Taking Control

There are times when you'll work towards a goal that takes many steps, lots of attention and much patience in order to do well, and sometimes, when you think you have everything in hand, external circumstances come along and throw it all out of alignment, even when you only take your eyes off the prize for a second. It's a highly frustrating experience, more so when it undoes all the blood, sweat and tears you've poured into it, but that's just how life can be. It's not a matter of if it happens, but when, and what you do then defines you'll become as time goes on.

In my case, I tend to throw a mini shit fit, then pick myself up and push ahead with what's left

As for why, I wasn't a generally expressive kid, and that allowed a lot of the emotions people tend to express in tiny puffs to build into a big head of steam ready to emerge at the worst possible opportunity.  Only now, after all the strides I've made to become something greater than who I am now, have I been able to put that energy in a positive direction(although I'm still quite susceptible to moments of inopportune rage). The more I come upon these less than ideal situations, the more I realize both how much I don't control and how much I do, the latter growing more and more apparent as my abilities become more crystallized.

Now that I now what I do control, I've grown a lot more pissed at people trying to take that away, especially when I know damn well what I'm doing.

“Why fight so hard, though?” you may be wondering. “You know that the best way to get things done is to ride the flow and let things resolve themselves, so what's the point?” I admit to thinking like this more than once in my life, and more than once have I thrown my hands up in frustration and felt like nothing I did worked, thinking that maybe the best choice would be to just give up and let the winds take me wherever they may. I mean, why should anyone work so hard to achieve a goal that may not even be all it's cracked up to be and take away more than it give to you?

Because, if all the things I've gained over the years have taught me anything, it's that the effort pays off, and will always pay off if you don't let it get away. 

It's easy to just take the easy way out of things and lead a fairly normal life, things such as not allowing yourself to get to close to other people after a heartbreak in order to avoid further heartbreak, doing just enough to keep whatever job you have and hate so you can keep the essentials in order and eating that apple a day to keep the doctor away, even if it's the only healthy thing you eat all day. Comfort is much easier to attain if you let yourself be content with what, who and where you are now, but I certainly can't remember the last time someone broke through and became something more from a place of comfort.

It's only natural that growth and comfort cannot co-exist, especially within the human spirit.

Had people been comfortable where they were centuries ago, we would never have the net, we would never have modern medicine, we would never have the ability to easily travel the world, the country or even 20 miles outside of where we were born. Growth can be painful and awkward, sometime agonizingly so, but the human heart, mind and body are some of the resilient things this world has to offer, able to patch itself up and grow even stronger more knowledgeable and more awake after each encounter, even as children still developing their conception of the world. Only when we embrace those inevitabilities can we understand how to best use them to help us grow and shape the course our lives take, knowing that, even if it's precisely what we envisioned, it will always come to be more than we ever imagined possible.

The World Beyond The Screen

Often, around New Years time, many become prisoners of the moment and make resolutions their will can't maintain, myself included. In fact, I didn't find the clarity to even make a resolution until I grew more secure in who I was and what I wanted, something my travels have given to me, little by little. This year, with everything I've gone through and all the growing I've been blessed with, I'm certain I've find one I'll commit to long after the moment is over and the normal world stares me in the face.

If there's anything crucial I've discovered as I explored the world around me, it's that despite how easy technology has made it to keep in touch with others, the ability to convey our thoughts to the people we meet everyday is still vital to becoming more connected to our world and creating the desire to contribute positivity however we choose to do it. The fact that my in person skills still need much sharpening has shown me the resolution I want to keep with me as a new year begins and I grow older and more aware of what I want to leave behind: to refine my handling of small talk and become more deft at face-to-face communication.

As it is for many out there, there've been people who've made my life suck, sometimes to the point of emotional breakdown (e.g a fetus-position-on-the-floor, make-it-stop kind of breakdown), and in those times, I wanted nothing more than remove myself from them and never see their face again. Technology has made it easier than ever to do just that and tune out the people who would bring us to this point of mental stress, but the truth is that no amount of advancement will completely eliminate that from our lives; in fact, because we've tuned it out so often, many have grown less able to deal with the daily stress of the day, which means it has much more power to shake us down to our foundation when it starts to pile on.

When I started to interact with the world outside my computer screen, it was like relearning how to talk, more so because I had much less time to mull over my response to someone separated by 3 feet of air, compared to a few miles of fiber-optics. As I see things like smartphones, video conferencing and social networking become more common place, I can notice this effect growing more and more prevalent as people isolate themselves from the world of purely physical interaction, finding more of their voice, sense of friendship and power coming from using technology to communicate.

As a writer, it fascinates me to witness the very way we connect to other change so dramatically, but it concerns me how people are losing touch with the base skills we use to forge relationships and become connected with those we care for. Even before my hands touched a keyboard, I knew that communication is only complete when we can see the person in front of us, their every tendency, tick and odor there for us to take in and analyze as needed. Phones, chatting and so on were only meant to be supplements to face-to-face interaction, but the greater dependency on these things to keep us in touch as our lives grow 'busier' is making them the main method and face-to-face, the supplement.

In time, the abilities to read someone's body movements, separate genuine criticism from harmful language, keep things in perspective and build our self esteem through contributing to the world around us falls and falls fast, as it did for me when I made the net my main method. As contradictory as it may be to use a blog to say this, people have to balance themselves out and make the world beyond the screen a bigger part of their day to day routine; the more we do that, the more we can appreciate what technology does for us and use it to its maximum potential.

I certainly won't say the process is easy, but all the experiences and knowledge my time away from the net gave me have let me know it's a worth while effort. Awkward communication is better than no communication at all, isn't it? Beats going through life with the desires of your heart falling silent, leaving you to wonder 'what if?' as you think about all you could've done, had it been given a voice

Want It All Back

There comes a time in everyone's life where it feels like all the forces in this world are working against you and you alone, and mine came on the day my bike was stolen. On that day, someone targeted my precious vehicle to be taken, leaving the other, unlocked bike untouched as the family slept and forcing me to use the 4 wheeled scooter I left behind in my youth. Pushing myself on the rocky terrains as the gales buffeted my every move caused all the frustrations I've held for all this time to unite as one white hot flash of rage. After a toss of my scooter and copious cursing, this is what I shouted to the heavens(more or less): Take my bike, take my computer, take my hands, I refuse to relent! In that moment I realized what it means to sacrifice and struggle to bring a dream into reality.

I am quite fortunate to have many dilligent, hard working people in my inner circle, and they remind me of the advantages I have that I'm not using to their utmost, such as being able to bypass many trials and tribulations simply by being born a citizen. Perhaps it was this relative ease that's made it hard to look past all I don't have or can't do and recognize the things within my reach, however minimal they may be, in my view. Whenever the situation shifted, I always sought out ways to adapt to it and rarely how to change it, mainly because I didn't even think I had the means to change it in a meaningful manner, even when I did. It's often the case that we don't feel an urge to change the way things are until a certain catalyst enters our lives, and I'm no different. When I discovered creative writing for the first time, I knew then and there I want it to be a part of my life; when my beloved perished doing the mountain road drifting she so loved, it inspired me to take chances in living the kind of life I desire, even if that means taking the ultimate chance; all through the day I lost my bike, I became familiar with this idiom: the more willing you are to let go of things you see as key to you now, the more you free yourself to change your world and make a better atmopshere for the things and people you cherish.

I learned this well the first time I was unable to use my PC, incidentally putting many of those I saw as close friends beyond my reach. Losing that revealed what losing my bike brought to light: I relied on both to ease my burden and make me comfortably umb to circumstances, with the loss of both triggering a drastic change in outlook. In yelling those words into the cutting night air, it dawned on me that regardless of reactions to events, time nor life cease their progree, and if you choose to do nothing, they'll leave you behind just the same. If there's anything this time has done for me, it's thrown a a barrel of fuel on the fire of my desire to take hold of the life I seek I know this may mean giving up a few of the things I love, but if it means crafting a better place for them to live and thrive, so be it.