not an impossible solution. We’re only human.

The Importance of Planning Ahead

Growing up, I was decent at school. I had above average grades, but I mucked about like any of my friends. From a distance it would be difficult to understand why I was so much better with my grades compared to my “under-performing” peers. Do I think I was smarter than them? No, not really. After all, I once tried breaking up a random fight I had not dog in. I’m probably on the dumber side of the population if anything.

What I did do well was plan. I was extremely rigid about it as well. If I missed even 5 minutes of studying, I’d remove my break time and study more. Punctuality was a consequence of my planning, nothing more. Every semester I’d plan my day down to 15 minutes and barely enough flexibility to keep me sane. Whenever I got a new class or job, I’d throw out my old schedule and make something completely different. Deviation from the schedule was intolerable, but there were instances of me doing so without my consent. However, I did everything in my power to avoid such horrible tragedies. One of my most embarrassing secrets is that I did a fairly good job of studying other people’s tendencies and schedules and factored that into my own. “No I can’t go get food at 6 because I’ll see Tom on the way and I’ll have to listen to him for hours”. In a perfect world, everything would have been like I was one of those super villains watching the hero beat up their thugs and saying, “It’s all going according to plan”.

Now the most obvious reason for why I planned so much was because of my household, but that was not the case in the slightest. My parents were not helicopter parents, they never asked about them. They were always impressed when they’d see my grades at the end of the year and how I managed to do anything else in the meantime. Deep-down the planning obsession was all mine. It was not healthy.

Why did I start or care about schedules so much? I can’t be certain, but it’s probably the control. Life is a bunch of random event occurring one after another. Each day has new problems along with older ones that still linger. Planning gave me that cathartic release from the stress of my life. Frankly there was not that much happening in my life at any one given moment, but that single ounce of stress made me want a life completely filled with.

The schedule became worse than the stress than the stress being mitigated. Missing one study period to hang out with friends sent me into a frenzy all-nighter to recover. I was always checking my phone to make sure I did not miss my 5 PM break-time. Yup, I reached the point where missing my time intended for relaxing was stressing me out. Don’t get me wrong, I stuck to the schedule probably around 90% of the time. However, I forgot to factor in two things.

First I’m human. Sometimes it would take me 32 minutes to learn something even though I only allocated 30 minutes. Spotting a random guy at the gym added 5 minutes to my workout time and I cursed him out the entire drive back in my car. Also, always doing the same things at certain times really grinds you down eventually. No one likes being in a rut, but the schedule made the rut. How could I plan to not be in a rut, when planning was what threw me in it to begin with? The mind needs to be stimulated and after a while it’ll figure out your everyday patterns.

The second was that life has too many variations. How could I possibly know that my grandparents were moving in the summer and therefore need me to help move their stuff instead of working more hours at my summer job? How could I have known that the girl living in the dorm suite next to me was going to have an emotional collapse and need at least 3 people to help her through it? The schedule did not always have the answers. It could account for the mundane stuff, but outliers completely screwed it up.

Schedules are good in determining what you know you need to get done and figuring out how much time you have to do it. However, they shouldn’t become your personal Bible. I still make schedules, but now I place much more flexible hours to allow for unexpected events. If I miss some time for studying, well I guess I’ll just have to study harder later.

Maybe I shouldn’t be having these thoughts right before finals though…

How Smart Are You?

There are a million different ways to measure intelligence. People often think of academic intelligence, the classic nerd that we see in the movies. No doubt some of the most intelligent people in the world are a part of academia, but there are other ways to be smart. It’s usually the non-academics that say that kinda stuff, ” I may not be book smart, but I’m street smart”. Not the best way to say that you’re no good at school, but there is some truth behind it. There is no doubt that excelling at academics is one of the most notable types of ways to show your intelligence, but there are some other types of smart out there.

You got your emotionally smart people. These ones are some of the most dangerous because not only can they read people, they can manipulate them. They can be some of the hardest to find, but when you spot one its best to keep an eye on them. I’ve only spotted five or six in the wild, but man can they work a room. No matter how academic someone is, there is always the danger that their emotions take over. Sadness can make a person do something they would never do in a heartbeat like some new heavy drugs or even suicide.

Intensely rational/logical people are often lumped in with the academics. They may not come into a problem knowing how to solve them, but give them the time they will fix it. Its the application of knowledge that certain people excel at. Old people usually fall into this category since they’ve seen the same shit going on for years. Problems seem to follow patterns and even though they may not always have a full deck of cards never underestimate an old person.

The social smarts is something that entirely escapes me. Some people may not know they are even doing it, but working a room is nothing to them, It irks me when I meet people like this because they make it seem so effortless meanwhile I can barely string together a sentence. Some of the more nefarious ones will know exactly what to whisper into their boss’ ear to get a promotion and manipulate others to get their own agenda through.

Then there’s the philosophers, or the “life smarts” as I call it. Some people just have life figured out and there isn’t a curveball life could possibly throw at them that would take them by surprise. Its usually pretty closely tied to the wise/rational, but there’s a distinction. Life smarts people will often only think about stuff in the largest picture. They zoom out enough in perspective and give a better view of consequence associated with the problem at hand. They’ll see the perspective that you couldn’t and are often the extremely optimistic and pessimistic people. After all everyone thinks they’re a realist.

One can’t forget the creative smarts people. If you give them a blank piece of paper and an hour, they’ll give you back something worth a couple thousands dollars. Painting, writing, singing, whatever. Some people were born to create something larger than a single person could ever hope to become. I feel like this is one of the more underappreciated smarts by those who aren’t as gifted (not that I’m creative in anyway). There is a difference between color on a canvas and a painting and it is up to the artist to do so.

I’m sure there are plenty more types of intelligence. Everyone is at least predisposed to one of these types, despite what others may say or think. It can take time to figure out what exactly you are good at. However, there are some people who just seem all-around smarter than you and its horrifying. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve met people smarter than me in the traditional sense, but I rarely feel like there is someone who is smarter than me in every facet.

Those are the people that intrigue me the most. It may not seem like much at the time, but if you come in to contact with someone like that keep an eye on them. Its a sobering experience. What will they do with their clear superiority over me? Are they simply just toying with me?

I met a girl in college like that. On the surface she seemed normal. Nice, pretty, and social. There was no indication at the time when I first met her, but there were hints. She seemed to just luck her way into whatever. Good grades, plenty of friends, and she had to constantly reject guys from asking her out. She was the perfect storm. The scariest part though was that I didn’t even notice. I guess I’m just too dumb, but she knew how to manipulate everyone and do so in secret. In every area she excelled and all I could do was try to figure out how she did it after the fact. The worst part was that she masked it so well. To most people she was just a pretty face, but retracing what she said and how she acted it was clear that she had ulterior motives. Yet it seemed so natural for her. At first meeting her she seemed like a typical ditzy girl, which is exactly what she wants.

Maybe in another post I’ll go into, but at some point you have to sit back and marvel at the prospect. You ever see those anime moments where the hero’s friends see the hero/villain’s power and go, ” His power is unreal. How is something like that even possible?” It’s like that but with intelligence. How are there people like that in this world? They must be seeing the everything in a whole different way. Are we all just pawns to them? Are there people out there that even outclass them?

It’s humbling and terrifying all in one. I’m gonna keep my eye on her from here out and try to keep up. Maybe I’ll learn a thing or two.

Everyone is smart in their own way. How they use it may not be apparent at first. Who knows exactly how smart anyone else is. You can only gauge them in relation to yourself and its impossible to know if its their real selves you’re seeing.

You can never truly know if you’re getting played, all you can do is a keep a look out.

What’s The Worst Place A Ghost Can Haunt?

Long car drives are both a blessing and a curse. You need to give most of your concentration to the road to you know not die, but even potential death can be boring at times. Staring straight ahead while sometimes cursing at Toyota Camry going just under the speed limit- I’m getting bored just thinking about it.

The one positive you start to think about weird stuff. Like all the rules that go into ghosts. Depending on what logic we follow, being a ghost has plenty of ups and downs that may deter people from sticking around after death.  Are we going with standard cartoon logic where ghosts can freely move and do whatever the hell they want? They kinda just keep doing what they were doing in life,  occasionally befriending some person alive. That would be one of the worst ways to go out I think. Stuck in the era’s clothes and dialect while the world goes on. They don’t really have a purpose, they’re just ghosts that appear around Halloween and help the main character with some Halloween problem that is strangely paranormal. They can phase through walls and that’s about it. That is Hell in itself right there. Then again, ghosts in those can usually still move stuff and most people can interact with them so it would be like I never died. Then again that would mean I’d still have to socialize. I would hate to be a ghost in an old Saturday morning cartoon.

Or maybe you’ll be one of the more mature ghost movies that haunt shit that they feel like. A grandfather’s clock or something that you saw as you were dying. You know these movies where ghosts don’t look like they’re people with sheets over their heads. It would be cool to haunt a computer for a while and open a bunch of horrible porn and when I’m board I can just surf the web. It would be like me being alive except I wouldn’t need to eat or poop. Pretty dope- well as long as I pick something cool to haunt. Some haunted movies just make you haunt the place you died in, which is a serious risk. Great if you die in a school or something. You can fuck around with the freshman or spook some kids who snuck in to the school late at night. If you’re feeling lazy you could just listen in on the gossip. Hospitals, schools, populated places that aren’t always busy would be ideal, but imagine dying on a sidewalk. No roof over your invisible head and not much to do except look at the occasional cool car drive by. That’d be horrible. Plus you’d really have to spook the few people who walk by, and cyclists would be way too fast to spook. I take it back, haunting rules would be too much of a gamble. If you get a hospital great, but sidewalk ghosts probably can’t wait to kill themselves again.

Then there’s the religious angle, where your stuck in Purgatory or something similar. Regardless of the specific religion, ghosts in general just stick around either to serve some sort of light divine punishment or tie up any loose ends. When I’m about to die there’s no question I’ll remember something important I forgot to do before the whole dying stuff turned up. Oh crap I forgot to feed my cat. Welp guess I’ll see Alfred Whiskers in the next life. Or maybe I got murdered and I have to help some girl help solve my own death. One last screw you before I ascend (or descend). Purgatory as a punishment would suck. Just see how the world progresses without you. A year or two wouldn’t be bad, but after a couple 100 years I might get bored of watching other people play video games or whatever. If there was a lesson I was supposed to be learning I would assuredly not learn it until Jesus himself told me.

If I had to choose I guess I’d go with the lesson one and I’d try to speed-run it. What kind of ghost would you want to be? I also know there’s plenty more types of ghosts, but I’ll get to those later I guess.

 

 

Exceptionalism

Exceptionalism is something everyone tries to attain. What this exceptional attribute may differ from person to person,but that desire for mastery and becoming the top in one’s field is across the board. No child wants to be a bench warmer in the pros. No writer wants to just write in a blog once in a while.

It is a predisposition for us to want to be the very best. Our hopes and dreams put us on the top of humanity, being adored for the rest of your life and being etched into humanity’s records for all future generations to revere you. There is a desire to be something far larger than one is.

For almost 100% of the population that is simply not possible for them to attain. If everyone was exceptional then no one would be. For there to be Bill Gates, there were thousands of people who invested in coding,but could never get it right or simply were not lucky to be exposed with their findings.

For every Tom Brady, Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth had countless failures, but only some people persisted. Is it blind optimism? Possibly.

Am I talking out my ass? Certainly, but hey I like writing about whatever.

We want all the benefits of benefits from being the best, but man the process sucks. Its almost impossible to find cases of people succeeding at the first chance they get. Sure some are more predisposed to excelling at certain things. If I ever become a seven foot tall behemoth you’ll definitely see me on the court some day. I have a friend who is 6 foot four and he is bombarded with questions about trying to go pro. Too bad he’s the most uncoordinated person the world has ever decided to spawn. Even with these advantages there’s still no guarantee of success. Yet even then there are still other people fighting with you to get to that same goal. Fighting to be a famous writer is a bloodbath while being the number one chainsaw juggler is a bit less broad in scope (not to say it isn’t impressive).

How much of this are we in control of? People love the underdog story and of the self-made man (or woman), but how attainable is it? It happens for sure, but how much is circumstance and genetics and what is the hard work portion. If you’ve seen any of those gym site its always showing these fit models sweating their asses off. They’re not showing the scrawny version that they were for the majority of the time. The gym is more packed in January than Time Square is during New Year’s Eve, ” This is the year I lose the baby fat and pick up that chick on the treadmill with the firmest ass I’ve ever stared at for too long”. The difference is that that girl has been going for 4 years and has been ogled her entire gym career. She’s been running on that same damn treadmill everyday at the same time after eating the same meals for before you knew what leg day was.

I always felt I was one who would strive for goodness, but not greatness. I was an A- student. I went to the gym fairly regularly and ate healthy 4 outta the 7 days of the week. Motivation was a fleeting concept with the occasional appearance in my life. There was a general feeling to be decent at everything I did. That was it though. I never felt like I had to be number one in anything growing up. The top was good, but the very top was too much work.

Was I born to be meh or was it a lifestyle choice? I hold the (rather optimistic) belief that enough effort can alter your life. There is a level though that can’t be attained without some help.

You see the type of person I’m talking about everywhere. They give all they got in everything they do and it shows. Did the effort cause the exceptionalism or did the exceptionalism spawn even more effort to be called upon?

I’m not sure anymore man, my head hurts from thinking about this too much. My fault for trying.

How to Make a Life Changing Decision

Changes in your life can make or break you as a person. Making the right choice on a decision can lead to you hanging at the chillest restaurants and wearing the freshest clothes. Making the wrong choice and oh man. You’re stuck spending the rest of your life thinking “What if?”. The answer to that question may not be the best to think about. Beating yourself up about it won’t help you at all and eventually you’ll have to face Everyone will have at least two or three of these in their lives.

Should I ask her out?

Should I really move across the country for this job?

Should I post my naked ass on the internet?

There are no definite answers for questions like these (except the last one, trust me). I’m sure you’ve spent hours weighing pros and cons. It’s always good to do this, just to see exactly where your fears and aspirations lies with the decision. Some might seem a bit far-fetched,

“If I move to the desert, I’m at an increased likelihood of being struck by a meteor, but at the same time vending machine accident probability goes way down”

That is the kind of thought that keeps me up at night…

Not only will there be an immediate impact when you make that decision, there will be residual outcomes and unspecified side effects. The world will keep spinning even after you make your decision, unless that decision was stopping the Earth from spinning. That back tattoo of a butterfly will infuriate your parents and they’ll cut off your $1000 allowance. Joining an underground fight club will lead to you blowing up a bunch of credit card companies’ buildings. You know typical x causes y, but then z,q,r,and p too. Once the decision is made understand that there will be an afterwards.

There is a lot of emotion that goes along with making a decision like moving across the country. Your parents will miss you and you’ll miss the free rent. You shouldn’t just move because you’re angry at your parents and its all a part of your parents’ punishment. You need to be as objective as possible. You might change you’re mind when you see how much it costs to even live in a cardboard box in Los Angeles. Spend a day relaxing and free of others before making a decision and before the days comes when you make the final decision repeat and see if there were any doubts during that window of time.

The final piece to making the decision is acceptance of your decision. No matter what your decision is there will be positives and negatives. Different people in your life will disagree with either decision and its up to you to accept the decision you’ve made. Be proud of the decision you’ve made, knowing that you did whatever you had to to make the best of your situation. I guarantee it won’t be a perfect life afterwards, yet its almost comforting in a sense that both decisions have their own flaws to them. If you’re lucky enough to still have the chance to go back on your decision later, just be ready to go through the same process above to undo it, BUT ONLY IF YOU KNOW WITH 100 PERCENT CERTAINTY THAT ONE CHOICE HAD MORE NEGATIVES.

You’re molded by your decisions and its from this mold that the current you is made. That current you will also be in charge of future decisions so do what you can to make the decisions as easy as possible. Everyone will have a difficult decision in their life at one point or another, so make sure you can help others when they go through something similiar.

 

Writer’s Block

Writer’s block is a horrible thing.

It prevents writers from doing the one thing that makes the writers. So are they really writers at that point? They’re just frustrated people staring at the same sentence for an extended amount of time. It can be extended to other facets of life as well.

Everyone reaches a point where they don’t know where to go from there. They want to progress, but every time they start to move forward, something stops them. Some people have huge blocks, often referred to as a “midlife crisis”. Quite frankly, that is a horrible term. Any smart person would try to have their midlife crisis in their eighties or something so they could live until their 160. By then you could probably go to space and do some awesome old-person-in-space stuff.

Anyways, during a midlife crisis sufferers will often ‘discover’ that they are/were in a rut and were wasting their time; usually in the form of a soul-sucking job or maybe a less than ideal marriage. The realization of one’s own mortality, the minuscule impact one’s life is going to have in the grand scheme of the universe, the horror of shopping at Walmart. These are all realizations that may occur as a result of the crisis and to combat this victims will try to do one of two things; try to relive their youth or break up the monotony of their life all at once. These two options should remind you of a lazy son of a billionaire, they don’t work.

A person cannot just have a realization one day about changing up their life and have the exact life they wanted the next one. It’s a process. Instead of quitting your agency job to pursue your art career, just start by drawing in your free-time everyday. Are you planning on dying your hair so you can buy 50 dollar vodka/water mixed drink for a woman half your age at a bar? Maybe just try online dating first… I like your confidence though. The point is, when you’re having midlife crisis, its only a crisis if you try to 180 your life too quickly and you end up crashing and burning. You’re essentially doing a 360. You gotta build the changes you want to make in your life and then each time you do them, you’ll be that much closer to the person you want to be.

The same thing can go for writer’s block. Instead of writing an entire trilogy of novels in one night, just try writing a stupid blog post. About writer’s block.