What makes up a "personality"?  Is a personality the sum of all the things that you think??  If so, then the Emerson quote about the results of "sowing a thought..." takes a lot of the "if" out of "what if", at least it does for me  There are a few people who have crossed my life who would go on to success in their particular fields and when I recall those moments, I often reflect on the intensity with which they pursued their goals.  Often, people (myself included) believe that there is a precursor to the heights that one attains in life, like a good upbringing, rich parents, or somehow being "born" with certain gifts.  Though I am sure that having any or even all those things does augur success, they do not assure success in and of themselves.  But, as encoded by Emerson, the steady and sure practice OF the practice that bears success will make one successful.  That is what I saw in those people who made themselves, quite literally, the people that they are.  So, it isn't that I didn't "know better" as much as I did not "choose better".   “Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action; reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character reap a destiny.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

People tend to fail when they are unable to raise the level of their thinking.  This, I think, poses a conundrum … how can you raise the level of your thinking when it is how you think, ultimately, that brought you to where you to the level you are at?  This is why, IMO, people who are unsuccessful in their minds at life, are at a loss.  Yet when a person upon reaching a crossroads that demands that they make a decision, have only the processes that brought them to the conundrum that is leaving them exacerbated.  Our brains are designed to seek and maintain homeostasis… but our MINDS are what drives us forward, drives us to achievement.  And it is the mind that gives us our identity.  You are not only what you think, but also how you think.  It isn’t that success is reserved for only the successful, but for those who believe in their minds that they are, themselves, successful.

Since I was able to confirm my brain injury, I find that I have pushed myself down a narrower slice of being than the one that I was on before the diagnosis of TBI.  Part of that decision was out of necessity… I did not want too much exposure to the world at large.  But that is similar to the path to fulfillment, at least in regard to my personal journey, and to that of others who have the life that has been consciously lived .  The more that I have manage to accomplish, from putting my affairs in order, to relocating and settling into a different city, the more that I have continued to grow and evolve as a person.  I can say that I have a relationship with my oldest daughter, and it goes without saying that KT considers me her Father, capital F.  I have not given up on Lexxie and just maybe we all will get the chance to go to Epcot together. 

Back on message.  I have occasionally been amazed at the progress that I have made.  Eventually I will be able to consider myself the owner/operator of two businesses that improves the lives of those in my community.  I am also talking with someone about a real estate venture… and that still does not take in consideration other opportunities to build other small business and independent contractor-ish things.  The one thing that I do wish I had finished was my schooling, because of what it meant to me.  Even in writing that brings an immediate urge to “make it happen”.  While I prefer going to class, maybe I will have to do some of it online, or at the very least, make it a weekend thing.  Anything to get back on that horse and finish that race is what I plan to do!!

BACK TO BASICS

OUR ROMEO…

I am striving to fix my attention on the things that need my attentiveness the most.  For instance, I would rather plan for my classes both at the Pinnacle Fitness Club and in Papillion, but thoughts of “stuff” precisely the thoughts that I left the Motor to avoid, are cluttering my mind.  Given the preoccupation of my mind, the brain is unable to focus on the work that need to be done.  That said…

A few years ago I found this website, “Wait But Why?” is ran by Tim Urban and he even has a TED Talk about the topic that is at heart of my absence from my journal… procrastination.  He made a series of blog posts about “the why” of the subject and how to avoid the tricks and traps of the instant gratification monkey that lives inside of all of us.  When I started including Kitty into my life, I found that my time for myself began to shrink and I made the executive decision to let my “internet life” go into hypersleep whilst I focused my energies in my real world activities.  Soon, all I had were the small, niceties, of my life to content myself with, as I felt less and less productive with the construction of the life that I hoped to live.  Remembering Tim’s talk, I have decided to adopt some of the discussed principles and apply them to my life.

One of the things that I will HAVE to adopt is scheduling.  Going randomly from task to task is an easy way to become bogged down in the doldrums… the niceties of life.  And in observing Schopenhauer and what can be found in them, such as where a man’s character resides and how prone one is to being a scoundrel (or a**hole… take your pick, as they are too similar for me to make a distinction between them) or someone who you can place trust and faith in, is quite important when you are planning a “grand undertaking”, the operative word being “grand”, because as long as it is an accomplishment of major distinction to you, it is grand enough to be designated as such.  Yet, without a schedule, the “grandness” of your objective is not even a dream that becomes deferred, but something worse… a pipe dream, whether in a hookah or a crack one, may as well be a wish.

So I am going to be producing an entry a week, most likely either Thursday or Sunday.  Occasionally both days, but definitely one of them (unless noted), and it will be low on the ditherings of my social life.  While you can never return to a place, I do long for my initial time of solitude when I arrived in Omaha.  Being alone was something that I looked forward to, and accepting of my own personal faults, thrived while I was so.  I am not outright blaming Kitty for anything… but, I know that I was in a better state of affairs when we first met than I am now.   I did not become a “better person” for my experience with her… I am still tracking to be who I want to be, but after wandering around for a bit, I feel that I have certified the direction that I want to go.

WAR IS BORING

WAR IS BORING

TACTICAL

Winter term of classes took so much out of me that I did not get it together in time to register for spring.  I was already planning to take summer classes but now it has become mandatory that I go for two classes at the very least... ugh!

I have done a video profile for my position as a trainer at Pinnacle Fitness!  It does seem a little odd that it isn’t for personal training, as my certification is for amateur boxing, but whatever!!  Nebraska and I weren’t able to get a schedule together… as she feels that she needs more accountability in her workouts and meeting once a week did not fit her needs.  Understandable, as that is to be expected of anyone seeking a personal trainer to help them out.  She says she wants to work until she gets to the level of being a fitness pro herself!!  As to my training, I am have been coming along quite well and getting compliments on my physique; of course, I still see myself as not as fit as it would appear to observers.  And that leads me to...

The biggest reason that I am a big proponent of resistance training is the direct and objective measure of improvement that comes from a good program.  You lift varies in two of the three training (volume, intensity, frequency) metrics, and you can expect and see change in your body’s make-up and performance.  One of the reasons that there are so many other valid and effective training disciplines is simple to me-- move more and eat less pretty much sums up the entire fitness paradigm.  But I like weight training because it has more of a lasting impact as well as more effective real-life application, along with its many other healthful benefits.

Next week, Ken will be in town and  I am definitely looking forward to seeing him and introducing him to my… wait for it… FAMILY!  I think the most outstanding aspect of my present relationship is the level of acceptance and consideration that I have been accorded.  Speaking with my partner on the subject, she reminded me that HER heritage is considered a mixed one, with her father’s Mexican heritage and her Mom being of Italian descent.  While I can understand the idea of her having a mixed-race identity, her and her sister’s, as well as her Mom’s complexion says “white” to me.  That said, there have been several occasions where she has been asked if she ways Hispanic, which revealed, to me how the construct of race is truly a fiction.  I see her as “white”, which is how she appears to me, and to others, she is just as clearly “Hispanic”.

...anyWHO… life has become very metronomic and bland.  There is nothing for me to “journal” about, especially when it comes to my state of being.  It is more likely that my blogging will become a repository for my random thoughts and odd sense of storytelling.

The blackout on current events has continued and shows no sign of abating.  Instituted after the US Presidential election, I have abstained from deliberately following the news, limiting myself to Facebook post (no clicking) and random eye-grazing of televisions and their chyrons.  Even when people attempt to have such conversations with me, I deftly turn the queries off the subject and leave the conversation as soon as possible.

Well, that is about it from fly-over country.  I will prolly be back with more workout tips and inspiration, and some existential exposition as well!

I DON'T CARE WHAT THEY WRITE

TACTICAL

We have been doing well, training hard and work has been as good as it has ever been.  I have decided to go on and purchase “Being and Nothingness” rather than reading it for free online.  If anything, it is always going to be a good book to have on the coffee table and I just feel better holding the material in my hands than I am with on a computer screen.  Even if you can use some devices to highlight key or memorable passages, the adventure in flipping through pages, finding not only what you are looking for, but also stumbling on other points that may have been overlooked previously is one of the treats that I have always enjoyed about reading a book.  Using a computing device simply lacks the tangibility of a book.

I think that one of the reasons that I have never thought of myself as an existentialist has been the image that I developed of the philosophy in the 80’s.  As a teen, I thought of existentialist thinking of being mopey and one where nothing matter because nothing was “real”.  Apparently, I was guilty of typecasting those who questioned the meaning of life as someone who was simply finding an excuse as to why they were unemployed and still living with their Mom in their 30’s!

What I took for interpretations of Nietzsche back then was shaped by comic book fantasies of what his words meant.  This is not to say that the interpretations of his work that I drew an understanding from were inaccurate… just that my understanding of Nietzsche was not as well rounded and developed (to say nothing of my own ability to comprehend the depth of human character that the works of others’ outlined) it could have been.  There is a very likely chance the same thing will happen as I explore existentialism, but that is precisely the point of it all, in my opinion.

BAD FAITH

The title of this entry owes itself to the anti-intellectualism that I experienced growing up.  Though I have mentioned it before, particularly when I first began to journal, I came to much of my knowledge through reading, which was dismissed as “trying to be white” among many other insults that were hurled at me.  But was always more troubling was the lack of substantive arguments that were made against what I held as a more fact-based position.  I mean, conformation of your opinion cannot be based solely on the coincidence that you are surrounded by those who believe similarly.  Neither can an opinion be dismissed because it is not shared by those around you, either.  Is there such a thing as “the extrapolation fallacy”?

When you have a question between you and another person, with said person being unable to support their belief and being unwilling to accept your ideas that are more concrete, where do you go from there?  Are you supposed to concede to their articulations because of THEIR ignorance?  Though I understand how a little knowledge can become dangerous, how much more so then, is that same lack of knowledge in the hands of someone without the will to pursue the question further, whose curiosity is done with the first idea that confirms what they were told?  I would rather find the information myself and draw my own conclusions.  And I am going to do this now, very prematurely, with Sartre's idea of Bad Faith.

Much of the collective ignorance that I have ranted on in my journal could collectively, I think, be used as examples of bad faith.  My observation of many walking around in today’s world is one where people carry the weariness of resignation, an inevitability to an image of one’s self or condition that they can’t meet or even bring themselves to believe that they are ever capable of meeting.  Rather than meeting the challenge brought by the responsibility that comes in making themselves into the person that they could be.

Because of my solitary nature, I have no real idea on how close I am to making sense.  All I know is that my theory makes sense to me.  If Sartre’s “Bad Faith” is filled with self-deception and a refusal to accept the responsibility one has in making oneself who they are/could be, then maybe intuitively, there is the projection of bad faith unto others, stitched together by false equivalencies, fear, and anti-intellectualism.  For instance…

Recently I came across a paper from the NIH on “Adult Neurogenesis in the Mammalian Brain:Significant Answers and Significant Questions”.  One of the more significant questions dealt with the possibility that adults can create and grow new brain cells.  Now if this is true, then it is likely that I can grow and create NEW brain cells… and with that, extend the limits of my future possibilities.  But I did not think to save or go into my history and try to find it… though I prolly could keyword search for it and have it auto-fill.  But in a previous era, information that I stumbled across from nigh-unimpeachable sources, such as the paper from the NIH, would always be called into question.  And it left me baffled, especially when it would come from those who knew that I would not repeat something that I could not have verified.  Even were I to do so, would it have matter?  The information I came across was through “something that I read somewhere”, which may have well been something that I conjured to make my tale more believable.  F*ck that.

Now the point of the previous story is to show how I have learned to avoid offending the taste or intellect of others.  The question that I have for myself is, does my behavior somehow fall into Bad Faith, or is the Bad Faith present in the relationship condition more of a projection of the other person’s own illusions? People believe that they are rational actors in a world that is clearly irrational.  Their senses define for them only what their minds can interpret and so, are limited by their own vision of reality... Anywho, I will purchase a copy of “Being and Nothingness” from Barnes & Noble, as well as hopefully find the movie “Nausea” somewhere on the internet.