AndrewBrunelle.com

I’ve gotten on this remote path lately, a path where serving others is something I don’t mind doing, as it also is serving myself in some way.  I understand that it is better to give than to receive, but you still have to receive some to maintain your physical body and the more money you have, the more you can express yourself in an efficient manner.  Supposedly, there’s a quote that says, “Money makes you more of who you already are.”  And I suppose I agree with this statement to some extent.  I know that richness does not imply happiness and this is something that people have a  hard time underdstanding.  Sure, it may lead to temporary happiness, but this feeling will be soley momentary.  It will not have the lasting effects of inner peace and love for everything in the universe and beyond…

I suppose this inner peace thing came to be in a very relaxed way.  One day I wasn’t working and I was really relaxed and I was thinking, “Wouldn’t it be great if I could feel like this all the time?”  So I started feeling like this at work, at peace, no hostility, no worries about the job, no worries about life, just flowing effortlessly through a world I do not completely understand.  And it’s worked well for myself, as I no longer feel fatigued nor do I feel stressed, for the most part.  There are times when I get out of this state, but it’s not as frequent as it used to be.

Humor and relaxing go hand in hand.  Laughing is a tension relief method that takes me to a place I love to be.  But it has to be genuine humor, not some ill-fated humor, like making fun of a handicapped person.  It has to be something that’s genuinely funny.  I have this resource of material I use to make myself laugh and to put everything in perspective.  Like if I’m ever stressed on my job, I just say, “Hey, who cares?  It’s just a job.  It doesn’t matter.  You’ll be in college again in less than two months and who cares about this job?”  And then I see how trivial it is with respect to the universe as a whole and I almost burst out laughing.

Yesterday, I didn’t get a break until 5 hours fifteen minutes of working, which is odd for the place I work, but the people there NEVER offer me a break, I always have to ask for it, so yesterday, I decided I was not going to ask for one at all and if I didn’t get one, so be it.  So I just work, work, work, in a relaxed manner.  I’m waiting for the break, even though I really don’t need one, I even buy a water so my throat doesn’t become parched while on the clock.  About fifteen minutes after that, I am finally offered a break, but now I really don’t feel I need one, but I take it anyway.  I grab an apple and eat it very slowly, as I have fifteen minutes to eat it.  I savor every bite for what seems like a half hour, then I go back to clock back in.  It has only been fifteen minutes, but how could I have known that?  I dismiss all forms of clocks and time as I find them irrelevant, except when I have to be somewhere at a certain time, but I’m sure if I relaxed that notion, I still would make it to most places on time, and even if I didn’t, what’s the big deal?  It’s not going to kill me.

I’ll never forget the episode of Seinfeld when Kramer says, “I tell time by the sun,” and one of the other characters asks him, “What do you do at night?” and he says, “I’m usually within a couple of hours or so.”  I find that hilarious, while at the same time seeing it has practical use.  Why not?  And why bother with defining time so rigidly?  So we can get credit for working eight hours?  I don’t care about that, I think you should get paid for the value you create, not the time you spend creating it.  It should be, you work, you get done, you leave, no need to work out the remaining hours standing around just so you get paid for what you did before. 

I believe you can do everything in an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way, in its own perfect time, for the highest good of all.  I stole that quote from Marc Allen, and he stole it from some lady who wrote a book about something, I don’t have the willpower to look it up right now.  You don’t need to be so rigid and cutthroat.  It’s not the way of the world.  Well, maybe it is now, but it didn’t use to be.  I try and bring this relaxation with me wherever I go so that people around me will be receptive to this and share some laughs with me.  It’s a very enlightening experience to share your relaxation with someone who is down.  It cheers them right up.

Last night I had a conversation about one of my favorite dark comedies, American Psycho.  And we’re laughing at the fact this guy put on a raincoat before he killed this guy and had copies of the New York Times lying around his floor.  The victim asks him, “Is that a raincoat?” and he answers enthusiastically, “Yes, it is!”  So funny.  It’s a really funny movie and I just got the book in and am reading it.  It’s a very superficial story, but it’s so detailed and funny.  But people who are uptight could not see the humor in a homicidal maniac who cares more about which loafers you are wearing than the person inside of you. 

So, I guess the overall message is to take life lightly and don’t get to caught up in the “rat race.”  I see too many people who always neglect their laziness, and while doing so, become so focused they get this tunnel vision and it leads to neglection of opportunities they would otherwise be open to had they not been working so hard.  I realize that it is my duty to lighten up people’s days and slow them down a little.  Relax, take it easy, for an hour every day.  Just reflect, understand, and ponder the nature of our existance and why you get stressed over seemlingly insignificant things.  Just laugh, love, learn, and be happy. 

 I hope you enjoy this post as much as I did writing it.

I like to let my mind wander. Just let go of reality for awhile. It’s very comforting. What if I was different? What if I was older, younger, smarter, more energetic, less focused, what would my life be like if I was like that? Where would I go? Would I understand everything I do now? Or would I understand more? What if I was a woman who grew up in Singapore and was told her whole life that I wasn’t very important by my parents, or told I was useless? What would life be like if I were born to a millionaire and never had to work a day in my life? All of these insane thoughts, I kind of make different lives for myself that don’t have any real staying power in reality, but they at least allow me to pass the time. I need a reason for being here, though. There are no real reasons as through the perspective of the universe, everything becomes trivial. So it’s hard to really understand what’s going on. I’m not going to accept anything blindly either. I need to have it resonate with me. I need some sort of answer that is justified in my conscious mind. And until I have that, I really do not have any answers about reality in a way that I can comprehend. Sure, people have tried to explain reality as accurately as possible, but they have not done so to my standards. I need something more concrete, something I can grasp.

I want to know why we’ve created this world and why we live isolated from the rest of the universe, and mostly isolated from the world. I need answers, but it’s not easy to come by them these days. The fact that I’m thinking about this counts, though. If I was just living a sedentary life, with no real questions, no thoughts of introspection, then I would be ashamed of myself, realizing that I have nothing to offer. But maybe I’m crazy and the rest of the world is sane. How would I know? I have no one else to compare myself to that won’t be wearing their mask of sanity. The people that will act normal to fit in and never understand why until it’s too late, they are normal. It’s an assimilation, if you will. A direct assimilation that halts creativity and mind. But in order to be accepted by these people, these entities, we have to want the newest car, the greatest gadget, and watch hours of television where these innate values are fed to us with a silver spoon.

But what does this mean anyway? If someone is dishonest about marketing a product to you through all these relatively evil methods, what is their real motivation besides money? And what will money do for you once you have too much of it? And what does money have to do with the whole universe? Why are we on this planet where making money from something is more important than actively giving it away to benefit people? Maybe I was brought into existence too late because I’m sure the universe didn’t work this way thousands of years ago, a time where we thought for ourselves and based our decisions not by what others did, but from what we want to do.

I think the best question to ask in all of this is: Why? And I’m sure you could go for the cop-out answer: Why not? But that’s not very clever, nor is it amusing. People will go into some long-winded sermon about how a certain religion is right and that it’s the only way to answer that question. And I can’t deal with that. I don’t want beliefs forced on me. I want to figure my own beliefs out for myself. I’ll assess the situation and go from there. It’s a hell of a time doing this, though. It could take a lifetime, maybe longer. But most people don’t take the time to do this. They follow whatever they’re fed because it’s too much work to figure out things for themselves. Just go to someone who seems to be thriving in a current belief system and adopt it. But it shouldn’t be that simple. Something is telling me it has to resonate with you completely. It can’t be someone else’s words flowing through your head. The only thoughts that should be flowing through your head are yours.

I don’t know how much further I can take this before I go completely and utterly insane, but I feel there is such a group mentality in the world where people simply believe what certain people believe in order to be accepted, while not completely accepting themselves. If you completely and fully accept yourself, then there will be no need to search for acceptance in other people. This is where the concepts go astray because the majority of people don’t really accept themselves and don’t believe in anything specific, due to the fact they don’t take the time to see what works for them. So they take “the easy way out,” not finding beliefs and not accepting anything as real. So they look to others for some guidance, and the guidance most people give have to do with their own agendas and conversion rhetoric. It’s a terrible system and it needs to change. If I were to form a group, I wouldn’t want anyone to be here that doesn’t believe what I believe in because it would be incongruent with their beliefs. Why would you go to a Catholic church if you’re a Muslim?

But we all want answers. Answers are what we desire. Answer to Why and Why Not are very hard to come by. But most people don’t put in the time to answer logically. This is a problem because this leads most people to believing what others believe in just because they haven’t done the groundwork for their own unique belief system. We’re so conditioned to treat time as “money,” and to not take time to ponder these great questions, but rather to get as much done in a half-hour as is humanly possible. Efficiency is highly valued, but introspection and assessment of the self is not. We value robotic “good” workers much more than we reward intuitive thinkers whose ideas can be very useful. Sure, people like Jesus and Buddha got recognition and so did Socrates and Plato, but most of these people are told, “Why don’t you get a job, you lazy bastard!” And it’s wrong, wrong. Let them think, let them experiment.  These are the fathers of the new world.  Don’t stifle their creativity, but embrace it.

Sidenote:  I know these posts are becoming a bit more abstract and less funny, but it’s just I’ve been doing a lot of deep thinking lately and it’s been wonderful.  It’s an exercise in the mind.  You should try it sometime.  It does wonders for my creativity as well.  And the dreams!  Vivid, amazing dreams that you could never imagine unless you personally had them yourself! 

There’s always a question that people ask that quickly forms judgment on other people.  “Do you believe in God?”  As they ask this question, you aren’t really sure what kind of God they’re talking about, or if it can be anything.  Some people see God as this father figure, much like the governing force of nature, whille others simply see God as a presence in our world, an energy force.  So if anyone ever asks you a question like this, you should have them define what they’re talking about by “God.”  It’s almost like we’re handed this world and asked to make best judgments on what holds true for us.  For example, if you grew up Catholic and now you’re out in the world and you see all these other religions, of which yours damns them all the hell.  How can all these belief systems exist and all be the “one true religion?”

This is where it gets a little hazy.  With all the belief systems, most of which are fear-based or too structured to be realistic, are a trap if you really look at them.  Most of them have good messages, but they somewhat limit your scope of reality.  You can’t have certain experiences in certain belief systems, mostly because you don’t believe they’re possible.  But most people stay inside one religion or set of beliefs in their entire lifetime, never experiencing anything else, so even though they may believe that all the other religions are wrong, they have never experienced them from the inside and seen if they resonate with them at all.

Of course, most people never stray from the system in which they were born.  And it’s sad, really, because they never do any thinking about reality for themselves.  They allow others to do the thinking for them.  If you let someone else tell you what to do with your life, it wouldn’t really be your life anymore.  It would be the life of the person who’s telling you what to do.  So unless you make a decision that reflects yourself, you’re pretty much giving up control of your life.  I believe the whole test is to question your beliefs and wonder if there are any beliefs outside your own belief system that could work for you.  And it takes time to try each of them out, but it may be worth it in the end.  You never know.

But there are all these pressures in certain religions.  People will notice if you start to get away.  Like if you go to church every Sunday and have been doing so for the past ten years, then if you all of the sudden stop, there could be some backlash and people muttering, “That guy’s lost his mind.”  And the thought of dealing with this is one thing that holds us back.  Not only that, but the fact that you’ll probably be spiritually unstable for awhile because you have to adapt to any new belief in your world.  But that is only temporary. 

I remember the time I tried to adopt a belief that time is only an illusion and is a creation of the mind.  At first, I couldn’t really grasp that, but eventually I came to figure out that everything is a creation of the mind.  Nothing just happens, there must be some sort of willing it to happen, be it a person, an animal, or a plant.  You see, the fact that time exists it mostly something we use to measure results, lifespan, and other seemlingly trivial things from the universe’s perspective.  If we place so much importance on the impermanent, then we start to place too much importance on the aspect of time. 

The most mind-blowing realization I’ve ever come to is the fact that we really don’t matter that much.  The fact is, while looking at the universe and its expansive size, we are not exactly the best thing since sliced bread.  We are just as important as an insect or a planet.  We are a cell in the organism we call the universe.  We are here to perpetuate the existence of our planet, which for some reason exists.  People often ask why we’re here, and I say, you could look for the rest of your life and you may be able to figure out how we are here, the science of why we are here, but it doesn’t bring us anywhere close to the purpose for being here. 

This is one thing I’ve been struggling with.  If we are as insignificant as it seems and our planet is nothing more than a small rock in the most gigantic formation of rocks anyone could ever imagine, then why is getting your taxes done so damn important?  How come people get stressed out over trivialities when there really is no need, from a cosmic perspective.  Even if you were to die, or even if the planet were to be destroyed, so what?  It’s not that big a deal.

And I think religion is the way to cope with all of this.  People place some sort of value on answers to these questions, and they’ll buy almost anything.  I’m not saying people who are religious are stupid, they’re not, if they’ve chosen their beliefs from examining many others.  If you ask this question to the universe, “Why are we here?” you most likely won’t get a response.  I think it’s because the universe is asking the same question to you:  “Why are YOU here?” 

And answering that question is very difficult to do.  Many people never answer it in their entire lifetimes.  I mean, if you have realized what I have, you know that from a cosmic perspective, choosing a purpose for your life can be very difficult.  Now that you realize the magnitude of the situation.  If you want to be a lawyer, but you know that doing so will force you to lie a lot, then you have to make a choice of whether or not you want to pay that price.  I’m not sure how the universe works, but from what I’ve seen, people usually get what they deserve, but it’s almost meaningless if you keep shifting perspectives, even to the other side of the globe. 

So I think the best deal is to choose a belief system that gives you the most power.  Choose one that will allow you to feel the most in control of your life.  You can give up control, but you can never give up responsibility.  If you have control, you do have responsibility, but if you don’t have control, you still have the rsponsibility to regain control.  So gain control of your beliefs and don’t follow something just because the rest of your family does or the church you go to does.  Don’t expect them to be understanding of your change in beliefs, as they most likely will dismiss you as insane. 

I guess it’s all about you, but not you in the selfish way.  It’s you as a collective whole, you as a planet, you as a universe to make it a better place without restrictions.  You shouln’t have to ask a pie-in-the-sky authority figure if you can do certain things.  Do what feels right and do what will give you the most power, but not power in an evil way, but power for the highest possible good you can imagine.

Then the most empowering for me is called subjective reality where a) there is only one consciousness, b) you are that consciousness, and c) everything is created by thoughts in that consciousness. It gives you an insane amount of power, but also an insane amount of responsibility.  So therefore, it places the world, the universe, in your hands.  It definitely takes time to get used to this, as your realize that other people are actually a projection of yourself.  Even strangers that pass by and plants, animals, books, tables, chairs, they’re all part of you and you have the power to change it.  It’s a very harmonious way of living, but you have to work at the thought part because every negative thought you have will be created, just as the psitive ones will.  So there are a lot of goods and bads like any other religion, but it is the only belief system that empowers you to this extent.  I hope I’ve been helpful in my musings and have a nice day, at least the one I created for you.

I just read an article called The Medium vs. The Message on Steve Pavlina’s site. It explained how some people define themselves through a job title or as a blogger, which is empty in itself as defining yourself as a medium and not by your message is very limiting because you don’t really show the value you provide by doing this. If you say, “I’m a lawyer,” you’re not really giving a concrete example of who you are. You’re more saying the medium in which you work. And this is something that can give a false representation of who you are and what you do, and will be an empty shell because a medium in general is empty without a message to fill it. I wake up much earlier than I used to. I’ve heard so much how waking up early is so good for you, so I decided to make it a habit. Eight o’clock right now is the time I wake up. However, waking earlier than that may inhibit my sleep time at night, so for now I’m going to stick with eight o’clock or if I wake up earlier, then. It wasn’t that hard to do this, either. I just set an alarm away from my bed, so it forces me to get up and go over to turn it off. I use a cell phone alarm, so I never really know what time it is, so if I wake up, I get up, oblivious to the time. As long as it’s not dark outside, I’m okay. I can usually fight off a cold or any other sickness now because I’ve become more immune due to my new habits, but right now I am a little sick. It’s the first time in maybe eight or nine months this has happened, so it’s just a freak accident, I think. But I’ve been pretty healthy in that regard and I have to credit it not just to my diet, but my mental state of being. I have been at peace and have been relaxed for a long time now and it’s really helped my creativity in a large way. I’ve totally gotten rid of the “rat race” mentality and focused primarily on doing what comes natural to me. So far so good… What does this mean about the message vs. the medium? i feel that what I do has to do with different aspects of my life. If you limit yourself to defining yourself from one aspect of your life (i.e. your job), then you neglect other parts of your life, I guess I’ll say. But all these businesspeople say you should pick a focused niche when doing your career… That’s only true in a profession where everyone is a carbon copy of everyone else and there’s so much normality it would make me vomit. You are unique, so you should bring your unique capablilities and personality to everything you do. Have a nice day. So as I use the blogging medium to express myself and show that if you limit yourself to just one medium or define yourself by that medium, then you’re not really telling the whole story. If someone comes up to you and says, “I’m a teacher,” does that really explain their entire existence? Does it give you any insight into the kind of person they are? It may give some sort of insight, but it will not allow you to really know what these people live for. Another thing is that using the medium to define yourself limits you from realizing how to use your message in other ways. If you’re constantly reinforcing the lawyer medium and you get a chance to do something else that’s not related to lawyering, and it would most likely be a good experience, then you may not choose to do it because it’s not in harmony with your job title. This is why I find that when people ask me what I do for a living, I simply say, “I stinulate minds and try to make people think, while at the same time laugh.” I’ve been into personal growth for awhile, ever since I had a brain tumor. That was the first spark of growth that started this thing. Then I grew a beard, and now I’m starting to grow internally. And it’s a pretty rapid pace. But I enjoy it to some extent. The place in which I feel it’s really made a difference is in my clarity of thinking and being able to write for hours without being bored. I don’t succumb to the usual mental distractions that plague all of us at one time or another. It’s a great feeling so far. But it’s more than that. I’m starting to make quantum leaps forward in many areas. I’ve drastically improved my diet and eat a variety of fruits and vegetables I would have never tried before. I’m hooked on kiwis. I also have been eating smarter, meaning less in calories, but more in nutrients. I’ve even looked into an all-raw diet in the near future if I ever want to try it.

 Edit:  it seems like every time I put a link on any blog post, it erases half of my post, so the rest of it was mysteriously lost in the ether.  The basic message was that there is no job title for your life.  You are a unique person and you bring a unique quality to everything you do, so don’t limit yourself by calling yourself by your job title, but by the kind of person you are.  Now, if I could only figure out how to stop this inherent depletion of data from continuing.  I’ll most likely have to start typing these in a Microsoft Works Document, which is actually just as risky.  But at least I’ll have a dual copy of it. 

So the main message is to be yourself and don’t let labels define yourself.  No label can be put on the vast experiences you’ve had that are not like anyone else’s.  If you can remember that, I’ve done my job.  If you can’t, you may want to look into memory improvement techniques…

If you’re somewhat creative, then you know that following conventional norms is most likely not the best way to go about living your life.  If you conform to all these supposed standard ways of living, then you will be stifling the creative person that you are.  And this will lead to an array of unfulfillment and regrets.  I really can’t state enough that following what you feel you should be doing in life is the best thing you can possibly do, especially if you have a unique approach to doing so.

I realize that sometimes people don’t know what it is they want to do with their lives.  It’s not an easy decision to make.  Sometimes you may feel that there are too many possibilities.  And you feel pressured to make a choice, but I think the common flaw is that most people look to external phenomena when they should be looking inside to determine what it is they should do with their life.  Everything I write comes from within myself.  It doesn’t come from any external conditioning.  I try and create value by looking deep inside me and just letting the thoughts pour out.  That is why I value journaling so much as a problem-solving tool.

 But if you are a creative person, then why not get creative in all facets of your life, regardless of whether or not you have a definite purpose for your life?  If you feel you could make money is a fun and creative way, then go for it.  I’m going to start experimenting with this.  I have some items I’m going to sell on eBay to bring in some extra cash, at least enough to supplement my meager income from the grocery business.  My main goal is to make enough money consistently to not need to have a regular job through multiple income streams.  I’ve been working on a book I’m writing.  You can get the excerpt here.  I’m enjoying creating this person, this entity, that is so different from anything I’ve ever read and inspires me to write more and more about.  I’m also working on improving my drawing skills so that I can start drawing some funny cartoons/comics.  I’m becoming more of who I know I am.

I feel that if I can unleash my creativity to the extent I want to, I will be able to have some amazing ideas that will lead to many endeavors that will unlock everything I could dream of. 

Having the ability to entertain yourself is very valuable.  This way, you never feel bored.  I could not leave my house in over a year and I’d never be bored.  I get more bored when I’m at work because there is no time to think of good ideas.  I can go on vacations without ever going anywhere.  Having a creative mind is so valuable.  If we all could see that, we’d all be off the dreaded drug called TV.  How many of you have taken the time to read a book in the last month?  It’s so much easier to watch the movie, isn’t it?  But there’s no thinking involved when you watch a movie, just passive watching. 

I must credit my creativity from my early reading. I used to read about a 160 page book a day when I was in elementary school.  I read many of the classic books, as well as the Goosebumps series.  I read the Chronicles of Narnia, and other very creativity-centered books.  They allow the mind to wander.  I enjoy stimulating my mind much more than stimulating my body through watching TV.

So if you want to be creative, just start thinking.  Once I decided to be creative again, my dreams became so vivid I could almost touch them.  I remember the most minute details from them.  It’s almost like my mind works 24 hours a day and I am allowed to think of ideas even when I’m unconscious.  It’s a pretty cool feeling.  I have the power, just like you, to become a creative genius.  We all have talents, but most times they go unnoticed because you’re stifled by “real life.”  They say that your creativity shrinks in size as you get older.  Don’t let that happen.   Grab it while you can.  And live the life of non-boredom.

Who here has ever wondered what it would be like to dream constantly?  You constantly have your dreams and aspirations in your mind.  You never let them go.  You are constantly reaffirming where you are headed.  This would be a great way to live, wouldn’t it?

But we don’t live like this in the real world.  We more or less have outside distractions that ultimately take us away from where we want to go.  This is why I am definitely trying harder every day to limit my distractions or enhance my way of dealing with distractions.  This way, I will be able to handle anything that comes my way. We’re all going somewhere.  Some people are going to do something big with their lives, while others leave those decisions up to others, but inevitably you are in control of your life, to some extent.  Sure, there are outside influences, but I think being able to deal with these circumstances that makes you a success.

You hear stories about people who triumph over adversity.  We here them all the time.  And there was usually one driving force in all of these people.  They refused to give up, even after a major setback.  They had a vision in their mind of what should be and they knew it was impossible to fail, eventually. And this is the mindset that is desirable.  We want to have a mindset of inevitable success, but sometimes fear or other internal or external influences hold us back.  But if we take personal responsibility for our lives, then we can work from there. 

If you’re at an unfulfilling job, it’s because you put yourself there.  If you hate your boss, it’s because of your attitude towards him/her.  There are two ways to look at the world.  There’s the optimistic way and the pessimistic way.  There’s the people who will quit after one failure and then there ar ethe people who keep pressing on, even after dozens of failures.  It’s not because they’re already successful, but it’s because they have the mindset of already being successful.  I think that’s the key.

One of my goals for the next five to ten years is to make one million dollars.  It’s definitely attainable and if I really focus on it and not the opposite, I know I can do it.  Many other people have, so why not me?  And I’m not doing it for greed.  I’m doing it for freedom and to be able to express myself in different ways, regardless the amount of money it generates.  I want to try interesting projects and different schools of thought.  I want to work very extensively with my creativity and see where the limits are.  There are so many things I want to do, and I’m doing some of them now, but eventually, I hope to have enough money where I can pursue all of these things all the time without having to worry about covering my survival needs.

No matter how much money I have, I don’t think my lifestyle will improve with respect to material possessions.  I will be much more giving, I suppose, to causes I care about and to people in my family.  I will be able to take the people I care about out to dinner and be able to talk about what I’m doing with all this “free time.”  But it won’t be free time.  It will be time I fill with many rigorous activities that will allow me to be even more of who I am.  So, let me state my goal in bold italics at the bottom of this post so they really stand out:

 I intend to be a millionaire so that I can give more to causes I support and also my family, to explore my creativity and pursue projects that fulfill me, and also to have the freedom of not having a regular job. (I know I’m not normal.  So having a normal job doesn’t seem like an option, now does it?)

Working is taking a toll on me.  Working at my job that is.  Every day it’s the same damn thing and it never changes.  It’s so damn boring sometimes.  There’s nothing interesting happening there.  It’s like the theme for the store is monotony.  So I have some options I can consider, but I’m not sure which will allow for the best experience:

1. Going back to college:  This is a definite option that I am considering very heavily and will most likely do to further enhance my capabilities.  But it’s such a stretch financially, but a degree is so important in today’s world.  The pro’s are that I’ll be able to get a good job and be able to make a good living doing something.  The con’s are that I’ll be in heavy debt, more than 15,000 dollars by the time I get out, and I’ll most likely make less working because I’ll have to be in school.  But in five to ten years, my potential will increase substantially to the point of being able to have enough money to support myself independently.  That’s not a bad thing.  But it has to be doing something I like to do.
2. I could also become a freelance writer/comedian and go all over the country and travel.  This will take a toll on me in many ways, but it will be an interesting journey, I’m sure.  It would be nice to do that, and once I’m able to in the near future, I intend to go around the country and see what there is to see.  I want to experience the world eventually as well.  It will be a lot of fun, but I don’t have the financial means to do so right now.
3. Become a full-time comedian.  I don’t know if this is completely what I want to do all the time, but it would be very fun, I’m sure.  I feel like if I pursue this goal whole-heartedly, I’ll be limiting my capabilities to only one facet of my talents.  So if I go to do this, I will be only doing one thing I’m good at.  And that might lead to an eventual imbalance in my life.  And I know that people say it’s hard work, but it’s not work if you love to do it.  So it’s something I could definitely do, but it’s something that may be too narrowly focused.
4. Become a comedy writer.  This is probably the most attractive of all the goals here, mostly because I can definitely write well and I also have the capabilities of creating characters and using my creativity to develop a plot and storyline.  I enjoy freewriting and I love to expand thinking and awareness through journaling.  So, it’s a question of how often I want to do this that will determine whether or not I choose this.

It’s just a multitude of possibilities.  I’m looking for some sort of clarity of where my life should go.  I’m almost 21 years old and I know I shouldn’t rush myself, but I still want to get things moving.  Revitalizing myself and rejuvenation are key points for me to get on the right track.  I need to rediscover my passion for laughter and comedy, as well as writing creatively.  Those are the things I need to work on.  That and developing unique experiences in my life to perfectly put myself in places I want to be.  These are my intentions for the next few years.

I want to understand what the point of everything is as well.  It’s almost as we all just run around on this planet with our heads in the ground (it’s possible, believe me).  And most people don’t ever make a real choice of what to do with their lives.  They let someone else do it for them.  Or they’re stuck with other people’s leftover choices.  An example of this is a child whose mother pushes her to become a child actress.  The child does so only because he/she is being pushed to do so.  But I don’t want to spend my whole life wondering what I should do.  I have to take action soon and when the time is right, I will.  There’s something holding me back, probably the thought of not having enough money to get by if I go out on my own, or maybe I’m doubting myself too much.  I don’t know.  I have trouble sticking to things sometimes.  I get distracted.  But it’s temporary.  I have to rerout my thinking so that I’m full of focus, but at the same time being relaxed.  It’s a hard balance to follow, but I’m working on it.

I’m coming closer and closer to fully understanding myself, so that’s good.  I know what I am capable of and I know what I want to do, but the main problem is to incorporate all the things I want to do into one way of life.  It shouldn’t be that if I pursue one thing, I have to put all the others on hold.  It should be all simultaneous.  it should be coexisting.  And that’s my main goal.  Make everything synergistic.  Allow everything to come together, along with making a decent income at this.  I’ll post an update soon.  Wish me luck.

Okay, so I took a nap today.  Not to mention I kind of liked it.  And I’ll probably be up all night now.  Is that necessarily a good thing?  I like to think so.  Here’s what I’m thinking:  If I sleep maybe six hours a night, wake up earlly, and nap right before I go to work around 2 PM for maybe a fifteen minute span, I can effectively increase my awake time by more than two hours.  That’s not a bad idea at all if I think about it.  It’s a form of biphasic sleep I think, but I feel like if I start waking up earlier, I can go for a jog/walk, eat a big breakfast, which is always beneficial, and work on my array of projects I’m currently creating.  If I spend maybe fifteen to twenty minutes napping around 1 PM, I can effectively get my sleep requirements by sleeping less.

But I have to have a reason for doing so.  I’m considering working out again.  Just to increase my strength somewhat and be able to do things easier.  I want to meet my physical body again, as we’ve lost touch, except when I’m at work.  Tomorrow I plan to wake up around 7 AM or so, go to the health club in my development, which opens tomorrow, do some weight lifting and cardio work, then come home, eat a big breakfast, work on some comedy, mostly scriipts and then get working on developing the book I have this idea for.  It’s a book based on creativity and allowing ideas to come to you when they do and not rushing them.  It will also have to do with relaxation and stuff like that, which will allow more creative ideas to flow to you.  I really don’t know how much I can say about this, but it will relate to all different kinds of situations.  It will be a book about living a more creative life in all aspects possible. 

I’m really looking forward to writing a book about this and I feel if I can wake up a bit earlier and get working on myself extensively as well as writing this book, which I hope to finish by the end of the year or so, I will be able to be more productive while essentially not stressing to get things done in what will seem like a scarcity of time.  I want to increase the amount of time I have in each day so I can spend it in a variety of ways.  I feel if I can incorporate some sort of routine into my life that starts early, I’ll be setting a positive pattern for the rest of my life.  Also, I want to start getting to bed earlier, maybe 10-11 PM.  It’s not that I’m tired at that time, it’s just there’s really nothing to do during those hours.  Before I stopped watching TV, I used to watch TV.  Now I spend it doing mindless activities online that I don’t even remember the next morning, so what’s the point of doing them?  I feel that if I can change the waking/sleeping hours, I’ll be able to really focus on comedy at decent hours and not have to feel stressed and trying to get things done so fast, because stress and a feeling of time scarcity leads to an inhibition in creativity, as I’m sure we all know.  I’m searching for a title for the book as well, so I’ll brainstorm some ideas.  I’m not going to rush anyting, though.  If one day I don’t feel like writing or don’t feel like working out or whatever, I won’t.  I just can’t let it become a pattern.  I don’t think it will be a big problem anyway.

I’m working on some creative comedy as well.  I want to create a show that will be very absurd, but it will also be very funny.  I may pitch it to someone and see what they think and eventually pitch it to some network once I get the groundwork done.  I’ve got what I want it to be, so I just need to build a foundation underneath it.  A good foundation is key because without one, it will be hard for the show to stand on its own.  I’m going all out into this, although it will be in a relaxing way. 

A sidenote:  I’ve been intending for more money to come into my life, so I’m sure you’re familiar with the Deal or No Deal lucky case game.  I don’t really watch the show, but I enter ten times online in the lucky case game every time the show airs with a shot at winning $10000 dollars, which would certainly have me on my way to getting enough to live independently without having to get a job.  This will also allow me to do what I love, whether or not it makes me money.  That will be a fine day.  So that’s what’s going on.  I’ll be going to bed around 1 AM tonight as I took a nap, but tomorrow starts the new sleep schedule.  I’ll see how it works and fill everyone in!

I seem to be waking up earlier lately.  I guess this means it leaves me time to really write.  I’ve been waking up around 9 or so and I usually et to bed around 1-2 AM.  So, the way I see it, I might be adapting to having a healthier diet or something.  There is a truth about how waking up earlier is definitely conducive to productivity.  I know that anything I do late at night is never very productive, yet I tend to stay up if I’m on my computer, for maybe hours doing really nothing.  I’m on the verge of falling asleep with the only thing keeping me awake is the background noise from my computer.  But I’m going to make a radical shift here.  I’m going to try to start going to bed earlier, maybe 11 or so, so that way I can possible wake up around 6-7 AM and go to the gym in the morning or something.  There’s  a free gym I go to in my development about half a mile away and it’s a good walk to get there, but it’s worth it because now they have new equipment.  It’s opeining on Friday, so that might not be a bad day to get down there and check it out, although they’re having a grand opening cocktail party at like 5, so I don’t know if it will be officially open at 7 AM on Friday or if it’s open only after that party.  But I feel like getting up earlier will allow me to do more things that involve time-bound events.  Like I can’t go to that gym at midnight because it’s closed, but if I use the extra hours I spend awake on my computer doing essentially nothing except reading and wasting time to use the gym or go for long walks, it will inevitably affect my health. 

It’s a thought definitely taking into consideration.  For some reason or another, I’m putting the comedy on hold a tad.  I’m looking into discovering my true passion right now, and comedy is a facet of this passion, but writing seems to be the main passion I see right now.  Not just organized articles and reserach papers.  I enjoy creative writing and journaling.  Journaling is one of my favorite things to do, especially when I do what I like to call an “unedited rant,” which means I just write directly from my subeconscious and my thoughts flow so fast I can hardly catch up.  there are usually many typos, but the ideas are usually really profound.  I usually gain great clarity when I do something like this. 

But being early to rise will allow me to get these sort of things done before I get started on my day.  I like to wake up, write down any dreams I might have had, then move to searching different blogs, then eating some breakfast, then I don’t know what I do because it’s varied.  But in the varied area, I would like to add some sort of workout routine, whether it be running, walking, working out, or a combination of the three.  I’m sure it will be a good way to pass the time.  The biggest problem that I have with exercise is the fact that there’s no real reason to do it.  Here’s my philosophy.  Years ago, exercise was a necessity becausse we needed to do these tasks in order to survive.  We needed to catch our meals, we needed to run from dangerous animals if we lived in a forest.  Now we have no real need to move fast, except to tone our bodies, which is good, but there’s no intrinsic motivation besides energy boosts, but having an energy boost won’t really do too much for me, as I’m not a driven person.  I’m all about relaxation.  So it’s a weird contradiciton.

I’m not sure what I should definitely allot this time to.  I noticed when I was in college, whenever I was forced to wake up early, I definitely got a lot more done and it wasn’t rushed.  So maybe waking up earlier will allow me to do things that promote relaxation.  Like maybe I couldwork on my goals and intentions and work on manifesting them in an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way, in its own perfect time, for the highest good of all.  I could definitely work on that and kind of put a structure into my days, well most days.  I like to take little mini-retreats every once in awhile.  Like today, I doubt I’ll accompish much as I have to heal my mind, body, and spirit.  I’ve worked five days straight and it’s not that it takes a toll on me because I’ve been relaxing at work as well, but it’s good to wake up every once in awhile and have nothing to do.  It really makes me feel better.

 Today I’m most likely going to go for an extended walk on the golf course near my house.  It will be a nice, trail-guided walk where I can just observe the sights and sounds of the course and just take some mental time off.  I need this kind of thing every once in awhile.  I’m even making significant mental breakthroughs at work when I’m a bagger because there is so much alone time (getting carts, cleanups, go-backs, etc.).  So I’ve been making breakthroughs on a regular basis and I feel like I’m really getting up there. 

I think the best use of the time is to get back to my true nature.  I’ve been moving towards this and been having creative sparks of genuis.  If I’ve written any comedy jokes, they’re much more creative and Steven Wright-esque, but they’re even more outlandish.  I’ve always been creative, but I think I stifled it for awhile because the world says you have to grow up and forget about this stuff.  My next creative enterprise is to try to find unique and fun ways to make money.  The object is to make maybe $100 dollars a month this way.  If I can do that, I can definnitely expand this figure and eventually make enough money to support myself.  We shall see how that works, but I’m defnitely optimistic about it. 

But these are all good things to undertake and I have the time.  It’s not like I don’t have spare time.  I just have to take away the mindless activities I do now, like watching TV at all, which I’ve reduced to the point of less than 2 hours a week.  There’s nothing on there for me, except South Park, which is the only show that still inspires me to watch it.  You can read about that here.  So that will definitely do something for me. 

But I remember coming home and my mom and brother were watching the elections.  It was funny because there was a bottom line of who won and lost, much like the thing on ESPN, so it was almost like they were looking for game scores or something.  “Oh, Sanford won!  Good.”  It was just funny to me.  Just thought I’d bring that up as well.  Good day.

Yesterday I had an extremely enlightening conversation with a fellow brain tumor survivor.  He works at the same store I do and is the most positive guy I have ever met.  He is constantly in a good mood and is always trying to get the customers to smile.  Sure, he can be quite annoying to those who don’t share the same feeling of sure joy, but it holds true because I’m one of the only people who reallly talks to him in a complex way.  So yesterday, we started talking and, seeing as we have similar experiences, he told me this: “I now have an enlightened perspective on life.  I am bursting with joy every minute of my existence.” Then he went on to tell me a story about how his surgeon was not sure whether or not my coworker was going to survive the operation.  It was an extensively intrusive surgery, much like mine was (with 64 stitches in the back of my head).  But supposedly the doctor came out to my coworker’s parents and said the following, “I do not know how I performed this surgery.  It did not even feel like it was me.  It felt like I was an outside observer and something was guiding my hands into the correct positions to carry out this surgery in an effective manner.  It was nothing short of a miracle that he survived and I know that something divine was at work.” I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.  I really don’t.  Sure, his tumor was worse than mine and he told me he had eight brain surgeries.  Eight.  I had three, but one was an emergency one and another was simply poking a hole in a ventricle.  But Mr. R, as I’ll call him, was a real trooper.  He just has this insane positive outlook on everything. and it’s similar to the feeling I had when I first got over my tumor.  But now I’m getting back to that feeling.  To think that I could be dead had I been born in a different time period where there were no neurosurgeons, makes me feel so lucky.  But he is a stunning example of who we all strive to be.  Someone in total joy, at total peace with themselves, someone that I honestly can say I’m proud to have met. I don’t know if you believe that everything happens for a reason, because I sure do.  The fact that I had a brain tumor is something I see as a definite blessing.  I asked my coworker the same thing and he responded with, “Absolutely.”  As you can see, he feels the same way.  And I thank the universe for showing me someone like this because it totally revamps my passion and motivation.  It gives me a reason for still being here.  It’s like the universe said, “I’m going to let you live, now let’s see what you can do with it.”  I’m up to the challenge.  I hope you have  a peace-filled day.