Discipline.

Not a lot of fun. It has very few attractive qualities and they are all quite indirect. I dare say that the positive form of discipline is obsession. To be driven by a need or hunger in such a way that preoccupation diminishes is really preferable. I can sit with my Xbox360 for hours. I used to be able to do the same with WoW. Both activities have taken up less an less time recently due to simple lack of interest. I find a vacuum however where I spin irrationally to different potentially distracting activities that don't yield much satisfaction. It's like repeatedly going to the fridge knowing there's nothing to eat.
Information being readily available, my new areas of focus are centering around the same story I've been selling myself since I was ten. I'm going to be an author and a film maker. I've got the books and the time and I'm actually finding myself with nothing better to do than to sit and read and study. The mind still wanders however and without deadlines of serious consequence, the only urgency I can generate stems from a vision of myself in ten years. Somewhere along the way I want to own property, a Bentley, a business. I've got all this time to plan and research and the days are zooming by . . . wow, I used to think time just flew when you were having fun. To think you can sense its rapidity from anxiety or speculation. It feels closer to waiting for a package to arrive that you've invested in, or crossing your fingers before they announce the lottery. The closer you get to committing yourself to a life goal, the more dreadful it seems. That fear might have been what's kept me diverted for so long. Courage being a virtue and defined in its spite of fear, would make the term "fearless" an inhuman quality. The lack of any emotion suggests a coldness that does not bend to the ego's wavering response to the dangers of the moment. Of course it's just one example I'm using to generalize the conditions, like doubt, that stamp out consistently progressive behavior. But I wonder if the distribution of monetary wealth isn't some indication of a play on the disconnect from our relative vulnerabilities. If you're sharp enough to make life a chess board, one you can see clearly and move with purpose, then what does that make you?
The important moments string together and make something as yet imperceivable. We can speculate and come no closer to realizing the balancing act of our potential weighing itself upon our decisions of courage and passion and fear. I've started to feel a guilt that grows around the hours that pass. Sometimes living starts to feel like being a part of a system you have no say in, when you get down to figuring out where the unhappiness comes from. And it's ludicrous that you'd have no say. But the alternative truth makes one pause. It's the pause that gets you, kills you if it can. I have to remember not to pause. It's OK to let the world know I got a clue and I'm using it. Maybe discipline comes down to not pausing. It comes down to faulting the argument for hesitation or moderation. I see people all around working so hard and digging themselves deeper into all forms of debt; to bad relationships, to jobs, to places they don't want to be in. It's hard to accept you can put that same effort into change, and it be OK with the world you've come to know. The paradox is it's not OK with your world and what you've accepted of yourself. Light can shine in from the outside and all it causes is trepidation at first and for a while after. If the only thing to put faith in is consequence, the despair can be strenuous if not fatal. But it's this pragmatic view that becomes evidence you're accepting control of what happens. If you can get rid of that buffer of pretext and misconception, the anxiety about the "what ifs," then the information they yield become relevant and strategically necessary to navigate your way out. Everyday yields opportunity to practice this control, no matter where you are.
"Discipline" has a bad connotation because to the average person it means forcibly doing something you don't want to do over and over again cause you have to. It doesn't portray favorable commitment, constitution, or desire because the word is beaten over the heads of individuals that can't relate: parents to children, bosses to subordinates, teachers to students. Discipline is demanded by the institution upon its dependents. There is no one word of equivalent describing when the dependent demands it upon the institution, or when the soul provides the imperative upon the body. No I'll strike discipline from my mind and see what I can do with desperation, obsession, rage and love and my own imagination to light the way. It sounds chaotic, but doing things for the sake of practicing a sterile behavior; being disciplined as an end in itself, is still submitting myself to a laborious use of my will as deemed beneficial by the standards of authority I forgot to recognize. Life should be an adventure, not a daunting practice. I can play video games religious. I escape everyday to the terms I prefer. Evidence exists that I can be dedicated to something. I just need to bring those terms home to me, and own them in the things that matter. Then discipline won't seem like a lash. It'll be a banner. And my faith in consequence will yield the spoil of production.
In the end, I as a young man with an open future, just want to declare myself something positive and forceful. Nothing is trivial.

I don't know what to write.

No. That's not true. It's not plain to me but it's there nonetheless. It's some thumping, clanking nonsense in the background. The only tangible material lies in the intent. It's most clear desperation is a stride toward legacy.

The ride is so important, so the ego frays before the dilemma of "how?" and "why?" relinquishing moments to translate the intent for the long view. It's easy to get caught up in wonder; the appreciation of life's mysticism. The quiet moments at 2am, when the pretenses fall and falling asleep feels like giving up, are the clues that the day and its distractions acted both as hiatus, and missed opportunity to fight for something closer, to the truth.

Today I quit my internship. I cut a loss of time ill spent. I'm 26. An internship without direct knowledge of the company or a strategy to win the hearts of its management is like donating life-times to the abyss of never-where. I try to find consolation in the lesson, that decision making should not be a passive consequence of external events. Were that lesson so easy . . . I've been wanting to sit still and write my business plans. My unemployment is running out, I have few games to claim my interest. I'm building the courage to jog again. My life has be a series of preparations and plateaus, but I won't stop believing that perspective can change the game. Not everyone ages well. Peel your lids back and find yourself racing a demon without regard for showmanship or declaration. In fact, the enemy of progression is silent; absence. The fight for legacy comes in simple moves, strategies, counterattacks, feints, presses and withdrawals. It's sort of wonderful when you take a step back. But I do wonder if that hand that articulates this tapestry isn't simply my willful own. Is idle deliberation a sign of the crazies? I wish someone had the authority to point that out. But I know I'd flip them the bird anyway. Being human is a trip. No wonder the signs don't come in plain English anymore.

Incomplete

If I said I felt lost, I'd feel pretty funny. It seems such a melodramatic statement, complete with generalized overtones of despair having no function other than to justify idleness.

But I do. Tsk Tsk to me. And I travel between homes of family and sentiments with not real sanctuary of my own. I see the roads and skies passing around me and I wait for some solid ground, all the while knowing that waiting is a joke and an excuse ultimately revealing nothing but a standstill. Time is pushing me forward like the momentum of the planets revolution and you'd think I'd get the hint. I do in fact. I dare say maybe . . . just maybe that missing gear, that crossed wire, maybe it's been OK this whole time. What if I'm not broken and it's all some backward decision I made somewhere along the way that I'm too scared or too comfortable to re-neigh on?

Yesterday I did this and tomorrow I'll do that and the whole mission will be pushed back another hour to another week and my sadness will linger upon months of regret. But I'm awake during all this. The shame is sharpened with time and it has its own grip on movement.

I got this whole back'n'forth thing going on if you haven't noticed. I have some work I put off for several levels of a video game. This was after a day of listening, which is easy to do, to someone who cares about me and uses the time with me to self-medicate with appropriated wisdom that isn't appreciated elsewhere. I'll call him Coach. He reaffirms his righteousness, gives me confidence and we do this all day. If it weren't for the evidence he provides I'd sign off completely but I think it's working cause I come away terrified. It doesn't quite stop me from living but it makes me aware of how far behind I am. He see's my potential tomorrow, I see bad habits repeating themselves. Hope is great and all but you need a sentiment inside you that sort of works like a point man and sharpshooter combined. Move forward, line it up, pull the trigger and see what happens. It just happens to be that my trigger might take 2 years to pull. I'm guestimating.

We're talking ambition here people. According to my data, thinking is of no use by itself. It's an impotent agent. There is a great benefit in the unknown. Within it lies our greatest moment. And while adventure may imply spontaneity, it takes the strictest discipline to properly explore the potential of the thinking process.

Babble. No spelling error there. It's just what I do. Speculation assassinates progress. This all makes me wonder about drugs.

I like the idea of being an entrepeneur. Along the way I stumble into all this self-psycho-analyzing and I wonder how self-made millionaires never talk about all this. I do this because I'm a common guy with that common dream of being supremely uncommon. I know the general populace is where a lot of people end up and thats it and I don't look down on anyone for choosing a simpler path. If it's good it's good. But I wanna leave something behind, I just don't feel that, as a minority and as a lower middle class citizen, I have the programming for it. I'm scared of the lack of living and ultimately I sabotage myself anyway. I don't know why but I got a clue the other day it might have something to do with the fundamental doubt instigated in me when I attempted to rationalize my father's absence from home as I grew into adolescence. The discomfort and worry and general vulnerability sill linger. I don't think about him that often, these emotions are just residue and yet it's a sticky tar that was never completely washed off.

I don't want to make my dad the point of any argument. I don't think I can count on any resolution if I depended on him to make sense of my inertia for me, or if I depended on him to just help me resolve my dislocation from assurance. I don't want to depend on him even though I should be able to. Despite best intentions, he just wasn't there for me the way I needed. Seeing children grow up without guidance pains me. I don't know if its something I could live with if I had a child accidentally with nothing to give him and then have us forced apart or I winded up being forced to rationalize being separated from him or even worse, found myself distancing the child over emotions of indifference I hide behind some obligatory appreciation for vague concepts of whatever the hell it is stupid young men think about fatherhood. I'd rather sign up for a large term life insurance policy after getting in shape and then pay someone to steal my wallet and blow my brains out so the kid gets the money. At best someone can tell him I was trying to rescue somebody and he can build some awesome romance around it. Even if he hated me for it, he couldn't refuse to believe the act was noble and I'm sure the nest egg would give him the means to pursue his passions and test his ideal on the world.

That's a lot more speculation than I should invest in a blog entry but I don't really know what to do with this yet. Being consistent would still be a ginormous step up for me. Growing is easy when you obviously don't know shit. When you think you know is when you start to fight for inches.

Yeah, well . . .

Blogging isn't exciting anyway. I could spend 500 words speculating on the reasons why people do it and essentially I'd call it therapy, but I'd lie if I said it had nothing to do with an idea that someone with the ability to amplify might notice my message.

Self improvement, or discipline as its otherwise recognized, is hard because it's unnecessary. It breaks the equilibrium. It leaves us potentially bewildered and left thinking distracting thoughts like "why am I on this treadmill? Why am I spending hours trying to control my fingers on this stupid keyboard? Why am I saving this $20 bill? Why am I bothering?"

I submitted a readmit application to Brooklyn College earlier this week. I also recently invested in some test material software for IT certifications. I'd like to be self employed by the summer with maybe a restaurant gig to hold me down. It's all fantasy at the moment but I can't help but wonder if it really isn't all there for the taking. I'm in NYC after all. Hustling bring people together. Hunger leads to wealth and hunger is gravitational. I just hope I'm not a delusional 26 yr old. I know I'm afraid and avoiding more than a few things. Even now I prefer sleep to this rambling. I just know though, that if I don't write, I'm breaking myself and killing my future. I wouldn't feel it cause that kind of death takes a life time to a achieve, a lifetime of putting your dreams aside.

We fight for more than these dreams. We fight for hope itself.