Looking back, this year in my life....

Well it's almost the end of another year, one that I will look back on fondly, because it was the year I finally DID something, I took action to improve myself, and my life. This is the time of year when I remember that it's a lot like each day; each year, when it passes, will never come again, and I think about what I'm going to do differently in the new year coming up. I don't like to dwell on the past all that much, it's gone, and there's nothing I can do to change it, but I can change what I do now, and I can make plans and set myself on a path that will lead me to better things. To a better "me". If there's one thing I've learned, it's that wallowing in regret or being depressed that things didn't go this year like I'd hoped, or, conversely, congratulating myself profusely for a job well done does little to keep things going forward. There is always something to improve, there is always something new to learn.

I think that's the biggest lesson I learned this year, and that is to remember that I've never "arrived" at the end, I'm not finished growing, or learning, and that change, while sometimes painful, is always for the better. Everything that happens happens for a reason, and that reason is for me to learn life's lessons that I set out to learn before I came here to live this particular lifetime. I think that for a lot of my life I resisted change out of fear of the unknown, and it has taken years for me to learn things that I could have otherwise done in a very short time. No one knows what the future holds, but to me, the future looks bright. I know now to work to control my fears, control my emotions, and listen to the signs and signals put before me, because they are ultimately going to make me more than I was. Every time I lose control, every time I resist, my progress halts, and in some cases even takes me backwards, and then I have to get up and go again, losing valuable time, after all, this lifetime is not without end.

One thing that stands out very clearly to me looking back on all that has transpired in the last 12 months, and that is that I am the only one standing in the way of my own personal growth. The other people in my life are the catalysts, the ones that prod me, take me in a new direction, but when it comes down to it, only I have the power to move. I have to see what needs to be left behind, I have to decide where I will make changes, only I can determine if I'm making progress, no one else can do that for me. That's the other major lesson. I can't look to others to tell me what to do, it's not their life, and whether they approve or not has no bearing on who I am. Asking others to tell me what to do or looking for their approval are just more symptoms of fear, the fear of standing alone, being accountable, I have to know for myself if something is right, for me. My guides exist to guide, not to dictate. There will never be easy answers. Trying to take shortcuts or relying on them to give me the answer will not help me to grow. I have to put aside the doubts, learn to listen to my heart, my intuition, and put my foot forward, not back. Only then will I be confident enough in myself to truly learn my lessons, and then internally, take stock in what I've become and be truly happy.

I've mentioned in a previous post about how I believed I had a duality of thought, emotion vs. logic. While in some aspects I still believe that is true, I also believe that I use both simultaneously, but that the main issue is my tendency towards extremes. I have many times believed I had achieved balance, but found out later that I had just gone to one end of the spectrum of the extremes, being emotional, or being logical. To be truly balanced, the emotion and logic must be used together, in equal measure, and while there may be exceptions, for many circumstances I encounter, there is no need to think only logically, or only emotionally. I have allowed myself on countless occasions to let the emotions of a situation to overwhelm me, thereby forgetting logic, and to a lesser degree, there have been occasions when the same has happened in reverse. Some things that happened quite recently allowed me to see this very clearly, I let my emotions get completely out of control, and as a direct result, I did some things that can only be described as stupid and completely crazy. For some time afterwards I was severely depressed, and down on myself, thinking I had let several of my friends down. All I could think was "Will they ever forgive me? What must they think of me now?" Then the thought struck me that the only person who needed to forgive me was myself. My friends, while they may have been disappointed, probably didn't spend half the time that I did worrying, they didn't dwell on it, they did like most people do, they let it remain in the past, and moved on with their lives. This time, instead of being ashamed of myself, wallowing in the emotion, and therefore not learning anything, I decided to pick myself up, shake it off, and really see what caused me to act in such a way. Learn from my mistakes. I think the saying that rings true to me the most is the one that says "Insanity(or Foolishness): doing the same thing (or making the same mistakes) over and over again, and expecting different results". That's the reason I didn't learn from those mistakes, I wasn't really seeing them as "mistakes", I figured the situations were different, how could the outcome possibly be the same? But they were. I was so wrapped up in the emotions of feeling bad about myself that I couldn't see the reasons I was making the same mistakes over again. To look at the root cause, and fix that, I finally can move past them, and learn something about myself. Because that's what this journey of life is all about, self discovery, and growth.

I know I may have repeated myself a bit here, thank you for bearing with me, this is how I help myself process what I've learned. As this new year dawns, I look forward to learning even more, this time I embrace the change, because I know when this day comes around in 2011, I will be more than I am today.

This is a test, take 2

I finally figured out what to do, I got the info pasted into the myfreecopyright.com page, and they did send me the verification emails, so now both of my blogs are copyrighted. Go to their page if you haven't copyrighted yours yet, it's really easy, and it will give you peace of mind knowing that your works are registered as belonging to you, should anyone steal them and claim they are their own.

This is a test....

I've been trying to add a copyright to this blog, and this is a test post to see if it "took", you can never be too careful these days.....

Haven't been writing....again

Hey folks, hope everyone's doing well tonight.......

I haven't been writing again, and all I can say is that I haven't felt like it. I've said several times in former posts that I wanted to write every day, but I never seem to be able to find the words to put on "paper". I'm just going to say now that I'm just going to write whenever I feel I need to, because that's what I do anyway, no matter what I might have said a week ago, a month ago, or even a day ago. My goal I think in writing should be one that is not only attainable, but is something that doesn't feel like a "goal" per se, but more of a lifestyle. Or at least something that becomes a part of a lifestyle. All I really want to do is get my thoughts out, in a permanent form, and I want to write a book, several in fact, all that's needed is the motivation.

See, this year has been especially difficult for me, but yet at the same time it's been one of the most memorable and wonderful years of my life at the same time. How? Well, for starters, and this is the "Reader's Digest" version, I left my wife, moved in with some friends of mine an hour away, got a new job, and basically tried to start a new life, living more or less on my own for the first time in my life. Every aspect of my life changed, but then some things stayed the same, like the way I thought, my mind, most of that didn't change much at all until recently. It's been difficult to be away from my daughters, and to see them only on occasion, and when I do, to see how my absence has affected their psyche, and to see the changes in them due to the influence of their mother and grandmother, I don't know, I just feel like I'm losing them. I know they still love me, but more and more now I see that they are getting used to me being gone, and they are not the same as I remember them. It's almost like sometimes they are happy I'm gone. My oldest cries every time I leave to come back here, but as far as the other two, I don't know, it could be that their minds are being poisoned by their mother, who of course is not happy with me, and so then too neither is their grandmother. But I'm not there to see it, I really don't know what they're telling them. So I can't pass judgement. Well yes I can, I know them well enough to know that they ARE in fact telling the girls about how "bad" I am, or maybe how "worthless", who knows? Anyway it just bothers me to think that my girls might not want to have anything to do with me because I'm not there, but more than that, I worry that I'm missing out on them growing up, missing out on moments that will never come again.

That's the difficult part, but there is a wonderful and memorable part, and that's the internal shakeup that has happened directly because I'm on my own. Many things about my way of thinking have changed, the way I view just about every aspect of my life has been affected in some way with this lifestyle change, and I'm loving it. I feel more alive, like I can do anything, but more than that, I feel the freedom to do anything I set my mind to, with no restrictions from anyone else to tie me down, and keep me from being successful. Things are going well at work, and soon I hope to attain one of my goals, which is to become part of the stock crew. Away from work, I've developed a few new friendships, and become even closer with a few I already had, and I've also been able to curb my obsessions, I've started to learn some control, and I couldn't be happier.

A few of my goals for the coming months are to further develop my new thought process, and to make strides in the aspect of my trying to look for explanations for everything, that's something I need to do a lot less. Sometimes things defy explanation, and I need to work on not always assuming that there MUST be a reason for every little thing that happens. It's the double edged sword of my emotional/analytical brain, first I feel about things, then I try to work out why a particular circumstance happened, and then come up with a likely scenario to follow. It's just the way this brain works folks, don't ask me where it came from. I just know that a little more flexibility would do me wonders. Just because my brain processes information into neat little boxes, that doesn't mean that the rest of the universe can and should be contained as such.

Well that's enough for one night, I'll see everyone again soon, when I will start posting the 30 Days of Truth posts again, I haven't done that in a week or so now. I hope everyone had a great Christmas, and I will talk to you soon!

How I think......Men vs. Women

Hi folks, I hope everyone's Winter Solstice/Lunar Eclipse night went well :)

I've been away from blogging again, and this time all I can say is that I just didn't feel like writing about what I was thinking. As is the norm, I've been going over and over in my mind things that are happening, gaining fresh perspectives, and in the case of recent events, gaining a completely new thought process.

This is one of the hardest things I've ever written about, because it will expose what goes on in my mind, the part of me that no one else but me can see, and I guess that makes me feel a little vulnerable, I don't know if I want anyone to see those parts of me, my innermost thoughts, because I don't want to look like some kind of freak. But I'd rather get it out than to try to cover it up, it's too big of a deal to me, and if I don't write about it, it's just going to eat at me until I do, so here goes.......

For as long as I can remember, at least since I was pubescent, I have always treated women differently in my thoughts than I did men. I don't know if it is partially due to genetic programming, or my upbringing, but regardless of the reasons, when I interact with a woman, or think about a woman, my thoughts are completely different than they are about men. I mentioned in a post not too long ago about the duality of my thoughts, and that's when it hit me, in addition to having a few discussions with a few friends. It's not a duality of thought, it's a completely different thought process between the sexes. With men, I feel little in the way of emotions, I care little for how they take what I say or do, I figure "it's a dude, he can handle it". I can be talking to a man, stranger or friend, and I'm completely logical, with very little in the way of an emotional filter, I don't base my thoughts or actions in the fear of how he will feel about me. But have a woman, any woman, walk up and start conversing with me, and it's like someone flipped a switch, I become a completely different person. All of a sudden, here comes the emotion, I care very deeply about what she thinks, my whole persona changes. My friend at work described it as me turning into a pushover, or "doormat", and my thought was "wet noodle". It's complicated but yet so simple. The thoughts are hard to describe, and since I've done it for so long, it's become "normal" for me, it never even entered my mind that all men don't think the same way when it involves the opposite sex. I even had the idea that I "love" all women, and apparently that was nothing more than my deep rooted concern for women to like me, even love me, every one of them that I interacted with I would be silently sizing up for compatibility. Every single one, and it didn't matter if they were single, married, older, younger, nothing changed the thought process, all I could do is see them as a potential mate. Granted, there are exceptions, but you get the idea. Imagine living your life where every member of the opposite sex is sized up for opportunities to make them your mate, every interaction is processed with intricate detail, every nuance of body language and conversation is analyzed with excruciating precision to wring every last ounce of emotional signals from it, some of it done unconsciously, but most of it consciously, to ensure that this particular person likes you and the interaction goes well. That's the gist of it, every single time, every woman, no one is left out, and up until about a week ago I didn't even realize I was doing it.

Think about men, think one way. Think about women, and it's almost like I am a different person. That's who I am. Two extremes, with no balance. As you can imagine, having that thought process also means that all the people I consider to be my closest friends are women, not men. There's just no emotional attachment to men. And to treat a woman like she's "one of the guys"? Never. I can't do it. All the emotion is on one side, with women, and the men get little to none, only logic, effect follows cause, and therein lies my solution to this problem.

All I have to do is balance the equation, to see everyone in my mind equally, regardless of gender. It's really simple "on paper". In practice, I've found it a little more difficult. I have told myself countless times already to treat everyone the same, and even gone so far as to try to see if I could think about the women as if they were men, and it's having an effect. I'm seeing how the thought process makes my actions and what I say completely different, I'm learning to allay any fears of what someone thinks, I'm losing that thought process of worry, the constant craving for female attention. If it really doesn't matter what someone else thinks of me, if everyone is treated the same in my basic thought processes, then I can finally be free to be my true self to everyone. Up until now, only the men got to see that. I was really that worried, my thoughts were so ingrained to that mentality that most if not all women have never truly met "Me". And that's also why I'm finding this subject so hard to write about, I'm worried that once the women know how I've thought in my mind, that they will hate me, and see me as some kind of pervert or something. That's not who I am, and I needn't worry, but the thoughts creep in nonetheless.

So to put it all together, I know now what has been my achilles heel. I know why I do what I do, I know what makes me "tick". My personal interactions have always baffled me, I could never get a grip on why I did some of the insane things I did that defied logic, and now I know why, it's because there was no logic to be found when it came to thinking about and interacting with women. All the emotion was on their "side", all the logic on the side with the men. To give myself balance, I need to therefore put both together with all people, with no segregation, and I have made conscious efforts to do just that. It won't change overnight, but with practice I'm confident I will emerge a different person altogether, more secure, and most importantly, more balanced. I'm giving men more emotional consideration, and women more logic.

The way I've presented this is not completely the way it all works in my mind, I can't really explain all the specifics, but this has been the condensed version of the process as it works. There have been many instances where I have used emotional thinking with men, and logical thinking with women, but for the vast majority of time, it's been like I've said here. I don't know how I'll come out in the end, but as the saying goes, "the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes".

I'm still alive, thankfully

Well I can't believe it's been 4 days since I last posted, but I guess it has.......

The 30 days posts will continue, but today I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm still alive, I had a bit of an accident over the weekend though, with the weather the way it was. I lost control of my car traveling down the interstate in the snow, and ended up in the ditch in the center median. I'm fine, no injuries, and the only damage my car suffered was a bent wheel. I even managed to pull myself out and continue on unaided, which I consider to be a miracle.

So all I have to say right now is for everyone to please drive carefully, and be safe as you go and visit your loved ones this holiday season. I'll return to the 30 days posts soon, but right now I have some things going on and I'm just not in the right state of mind to post them. I want to talk about what's going on with me, but right now I'm not in the right mind to do that either, but soon, I promise.

Talk to you soon everyone :)

30 days of truth, day 11

Something people seem to compliment you on the most.......

This one is difficult to say, as I really don't get complimented all that much. On occasion, I have been told I have nice eyes. When I do get compliments, they are usually about my personality, and when I was in tech school, one of my classmates complimented me on my writing, a speech I was making actually, she said "you pull them (the words) right out of heaven". High praise indeed. Anyway, most of the time I don't get compliments, not on physical attributes, so I don't have much to say about this one......