Tag: blog

Secret to My Success

The value of exploring new things can change your life. Every university likes to talk about academic "excellence" with hundreds of pages in the course catalogue of course subjects. The attitude seems to be that you can choose anything you want, as long as you do it well.

What's the end result of this?

Many students end up staggering under the burden of student loan debts (spoiler alert I'm in it for $90,000 for just my bachelors). The student body becomes unknowing subscribers and executors of "Peter's theory," that purports a theme of getting just good enough not to suck at your role in a company, then getting promoted as soon as you start doing well. (Leaving a chain of events where everyone is always partially sucking at their jobs).

The college mindset is often (tho of course it depends on the school, and your professors),

--from an academic advisor standpoint--

"It doesn't matter what you do. Just graduate, and that piece of paper will get you set for life."

Yet Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to become a millionaire starting Microsoft. Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College to found Apple Computer that is so part of our lives today.

What can we conclude from this? Baby Boomers often feel a sort of intangible optimism due to the rapid technological advances for the 18 years following the 1950s that seemed to infer things were always going to get better regardless of if you made plans, because success is based on luck. Which is incorrect.

Success is based on strategic planning and including within these plans, projecting for the future.

Millennials looking back to Baby Boomers often also ascribe success to a series of fortunate circumstances, family, money, private schools, who you know etc. Yet, there is a lot more to achieving goals than just opportunity. Plenty of other people had chances to capitalize on a market gap their company could solve but failed to innovate, clinging to old designs instead of evolving to meet the changes in public preference and society (Blockbuster, Kodak etc).

The worth of a product today, has to be adjusted for the devaluation of the dollar, and increased cost of living that continues to rise every year to some degree. And projected technological advances. Automation right now is big and will continue to grow, voice command software, eCommerce, all these are going to grow and evolve rapidly in the coming years as an example.

It definitely does matter what you do. Focusing on what you are already good at, and developing this into a master skill set is a good start. But hard work and dedication aren't enough. You need to look ahead, research trends in your industry, and determine if it will be valuable in the future.

You know the difference between people who have big dreams, but end up working at service-level jobs, and not making a lot of money and those who end up in Hollywood, on the cover of Forbes, or at least, making great money in either a phenomenal career or as a business owner?

Masive Action.

Consistency.

Research.

Mentors.

Massive Action.

It takes actions to make things happen, not endless convos about what life would be like if you got a big break. It is not luck that changes your destiny - it's mindset combined with taking specific actions on a daily basis to move the needle.

All the energy from making plans sipping jo at the coffee shop with friends, should be transferred into taking action. Being strategic, and prioritizing your dreams over drinking with friends, Netflix, socializing, video games on your phone, family drama, habits and hobbies, none of that excuse my french means shit if you can't 10X your income and lifestyle improvements as a result of:

Taking action
Guidance from mentors already successful in your field
Do Research - in-depth, results-based research not a blogger's opinion of success

And this requires a real sincere dedication to breaking down the steps in between you and your goal, as well as determining, specifically, how to overcome obstacles in achieving those microsteps to the bigger goals.

Sometimes you are your own obstacle.

Sometimes you need to remind yourself why you give a damn in the first place.

For me, it's family. I care about my family, and have unique gifts that will enable me to do a lot more with my life, and income earning potential than many of my fellow UT Alumni who subscribe to the "participation-award" ideology. I work hard to help friends of mine who are broke without exit plans.

But I don't work hard at just achieving mediocracy. I work hard at doing the impossible. The impossible is only impossible if you don't believe it's possible. So believe in your dreams as possible. They said we'd never put a man on the moon. The telephone was laughed at by early investors as impossible. Yet - it became possible because at least one person believed it was possible.

Be that person for your own dreams.

You need your own buy in. Give yourself permission to win.
To defeat your own demons you have to recognize your life is worth fighting for.

And it is, you are worth it, you've gotten this far haven't you?

So don't sell yourself short by accepting less than what you deserve. Dream bigger, work harder, BUT be strategic on specific outcomes from your actions. Hard work isn't going to accomplish much if you're only working to maintain. This energy needs to be directed towards something with much faster scalability. Seriously, figure out your Why and use it to motivate yourself to do the work necessary, inner work and outside, to live a better life.

You got this.

Sail Away

Thursday, March 8th, 2018

Press Play for mood music of this blog: David Gray – Sail Away

One of my favorite authors is John D. MacDonald, I only recently within the past year started reading his books. Classic reads like the Brass Cupcake and the Empty Copper Sea. The main protagonist is Travis McGee, a rough around the edges, but introspective gun-for-hire private detective. A self described “Salvage Consultant.” Travis is the last of the great knights-errant. He lives on a his yacht called The Busted Flush, named after a poker hand containing four cards of the same suit and one of a different suit, in the Fort Lauderdale Marina in Florida.

Travis drives a bastardized 1936 Rolls-Royce he’s converted into a pickup truck, & is accompanied by his best friend and next boat neighbor Meyer, a highly regarded economist. MacDonald’s concerns over the ecological destruction of Florida and his disgust for the greedy, corrupt forces driving it are reflected in his portrayals of villains McGee faces off and inevitably defeats.

“Travis McGee is the last of the great knights-errant: honorable, sensual, skillful, and tough. I canít think of anyone who has replaced him. I can’t think of anyone who would dare.” — Donald Westlake

My father once told me as a child that he wanted a sailboat to sail in. It was nothing more than a random comment 20 plus years ago. He’s had enough time to buy one but never has because of limiting beliefs he holds about himself and what he’s capable of. Transcending these same limiting mental habits is one of my life goals I continue to achieve everyday, by getting into college, getting a better and higher paying job at Facebook and keeping the promise I made to my son October 2016 to go adventuring in Hawaii by the end of 2017, last year. And we did.

Reading these noir Florida detective books has played a central theme in my life as of late which seems to revolve around large bodies of water and boats. I flew across the Pacific ocean with my kiddo for the first time December 2017. Seeing the endless stretch of waves beneath the wings of the airplane was magical. Standing on a cliff’s edge and watching the ocean stretch endlessly into the distance from the South East corner of the Big Island does something to a man’s soul. It fills you with possibilities, and the rusty chains of mental jail cells are broken as you roam freely as the seagulls.

Thoughts racing along the surface of the water, faster than the speed of light, filled with a wonderment, and the powerful curiosity that achieving your goals gives birth to, asking persistently, “What’s next? What’s next?!”

Perhaps Dad will never achieve any of his dreams for the simple fact that he doesn’t believe he can or will. I never felt like I adopted his dreams as my own, because we are very different people, growing up in different generations. And yet, 20 years later, I find myself fascinated with what it would be like to own and sail a yacht like a Hallberg-Rassy 94.

I remember the 1st time the ocean truly moved me on an emotional level. I was a reporter for the Accent Newspaper, when I was a student at Austin Community College. We competed in the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association with other colleges for front page news stories, news photography and other categories. I won honorable mention for my college in news reporting. The local swat team had been commissioned to tear gas bomb a car in the parkinglot of a hotel in Corpus Christi, Texas. It was a sight to see, I still can recall the vivid details of the canisters being shot into the car, purple smoke spewing out the car windows, as a mock news story event we competed for being the best reporter writing up a news story about this event, fictionalizing the circumstances.

One of the days there I went to the beach with my friend and fellow Accent news reporter Jenessa. We walked along the beach for hours, seeing and hearing the ocean waves hit the sandy shore. The sun beat down on us something fierce and we both got sunburnt, as it was a random urge we gave into instead of planning a trip to the ocean. But it was worth every second. Many hours later, after we had gone back to our hotel, I could feel the motion of the waves, rhythmically crashing against the shore, inside my heart. It’s hard to explain, it was as if, somehow, I, without intending to, internalized the giant movements of the ocean in synchronicity with my circadian rhythms. That was the first time I ever felt that way.

Standing on a cliff’s edge hundreds of feet above the south shore of the Big Island Hawaii, was another moment where the majesty of the ocean reach out and gave my soul a hug, in this quiet, powerful, sense of sentience. Smoking a cigar, my last night in Hawaii, on the northern tip of the Big Island in Kohala, watching the sun set on the ocean, with Maui in the shrouded distance, I felt the flame of possibility burn blue on the strength of keeping a promise. I plan on keeping more promises, especially the ones I’ve made myself.

While I cannot say the exact day I will get a sailboat, I know that this is part of the destiny I’ll choose for my future path in life. Whether or not I’m a real life Travis McGee remains up for debate. But like David Gray says, someday I’m going to sail away. Remington Brand typewriter on board, to type the stories inside me, my classical guitar to give voice to the songs I hear in the infinite poetry of the waves, lapping against the side of my sailboat.

Dolphin at Dawn

Wonderful Future

Sunday January 21st, 2018

One of the things that I’ve learned on this crazy tight rope walk and balancing act that life can be is that: Memories of the past make me change for the future.

I know I wasn’t a child prodigy playing concerto violin professionally before reaching 10, but I also know there’s solid gold potential in each of us. All it takes is a catalyst, a few well timed moves, and haha…a winning lottery ticket to turn it all around.

Maybe I’ve been a fool so long I cannot tell the difference between an imaginary future and what I’m headed towards. Or maybe I’ve finally reached the critical mass of serendipity and as much as forces inside myself tell me to give up, now is the time to grind harder than ever.

We all face set backs.

Sometimes I feel like they all pile on top of me and regret bitch slaps me like a pimp on the corner of some god forsaken alley of lost dreams. And then I suck in my gut and man up.

Laziness is so easy to give in to. And to be honest, aside from parents who don’t believe in you, friends who are too caught up in their own drama to give a damn about supporting your dreams, and the luck of the draw, laziness is the cherry on top that is the ultimate dream killer. Because it takes work. It takes the gumption to get up, get out there and DO SOMETHING. Anything as long as it keeps that forward momentum going. As Outkast raps, “Get up, Get out and Do something!”

Hangover Reconnaissance

Today I wrote 8 pages in my upcoming book, The Beauty of Now. I’d rather have written 22 pages, but shit, it’s better than Net Flixing and chilling the entire day, and nursing a wine hang over from the night before. I had such a crazy fight with my son’s mother last night. Without discussing it with me at all, she sent a sheriff to my door with official forms to change my son’s name.

Huh?

This was a slap in the face and then some. It’s a challenge to have to deal with the struggles of burgeoning entrepreneurship, student loans, and planning a trip to New Orleans but now..out of the blue…she wants me to just check a box without having a discussion first??

Somewhere along the way, when she decided to up and move my son and her to a border town by Mexico in South Texas, she made the decision that I wasn’t allowed to parent our son in any way and excludes me from everything in our kid’s life. Whether it’s the clothes he wears, the food he eats, the school he goes to, or his behavior, she forbids me to parent our son.

It’s been a long road to develop trust with my son and we’ve made great progress, but events like this show me that my son’s mother is still stuck in the past 8 years back or something. Which is ok, to each their own, but when it hurts the quality of life my son has, it becomes an issue.

Apparently he’s been going through off and on, some bullying about his name. But instead of tell me about this, and let me help and support my son, emotionally and as a dad, I just get this constable at my front door handing me legal papers to change his name. She threatened to forbid him to go on a father-son trip to New Orleans we are planning this summer unless I just agreed – without talking about it.

Perhaps I’m crazy for thinking that a child shouldn’t get tattoos, or make any other life long decision and wait until he’s actually old enough to legally change it himself. I expressed to her that this seems inappropriate to demand me to change my son’s name legally without ever bringing the issue up beforehand.

If there are bullies at his school, making fun of his name or harassing him, shouldn’t this be something we both talk to his school’s administration about? This is a bigger issue than a name if our son is getting messed with at school. We should be talking about that, right?

Why is this the first I’ve heard of it? Changing his legal name, based on what may be a childish whim of his, seems more of an issue of not being able to tell him no when he wants something than actually about bullies.

Either way, it seems reasonable to at least have a conversation about this before sending a constable to my door with name change papers and commanding me on the phone to sign them or else she’ll take me back to court for child support. Doesn’t this seem a bit off? Can I be involved in my son’s life and help him through this before we make a decision he may regret as an adult?

SNAP…0 to 100

She starts yelling at me on the phone about what a horrible person I am and how if she could she’d never have told me anything. It got so bad and mean, I have to disconnect saying “You are being mean and hateful right now, I cannot continue this conversation, goodbye.”

After about 6 years of not being able to see my kiddo on a regular basis, being denied basic visitation rights, and being stood up numerous times, even on his birthday, halloween, and other holidays, and having be constantly insulted for…wanting to be in my son’s life? Attempting to be a good dad, be present, and teach my kid healthy social skills?

I realized that no matter how hard I tried to be kind and patient, there was a line she kept crossing and it was getting abusive to sit there, be ordered to do things, excluded from any decisions for how my son grew up, and be the recipient of a filibuster of “I hate you” like statements.

So, when she started going down this path, I realized that it was up to me to say no to being yelled at and insulted and to proactively end our conversations when they went that way.

That’s what happened last night. And I was super depressed, feeling like I had done something wrong. She always made me feel that way, like I was someone that didn’t deserve to be alive or in my son’s life. But I know this isn’t true. The last text my son sent me last night was:

In the Aftermath…

I make myself dinner, and pour a glass of wine, a nice merlot, trying to process what happened. Trying to figure out if I was really a bad person and how exactly was asking to be part of my son’s life such an…offensive request?

It’s easy to get discouraged about your life when you have someone in your life that is a negative force. My dad was like that, always very condescending and insulting me constantly. It took me years to heal from his emotional scarring. Now I find myself triggered in the same way that he used to make me feel bad all the time.

Today I had to take 20 minutes and remind myself, that I’m a good person, worth loving and caring for. The shockwaves of the previous night were so intense, but I knew better. I’ve been down this road before. Never take someone trying to demean you seriously, never take their words as the gospel.

To Zone Out Or Not To Zone That Is The Question

As much as it was tempting to spend the entire day zoning out on Person of Interest, Continuum, Aquarius or Jerry Seinfield’s Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee, I got myself out of the house. Walked a mile or so to Central Market, and bought some delicious grape leaf dolmas and Cuvee Meritage coffee beans.

Walking to my townhome rain fell softly around me.

It used to rain often after I had fights with my baby’s momma. I always thought in the past it was a sign of bad things but today I rediscovered the rain as a source of life and refreshment to the plants. I found myself watching David Duchovny’s Californication and almost tearing up when his daughter said her one wish was that her parents could get back together.

My son has expressed the same thing to me. I can’t wave a magic wand and make that happen, but I can continue to work on my dreams, and not give up. David Duchovny’s character in Californication is a somewhat deadbeat but with style writer, and I found myself becoming inspired. I sat down, got out my source material, one of the journals from 2003, and wrote 8 pages.

Ironically it was detailing the day Tina and I first got together and started dating. I looked through this window into the distant past and realized no matter who she is today, and no matter how ugly and mean she acts towards me, she once had a light that shined within her.

I hope she finds it again. I appreciate the good moments we shared in the past 15 years of our life and that’s what I celebrate. A few things I’ve learned in this crazy walk of life is that being appreciative is the key to happiness and leading a fulfilling life.

I’m keeping my promises

I’m keeping promises to my son, and my promises to myself to follow this path of being an entrepreneur, using my talent to write to author my first book and build my own business.

Onward and upward, with no glances over my shoulder at could have beens or would have beens. Just appreciation for the present moment and how much beauty I see in myself, the world, my son and a wonderful future.