These are not threats

Just lies in hope's twilight.

Currently I'm reading "Never Eat Alone" by Keith Ferrazi. The man simultaneously makes the case for and against "the natural." Someone with his dedication is quite unique, and while he may prod the impetus existing inside those with the interest, I am certain the world remains divided by those born to lead and those born to follow. Greatness lies anywhere but is it really possible that an originator can be revealed in the brush of mediocrity?

I want a Bentley. If I can't have that I want a Ford Mustang. I want to make money and enjoy the process. I am never so great as I am in a strange land. At home I'm beloved. Abroad I represent opportunity, or at least I'm learning to. Finite and Infinite potential exist in the polarities of perspective and who's perspective is quite intriguing. Other people are game changers . . . well. When they apply themselves they are. Engaging circumstance is an indication of your traction in this world, regardless of the discomfort. Ferrazi wrote a book because it was truly in him to do it. Not simply a dream forever to become. He's one of these others that our internal projections tend to bounce off when we're tuned into a path of progressive living. Thought, it's easy to swing it into self-help and leave it there.

I'm operating on a fine line and I'm doing it badly. But it's in my nature to struggle with faith. I do it while whittling away at a blog in mid distraction of a show reminding me vaguely of every high school day dream I may have had about righteous confessions of love i had for this girl or that girl, full with chorus, dancing and live musicians sounding the charge and pulling whomever she was, my way.

I'm writing now to keep it all fluid, but it feels anything but. Ugh.

On to other news: I'm in Philadelphia considering a future in presentations and relationships and hotels with cheap everything and luke warm meals. There's money here and a chance to write and a lot to stretch thin in the interim. I walk around pretending to be George Clooney, except hispanic and not a celebrity. There's nothing in popular culture I care to regurgitate to make this simple practice a worthwhile investment for anyone but myself, unless of course you like the self-speculating mood you may be overtaken with in strange environments while trying to change the future of your legacy.

There may be better places for this, but until I get my act together and begin accepting the truth of the seven circles of submission purgatory (I've butchered a reference and I don't care), this is as good as I care to make it. Should a reader ever go retro-grade on the history of this miasma, I'd be pretty interested in the side-effects.

Ah well. Dreams.

the lodestar

It's not quite magic, the way relationships work. But to remove any type of metaphysical principle to the laws of attraction isn't logical. People may be drawn to one another for mutual benefit but there's a lot to be said for instinct and we can blame it on the genes all we want, but there was still a time when the genes didn't have a clue.

I said earlier today that it payed to be reminded of chaos. Exposure to it is intrinsic to our survival. Man is on the top of the food chain on this planet because we alone have the capability of navigating through it. We have imagination. Our emotions are rocket thrusters for the projections changing the face of the planet. With that in mind, unions are the pulse of civilization. I'm agreeable to the cause and effect but I have my reservations. I'm a new yorker. I got a big "fuck-you" in my pocket for any occasion. But unloading that out of pure cynicism is not the way to live.

A few entries ago, I complained about sales. I questioned the most basic frustration of any ignorant generalizer, can we really sell something we don't believe in and why? But everything I've heard is becoming clear. It's not about the product, it's about your relationship and the nearer you can get to displaying your awareness and consideration, the better you are at having the opportunity to provide value in the form of whatever it is you carry around. I don't believe sales has anything to do with pressure, just humility and observation and homework.

I'm in Philadelphia this week learning a million new things I hope to make the best of. We should all know that hope, however, just won't do. In America, hope is for the people that don't accomplish. With all the opportunity being created by people who do, the hope is unknowingly placed in the percentage of those who stop waiting to keep the world moving. They move it and the rest of the planet gets on with their lives. I wish I could still give all the credit to mother nature, but we'd be satisfied in loin cloths if she was the destination, rather than spring-board. Industry and Evolution beckon to all of us. There's a responsibility in that whether we choose to recognize it or not.

Registered

After about 5 semesters of above average performance, I take a nose dive and fail the 5 classes I register for in the following 2 semesters. My will plummets. I'm shaken and unwilling to risk any more time and money. I take a year off to forget it all with the notion that being a full-time student, while attending a different school online for a separate degree, while working full time, is not so much about confidence as it is about insecurity.

Performing obligations independent of some external prompt is not something they teach you in school. They build the routines that service you through a stagnant, if stable, career. The most you can do to show some element of control is pile your plate and accomplish the string of commands, making the most of it while you go along. The less it impresses upon you any strife, the more you can do. But the minute you question it all, the minute you suffer any debilitating emotional effects, the whole house of effort comes crashing down and on an institutional timetable, that means a full stop. I withdrew from school because up until this point, I had not had an upset to this degree. It happened in large part, due to my experience in my first film production.

I was coming to class late. I was having a hard time getting my storyboards completed. My drawing skills a mess. My short film ideas were tossed, one after another. My camera only recorded half the footage I shot for my final. Much of what was left was overdeveloped. I had the bad juju, and my lax ways in the beginning of the semester didn't help me pull through. At the end, my professor was convinced to prove every possible way I would fail. I came late to class on the day everyone was showing their dailies, and I left without entering.

Since then I've attempted to review books on visual storytelling and on drawing. I've thought a lot about what stories I would offer and if I shouldn't go ahead and put a production into play just to practice what I've been taught. But outside of an institution I have to motivate myself and I'm left to wonder about how truly passionate people resolve their issues. To wait to be told to do this or that is just evidence of a grand fault that will affect me for the rest of my life. There are reasons to spare myself the anguish of another trial I don't have the heart for.

But to admit defeat is to turn my back on a deep desire molded since I was 10 years old. I enjoyed my youth, I played video games, like girls, scraped my knees, rebelled against my mom and all that. It never came fully to surface but I thought then and I still believe that constructing stories for a living is probably the best damn career I can think of. In fact, I don't even see it as a career but an instrumental function in my design; to use my imagination to show people what's possible.

I admit, you couldn't hinge the world's fate on my shoulders without me knowing and expect me to come through. The peace in between moments is precious. I would sit out on a stoop and daydream to senility if the weather was good enough and my bills were paid. But reaching that calm plateau in life should come earned and with people to share it with. And how could I even begin to accept those blessing if I'm unhappy with my legacy (that is hoping there is a legacy to feel one way or the other about).

Fitness, relationships, wealth segment my life and my day into a series of activities, some of which I constantly trade away for pause or distraction. But at my age I want more and I don't have it and I only have myself to blame. Conditioned by the complacency of my childhood, I could argue against the universe and my parents and whomever. But life being what it is, what more can I expect to control than myself once I'm cognizant. Heroism displays the higher objective always. That's why a transformation is involved and an icon created. The act of fighting our own hesitation and impulses is an ancient formula, but school doesn't teach that.

I've re-admitted myself to the fun-house; college. I'm going back, if for nothing else, to finish what I started or at least let the clock run out on my financial aid. I don't have faith in myself, only in the moment and its power to make the future. I hope my regard for time has matured enough to be an asset in the coming challenges this fall and beyond. I pray that the love I have for realizing tall tales and romance and epic dangers doesn't fail itself under the weight of cynicism. Wish me fore-sight, clarity, will power, and luck.

Not Quite Daily Yet

With so much crap to do I can easily spend half the day between sorting out what's necessary, what's interesting, what I've put off for too long. Somewhere in between my mind gets tired and I nap. If I look at something for too long without acting on it, it's like some timer goes off and my body starts to shut down. Stimulation works as it should like direct questions, orders, threats, requests and gravity (moving around and moving things around often require spacial awareness, I don't fall asleep when I'm moving). Original projects seem to strip the life from my bones. I'm not sure what state I was in to write the entirety of my last blog entry but I'm sure I stepped away once to lie down. Currently I have tea and a sandwich to keep me moving and distracted but I feel the weight on brow, the droop in my eyes and that calm equilibrium that goes from shoulder to shoulder that I get when resting becomes like stasis. Writing is calming no doubt and I really hope the peace stems the risk of heart disease. But what if it doesn't and I need to pay for something?

As of now, years into this blog, I have yet to find one subscriber. I don't talk about current events. Often I digress into the vague of subconscious. I hope that people can relate but often I go back and I don't even relate. My thematic curve is over the individual investment in living in a "free" world. Do we fully appreciate it? Why don't we make the best use of it? How do the "bad" neighborhoods end up that way? Why are children roaming around unguided? I only have guesses. I'm not interested in research. I speak to people, I observe my community, I read the news some times but generally leave it there. Somehow I've got an answer for everything regardless.

It doesn't make me feel better that I can go on and on, but I'm fueled to in spite of myself . . . when I actually sit down to do something. Where do my days go? I'm convinced that wealth begins with a state of mind. I don't have whatever that state is and since I'm finding it I'm pretty much uncomfortable in some way on a daily basis. I'm prepared to lay down right now, but I'm hunched over this thing with an excuse for being otherwise productive, or otherwise a quitter. I woke up not 2.5 hours ago and I'm mighty tired. I've got calls to make and a book 7 pages in and 3 miles to run and gf getting home soon and tickets to buy for something on M-day and birthday party to go to and an extreme desire to play almost any slightly compelling video game. Did I forget it'd be awesome if I cooked my own food?

I've tried the planner thing. I'm going to have to try it again but I don't really feel motivated to look at it or even follow it once it's all down. How can I be this conscious of what's needed to improve my life and have this much disinterest at the same time? How can I pursue something I'm also avoiding? Right now I suck but it's inconceivable to be on the verge of 27 without a flag in the ground.

Sigh, I'm giving my body 15 minutes to get the droopy out of its system. Then I'm going to starbucks to listen to some strange world music, purchase one overly pricey latte, and believe among strangers that I am far more conditioned than my privacy would reveal.

The Things That Make Us Strong

A complete list couldn't be warranted. No one knows the complete truth about the mystery that compels us. Some of us need quiet time to wonder and contemplate about the breeze or the way sunshine feels or the intent behind the hand caressed by yours.

We don't truly know any perspective beside that of our own. It can be a source for anxiety or even peace depending on a variety of factors. But there are no more important elements than the one we base our decisions on. In a life where the worst thing that happened to me was a seed of doubt, I have little to fret over. The little is enough to stem the courage I believe I have inside, needed for the efforts required in my destiny. It is a choice, and if you prepare, not one you will suffer as greatly for. All change hurts a little for the letting go. And until we trust ourselves to the seasons before us, we are in the dark, senses betraying an alien manifest.

This is each year of my life and fear is the stabilizer. It always has been. How we judge the calming effects of hesitation can be viewed over a life time of perilous waters, not for the chances taken but for those passed up to maintain an equilibrium in the mounting expanse of our potential. Venture too far out and you can, and perhaps will, get lost. The acquisition of personal power is not without an element of danger. If your will is too wide, too far reaching, you may thin out and lose your connection to anywhere and anyone.

The void is worthy of fearing. And the fear is its own danger. It may hold you in the grip of the thing you loathe, and the relationship is intense for its proximity to your thoughts. Obligations keep you busy. Distractions keep you away. The world was meant to be engaged as an adventure. But we are complacent in the immediate. Time passes. Opportunities dwindle. Energy becomes stagnant. And the question arrives: Is it worth it? What I'm doing, where I'm going, the people I'm involved with, the patterns I've invested in? Not thinking is easier and widely considered the higher alternative. Speculation is tied to indecision; a negative. It's sad that realization has become an island.

All the while you trade external experiences for internal ones and vice versa. You beat around the bush, circling the truth defined by the limitations you refuse explore. The silhouette of a different life takes mold and old decisions come to the surface; old mistakes perhaps and chances long gone.

"What is Love?
Baby don't hurt me.
Don't hurt me,
No more."

Yeah I know. : P

It's a classic that speaks to something generally untouched but all too common. We can build a dream in something that has no place for us and the prospect of taking control and building that place seems daunting for the lack of consideration from the environment or the minds that police it.

The relationship you want, the career you want, the home you want. Everything else is some extraneous side-story to the needs of today's children. Survival is an emotional, social thing now. Living means connecting. And some of us strive for the strength to turn the connections true and to make our hearts soluble or solvent. We need homes for the heart and mind and when we can't have them at the time we feel we need them, we suffer.

It all comes down to the quiet. It's fair to wonder if you're truly happy. Cynicism being the trend in the modern era, even the question is a painful practice because of what it means; primarily vulnerability. No is invulnerable and yet everyone moves forward. Everyone acknowledges the truth in some way; if not that they're lonely, that they do exist in a solitary viewpoint. Your environment's understanding is not guaranteed. The danger is in dissolution and a thousand smiles can't make up for genuine silence among the family you make.

The lost boys and their leader had their happy thoughts and it gave strength. It's childish to think something that simple can help people fly and be brave. I've spent a long time seeing the silly in it and protecting myself against thoughts that threatened my constitution and pointed at dreams I've long since abandoned. I did it because accepting these influences would make me subservient to unrealistic wishes, incapable of the strength I so desired; unable to live independent from the errant machinations of chivalrous dreaming.

It's bullshit but the world has no problem prizing the fantastic as fiction and in commune we follow the faiths of our projected ideals, each of us in secret revelry of a worlds full of justice and love requited and life-glory. We go home and hold our wishes deep down as the days pass until they are partially forgotten or the obligations return to claim time away from the spirit's endeavor to proceed as it should.

I've been blessed with a great dream, and the will to form it was . . . altered, sometime ago. I search now for the way to accept that the dream has always been stronger than its obstruction, that indeed the obstructions are the consequence of fears for the truth being real and a world truly capable of accepting the glory we may yet form in it. At the bottom, I see something sensible and fundamental in the thought that what makes us strong doesn't exist. It is woven into dark fabric representing the chaos of all possibility. It is the virtue reflected off our hearts, unattainable, beautiful, infinite.

Is that OK? To never truly have something, and spend your life creating it? In our wildest dreams we say YES! I never exploited that energy. I will try.

Fun-house appraisals

I spent about an hour feeling comfortable about a profile picture. I went through several snapshots on my web cam and found unsatisfactory statements being portrayed. I'm also a little loopy from some caffeine powder being sold in the drugstore. It was an experiment and hear caffeine is bad for you anyway. I was falling asleep prior from too much wonder. and now my thoughts are somewhat scattered.

At some point I'll be cold-calling for a new venture I'm involved in. My previous concern over the villainous, manipulative, salesman role is gone. Replaced is simply the foreboding of first interactions. Our life is often propelled through our reflections in the eyes of another. Being considerate is valuable, being an introvert is detrimental. I don't like it, it's strenuous but I do it in little bits and usually the fear is based in nothing but mystery. I move along ok.

When I exercise, I find extreme value in how the internal conflict between mind and body services in levels of pain and fatigue. It's like I'm finally having it out with myself after days of indecisions. Occasionally this spills over into other progressive acts, like cleaning, cooking and writing. But creating a discipline of success is still a work in progress and maybe always will be. It doesn't really matter to think about though until current levels yield sustaining profits. The industry of the soul being warped by tendency is like a big joke on the culture of youthful ambition. Guidance is not meant to be a luxury but a requirement. I give a lot of respect to people that can and have motivated themselves to their own targeted heights. However the passive suggestion to some inherent flexibility new parents may have about the care and support of their children can be a determining factor in the mass hesitation of young people to do anything more than build on their BC rank or study raid boss encounters or whatever it is that girls do with their time while boys plot to engage them.

I often receive statements from my closest elders about pride and peace of mind about how I turned out. But I know how I'm living and how I want to live in the future and the disparity is disheartening. Everyday I push and realize that during the exertion it's hard to remember why. By the time I get to looking at my own reflection, I'm confused as to what I'm searching for and that flux propels itself into the challenges invented by my initiatives, no matter how impulsive they were. I believe there are people out there that don't think nearly as much about the relationship between self and applied angles and consequence, but how human can you be if you don't learn as you go, but just act and accomplish without demanding reason or assurance. How are successful people created?

My parents aren't missing, they do have their own distractions. I'm not alone but I prefer my own shortcomings to those of others. I see that production and marketing all begin with pen & paper and solid appreciation for cause and effect. We could all be so effective if it weren't for the nameless. I can't honestly say I'm thoroughly distracted from writing or exercising or working all the time. I acknowledge that I wish not to. It is the paradox behind desire and it is invented here in society. If I can acquire, my existence giving me the opportunity to afford the acquisition, then what truly prevents the effort. A million answers and not one satisfactory about how determination prevents itself. I think language is generously applied to successful people, so much so that they seem pinnacles of focus. I have considered the idea recently that maybe success isn't hard won at all. For those most likely to enjoy and adapt to a subject of interest, it happens naturally and organically and with just regular practice they are often prepared when an impulse of supportive energy passes their way. It's possible that everything we think we know about hard-work is false.

Monetarily, systematizing an endeavor with a mixed team of specialists is standard practice for maximum freedom. Regardless, it seems daunting to the normal masses who yet even know what they truly enjoy working at. I generalize but I get out, I'm not crazy. We need a change of understanding.

You don't lay down in NYC.

In fact, I could probably argue that anywhere. But NYC has a reputation for being particularly live. It brings people together in all sorts of environment. People are the prime mover of all things happening in our society. Knowing them should be the big business of anyone venturing anything remotely ambitious. I don't know how long it takes to earn the gumption to adopt an aggressive social stance, or if I'm fighting a genetic stamp of "introvert." What I do know is I ended up in some high-rise lounge in upper-midtown the other day. My entry ticket was my pheromone-bucket of a cousin; I don't know the science. I watch gorgeous women wave white flags in his presence. He doesn't say much and has admitted he doesn't care much either. Apparently this is key when dating in a mature market, being needless. I think I'm pretty good at pretending, it doesn't change the fact I can't remember the last time I was notified that a model saw Jesus in the back of my head and praying I'd notice her revelation and start a conversation. I used to believe that girls never looked back, this is why men always do. But, believe it or not, the hot ones you wish had more humility in them, do have their exceptions. When they make them, they don't just look back, they look repeatedly and they stare.

It's a stretch to breach the metaphor here but consider how perspective educates. New angles add dimensions to previously 2D realities. All the opportunity in NYC doesn't count for much if you aren't out there experiencing it. The opportunity of experience itself comes seldom to those who don't prepare. Taking care of yourself, maintaining your appearance and being confident enough in what you can offer may be a few of the steps that can get you into some hipster playpen overlooking the little people scrambling down below (dismiss my inferiority complex, it really does feel that way when you're up there). Did I mention, the woman inviting my cousin was just serving the drinks in this environment where none of us knew anyone personally and we drank for free the entire night, with table service which she appropriated from another group she somehow kicked out. There are so many rules to bend and break in life and most often this happens out of impulse: in this case she wanted to get to know him, invited him where she could at her leisure, took care of his people and got her time in, all without the proper authority.

The magic of wealth and freedom (moving where and when you want to, never wanting for the basics and a bit more) has little to do with money, I'm starting to think, and more to do with realizing what is already within your grasp to exploit: Strengths, positions, friends, common sense, desire and youth. There's no more royalty, upholding a cultural hierarchy is something done in the mind. It's flexible just like everything else up there. Sometimes perceptions aren't of any value and living with a forward lean can yield more results. Whatever you do, if there are dreams to pursue, don't entertain functions that reverse your output when you'd have more than enough energy to drink and dance the night away in strange environments amidst provocative energies. The work is related to the reward through you. Everyday you have the opportunity to entice the universe to play your game. But None of it happens without engagement, and exposure.

I was only out because another cousin came in from out of town for his birthday. I'm glad I didn't bitch out for laziness.