Update

Hey! First, here’s my Friday Fitness pic. (Yes, that is a PokeWalker clipped to the side of my cap. Be jealous.)

Sorry about the lack of an update Wednesday! This week has been pretty hectic. I recently applied for what seems like a pretty sweet job, and I’ve also been busy with friends, family, and various summer activities. In fact, as soon as I’m done typing this, I have an art show to visit, and my potential employers will be there, so I’m hoping to go make a good impression.

I’ve been doing this blog for over a month now, and I’m definitely glad I’ve stuck with it. However, I feel like I’m ready to take it in a slightly different direction. I like writing, but I prefer writing short stories and working on my novel, honestly. I really enjoy making art with my tablet—it’s just that MS Paint is a nightmare to use. So, I’m not sure if I should just keep chugging and see what happens, or take a break until I can afford to buy a new computer that can run my art programs. Once my equipment is updated, I would love to focus solely on artwork and comics.

On a similar note, I’m a bit divided on my YouTube project. I love singing and playing the piano, and even though learning to play guitar is difficult, I’m having a good time. It was very refreshing to upload my first video and get so much positive feedback (and even a request!) from both friends and strangers. It’s just that making those videos takes forever. Partially it’s because I’m a perfectionist, but even if I cut the number of takes in half, the process of recording, editing, and uploading the video basically takes a whole day. I just don’t know if I like that, you know? I bet I could streamline the process a bit, but I’ll have to figure it out.

I guess right now I’m at a sort of “checkpoint” in life. I’m evaluating a few goals and projects and seeing what should go and what should stay. I know for a fact that if I get this job, I’ll have to cut something, simply because I’m applying for a full-time position and most of my hobbies are pretty time-consuming and intensive. If I don’t get the job, I suppose I won’t have to worry, but honestly, I’m ready to see some income, and I’m even more ready to buy a Mac. If getting this job and taking a hiatus from the blog is what it takes to save up the money for a new laptop, then I will do it in a heartbeat.

Wow. Today’s post is offering nothing particularly helpful, funny, or inspiring to y’all. Oh, well. I’m a bit scatterbrained at the moment, and like I said, this week has been hectic. About the only goal that seems to be going the way I wanted/hoped is the fitness goal: I added 200 more sit-ups to my workout today.

Anyway, that’s all I have for today. I’m going to spend the next week or two soul-searching and assessing my goals, so if my blog posts seem weirder than usual, that’s why. Talk to you Monday.

The Novel

Hey, ducklings! Sorry for the late update, but today was extremely busy and I wasn’t able to get started on my post until late. Then, I decided to make a comic, and naturally MS Paint made my life a living hell for an hour or two. However, that being said, here is the “comic” I have been struggling to “create” for the better part of my Monday evening.

Sometimes, I get struck with a bolt of sudden, overwhelming inspiration that motivates me to type furiously into the wee hours of the night. Most of the time, I sit at my laptop, slack-jawed, until I realize that my fingers aren’t actually typing the next Harry Potter series, then I close Microsoft Word and watch Adventure Time for the rest of the evening. This is my life, kids.

See you Wednesday.

The Revelation

Hello, ducklings! I hope your Friday is going well. Before I get to the nitty gritty of today’s post, here’s the obligatory awkward Friday fitness pic.

On a related note, my workout is going well. I have added more sit-ups and push-ups, and I can now hold a plank for two minutes! That doesn’t seem like much, but three weeks ago, I could barely do one minute, and progress is progress (no matter how small). Little victories like these are always exciting, especially if you’re impatient like me and you demand instantaneous results. I might not have the body of a Greek god yet, but damn it, I can hold a plank longer now than when I first started!

All right. So, today I want to share something that probably seems blindingly obvious to the rest of the world, but didn’t quite hit me until today.

I can do whatever I want.

Let that sink in for a moment. Read that sentence once, twice, seven times. Allow the words to imprint themselves upon your mind grapes.

I can do whatever I want. Seriously! I just realized today that I have a whole life ahead of me, and a whole world surrounding me, and there’s no one to tell me what I’m allowed or not allowed to do. (Well, except for the law, but 1. most of what I want to do is perfectly legal, and 2. I suppose I can still break the law if I want to—I just have to pay the consequences. I am not encouraging anyone to break the law, however!)

I know this seems really, blatantly obvious. Like, duh. Seriously. As soon as you turn 18 and leave your parental units behind, the world is your oyster. We all know that. But do we really get it?

See, I’ve lived most of my life trying to live up to certain standards and expectations—not just those imposed by my parents, but also those imposed by society. I started breaking free from those chains around last year sometime and ultimately made the decision to take a break from college to explore the “real” world a bit earlier than planned, but it’s been several months and I’ve just now realized that there are so many paths open to me, so many choices available. I can move to Cali if I want. I can move to another country if I want. I can save up money and spend it on ridiculous things, or I can give it to whatever charity I choose. I can use my days off to sleep in and goof around, or I can use them to do something constructive and meaningful. I can spend my time learning to play guitar and understand ASL and make art and sing and read and all those other awesome things that make life worth living. (I’ve been doing that quite happily since leaving college behind, ha ha.)

Why didn’t I understand this earlier? Why didn’t I make the connection as soon as I was a legal adult that I had around seventy years of life left and I could spend them doing whatever I wanted? Why did I automatically think, “okay, time to adhere to the same old plan that every other person my age is following.”

It scares me that it took so long to reach this conclusion. I would like to think I’m just a bit slow on the uptake (don’t get me wrong, I totally am), but I suspect that I’m not the only one who spent several years laboring under the delusion that there are only a few paths available and that you can’t really do what you want—you have to do what’s expected. Even after I took the plunge and withdrew from OU, nervous as a cat and terrified of living on my own, it took me three or four months to grasp the magnitude of my decision to forsake the well-worn path.

Anyway, this realization has pretty much brightened my entire month. I don’t think I have words that can adequately describe the happiness bestowed upon me by this revelation. All I can say is that you have to remember that only one person can really tell you what to do. Only one person can really rule your life and make you follow a certain direction. Obviously, that person is you, and if you don’t like where you are right now, you have to start fixing what you don’t like about yourself.

See y’all next week, angel faces.

The Muscle

Hello, ducklings! First, let me say HAPPY AMERICA DAY! To my stateside readers, I hope y’all are enjoying your cookouts, pool parties, and—of course—your explosives. To everyone else, I hope the weather is treating you well.

So today’s blog title is a bit misleading. I’m not actually talking about physical muscle today, like the kind needed to lift heavy pieces of metal or the kind needed to burst watermelons between one’s thighs. I’m talking about a metaphorical muscle: the willpower muscle.

Now, I’m not sure if my theory about willpower has much scientific merit, but it does make a whole lot of sense. Here’s what I’ve discovered: your willpower is basically like a muscle. The more you exercise it, the stronger you get. If you don’t exercise your willpower for a long period of time, then it will atrophy.

Last week, I had a really sucky day where I woke up in a sour mood and just wanted to lay in bed and watch cat videos for like 12 hours. And at first, that’s basically what I did. 10:30 AM quickly became 3:00 PM, and before I knew it, it was 6:00 PM and I hadn’t even had a proper breakfast…or left my bed. (Pathetic, I know.) The longer I stayed snuggled up in my covers, laughing at the kittens gamboling around on my laptop, the less I wanted to actually get up and do something as simple as fix myself a bowl of cereal, or—heaven forbid—accomplish anything useful.

However, that day wasn’t my R&R day, which is usually Saturday. If it had been, I might not have summoned the willpower to get my lazy ass out of bed and do my workout. But…somehow…I managed to turn off the cat videos, drag myself out of my warm blanket cocoon, and begin my typical sit-ups/push-ups routine. At first, I told myself I’d just do the sit-ups and push-ups and skip the daily 5K. After all, I reasoned with myself, my ankle has been kind of bothering me. And I’m just out of it today…I’ll do the regular workout and skip the run.

But guess what? By the time my regular workout was completed, my energy had been restored and I thought, oh, what the hell, I’ll go run anyway. And I did! It was an excellent run, too. Granted, it was a bit later in the day than I am accustomed to, but it went well nonetheless.

So, even after most of the day was wasted on being a complete bum, I still managed to force myself to get out of the slump and do both my workout and my run. Later that evening, though, I caught myself wondering how I was able to do it.

See, I don’t have a shining track record of sticking to plans and achieving goals that take several months of dedication. I’m still not at the point where doing my workout, or practicing guitar, or learning ASL, is just a daily thing that I do without much hassle. Every day, there is a bit of initial resistance that threatens to hold me back. To be blunt, I’m pleasantly surprised that I was able to pull my shit together, get out of bed, and work on my goals. So what did it? What helped me snap out of my indolence and adhere to my plans?

I think it was a combination of two things. First, I had already spent a solid month following a workout/run schedule. A month isn’t very long, but it’s apparently long enough for me to build up my willpower muscle a little bit. Second, I did the good ol’ “baby steps” routine, where at first I told myself, hey, I’ll just get out of bed and clean up a bit, at the very least. Well, now I’m out of bed, so I might as well do some sit-ups. Okay, guess I’ll do the whole workout, but there’s no pressing need to run today’s 5K. Well, okay, now the workout is done and I’m feeling good. Guess I’ll run after all!

Sometimes, all it takes it just that first tiny step. Yes, I know that is cliché as hell, but it’s cliché for a reason, and that’s because it works. If you can force yourself to do one tiny little thing, and then another, and then another…before you know it, you’ve accomplished something. Sometimes, all you need is to check one item off your list. Then, a little bit later, you discover that you have checked off all the items on your list. (And even if you only checked off most of them, that’s okay, too. Hell, even if you only checked off your one small item, that’s better than what most people do…and what most people do is stay in bed all day and watch kittens frolicking playfully to jaunty music.)

Hopefully this post gave you a little inspiration, a little motivation. Feel free to share any stories in the comments section below. See you Friday!

The Dichotomy of Daydreams

Hello, ducklings.

So I recently came to a realization that has been giving me some trouble. Let me tell you about it.

I have a lot of dreams/daydreams/fantasies/whatever, right? I have movies that play in my head as I wait in line to buy groceries, as I run my daily 5K, as I fall asleep at night. We all do, I’m sure. I have an entire gallery of daydreams, ranging from the fantastic to the mundane and everywhere in-between. But when it comes to dreams of my future—dreams that could actually happen, dreams that follow the laws of physics—they can be separated neatly into two categories.

The first category is the Famous/Notorious category. These daydreams all have one thing in common: in them, I am fabulously wealthy and I am a celebrity of some sort. I have become a singer, an actor, a model, an author, an entrepreneur. I host television shows and write witty articles. My face is on magazines and I endorse various colognes and fashion lines. In these dreams, I have somehow become rich and famous.

The second category is the Mundane Hermit category. In these dreams, I live alone in some gorgeous locale—usually on a tropical beach or in some scenic Oklahoman hideaway near a lake—and I spend my days doing my own thing, which is writing, painting, reading, and maintaining a huge garden. I indulge myself with amazing home-cooked meals and a house that I am constantly remodeling. Occasionally I have friends over, but mostly I live my life as a happy, isolated weirdo who spends most of his time outdoors, either in a forest or on the beach. Of course, in these dreams the source of income is not as obvious as in the first type, but I’ll figure that out later.

So…which type of dream do I pursue? I see happiness in both. I see health in both. I see appeal in both. Is it possible to compromise? Can one have the best of both worlds?

The thing is, the first type of dream seems to be heavily influenced by societal/cultural definitions of success. We are told from a young age that you are successful if you are well-off financially, if you have a gorgeous car, if you have a big house. The second dream category is influenced more by my “yardstick of success,” which simply measures how happy one is. However, I’m pretty sure I’d be happy in either scenario.

My mind is a little all over the place today. I’ve just recently realized that there are a whole lot of things I want to do and there is going to be a whole lot of work needed to get them done.

What about you? Do all your dreams line up and make sense? Or are you sometimes paralyzed by all the options?

See you Wednesday, angel faces.

The "Ideal" Male Look/Fitness Goal Update

Hello, ducklings. Today is a Friday, so of course I will be posting a Friday Fitness Goal pic. Here I am, in all my awkward shirtless glory.

To be honest, I’m having mixed feelings about my workout. It’s been a month—I’ve been working out/running steadily; I think I took a three-day-hiatus but that was my only lapse—and outwardly, I see hardly any signs of progress, at least from these pictures. Perhaps there is a tightening and flattening in the abdominal region, but knowing me that very well could be wishful thinking.

However, I am happy to say that I have been running my daily 5K faster and a few days ago, I added 100 more sit-ups and a few more push-ups to my workout. So, even if I don’t have the body of Adonis yet, I know for sure that I am getting stronger and fitter. It’s just taking longer than expected.

I had really thought that a month would show more significant difference. I’m no fitness expert, so I could be dead wrong, but I hoped that after even three weeks, there would be more noticeable changes. I have a very lean body type and the metabolism of a freaking hummingbird, so it could be that I just take longer to develop muscle, but I am not sure. My diet could have something to do with it—I’m vegetarian, after all—but I take protein supplements and generally eat well. Plus, I feel absolutely fine, and I haven’t even had little ills like the occasional cold. In terms of how I feel, everything is splendid. It’s just…I wanted to look better, you know?

It’s not hard to see that women and girls are constantly being bombarded with images and media that portray the “ideal female look.” They are told by TV, radio, magazines, Internet, etc. that a woman should look this way, smell this way, dress this way, blah blah blah. However, it is important to note that men are not let off the hook, either. Just walk into an Abercrombie & Fitch store (or any other store like it, essentially). Look at the male models in commercials for shaving cream, razors, shampoo, soap, and of course fitness machinery. Just as women are commanded by mass media to look a certain way, so are men. And men are told to look like Greek gods. We might be able to get away with having little muscle mass if our faces are pretty enough, but the “ideal male look” generally involves shapely pectorals, bulging biceps, and the ever-present perfectly symmetrical six-pack.

Am I a conformist for striving to meet this standard, at least partially? Am I a hypocrite for telling others to do whatever makes them happy (provided they don’t harm people), yet spending two hours each day working out and running? Am I a fool for trying to achieve this look?

I’m not sure. I could be completely blind to my own idiocy (and it wouldn’t be the first time, unfortunately). But here’s the thing: I like being healthy. I like looking good. I love running. Sit-ups, push-ups, wall-sits, and planks may not be quite as invigorating, but I do absolutely love to run. My workout doesn’t make me sick or unhappy. My life doesn’t revolve around my fitness or self-image. I am not involved with steroids or any kind of detrimental supplement. Maybe I’m a moron for trying to look the way society tells me I should look, but what if I like that look?

Ultimately I think you have to do what makes you happy. If you are trying to achieve a certain look because it will make you happy, and you are putting your own happiness before the happiness of others, then I think you’re probably on the right track. Things start getting murky when you try to achieve a certain look (or anything else, for that matter) in order to appease other people.

And with that last nugget, I’m out! Enjoy your weekend!

How Dare You Mock Me, Punchfork

Hello, ducklings. So thanks to the incredible Internet invention known as Stumble Upon, I have discovered an amazing website. It’s called Punchfork. Basically, it’s a gallery of the most delicious, savory, jaw-dropping recipes gathered from all over the web. About twice a week, I succumb to temptation and spend an hour or two combing through the site, taking note of the more appetizing concoctions and fantasizing about a day in the distant future in which I will have the money to spend on fancy cheese and fresh herbs (organic, obviously).

“Ooh,” I drool, “look at this three-cheese lasagna with balsamic vinaigrette.”

“What’s this? Homemade creamy dreamsicles with orange zest and almond milk?”

“Oh my god...is that a flatbread made with mushrooms, pesto, and kalamata olives?!”

I work myself up into a frenzy at all of these culinary delights. My cursor flits frantically from dish to dish. Inside my head, I envision a bright and shining future in which I am the proud owner of an enormous pantry, an even larger kitchen, and of course a garden filled with so much produce that I could feed the entire population of Rhode Island. In this hypothetical future, I am a chef extraordinaire. I create exotic Asian dishes with the help of my wok. My soufflés are so light and fluffy that they taste like magic-airy-dream-clouds. I often feel the need to return to my roots and prepare extravagant Southern feasts, complete with buttermilk biscuits, fried okra and squash, black eyed peas, and juicy, melt-in-your-mouth blackberry cobbler topped with a generous scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream.

My cooking prowess knows no bounds! I am a god amongst mere mortals! Grown men and women weep tears of exquisite joy when they taste my creations, and countries go to war over who is allowed my table scraps! My culinary expertise enables me to RULE THE WORLD with an iron fist and seductively sweet shortcake! LOOK UPON MY MIGHTY PASTA AND DESPAIR.

I entertain this fantasy for a while. Then, of course, I sigh, close my laptop, and trudge to my tiny, dim-lit kitchen that looks as if it belongs on the set of Saw. I prepare yet another dish of Kraft macaroni and cheese. I eat it slowly and remorsefully.

“Soon,” I whisper. “Soon.”