A Little About Me: Life and An Attitude Adjustment

When I came back home after getting kicked out of college, I was an insufferable bastard.  No, really.  I was.  (Some of you reading are going…”Was?”  To you, I say “Shut up and I hate you.”)  When I came back from living on my own in my college town, I was so ragingly bitter.  Maybe it had been watching my friends graduate and go on to better things.  Maybe it was the fact that I had taken one too many bottles to the head during barfights, maybe it was my ex with the out of control scissor play, or maybe it was having a gun drawn on me by a mobster.  Or it could be that I was just using it all as an excuse to play the victim.

Anyone who has read my blog entries know that I rant and rave against the institutions of being a victim, or of being submissive to life.  I stand up on my digital soapbox and I sermonize about how you should never be scared of the Friend Zone, stand up to your bullies, fight for every inch, proclaim who you are and what you are at the top of your voice.  But the fact is, I was that guy that I’m yelling at for the longest time.  I didn’t know what to change about myself, and I was so indignant and unaware that I was unhappy with myself, that I spent the majority of my time lashing out at the world at large.

But then my dad was operated for cancer, and I came home from my college town.  It was benign and the surgeons got it all, but still it was a nice little scare.  A nice little reminder of how life is fleeting, and that the people who we care about can be taken away in an instant.  It was about that time that I decided that it was time for me to finish my education.  And maybe that was the beginning of a new leaf for me.  Where I’m at now, I honestly don’t believe that my college education really played a substantial role in my current intelligence.  I don’t know a whole lot more now than I did before I became 30k poorer.  The thing is…it’s really not about the diploma at the end of it.  It wasn’t even about the education for me.  It never was.  It’s about finishing what I started…what I set out to do in the first place.

So I went back to school, transferring my previous college credits to a community college.  I enrolled there for a year and accumulated more credits, made Dean’s List, and then transferred again to Rutgers, where I ended up graduating.  And I made new friends who, while younger than me, became people that I wanted to know for the rest of my life.  They gave me a brand new outlook, a brand new intent…  I got a chance at the senior year that I never got my first time around.  And while I don’t regret any of it, I’ll always look at my first stint in college with bitter sweetness.

But that’s in the past now, and those choices shaped who I am today.  I can hardly regret the things that I have done since I don’t know what I would be without those experiences.  So I’ll take the hand that I’ve been dealt, because…well, what I have now is wonderful, the people I know now are wonderful.  And with the invention of social media, people who abruptly exited my life come back in unexpected ways.

So today, I find myself looking at the importance of intent, and how crucial it is to follow through on the things we set our minds to doing.  As an example…I never really cared if I finished college or not.  It honestly didn’t matter to me, but I knew it would matter to someone when I went to apply for a job.  So when I got my second chance, I seized it with single minded pursuit.  “This time, I’m going to do it.”  Failing isn’t something that I tend to take likely, which is why I sometimes take my time going into certain ventures.  It isn’t that I fear to fail at something.  It’s that, if I do fail, then I know I will renew my pursuit of overcoming that obstacle with everything I have.  That often means that I’ll ignore everything else, and expend an enormous amount of energy to make sure that I don’t fail at it a second time.  It’s quite exhausting. (Another reason why I keep a 24 pack of Monster Energy Drink in my refrigerator at all times)

So when I do something, I go for it from the start.  When it comes to intent, there really is no difference between a passion and an obsession.  Both requires the same level of intensity, same level of commitment, and the ability to ignore the lines drawn in the sand.  The rest is perspective.  When I was a Japanese animation translator, I spent days staring at video, reading over the script 20 or 30 times to make sure I got the nuances right.  When I was a massage therapist, I spent all my time honing my craft, and worked my own body to near exhaustion.  (Ironically, there is no one that needs a massage more than a massage therapist.)  And now…I work in a tofu factory.  It wasn’t a job that I necessarily wanted at first.  I’m up every day at 3:15 AM (used to be 2:30 AM before I moved), I work from 4 AM until 4 PM, sometimes (and usually) longer.  I spend my entire day poring over documents, testing product, checking for quality, fixing mistakes, writing reports, translating files, mediating as interpreter, and readying for audits…and I mainline Monster like coffee.

But I do it all.  I do it because in the end I know that it’s something I’m capable of, and that utilizes my skill.  It may not be the best use of my abilities, it might not even be something I enjoy all the time, but I intend to see this through to its completion.  Until something better comes along, I give it my all.  I don’t sleep, my social life often takes a backseat, which is why I use dating sites to try and meet someone for romance, but I also know that this is part of who I am.  I don’t take myself seriously, but I try to live seriously which often times tends to butt heads with each other.

So with all that being said, I think it’s time for another attitude adjustment.  Another way of thinking about my life that will enable me to have it all.  A career and a life.  Love and stability.  Money and happiness.  The things that we often claim are mutually exclusive, are not always so.  We just haven’t figured out how to join the two aspects together.  And this is the beginning of the road  to lead me there, and I’m glad that you’re all with me on the journey.  – AB