Time to be thankful…

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I bartend weddings, graduations, and corporate events to pay for my writing habit.

You learn a lot from people who are starting out, ending or are somewhere in between. The constant at all of these is time.

At all of these events, regardless of the event’s purpose, time is brought up in some form. Whether it’s the time they’ve been with their company, the time they’ll be spending with their new spouse or the end of their journey in the corporate world.

We think of time only when it passes us by or when it’s coming towards in our looks to the future.

We rarely look at time as something to savor or something that we need to harness.

Taking the time to structure our lives in the best possible way to harness the time we have left, because honestly, we never know when we’re out of time.

There is a constant with all of these moments I’ve worked, not just time. Thankfulness.

Thankful to be honored, thankful for family who’s supported them and the rare, thankful for being able to keep going through the hard times.

I make decent money with the events, but it’s the stories people tell about their lives that make the events worth it.

I have coworkers who talk to each other during the speeches while I’m listening intently to them. I cherish the speeches because the time you spend listening is your time, not theirs. You’re using your time to focus on someone else instead of wasting it with idle chatter.

 

Transcendental Meditation two years in.

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My anniversary for my first transcendental meditation session has come and gone and I realized, I haven’t done an update.

Here’s what’s happened in the past two years.

  • My wife started doing TM and it’s greatly improved her bipolar disorder.
  • I quit my job in Las Vegas to pursue my writing. This is something I’d never have had the courage to do otherwise.
  • I write full-time and though there have been challenges along the way, I’d never change anything I’ve done in the last two years.
  • I’ve had numerous people reach out to me on Facebook who had read my articles about TM from TM.org. This one thing has meant more to me than anything else.

I still have depression issues, but they are less than they’ve ever been.

One thing I’ve started doing in my daily routine is exercise. The combination of settling my mind and exercising my body has made a complete difference in my life.

I’m more focused in my life than I’ve ever been, I’m not saying things have been perfect, life isn’t perfect for anyone, I know that I’m a better human for doing my TM twice a day for 20 minutes each.

If you’d like more information about TM, follow the link in the article. If you’d like more information about me, connect with my on Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter or Anchor.

 

Morphing…

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We morph, that’s all we do.

We change from one person to another throughout our lives until we discover the person we were supposed to be.

For some of us, it’s a religious experience that causes the change, for others, it’s a business experience.

While all of these are possible, the one thing that follows all of these is adversity.

In our lives we reach a certain point where we need change, we either revert who we once were because of the modification or we have an awakening that brings who we should have been in the first place, forward.

This is the advancement of self. It is the advancement of who we used to be that clarifies who we are and distills in us the person we knew we had to be instead of the person someone wants us to be.

Becoming the person you want to be instead of the person others want is hard, but it’s worth the effort.

 

Carrying the flame…


We get to the other side of who we need to be slowly and often without merit.

Those around us will ignore what we’re doing or they may stare and wonder why.

To those who’ve reached the other side, I say take your life in the hands you’re given, run through the forest of your life and cherish the flame you’re bringing to others.

What we forget about the other side of your life is that it’s often reached through tumultuous beginnings and we’re unsure of the pain we’ve caused until we sit down with someone we’ve caused pain to.

It’s in this event that our lives have reached that other side.

We’ve gone through the fire, crossed over and begun to understand who we are, and sometimes we were.

 

We understand that the flame is often born from strife and we have to carry it to others so that they may know the flame as well.

Carrying the flame to others, no matter what your difficulty should be your life goal.

If you’re a writer, write about the pain that brought you to writing. Painters, stain your canvas with your pain.

These little things are vastly different from the rest of the world and what it does.

Our creativity brings us to the other side of who we need to be and without it, we’re the same as everyone else.

Climbing my mountain…again!

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I’m listening to Staind right now. It helps me focus when I’m wondering what to do with things. Nine Inch Nails does the same thing for me when I’m angry.

But, let’s get to the gist of this post, shall we?

Last July,  my wife and I boxed up our house in Las Vegas in an attempt to get our kids away from the constant barrage of naked women on billboards and the way Vegas portrays women in general.

It was something we’d planned for eight months and we’d saved enough to move, get our stuff in a storage unit so we could later put it in a house.

Another reason we moved was so I could write.

This is something I’ve wanted to do since I the age of 14.

Today, I look at what I’m doing and as Neil Gaiman says, “I’m moving away from my mountain.”

I’m getting farther away from my goal of writing full-time.

I’m between two places, one that leads me to the mountain top, another that takes the mountain and places it under a pile of workout programs, supplements, and distractions that I shouldn’t have been involved with in the first place.

I should have known better, that’s the problem. I keep looking at where the road diverted and get sick.

I’ll be writing and ignoring things for a while. I love working out with these programs, but I want to be a writer.

I have an event in Dallas in May and that may change my mind, but writing is the reason we moved and what I’ve been doing has taken time, resources and money away from that goal.