Personal Blog

The Older You Get, The Faster Time Moves

When you’re a kid, time just runs more slowly. I remember the summer of 2000, I was between 8th grade and 9th grade – only 13 years old getting ready to start high school the following school year. I spent every day that summer skateboarding with my friends and hanging out at their band practice. There were days we wandered around with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Floating along the streets, looking somewhere to skate or some new thing to see. It felt like that summer lasted a lifetime. We did so much in those 3 months. Even back then we recognized it – forever known as the ‘endless summer’. If I called up my friends from that era, I’m certain they’d all remember that summer the same way I do now.

Things are different now. The summers come and go. One minute it’s 2019 and I’m starting a new job, my life’s moving forward in a good direction. I have so many ideas and plans for projects I’d like to do… I even write a blog about it. The next minute it’s 2021 and nearly two years flew by.

In that span of time, we had the Black Lives Matter protests, murder hornets, Australia burning down, fears of World War 3, a chaotic political climate with Twitter-storms of epic proportions, and Cryptocurrency mining ruined the graphics card market. Twitter got hacked, the government got hacked, toilet paper got hacked, and oh yeah… a global pandemic with mandatory stay-at-home orders totally upended all of civilization.

Not quite as much has changed in my personal life since 2019. I kept my job and worked from home through the pandemic. I paid off my new car and started saving money to buy a house. I whittled away at my Computer Science degree at a decent pace. The biggest change was moving in with my girlfriend and starting to rent the house we live in now. But, despite all that’s happened and changed over the last two years on a global/national scale, to me in my little life – the last two years went by in the blink of an eye.

It may be my age (34 this year), or it may be my stable routine, but it literally feels like 2019 was just yesterday. Up until this week, I hadn’t even realized it had been a year since I last wrote any blog at all. Wow. I’m taking tonight to pace back through the last 24 months and take account of where I am now and what I’ve learned. Join me, won’t you?

Plans Change but the Goals Still Remain

Near the end of 2019, I wrote a couple more blog posts that revolved around detailing a huge list of goals and projects that I would be dedicating all my free time to work on. (Blog#2 and Blog#3) After keeping a journal over the previous 3 years, I had a huge list of dozens of dozens of ideas and projects, research and notes, links and references, thoughts and goals. They were all built up just waiting to be organized and acted on. Here’s a rough list of everything I wanted to do or look into, all my main goals:

• Finish my Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science by 2021
• Get my CSSLP certification
• Learn the C++ programming language with professional proficency
• Work on my video game project “Omnia” – https://github.com/wforbes/omnia
• Start flipping (buying/selling) websites and running small online businesses via https://flippa.com
• Complete as many online tutorials and courses as I can for Software Development and other topics (via Pluralsight, Freecodecamp, KhanAcademy, Udemy, etc)
• Build a web application that provides gameified to-do lists that makes getting stuff done fun (https://lvlz.app)
• Practice editing videos with Adobe Premier
• Write articles and create video tutorials using my college work and research journal entries
• Post videos to my YouTube channel regularly
• Read at least 50 pages (or one chapter) from a book each day
• Post articles on the books I’ve read
• Research and study neurology with the goal of working with neurologists as a programmer
• Further organize and expand my Indicium project of useful links and categorized topics
• Learn the React.js framework
• Get more proficient with WordPress development (themes and plugins)
• Set up and run a physical web server in my home for practice
• Learn to fly Freestyle FPV drones (like this)
• Learn D&D and start playing with a group of friends regularly
• Write music and practice guitar at least once a week to post music on soundcloud
• Skateboard at least once a week and start filming clips regularly
• Draw on my graphics tablet an hour per day and get really good with Photoshop/Illustrator
• Work out at least 8 hours per week

(And that doesn’t include everything, only what I thought I could handle…)

Then the year 2020 happened…. and slowly but surely plans steadily changed. Looking back at this list… there are a few things that I made progress with, sure, but others I still have yet to do regularly or even START.

As I mentioned in Blog#4, it would be easy to blame the COVID pandemic and the events of 2020 for not being able to somehow do all these things I listed. In all honesty, though, that has nothing to do with it. At the end of the day, all the insanity of 2020 really didn’t affect my own life very much. I’m supremely thankful for that and I counting my blessings.

Instead, I’m writing this blog to share what I’ve learned about setting goals, stretching yourself thin, and the counterintuitive limits of developing self-discipline.

Set Impossible Goals, Then See What Happens

Out of those dozens of things I wanted to explore and accomplish two years ago, even mastering one of them by now would be outstanding. I realized as much back then, so I wasn’t expecting to get it all done. I tried my hardest with reasonable effort, but I still spent time with my girlfriend and my friends. I still played laser pointer games with the cat. I still slacked off when I needed to, and I didn’t beat myself up too bad about it. Instead, I’ve gradually just tried to improve my habits and do as much as I can without too much stress.

So, even though I’m not looking back at the last year and marveling at my world-record accomplishments – I have a much better idea of what I’m actually capable of. I know where I can make improvements in my routine. I’ve realized some of the bad habits I have so I can work on them. I’m wiser today than I was two years ago. That’s my greatest accomplishment so far.

My advice in this regard is that you should never limit what you set out to do, just be realistic with what you expect. Try to do everything. Work like a maniac. Then dial it back. Find what’s most important to focus on, recalculate your plans, restructure your approach. Then try to do all you can. Work like a maniac. Then dial it back and repeat. Doing this will teach you what you’re actually capable of, there’s only one way to learn that. Pushing yourself may help expand what you’re capable of, but pushing too hard won’t always turn out so well.

Stretching Your Schedule Doesn’t Earn You More Time

Pushing yourself too hard, trying to wedge too much into your schedule, then depending on your own improvisation in getting better at managing it all is … well, it’s like a train-wreck waiting to happen. If your focus is spread too thin among too many different things, you probably won’t magically find a way to make it all work…. instead your work in all efforts will suffer somewhat evenly. That’s what I found at first.

I’d work on projects or college assignments in the morning, I’d do my day-job work through the majority of the day, then I’d work on more projects at night – leaving just enough time to read, workout, practice a skill or two, and collapse in bed asleep. Then, I’d do it all over again. I have a high tolerance for burn-out, so this went on for a while. I could manage it for a time until eventually, I realized that instead of burning out – the quality of my work was just fizzling away. I would spend the scheduled time focused on a task… but my progress toward that task would result in less and less as the days went by. Eventually, I just wasn’t getting anywhere in anything… but I kept on doing it anyway.

After about 3 months I changed my trajectory. I thought about it and tried different approaches until eventually I just went with the flow. There was absolutely no reason to keep trying to hold myself to a time-based schedule in a planned routine. So – I stopped doing it. Almost immediately I started making progress again, it was just in fewer different pursuits each day. I spent more time on things I had to do – like college assignments. I spent the rest of my time only on what I wanted to do – like write some code, or complete an online tutorial/course of my choosing.

Then, there were days focused entirely on recharging. I didn’t do anything but my day-job work, study college assignments a little, and spend time the rest of the day relaxing. A few hours of quality time with my girlfriend and scratching our dog behind the ears ended up netting more positive results in my work than forcing myself to a strict 24/7 schedule.

Allowing for blocks of time, or entire days, where I could simply deviate from my schedule and do whatever felt right provided the perfect balance to return to hard-working days when that felt right instead.

True Discipline Means Having Full Control Of Yourself

At the beginning of this journey, I had this certain concept of “discipline” that I’m not sure I agree with anymore. Back in 2019 and before, I’d thought that being completely disciplined meant that you were always able to do the hard work that you didn’t necessarily want to do. It meant putting off short-term enjoyment for long-term rewards, in every situation. Now I’m realizing that this creates a sort of “John Wick dilemma”. Let me explain.

In the movies, the character ‘John Wick’ is a trained assassin. In fact, he’s the trained assassin. He’s the prototypic action movie anomaly that is unkillable no matter the odds against him. He’s supremely focused, and the ultimate master of his craft. The line from one of the movies is: “John is a man of focus, commitment, sheer will… something you know very little about. I once saw him kill three men in a bar… with a pencil, with a fucking pencil.”

John Wick is legendary without bound. Known the world over, feared by all. A figure that, when I used to consider the concept of ‘self-discipline‘, my mind would instantly conjure up. He’s a character that you can always use as an impossible goal-post. Just focus, be like John Wick.. be a man of focus.

But since the beginning of 2021, I’ve started to realize the profound dilemma that the John Wick character is trapped in. The reason for the conflict in his story and what is actually driving the plot in those movies. (Spoiler Alert ….)

Despite all his focus and commitment and sheer will … despite his mastery of deadly combat and amazing driving skills… John Wick is a prisoner of his own bottomless abilities. He is able to kill anyone, do anything, and accomplish whatever he puts his effort into – yet this ability is the entire reason that he’s suffered all his worst losses in life. It’s the reason he has to now somehow escape the impossible in the next movie.

In the story, he left the world of assassins and got out of that industry just before the movie series began. He was able to get out and enjoy time with the love of his life, for a time. As the first movie is opening, he’s dealing with the cancer-death of his wife. Thugs then break into his home and destroy the last present his wife gave him before she died … and so begins the saga of movies. A saga of vengeance. A string of gnarly fight scenes and endless killing. We’re rooting for Mr. Wick because we want to see that vengeance enacted just as much as his character does. Go John!

But… wait a second. Just because you can murder literally hundreds of the most dangerous people on the planet and burn down the empire of a mob family for revenge, then repay a blood oath by assassinating some under-world royalty, then try to defend against that entire under-world coming after you…. and so on, does that mean you should?

Rewatching the movies now, I see – plain as day – that my initial concept of the ‘discipline’ that I wished to work toward years ago is a total contradiction in logic. If John Wick was actually the most focused and committed individual on the planet, he wouldn’t rest until his problems were solved on his own terms – in his new silent life away from violence. In a way that truly honored the memory of his deceased wife and the life they shared.

Thugs break in and mess up your greaving process? Well, first – move, then you’re the most feared assassin on the market, pull some strings, make some calls, study accounting and law, then perform a non-violent hostile take over of their empire and get them all sent to death-row. Blood oath comes back to bite you in the butt? Well, again… pull some strings, have a high-council meeting or two, and let them sort out their own damn family problems, work out the oath/council conflicts in the rule book, and keep on truckin’. If you somehow still wind up being hunted by every trained killer on Earth, then clearly now it’s time to start killing… but at least you made some measured efforts.

That poor wife of his was probably spinning in her grave so hard at all the mortal sins being committed in her name I’m surprised she didn’t helicopter out of the ground and start killing people alongside him. Or maybe she did and they just cut those scenes out – you never know. (There’s a ‘spin-off’ pun in there somewhere, be thankful I didn’t go for it.)

In all honesty, the John Wick movies are a perfect example of uncontrolled discipline. It’s the story of a mythical murder savant stumbling from one unplanned, unrestrained, uncalculated, unsafe … and actually undisciplined mishap to another; all the while utilizing the most disciplined abilities imaginable. Riding on the razor edge of death on a daily basis for what must be months at a time.

Just because you can train yourself to push away all distractions, tune yourself to be endlessly productive, and focus your energies toward a mercilessly impossible set of tasks absolutely doesn’t mean you’re ever actually in control. Becoming consumed with building self-discipline, productivity, commitment, and focus leaves you totally vulnerable to become locked into that state. Head to the grindstone. Obsessessed. Consumed. Ignorant.

What is true discipline then? In this context? Lately, I’ve cultivated the idea that it’s a finding the perfect blend of sticking to long-term goals but having the short-term control to remain flexible throughout day-to-day events. It means framing what you do in the short-term so that it works toward the long-term, understanding that you may not always be accurate in your assumptions of how to get there.

It’s the act of challenging yourself to try harder when you don’t want to and, knowing when not to. It’s being able to do what’s actually required of you, rather than simply what you desire to be required of you.

It’s patience. With yourself and with the process. Awareness of your surroundings and how you affect others.

It’s striving to find an ever deeper consideration for the broader context in which you live.

That is true focus, commitment, and discipline.

So, What DID I Accomplish?

If you’re really that interested, here’s a snapshot of my current progress with that silly list. What I realized many months ago was that the only thing that matters on this list, right now, is finishing my degree. Everything in this list will be improved when I’m making more money with the degree. I’ll have more time to spend however I want once I’m finished with the degree. There’s no side-hustle, no project, no other thing I can do right now that will increase my earning potential and knowledge like having my degree finished. For the last 9-10 months, that’s been my game plan.

• Finish my Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science by 2021
  • (38% Done). Not on track to finish this year. Calculus has delayed me. On track to graduate 2023 at my current pace, but I’ll be focusing all my effort on moving that up to 2022.
• Get my CSSLP certification
  • (10% Done). So far I’ve studied about a quarter of the material and I’m delaying going any further until I get my degree, or my workload in my day-job lightens up.
• Learn the C++ programming language with professional proficency
  • (30% Done). I did really well in my introductory level college class, I’ve finished 1 of my 5 books that range up to advanced topics… so I’d say I’m just entering a novice-level understanding of the language. Nothing to write home about, but I’m happy.
• Work on my video game project “Omnia” – https://github.com/wforbes/omnia
  • (20% Done). I spent about 2 months totally engrossed with this project. I got to the point of starting to work on combat and the inventory system when I realized that Java just isn’t the best choice for this game. I’ll be steadily rewriting it for JavaScript in the web browser, but this really isn’t a main focus.
• Start flipping (buying/selling) websites and running small online businesses via https://flippa.com
  • (5% Progress) So far I’ve only done market research enough to realize that I can make my own websites for more profit, or I need much more start up capital to flip sites that people will actually buy. I intend on just creating my own sites and apps to list on Flippa eventually.
• Complete as many online tutorials and courses as I can for Software Development and other topics (via Pluralsight, Freecodecamp, KhanAcademy, Udemy, etc)
  • (50% Progress) I was able to earn one FreeCodeCamp certification and complete most of a second and third. I got pretty far into the fullstack Codecademy course. I’ve learned ALOT of great skills on Pluralsight that I immediately used at work. I’m about half-way toward where I thought I’d be two years ago.
• Build a web application that provides gameified to-do lists that makes getting stuff done fun (https://lvlz.app & https://github.com/wforbes/levelz.app)
  • (30% Progress) I was able to get a solid foundation of core features done. Things like the login system, permissions, profiles, media uploads, and I’ve worked out plans for all the to-do list functionality, experience, progression, and other things. At this point the app is about 1/3 of the way to it being usable by other people.
• Practice editing videos with Adobe Premier
  • (5% Progress) I really didn’t concentrate on this much yet.
• Write articles and create video tutorials using my college work and research journal entries
  • (10%) I’ve got great progress on a set of programming, C++ and web development articles on this site, just chipping away at it now and posting it as it’s ready.
• Post videos to my YouTube channel regularly
  • (0%) Haven’t even started. There probably won’t be time for this until my degree is done.
• Read at least 50 pages (or one chapter) from a book each day
  • (5%) I started out doing this regularly… but after a month or two I stopped. Time to start back up again!
• Post articles on the books I’ve read – Nope
• Research and study neurology with the goal of working with neurologists as a programmer – Nope
• Further organize and expand my Indicium project of useful links and categorized topics – Nope
• Learn the React.js framework – Nope
• Get more proficient with WordPress development (themes and plugins) – Nope
• Set up and run a physical web server in my home for practice – Nope
• Learn to fly Freestyle FPV drones (like this)
  • (20%) For quite a while I would practice on a flight simulator (https://www.velocidrone.com/) using a real FPV controller… but over time I did this less and less. Time to start back up again!
• Learn D&D and start playing with a group of friends regularly
  • (100%) Some of my lady’s friends have come over now and then to play D&D on an awesome campaign our DM made. It’s been fun and I’m really glad to have those times to kick back and roll some dice.
• Write music and practice guitar at least once a week to post music on soundcloud
  • (50%) I’m not nearly as good as I’d like to be, but I’m getting much better than I was two years ago. I’ll be buying an electric guitar soon and I’ve got two new songs I haven’t posted yet that I’d like to build into full ‘prog rock’ tracks with drum accompaniment. Things are going in a good direction here.
• Skateboard at least once a week and start filming clips regularly
  • (75%) I end up skating a few times a week, then once every few weeks. I’ve gotten some good clips this last year, but they’re few and far between. I learned some new tricks and relearned alot of old ones I haven’t done in years. The main thing I’m happy about is that I’m more comfortable on my board and have more fun than I ever did.
• Draw on my graphics tablet an hour per day and get really good with Photoshop/Illustrator
  • Nope – I just haven’t felt inspired to draw lately. It’s ok. It comes and goes and I’m not forcing it.
• Work out at least 8 hours per week
  • Nope – I’ll do some push ups before bed tonight 🙂

I’ll keep working my plan, with true discipline, and we’ll see how far I’ve progressed two years from now. I promise I won’t post another self-absorbed list-based blog until 2023. Cheers!

Image Credit: https://www.instagram.com/seamlessoo

Greetings, adventurer! If you’re actually able to read this at any time in the future, that means the internet is still working and the world probably didn’t descend into chaotic apocalyptic mayhem of global proportions yet. That’s excellent news! Cheers!

Well, sit on down and rest your feet for a moment; especially if they’re sore because you’ve just got home from a full day of protesting with the BlackLivesMatter movement about police violence and the murder of George Floyd; or you noticed that you’ve been coughing a lot recently, or you’ve been running night and day from swarms of murder hornets, or you’re a bit warm from saving koalas from firestorms, or you’re a bit rattled because you’re still expecting a new World War to break out soon, along with whatever else this year is going to throw at us… maybe aliens? Maybe a supervolcano? Anything feels possible at this point.

As I write this, we’re hardly half-way through 2020 and it’s already appeared to give us more catastrophes than the last 10 years combined, so I’m sure you might be a little more winded… anxious… and jittery since my last blog post here on wforbes.net, back on January 1st. Oh what a simpler time that was. In that post, I stumbled through some thoughts on the futility of trying to predict the future and tried to express how much more important I think it is for us to put all our efforts toward making the future what we want it to be, instead.

I’m sure most people could never have predicted how this year would have turned out so far. Neither could we have really stopped it from turning out this way no matter how hard we tried. Yet, on an individual level, I’m still 100% convinced that we all have the power to keep pushing through this. Where predictions are concerned, one thing’s for sure, those doomsday preppers out there who’ve been stockpiling supplies in their underground bunkers for years preparing to outlast the end of the world have probably felt incredibly vindicated recently.

“SEE!?! WE TOLD YOU SO!! WE’RE ALL DOOMED!!”

With the economy in shambles, our work-days either disrupted or removed entirely, and the news reports pouring in daily about the new cases or deaths of this viral pandemic, the widespread collapse of entire industries, insane unemployment rates, government-mandated regulations, and now this last month of widespread American protests in almost one hundred major cities; through every media outlet available… it may seem like things are really bad. Depending on where you are, or how you make your living, they very well might be really bad. Let me make this clear: I don’t intend to downplay the state of things too drastically, the U.S. and the world at large are definitely enduring a few different critical crises.

The thing is, I’m not an expert in any field relating to any of the events related to these disastrous times. I’m an adult white male in America, and although I’ve grown up in a primarily Hispanic and African American populated area, I’ll never be able to speak with any authority on the struggle of Black people or other racial/cultural minorities in America. Instead, I simply try my best to support the fight against racism every day, and I always will. Equally, I’m not an immunologist, virologist, medical professional, or anything close… so I’m not going to comment on the COVID-19 virus, which has so far claimed over 100,000 lives and infected almost 2 million people in the US. I’m not an economist, so I can’t comment on how the job market and eventual recovery will play out. I’m not too savvy on politics and the appropriate government regulations that should be enforced during a viral infectious riot season. And for the less serious topics, I have no idea about the ‘murder’ variety of wasps, the disaster recovery of the Australian wilderness, and I’m not at liberty to comment on the current U.S./China relations. So it really wouldn’t make sense for me to try to get into the weeds and try to add my opinion on any of this or propose some huge set of solutions, or anything like that.

Instead, I’d like to take fifteen minutes of your time to help put things into perspective. I think we all could use some perspective.

Time and time again I see a constant truth with people and situations that I think is really important to dive in to for a few minutes. It’s probably more relevant now than ever before given the circumstances. It’s something I’ve personally struggled with and I’ve known so many countless people who have struggled with it too. So let’s put on our thinking caps for a minute.

Pessimism Is The Default

When it comes to just about anything in life, more often than not, it’s drastically easier to point out the negative side of things than it is to see their positive aspects. I’ve met numerous people in my own life, and I’ve seen countless people in popular culture that almost make a lifestyle out of examining and brooding on the negative points, while hand-waving the positives away. Problems and flaws are usually instantly obvious to most people, and so we will often stop there to sit and stew in them. We become obsessed with them. We turn the process of explaining and fixating on the complications and headaches about any given subject into an art form. Many of us even base our careers on it! Think: Investors that routinely short the market, movie critics that tear down everything they watch and plenty more jobs come to mind.

I’ve often wondered about this. How is it that so many people I’ve personally known, met, worked with, or otherwise observed, appear to be naturally pessimistic? Why is it so fundamentally easy to spot the problems in situations before we ever consider any bright side? When I look in the mirror and examine how I’ve talked and felt over the years, I remember doing the same thing. Why is it that I’ve been personally been more apt to regale myself in all the things that are, or could go, wrong before I celebrate the things that are right and positive throughout my life?

Like most things in human psychology, on the surface, I expect that it has to be linked to the way humans evolved over the last hundred thousand years and how we came to be at the top of the food chain with a more advanced intelligence than the rest of Earth’s species. Cause and effect. We’re so skilled at seeing the issues and problems in things because it can be a huge part of survival and staying alive.

In ancient times we had to be really careful and quick to assume the worst in many situations out in the wild because, if we didn’t, a predatory animal might sneak up on us and eat us. It’s built into our instincts, our DNA. We can see and smell the mold on a piece of fruit or the rot on a piece of meat because eating it would make us sick or kill us. In modern life too, looking at a building or vehicle and seeing that it’s not well-constructed or there’s a serious problem with it may save us from being inside it when it collapses or when the wheels fall off of it while it’s in jammin’ down the highway. When we meet people, and especially when we date them romantically, we’re quick to pick out their flaws and red flags, assuming the worst before hoping for the best. Our social lives depend on it. The drama we experience in the future is uniquely tied to our ability to see it coming, so being careful about people will often save us from frustration and complications later down the road.

That’s all pretty logical. These are the arguments and views of someone defending a more pessimistic mindset. It makes sense. I agree with the idea. It’s a defense mechanism we all share, because if you’re alive today – you were undoubtedly raised by, related to, or otherwise share some genetic link to an ancestor that made countless small safe, careful, intelligent decisions based wholly, or at least partially, in pessimism. Good job, great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandpa, you avoided dysentery and the plague by being really defensive and careful; thanks for surviving long enough to ensure I would eventually be born. Much appreciated!

Yet today in the 2020s, if you live in a developed western country, your life is substantially easier and more comfortable than that of your ancestors. Although things still aren’t perfect, we have the technology and infrastructure to help combat pandemics and plague outbreaks. We often have an abundance of fresh food at our disposal, we don’t commonly need to evade predatory animals in the wild, and we have more opportunities for education than ever before. We’re privileged to now know more about how our negative thinking happens, and we’re given the opportunity to logically dissect it and understand it.

Modern science tells us that often times our negative thinking and pessimism stems from the chemical balance in our brain. Apparently our brain loves Cortisol, the stress hormone. It flows freely and openly, created by our body’s adrenal glands and regulated by our hypothalamus and pituitary gland in our brains. While it does do great things for us, like managing our energy levels to cope with stress (the ‘fight or flight’ response); regulating our sleep cycle; coordinating our use of nutrients like protein, carbs, and fat; managing your immune system; keeping inflammation down in our body… it can also really wreak havoc on us and our lives if it’s not under control.

If you feel as though you’re under constant stress and that ‘fight or flight’ mode stays on, your cortisol levels will stay up, contributing to weight gain, problems sleeping, headaches, anxiety, depression, concentration problems, and eventually heart disease – the number one killer of Americans. The thing is… this excess Cortisol DOESN’T necessarily equate to being lazy and lethargic, often it seems that things are quite the opposite. So although you might feel like a ‘high energy’, driven, individual… you might be running off of stress response and being powered by Cortisol all the time, instead of Dopamine – the ‘feel-good’ reward-driven hormone that inspires action and satisfies you in a healthy and sustainable way.

You can read article after article after article about either not having enough Dopamine or having too much Cortisol in your brain and while that may give you all the information and insight into what you can do to decrease Cortisol and increase Dopamine … I don’t think it’s quite that easy. These chemicals and their battle for control of the way your brain works is caused by daily habits, and your own personal belief structures, that have been building and forming throughout your whole life. So just because we can sit down and rationalize “CORTISOL BAD”, “DOPAMINE GOOD”: That doesn’t directly fix the problems that most people have.

You can’t expect to gather up every stressed-out single mother, every stressed-out yuppie middle-manager businessman, every stressed-out impoverished inner-city gang member, and all other people that are suffering from an over-abundance of Cortisol and expect them all to suddenly dutifully do the things that induce healthy Dopamine production. Our problems don’t vanish because we start taking vitamin D and magnesium supplements, or trying to meditate 15 minutes per day, or getting a list of healthy foods we don’t want to eat. Those things COULD help, sure… but in practice, just because we know what’s wrong, and what could help, absolutely doesn’t mean we’re actually going to do anything to solve the problem.

It takes time. It takes commitment. It takes changing your outlook a little bit at a time, taking care of yourself a little bit more everyday, and relearning how to live as person who naturally thinks with a more balanced, positive brain. At the core of everything, this is how you can survive and flourish in any apocalypse that’s thrown your way. So let’s ignore the science for a while, forget the Cortisol/Dopamine/Serotonin chemicals that all struggle for dominance in our bloodstreams. Let’s think practically.

Finding A Balance

What I’ve come to know in my own life is that there’s a crucial and delicate balance that needs to be struck every day in my general outlook between pessimism and optimism. When I think back to my most troubled times, this much is perfectly clear. When life felt hopeless and I was swimming an ocean of depressive feelings every day, as though nothing could ever get better and life – reality, itself – would just keep throwing me curve-balls that I couldn’t avoid and I was powerless to do anything about; I was embroiled in pessimism. I felt bound to it. Locked in. It appeared to me that so much was going wrong that there was no way to see the bright side. There was no use in it. The bright side was a lie. It wasn’t a question of seeing a glass that was half-empty or half-full… because it didn’t look like there was any water in the glass at all. Though, in retrospect, now I see that predicting and expecting negative outcomes constantly ensured that they would always be the result. That was the trap, a cycle of expectations and reality that mutually ensured each other. I was my own doomsayer.

The only way I could break that cycle and escape that trap was to aggressively refuse that natural tendency for pessimism. Negativity is the default because it’s baked into our brains from an endless stream of past lifetimes evolving through pessimistic survival tactics in a world that’s bent on our destruction. If we don’t make every effort to not only look on the bright side of things but fight to make that bright side a reality with everything we’ve got, we’re destined to succumb to the negative events of the outside world and our own inborn tendency to destroy ourselves with negativity.

An abandoned house that sits in the desert at the whims of the elements will fall into disrepair and eventual ruin. In the heat of the summer and the cold of the winter, with the winds blowing sand against its walls day after day for years at a time. In time, the wildlife will creep in and make nests, the birds will bring debris to raise their chicks in and the coyotes will bring in their kills to feast and make a mess, enjoying the temporary shelter it provides. Over enough time, if it’s not tended to by people, it’ll crumble to dust, leaving only its cement foundation as a reminder of what it once was. Like anything, a house requires care and maintenance to keep it livable – just like our own minds, our attitudes, and our outlooks on life. It takes work, effort, and thinking beyond the immediately obvious problems we face, or the ones we can imagine, to see the way we truly want things to be. No one is saying this is easy, in fact, it might be one of the most difficult challenges we have to overcome in life. You have the choice to either celebrate or curse the never-ending battle it will become throughout your entire lifetime.

Yeah, but what about…

This choice becomes absolutely clear when you sit down to actually try to solve a problem. Although any single issue or problem in our life, or in society, might have multiple possible solutions; each of those solutions might also have many more problems or shortcomings that make them arguable, or totally invalid, from a pessimistic mindset or outlook. If you often find yourself resisting ideas for solving a problem with statements like, “Yeah, but what about…”, it’s possible that you’ve been an avid participant in arguing for the problem, instead of the solution.

Here’s an example. Let’s say my life isn’t going so well because my job sucks. It definitely has before, I’ve been there. For years. I worked in thankless retail jobs and grueling warehouse jobs. I worked labor jobs that broke my back and left me exhausted at the end of every day and restaurant jobs where I had to deal with stressful difficult customers constantly. Meanwhile, I didn’t even get paid enough at any of these jobs to support myself as an adult, with no hope of ever being able to comfortably support a family. It never felt like I was getting ahead because I wasn’t. I honestly felt like I was doomed to be poor and have very little for the rest of my life. Hopeless.
(Please note, I’m not trying to attack or degrade anyone here that works a job like this, don’t take it personally – these are just examples to show that I get where you may be coming from).

So how do I solve this problem?: My job sucks and it’s holding me back from the life I want. The first solution I might consider is just finding a better job and quitting. I mean, really pounding the pavement to look for a position with better pay, doing something I enjoy more.

“Yeah, but what about…” all the time it would take for me to put my resume together, research job websites, go on interviews, and take calls or make correspondence after those interviews – if I can even get any? Alright. So this first solution already might appear to have some immutable arguments against it. If my whole day is already spent commuting, working, taking care of my kids, and tending to responsibilities I don’t feel like I can change… this solution feels pretty dead in the water, to begin with.

There are plenty more doubts where that came from, built right into the first one. “Yeah, but what about…” the fact that I don’t have anything to put on my resume for this new type of job I want, anyway? “Yeah, but what about…” how there aren’t any better jobs available no matter how hard I search job sites, ask around, or look for ones in my area? “Yeah, but what about…” the fact that the job that I want usually requires a degree, education, or some training I don’t have?

So you may spin in circles for a while with this struggle. If you aren’t immediately defeated by the first few “Yeah, but what about…” scenarios, you may resolve that instead, you have to go back to college or a trade-school to retrain for the job you want. That’s a possible solution which carries with it even more problems you can easily raise. You may even begin to fall prey to the ever-more-powerful “Yeah, but what if…“.

“Yeah, but what if…” I go back to school and I can’t get good grades, just to flunk out and be stuck with tons of student loan debt? “Yeah, but what if…” I concentrate so hard on my studies at school that I fall behind in another part of my life? “Yeah, but what if…” I start in on college only to find that the teachers aren’t very good, or I’m not any good at the new type of work I want to do, or I totally hate doing it, or I miss out on some unforeseen opportunity because I’m so busy with school?!?

What I hope is becoming painfully obvious at this point is that no matter how amazing we are at second-guessing, reconsidering, re-evaluating, and re-calculating all the ways any given solution can go wrong… each time we do, we are making a clear choice. Even though, this entire time we are using the word “Yeah”: Yeah, I should look for a new job. Yeah, I should go back to school. Yeah, this is something I want. We are reflexively making the choice to argue against it with “…but, what about… what if…”, which completely cancels out the “Yeah”. Every time you make the choice to cancel it out with doubt, you hold yourself back from what you want. So even though this decision-making process feels wise and careful, you may be so trapped in deliberation that you’d go on for years without doing anything about it. In the meantime, suffering the dead-end job and bad situation that made you start to question things, to begin with.

The truth of the matter is, even though in a situation like this it feels like you can’t make a decision. Your indecision IS a decision. Every time you argue against something using a “Yeah, but…” to doubt the situation, you are making a very clear decision to think pessimistically and avoid an optimistic outlook.

So let me give you the final “Yeah, but what if…” scenario that will end them all, one you can always return to, and the sort of reconsideration you should use instead. This is the exact place where pessimism and optimism align and you can move in a better direction.

“Yeah, but what about…” all the time I’ve already wasted thinking up more problems and second-guessing things? “Yeah, but what if…” I sit here second-guessing everything about this for months? For years? For the rest of my life?

Truthfully, this is the root of the problem. To do anything in life, you have to argue FOR the outcome you desire, not AGAINST it.

At a certain point we all must make a new choice, whether we consciously realize it or not, to replace the “But” with an “And”, and then use it to move backward out of the pessimistic dead-ends we reach.

The word ‘But’ cancels out and negates whatever came before it. The word ‘And’ adds on and extends whatever came before it.

So let’s try and reverse our example here. “Yeah, and what if…” I’ll find a bunch of new opportunities I didn’t know I would have by going back to school? And I really like doing this new type of work? And the teachers are even better than I thought they could be? “Yeah, and what if…” I find new ways to concentrate on my studies that I never realized I was capable of? “Yeah, and what if…” my manager at my current job is so happy I’m going back to school to retrain that they work with my schedule or offer to help in some way? “Yeah, and what if…” I get good grades for the first time in my life and get a whole new view of what’s possible for me to do?

The chances are just as high that good things can happen instead of bad ones. Focusing on good possibilities will leave you open to see opportunities when they’re in front of you. If you can only think about the bad possibilities, you’ll assume the worse more often and you may be totally blind to the positive opportunities when they appear.

This isn’t blind optimism, it’s productive realism. Without a doubt, you will be able to find new opportunities for personal, social and professional growth by going back to school. You’ve spent enough time stirring about it to know you probably wouldn’t hate going after this new type of work, and chances are good you would genuinely enjoy spending your time learning more about it. If you give your teachers a chance, it’s inevitable that you’ll be surprised by what you take away and observe from – both good and bad. Every challenge for concentration presents a new way to grow that you can’t fully understand until you do it, and it’s happening. Employers are often really glad to have their workers retrain, especially if it can help them fill a higher-level job role they’ve been struggling to fill by hiring – promoting from within is usually preferred. These are all rather pragmatic truisms that fly in complete opposition to the defeatist pessimistic approach we might naturally base in assumption. Let’s keep going.

“Yeah, and what about…” being the first in my family to get a degree because this new job I want requires it? “Yeah, and what about…” the job opportunities that are out there for me that I’m not even seeing because I’ve been looking in the wrong places? So what about trying to talk to people I wouldn’t normally meet if I look in different industries or areas? “Yeah, and what about…” researching ways I can train myself online so that I have something new to put on my resume? “Yeah, and what about…” all the people that seem to have enough time to do so much with their days? What are they doing? What about looking up new strategies for time management so that I can look for a job?

Replacing that one word (But with And) in our self-talk logic and forming a coherent positive/optimistic consideration with it can help you think your way out of an indecision dead-end like this, but honestly… it can be used for so much more. Where using “Yeah, but …” will always lead you down a dead-end path of more and more problems that you have to try to juggle to figure out, instead, it’s possible that moving the other direction with “Yeah, and…” can help you reconsider the initial problem altogether and move into a new realm of thinking. If your ego can handle the difficult truths it might find, you might have been wrong from the very beginning.

Let’s reconsider the initial example problem and let go of our ego for a second. My job sucks and it’s holding me back from the life I want. We take a few things for granted here with this statement. Not only that the job itself sucks, but also that it’s the only reason I’m being held back, and that I don’t already have the life I want. Maybe I should reconsider what it is that I actually want? Let me explain.

Earlier I said that I worked in retail, warehouse, labor, and restaurant jobs for years. Which I did. I said they were thankless, they left me exhausted and they stressed me out while not paying me enough to support myself or a family. Which, given my mindset at the time, was all 100% true. However, in retrospect… I see that I was just fooling myself with excuses.

“Yeah, and what about…” the fact that I didn’t always put effort into getting better at those jobs and learning more about them. I worked as a Temp worker through an agency at a couple of different warehouses, and while I worked harder than a lot of my coworkers, I definitely didn’t work up to my full potential. I clocked in and did what they asked me to do, even a little more. Like when I was an order scanner I figured out a way to scan orders using two scanning guns. I could scan boxes for shipment twice as fast, so I got a pat on the back from my supervisor. Yet I stopped there and thought I was entitled to more just because of that. There was so much more I could do if I wouldn’t have felt entitled that way. All because I accidentally lucked into a faster way to scan orders? “Yeah, and what if…” I researched the software and computer systems that logistics companies use in warehouse settings like that and made suggestions to management or found other opportunities? “Yeah, and what if…” I learned more about managing or working with people so I could provide direction in situations when we had to make decisions as a team or coordinate our work for that week? “Yeah, and what if…” I learned more about the customer companies that my employer did logistics for so that I could speak more intelligently about various subjects during meetings with management, demonstrating that I can be more valuable than just scanning orders?

If I considered just putting my all into that job and concentrating every day on becoming more valuable to the company, or learning more about the industry, or simply just trying to be hired on as a full-time employee instead of a Temp worker … the job might not have sucked, I might not have had to do such back-breaking labor every day, and I could have found a way to move up. That was all blocked from my view-point because … “Yeah, but…” society says minimum wage labor-intensive work sucks, so why try even harder if I’m not being forced to?

I’ve come to realize that having that sort of mindset is what was really holding me back. Instead of putting in the extra effort I went home to play video games and ride my skateboard with my friends. When questioned about it, I quantified that with daydreams about becoming a video game designer or working in the skateboard industry – yet, I really didn’t do anything to make moves in that direction. In truth, I was putting my concentration in having fun and relaxing in my free time rather than doing the work it would take to have the life I wanted. For many years I really did have the life I wanted, because I didn’t know how to do the ‘useful’ hard work and put my effort in the right direction to have the life I thought that I wanted.

Your situation may be completely different and this little anecdotal self-analysis I’m giving you may not shine any light into your own life; but the point I’m trying to illustrate is that before all else, it’s important to let go of predetermined assumptions, your ego, your pride, and honestly challenge your own ideas. Challenge your beliefs and put yourself to task toward what you might be capable of before you throw up your hands and just pessimistically assume defeat, only to back that up with “Yeah, but…” excuses until you’re blue in the face. There are many very real small adjustments we can all make in our lives to own up to the truth we might be blind to. In my life now, as we speak, I have many that I try my best to see every day. I’m sure I always will.

We will rarely ever have the life we want, but we will always have the life we deserve. Please understand, that doesn’t mean that things will be fair. And that doesn’t mean good people deserve a bad life, or vice-versa. When I say that I mean: in life, we’re given only our own set of circumstances that we must live within. We only have so many options, it’s up to do what we can with those options to have the best life we can have, and provide the best life we can to those around us. What we do, given our options, inevitably results in the life we deserve. I don’t want to digress on this topic because it can really open a Pandora’s box of all sorts of extra existential conundrums which would take at least a few more articles, a book, a motion picture, and a few long heart-to-heart talks to adequately describe and give justice to. Let’s get back on track here.

The Apocalypse Is The Perfect Excuse To Give Up

Given the fact that it’s hard enough for most people, myself included, to find enough optimism and energy to fight against that pessimistic voice in our head that argues against our best judgment most of the time… I can only imagine that with all that’s going on in society right now, for many of us – that voice has a huge megaphone and it’s screaming pessimism from every angle it can.

At first glance, since all the problems and struggles we had in life were difficult to deal with, even before COVID-19 went and shut down our economy… it may feel like they’re 100 times worse. Not only do you hate your job, but you’re not even allowed to go into work now. Not only is your business struggling, but now you can only get a few customers a day or worse… if you’re even allowed to be open at all. Not only were you upset with ‘this or that’ and barely getting by… now you feel like you absolutely can’t do anything!

Your rents due and you haven’t got a paycheck in weeks. Your kids are stuck in your house and it’s driving you up the walls. The sports you usually watch to relax and zone out from your problems are all cancelled. That vacation or trip you were planning for months can’t happen now. All the things you used to go out and do to relax are closed. You have to wear this silly mask everywhere you go even when you can go out to do something. Everyone is telling you it’s dangerous outside, and everyone is debating just how dangerous it actually is.

Now you’re stuck, waiting. Broke and distraught, you start trying to figure out what to do. What can you do? Sit and watch every episode of every show and movie on Netflix? Use the tiny stimulus check you got to binge buy emergency disaster supplies on Amazon? Maybe you start reflecting on how tough life has been, how you can’t get ahead, and now it’ll be years before you can make it to your goals. Your life is ruined, along with everyone else’s lives too!

It’s been several weeks, even months, now and nothings getting better. The politicians on the news are arguing about nose-swab testing rates and when to open our cities back up. According to some the infection count would skyrocket, according to others, it’s no big deal and we can’t sacrifice the economy over it. Your uncle Jim is convinced it’s all an elaborate government conspiracy and sends you messages of videos about the dangers of 5G cell-phone towers every day for some reason. And yet still, among all this, it’s very obvious that Epstein didn’t kill himself.

All this time and energy we’ve spent debating and complaining. Analyzing and criticizing. Protesting masks and speculating on the infection rates. All the nights of stressing out and binge-watching a show were meth-heads abuse tigers and plot the murder of a boomer-hippy woman who also has tigers and also might be a murderer… and what has it gotten us? More confused, detached, and resigned than ever to assume that there is absolutely nothing we can do. The “Yeah, but what about…” demons are cackling in every corner of our mind at everything that’s going on.

What The Hell Can We Do?

Now, please understand, I’ve personally been really fortunate through all this. I was lucky enough to have chosen to study computer programming for the last 7 years. So not only am I accustomed to staying at home all the time, now I can work from home to earn my living all the same. By all means, in every way possible, I have thanked God for every day as much as I can for that. I’m less financially displaced and more contained from the pandemic than many other people right now. I attend an online school that only really requires an internet connection, and most of my hobbies fit well with social distancing guidelines. Given the current state of the economy and job market in our new-found apocalypse, that makes me one of the luckier ones. Truthfully, really, I’m endlessly thankful! I mean, I haven’t even mentioned the plights of systemic racism that have coursed through our countries veins which leaves me statistically less likely to die or be incarcerated. I can’t imagine some of the very real hardships that are actively befalling people right now as I type this, and the current climate of news media and overt scientific and political speculation which will keep adding fuel to that fire for months, and years, to come probably only making things more difficult.

That’s why I think that now, more than ever, it’s important to make your best effort to replace your “but‘s” with “and‘s”, so to speak… in all our individual plans, pursuits, and hustles. We absolutely have to make the arguments for our best solutions or new unanticipated opportunities, rather than reveling in our problems. Back a few months ago I continually saw protestors out on the street corner with signs that were likening the current “stay-at-home” government restrictions to that of ‘Slavery‘, and some new form of oppression of our political rights as Americans. Then later, we saw nation-wide protests and riots that were about racial oppression linked to ACTUAL slavery. It’s all been extremely startling, to say the least.

Although I have my opinions in either direction about the current crisis and political conversation, as we all do, I think that if you feel the urge to speak out and ‘fight the powers that be’… the only clear way to make progress or accomplish anything, other than braving the crowds to get pelted by ‘non-lethal’ projectiles, is to proactively work toward a better ‘new normal’ that we will all have to share once this is over. Work hard as hell to better yourself, and your own life, with this ‘stay-at-home’ downtime. Because while it might not always feel like it, we still really do live in the most prosperous, peaceful, safe, and affluent time out of all of human history. We’re enabled by the power of the internet and these amazing hand-held touchscreen computers in our pockets to rise above the civil discourse and achieve a better understanding of the world than anyone in our lower-class demographic might have ever imagined during previous eras. It’s up to us to not only act constructively but live with a more optimistic productive mindset every chance we have. Our children and future generations depend on it in ways we can’t yet even imagine.

I was born ten days before the ‘Black Monday’ financial crisis of 1987. My adolescent years occurred throughout the 1990’s economic burst of the ‘.com’ bubble, subsequent uncertainty, and eventual recovery. I was a teenager attending high school during the 9/11 attacks and witnessed the pandemonium play out, as every news outlet broadcasted coverage of it for months and the wars of the era began… continuing on for years. I was a young adult with one of my very first full-time jobs when the housing bubble burst and those sub-prime mortgage-backed securities induced the ‘Great Recession’ of 2008. Now I’m beginning the prime of my career as the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps the globe, causing the newest economic crisis. Before my lifetime there were countless national and global crises, pandemics, wars, plagues, and all manner of life-changing events; and long after I’m dead, humanity will still be experiencing events like this. In between each, there have been and will be less-noticed smaller scale societal problems, too.

We can rarely change or control the occurrence of these huge problems, and our national or municipal governments will act on them or react to them, one way or another because that’s just a major function of the government bodies in a civil society. Their action or reaction will always both help some and hurt people, it’s just the consequence of having billions of people in the population with vastly different viewpoints and needs. In some areas an attempt at the solution might be seeking to rein in and dictate what the views and needs of the people should be, reshaping the peg for the hole. In other areas an attempt at the solution might be to empower and bolster those views and needs to influence the system, reshaping the hole for the peg. Regardless of the configuration, or the confounding consequence of these series of actions and events; our own personal lives will be affected and interrupted in both noticeably salient and insignificantly invisible ways. We can’t change that, but we can change how we think so we’re less impacted.

The narrative by which we interpret any events like these and their results, large or small, global or local, public or private, I argue, is largely left up to our individual perspectives and abilities to consider our own personal truths and realities without fooling ourselves with excuses and half-true fallacies. Our freedoms are found in this very real, very important, set of choices all we have in our perspective interpretation. The closer we can get to cultivating a set of inarguable self-evident truths for ourselves in our perspective, the freer we are to act in the present for building a system of solutions, rather than spinning endlessly in the dead-end deliberation of proliferating problems. Thus, the popular culture and news media are based on providing us a narrative and framing the global chain of events and results to forecast for us a future we should expect, but it’s only when we make decisions for ourselves on what’s true, based on basic inarguable realities, that we’re ever as close to being ‘free’ as we can be.

So, the truth I know, which is inarguable in as much as I can determine right now, is that the apocalypse will come and go in each new passing form throughout the years, disrupting and changing the course of my life in different ways. I can’t control that. Each problem that it presents in each new form could easily serve as an excuse to act out more problems and confound the issue, or it can provide me an opportunity to find new solutions for myself and others so we can adapt in the best ways we can. This takes honesty and vigilance against the deception of my ego and the ego of others, and it takes integrity and humility to not only admit when I’m wrong but to seek out and clearly identify my own inaccuracies and assumptions before I doubt any conflicting logic or argument. No one can directly make my life any better or worse than I can. In what I believe, act on, and communicate with others about.

So, how do you survive the apocalypse? Don’t always believe your own bullshit, listen to the news cycle sparingly, and favor optimism over pessimism at all costs.

You Have The Power To Find Your Own Solutions

All the things you were too busy to do before the pandemic are waiting for you and now’s your chance to do them. Read the books you’ve been letting rot on your shelf, study the subject you always wished you’d known more about. Make an account on any one of the hundreds of learning websites that are out there so you can start setting yourself up for a better situation. Hustle on the things you know you’ve always wanted to do but never ‘had the time’, because whether we like it or not, we certainly have more time now than we ever normally would.

Racial and DNA-related subjects aside (race is a topic for another article), as fortunate as I am right now, it wasn’t all just an accident. I didn’t just slip and fall onto a pile of Software Development books and luck into what I know how to do now. I stayed at home and worked as hard as I possibly could, for years. I’ve read more books recently than I ever thought I could, because I’d never been a regular reader in any other point in my life. In the last year I’ve gotten through more than a dozen books and it’s vastly improved my outlook and my life… and those weren’t even about computer programming. Before this I found out what textbooks they used in programming classes and I ordered them and worked through them. I scoured the internet daily for articles and tutorials, videos and guides, demonstrations and on and on. I made it my life.

So whether you want to be an amazing musician, artist, DJ, designer, marketing pro, solar panel technician, automotive mechanic, or one of these top-paying jobs, or one of these ‘dream jobs’; it all starts with igniting your obsessive passion for studying and learning everything about it, practicing it every day, and really using this time you have. The same goes for just getting better at your current job, learning that new technique, getting that certification, or taking that online class. For instance the online school I’m going to offers degrees in a bunch of different fields. It’s all out there. Yours for the taking.

At the same time, it’s extremely important to connect with your family, get to know your kids better, call those friends you haven’t spoken to in months, and spend some quality time with your significant other. We all need people around us to fill our days with better times and to depend on for guidance or provide guidance to; especially in times like these. Stay connected to your loved ones, stay tuned in to your own personal life and what’s immediately in front of you.

Apocalypse survival depends on focusing on what you can control and casting aside everything else. Even if you’re in an incredibly limited state, you can still control your own perspective and daily actions. Take consistent action every day toward something you want or need to do, and eventually, you will be able to do it. At the end of this difficult year, or years, there will be those who used the lockdown as an excuse to curl up into inaction and there will be those who used it to improve themselves. Which one will you be?

I’m no fortune teller and although it’s fun to think about the soothsaying divination that comes from a gift of clairvoyance, the tarot card flipping and ritualistic candle lighting that’d go into it just seems like so much more hassle than it’s really worth. In every story ever told about looking into the future things never end up being exactly what they seem to be. Promises of riches may come with a sacrifice of health, predictions of success or fame will usually come with an untold curse or calamity that balances out the equation. Even so, if we were shown what our future would be, whether it’s bad or good, we’d still have in mind what we want from life and so in spite of the psychic’s words or the fortune cookie’s description; we’d inevitably vie for what we desire over what was prescribed. Twisting fate.

I feel like looking into the future and making predictions on what’s going to happen is a little like getting the pay off before the work is done. Like getting rewarded without the proper effort or achievement. Everything in the future takes paying your dues for them, regardless of how mundane it is. You still have to wait for a boring mundane future to come. Even more so if your future includes a lot of good, desirable, positive stuff. Usually, you don’t get stuff like that for free – you’ve got to earn it – and if you knew you’d get it in the future by way of a fortune teller’s predictions, then I wonder if you’d put in the same work to get it. Thinking you’re destined for something may make you assume that it requires little effort, or it make put you at ease and you just wouldn’t put in as much effort, or the same effort… and thus end up never getting it after all. Undoing fate.

It’s far more reliable to simply put in the effort to make our future what we want it to be. We decide. Have some goals, etch out some plans, and hustle until we reach our limits – then hustle some more to break our limits and grow even further. Sounds simple enough, but putting it into action requires a consistent daily commitment. A focused spirit, a determined breath. Discipline. That can be hard enough on its own, but when we factor in all the other fun things in life that may come along to distract us, waiting around every corner to take us off course and halt our progress, it’s even more difficult than one might think. Any other bad habits carved into our lives that we’re comfortably used to stand to guide us astray as well. Often these habits are invisible to us because we’re so used to their presence or they’re so ingrained into our culture.

I’ve spent many years reading about it, watching videos on it, and talking to people about it. I’ve really tried to listen to how people feel about trying to improve their lives. All the while reflecting on my own journey through the last few years. Growing to see the incomparable importance of the subject, I can see that how we feel today has a lot to do with what we did years ago. Yet that backward hindsight thinking is difficult to come to grips with. We only ever have ourselves to blame. Changing our habits is really hard because the most problematic habits feel the best in the short term. It’s very clear that a true change for the better and a path of continuous improvement toward some new future we desire is one most intimidating and frustrating processes we could ever experience. Yet, if we can manage to invoke that change and gradually become the person we want to be, the rewards in the result are greater than anything else in life. With hard work and persistence, over time, we could do anything, be anyone.

If you want it, work for it. It’s that simple.

So if hindsight is 20/20 and we so easily see the details of our past mistakes when reflected, yet we can never return to those times to right our wrongs or fix events after the fact, I’d rather work to develop the same clarity of vision for events yet to come. A future fixer, a fortune designer. Decide my fate and put in the work to make my dreams a reality. Actually see the future and make it real. A 20/20 foresight for the year 2020. Today’s January 1st and I really clearly see who I’d like to be by December 31st.

• Accel at work as a programmer, completing a full version of the application I’m assigned, with a happy customer.
• Have $20k saved in the bank.
• Be more than 75% finished with my Bachelor’s degree.
• Get great scores on my PluralSight IQs, nearly done with Freecodecamp, and lots of progress on KhanAcademy.
• Complete a large portion of the first draft of my novel and textbook.
• Earn at least a few thousand dollars with my web development business, make reliable contacts and help others.
• Organize my massive list of resource links into a website that others find helpful.
• Be adept with Vue.js, WordPress development, and able to administer my own web server.
• Be a proficient freestyle FPV drone pilot with some awesome flight footage online.
• Be a skateboarder with higher pop and more consistent tricks, with plenty of recent video clips to show for it.
• Have a set of designs drawn up ready to be put on apparel and skateboards for a new brand.
• Finish a solo instrumental progressive rock/metal album.

This isn’t some New Years’ resolution. No ‘new year, new me’ mumbo-jumbo. It’s all the same thing I’ve been working on for a long time now, step by step, taking my failures and learning from them, running with my successes to get the most of them. Yet, the turning of the year offers a unique opportunity to see how much can get done before next year if I stay consistent in my routines and find newer better ways to do things. That way I can challenge myself to do more the year after that and so on.

In a previous blog I talked about 7 main focuses in my life I’d like to perfect:

• Study – WGU, CEH, PluralSight, FreeCodeCamp, Khan Academy
• Creative Research – Fantasy themed textbook, Telepathy/Future Novel, and Neurology
• Business – Flip websites, Indicium, Learn React.js, WordPress dev, Set up a server
• Video Editing – Learn editing, Tutorial Videos, Youtube videos (vlog, review, spotlights)
• Reading – 50 pages per day, book reports
• New Hobbies – FPV drones, Magic, D&D
• Passion Routines– Play music, Ride skateboards, Draw, Workout

Over the last couple of months since then, I’ve felt out this new set of concentrations and experimented with different schedules I could fit into my weeks to maximize my time spent. Getting better at managing my time and reducing distractions that throw me off the mark. I uninstalled most of the video games from my computer, I’ve resisted watching shows and movies in trade for stuff that, at least vaguely, follows these topics, and I’ve stopped talking about what I’m going to do in trade for what I am doing.

The next step then is to pour the concrete slab of a schedule for myself. A foundation to build the structure of my days. I can brainstorm and theorize all I want about the things I’d like to focus on – but without a set of days and times with which to work on it, it’ll all be up to what I feel like doing and when I feel like doing it. That’s what I’m trying to get away from. I feel like there’s a better way than that.

Every day I’ll wake up as early as I can. Let’s say between 4:00 am – 5:00 am. This gives 2-3 hours to get ready and work on something a little bit before I leave for work. Studying and taking a lesson or two online, along with doing some push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups will be perfect – my mind and my body can get a little exercise before my day starts.

After work, I’d be getting home around 5:30 pm-6:00 pm. That’d leave about 3 hours before I should start cleaning up and relaxing for bed. Each day I’ll fit in at least an hour University study, then jump to one or more of the other categories depending on the day, and start rotating through the subcategories each week – and get my reading done between audiobooks in the car on my commute and actual reading before going to sleep.

So here’s a starting point for a schedule this month:

Monday – Friday:

Morning (4 am-7 am):

• WGU school work OR PluralSight/Freecodecamp/Khanacademy (1.5 hours)
• Free research (read articles, watch videos) & Work on wforbes.net (1 hour)
• Get ready for work (30 mins)

Evening (6 pm – 9 pm):

• WGU school work (1 hour)
• Daily Focus (2 hours):
  • Monday: Creative – Work on textbook, novel, or study neurology.
  • Tuesday: Business – Work on Websites, Organize Indicium, Learn Vue.js, Learn WordPress, Set up a Server
  • Wednesday: Videos – Practice editing, Plan/Film tutorials, Plan/Film Youtube Content
  • Thursday: Business – Work on Websites, Organize Indicium, Learn Vue.js, Learn WordPress, Set up a Server
  • Friday: Hobbies/Passions – Practice FPV drone flying, Skateboarding, Music, Drawing.
• Read – 50 pages or one chapter, until sleep.

Saturday and Sunday:

• 4-6 am: PluralSight, Freecodecamp, KhanAcademy (2 hours)
• 6-10 am: WGU school work OR Free research & Work on wforbes.net (4 hours)
• 10-12pm: Creative category (2 hours)
• 12-1pm: Lunch, chill (1 hour)
• 1 – 4 pm: WGU school work OR Business category (3 hours)
• 4 – 8 pm: Video/Editing AND/OR Hobbies/Passions (4 hours)
• 8 – 10pm: Relax/Free time

I doubt I’d be able to stick to this schedule 100% all the time every day. There will be blocks of time, or even days where I give myself a break – do something else, hang out with people, or figure something else out. I won’t beat myself up if I’m not perfect and I can’t expect to keep track of every little thing. Like this Reddit post, where a user tracked the time he spent doing everything throughout 2019. You’ll notice that only 2nd to Sleeping, his ‘Waste Time’ category of activities ended up taking the largest portion of his time (some 990 hours), just as I assume mine would too if I wasn’t at least TRYING to meet schedules like the one I laid out in this post. I’m really inspired by stuff like that Reddit post though, I like the idea of keeping track of how I spend my time all year to come out with exact numbers, but I seriously doubt my ability to keep it up.

This is just a guideline. Something to use to keep myself moving in the right direction. Along with all of this, in every activity, I’m going to work to keep better and better notes in my Journal and record snippets of my activity to add to my video content. I’ll be doing at least pushup/situp/pullups every day, and possibly starting to devote an hour to the gym every day with my girlfriend. Things will change, the schedule will need adjustment, and I’ll probably always be doing other extra things in the margins and on the sidelines.

It’s my hope that, along with my previous blog articles, this is giving you ideas. Inspiring someone else out there to start getting their shit together too. I’ll keep posting here, and working on content for this site on different topics … and this time next year I’m sure I’ll have made some serious progress toward being that better version of myself and meeting these goals. Thanks for reading, Happy New Year 2020!

Turning my journal into tasks

In my last blog post, I mentioned that I’d started journaling to organize myself. It’s reshaped everything about my life and who I am. Getting everything in my head typed out into a doc has me so much more organized and capable of doing more than I ever thought possible. Coming to terms with the past, understanding the present, planning for the future. It feels like I have a second brain. 

The brain in my head used to have to manage to keep track of remembering everything, keep up with my imagination on everything, thinking about my day-to-day life, and making it all somehow cohesive so I can progress. Like trying to do difficult math homework, hold a witty conversation, answer a bunch of emails, plan for the future and do my taxes all while juggling a bunch of random items on a unicycle over a pool of alligators. As you get older and your life becomes more complex, it just gets to be too much.

The brain in my journal can now take care of keeping track of remembering most things. Writing forces me to express my imagination literally and put it into words to help make sense of it. Then this frees my focus to be more present in my day-to-day life. I can exist at the moment with people and really pay attention to them; instead of drifting in and out of my unsorted thought processes.

Since 2017 I’ve written 300+ pages (some 250k words, give or take). Although I took a break from it during the first half of this year, I’ve written 150 pages since July 2019. Much of it has had to do with putting together what I’ve found that I like doing, shaping up my daily habits, planning for the next 10 years and where I want to be at 42 years old, and combining everything I’d researched in the last few years to form a plan to keep doing more with my life. I wrote a few essays I’d like to expand on and refine in my blog here too when it’s time for it.

Now I’m doubling back through this year’s journal to summarize it for myself and turn its contents into actionable tasks to work on going forward. Looking at the next year of my life and what I’ll focus on throughout it. I’d like to keep doing what I’ve been doing recently, only better. More streamlined and focused. Managed enough to do away with needless wastes of time, but free enough to decide what I can work on depending on my mood each day.

Here’s a rough list of everything I’m doing:

• Finish my Bachelor’s in Computer Science by 2021 (https://wgu.edu)
• Get my Ethical Hacking Certification before 2020, and my CSSLP before 2021
• Learn the C++ programming language with professional proficiency
• Work on my video game to practice my Java (and C++), and Game dev skills (Omnia, 2013 project)
• Flip (buy and resell) websites and business opportunities for profit and passive income
• Take online tutorials daily to broaden my knowledge (PluralSight, Freecodecamp, Khan, etc)
• Practice editing videos on Adobe Premier
• Compile my school work and research to write articles and create video tutorials based on them
• Post videos on my YouTube channel: Vlogs, Product Reviews, YouTube Channel Spotlights.. etc.
• Read at least 50 pages (or one chapter) from a book each day
• Write book report articles on the books I complete to sum them up
• Research and study neurology with the goal of working with neurologists as a programmer
• Write tutorials/textbooks styled like a fantasy RPG D&D choose your adventure book
• Write a novel centered around telepathy and future technology
• Organize and expand my Indicium project – a repository of useful and interesting web links
• Learn the React.js framework
• Get better at WordPress development
• Build a web application that makes a game out of blogging and journaling
• Build a web application that gives insights and research info based on browsing history
• Build a prototype for [proprietary idea] … more info on that soon.
• Set up and run a physical web server (Windows & Linux)
• Learn how to fly Freestyle FPV drones (like this)
• Learn to play Magic: the Gathering well and win a Friday night tournament
• Learn D&D and start playing it with a group of friends regularly
• Play and write music at least once a week (Exits Exist)
• Skateboard at least once a week
• Draw on my tablet at least 5 hours per week (learn photoshop/illustrator)
• Work out at least 8 hours per week

“Time Is A Concept”

First, I know already that everything I’m planning to do and already doing is more than my schedule can handle to excel at most of it. I work a fulltime job (8 hours per day) and I’m taking fulltime classes for another 4 hours per day. With the remaining 4 hours I have each day during the week and another 8 hours per day on the weekend: an accumulated approximated 30-40 hours to spare at the most… I have some room to work on other things but not much.

I know I won’t be able to work on all of this all the time. Avoiding burnout is really important. I’m sure I’ll try making schedules for myself and drop the ball on them. Plan things out and then change the plans. That’s ok with me. I won’t read that much every day at first, I might never be good at Magic any time soon, or flip a single website successfully. I won’t beat myself up about it if that’s the case. In truth, I have 10 years from right now to get it right. 

I wrote a detailed 10-year plan that tracks my estimated income and expenses, concentrations and projected focuses, with alternate plans for problems arising – like failing health, losing work, and other misdirections. More on that later.

The main idea here is that without this journal, this list and these ideas, I wouldn’t ever have a chance at getting anywhere close to accomplishing these things. This list and set of goals I’m forming is just an upper bound goal to keep reaching for this year and this blog post is an opportunity to break the ice and start writing about it.

I think the key is forming my tasks to accumulate together. Kill multiple birds with one stone. Everything having to do with learning software and writing code can be considered one big project, everything with videos and tutorials are another. Researching and writing articles can be done in the same set time of my schedule as studying for subjects in school and taking tutorials, and the new hobbies I’d like to learn can all be given the same time slot during the week that gets rotated out with one of them being focused on at a time. 

There is a way to manage all this and it’s my overarching main goal to be able to do that successfully by October 2020 and then keep getting better at it until 2030. Let’s see where I am when that time comes.

Birds and Stones

Study

• Finish my Bachelor’s in Computer Science by 2021 (https://wgu.edu)
• Get my Ethical Hacking Certification before 2020, and my CSSLP before 2021.
• Take online tutorials daily to broaden my knowledge (PluralSight, Freecodecamp, Khan, etc)

Studying and taking classes at home affords me the opportunity to also listen to videos and take notes for certifications and other stuff. Bouncing back and forth between tasks when I get bored or reach a stopping point with each one has been a really good workflow for me. I’m actually currently projected to graduate WGU by 2023… so finishing by the end of 2021 is incredibly accelerated. Like I said earlier, this is an upper bound to reach for. Graduating by 2021 is the best possible achievement I could ask for here, that’d be a maniacal pace. Good thing I’m a maniac. Those three items can be combined to be something simple like… ‘Study’. 

What’s next?

Creative Research

• Research and study neurology with the goal of working with neurologists as a programmer (and understanding the brain in more depth)
• Write tutorials/textbooks styled like a fantasy RPG D&D choose your adventure book
• Write a novel centered around telepathy and future technology

These are less important things to study but will require a different pace and they really don’t have much in the way of a time restriction. The work with neurology won’t be that important until I have my Master’s degree. The fantasy styled tutorials are just a fun idea I worked on one day that I’d like to continue. The novel has been in progress on and off since 2016, and who knows when it’ll be good enough to say what I want it to say? So these are like.. ‘Creative Research’. 

And then there’s…

Business

• Flip (buy and resell) websites and business opportunities for profit and passive income.
• Organize and expand my Indicium project – a repository of useful and interesting web links
• Learn the React.js framework
• Get better at WordPress development
• Build a web application that makes a game out of blogging and journaling
• Build a web application that gives insights and research info based on browsing history
• Build a prototype for [proprietary idea] … more info on that soon.
• Set up and run a physical web server (Windows & Linux)

It’s very clear to me that working a day job, even if it pays reasonably well, is not going to provide enough to do all the extra very important things that go into having a GREAT life. I don’t just want to scrape by and have a GOOD life. I want it to be great like Tony the Tiger would say. These important things include: being able to actually HELP others and provide meaningful value to their lives, travel and see more of the world than just this Californian desert I’ve been mostly relegated to, save for retirement so I can begin a new career and have freedom when I reach my 50s, and finally – do fun cool projects ‘n’ stuff.

I figure that starting a technology company is the best way to go right now, with what I know how to do already and what I want to know how to do in the future. With considerations on the type of people I want to be around in my life, and the type of people I want to be able to help consistently. The plan for this company is something for a later blog post, but roughly I figure that starting small and just flipping websites like people flip houses is my safest bet. I can hold profitable websites for passive income, make large flips and collect big revenues when the opportunity arises, and get more knowledgable about what goes into a successful online business. From there, building web applications and native apps on mobile or desktop would be a natural next step. Then on to building and producing devices that harness the new technology on the horizon after that. I intend to focus on Business to Business verticals and stay insulated from the ups-and-downs of consumer trends or market instability. File this stuff under… “Business”.

And on to the next…

Video Editing

• Practice editing videos on Adobe Premier
• Compile my school work and research to write articles and create video tutorials based on them
• Post videos on my YouTube channel: Vlogs, Product Reviews, YouTube Channel Spotlights.. etc.

Alright so, YouTube is huge and online video has a more broad and inclusive audience now more than ever. Most people have phones and laptops that can stream and play 1080p and 4k video, the quality of all of it is really prime now. So.. editing videos, even at a novice level for my own stuff is really important. I could write all the articles in the world, but if everyone is much more receptive to watching a video on it instead – why not try to provide that?

It struck me that most people can’t go to college and they may never be exposed to coding and technology topics. Getting into something like software development really requires a lot of context and introductory knowledge to get off the ground and understand the lay of the land. If I can do something to make it more accessible and fun to get into, I think that’d be a great use of time. File these under “Video work”. 

Continuing…

Reading

• Read at least 50 pages (or one chapter) from a book each day
• Write book report articles on the books I complete to sum them up

So far this year I’ve gotten through 5 or 6 audiobooks and started reading a few physical ones. My eyes are far far better at reading text on a screen right now than they are on paper, but I think it’d be a really important habit to just bake into my days consistently. After selling books on Amazon back in 2016, I have a huge pile of them left over ready to get started. It will just be a matter of carving through that and picking up new titles (I’ve purchased like 14 books in just the last few months). Most importantly though, I believe that writing summaries and thoughts on what I read will really drive it home and make the activity more meaningful. I’ve noticed people will speed through audiobooks, racking up dozens and dozens of them … but how is all that new knowledge cemented in their mind? I have no idea. For me to get the most value from reading, I will need to reflect on everything and what better way than little book reports like revisiting 3rd grade? Categorize these under “Read”.

Next…

New Hobbies

• Learn how to fly Freestyle FPV drones (like this)
• Learn to play Magic: the Gathering well and win a Friday night tournament
• Learn D&D and start playing it with a group of friends regularly

Learning these are just things I always wanted to do but never knew anyone that did them. There’s other stuff I could add to this list too, but this is enough for now. Won’t take a whole lot of time, but will require commitment to regularly doing them and adding to my knowledge on them. Label them “New Hobbies”.

Finally…

Passion Routines

• Play and write music at least once a week (Exits Exist)
• Skateboard at least once a week
• Draw on my tablet at least 5 hours per week (learn photoshop/illustrator)
• Work out at least 8 hours per week

These last four are things I’d be doing WAY too much of if I wasn’t on this new way of living, in fact, I think they’d be all I would be doing. I don’t know how to balance the time I spend on them yet. I feel like for stuff like Skateboarding or Drawing, I will either not do them at all for months at a time or spend all day on them everyday and not look up for months at a time, 10 hours at a time, no limits, all chips in. So learning to balance it will be the biggest challenge for me. In truth I’d like to start a clothing/skateboard brand and sell my designs/artwork printed on products, but that’s not really in my scope right this moment… but may be added if I can do these routinely.I’d categorize this under “Passion Routines”.

Summary: From 25 to 6

Ok so what do we have from that? Boiled down 25 subtopics into 6 main topics:

• Study – WGU, CEH, PluralSight, FreeCodeCamp, Khan Academy
• Creative Research – Neurology, Fantasy themed textbook, Telepathy/Future Novel
• Business – Flip websites, Indicium, Learn React.js, WordPress dev, Set up server
• Video Editing – Learn editing, Tutorial Videos, Youtube videos (vlog, review, spotlights)
• Reading – 50 pages, book reports
• New Hobbies – FPV drones, Magic, D&D
• Passion Routines– Play music, Ride skateboards, Draw, Workout

Although this is all the same amount of tasks and activities as we started with, categorizing and combining them suddenly makes them manageable. There are 7 days in a week, at least three of those topics are daily routine kinds of things(study, read, passions.. maybe new hobbies); so really I’m looking at just planning weekly blocks of time for three pursuits here: Creative Research, Business, and Video Editing. I’m imagining that right now, I’d best serve these by really spending multiple hours on them in each sitting.

Now I suppose my job will be to work out a schedule for myself and start a checklist every week to make sure I hold myself to task. Thanks for reading, I’m looking forward to sharing more about all of this when I can.

Today’s a new day. Just like any other, but what makes today somewhat unique is that I’m writing a blog post on it. I spent the last few years working on myself and my career. I told myself that sooner or later I’d start blogging about it, and I guess today is both sooner and later – go figure.

Recent Successes

This year I got a great job working for a military contractor in IT. Thanks to this new company I’m with, I got my CompTIA Security+ certification, and I’m working toward some more certifications in the same vein. CEH, CSSLP, etc. I’ve been getting straight A’s at my local community college for about a year now and I was just accepted to the Computer Science Bachelor’s Degree program at Western Governor’s University, starting on 10/1/19. After many years of never doing very well in school and moving from one disappointing position to another, everything has changed for the better all in just the last year or two.

Journaling and Writing

What I’m most proud of and what’s helped me progress the most is the habit of regularly journaling. In total now I’ve created well over 300 pages worth of journal entries, both personal and CS research related. Nearly every day I write about the stuff I’m interested in as I learn more about them. I write about the things that are going on with me in my life. I organize my thoughts, I express anything that’s troubling me, and all else. It’s been a fantastic way to bring my thoughts out of my head and organize them coherently. Now that I’ve been doing this, I’m twice as productive and three times more organized now than I ever was in my life. I’m honestly very surprised that more people I know don’t do the same sort of thing, but maybe it’s not for everyone. Either way, I highly recommend that you try… it could change your life.

Break Up and Socializing More

Today I just broke up with my girlfriend after dating for almost a year. That absolutely sucked, but I’m working through it. To counterbalance that, I’ve been trying to put more effort toward spending time with my friends and being more social – it’s hard for me because I’ve lost touch with a lot of my old friends. Nowadays I’d rather just work on code and stay home most of the time, but I’m definitely committed to changing for the better in that regard. I need to get out there more and being a good friend to the people I know!

Motivational and Self-Help Books

Over the last few months, I’ve listened to five books and I recommend them all to those who might be struggling with getting their life going, getting away from toxic attitudes, or just improving themselves:

• Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out Of Your Head and Into Your Life by Gary John Bishop
• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
• Unlimited Memory: How to Use Advanced Learning Strategies to Learn Faster, Remember More and Be More Productive by Kevin Horsley
• Dark Psychology Secrets & The Art of Reading People by Richard Martinez

Every day I’d just load one of these books into Audible on my phone for my commutes to and from work and school, concentrate on what was being explained… rewinding and repeating sections that I needed to focus on… and steadily I got through them. When I’m at home and I have a free moment, I open one of them up and read where the audiobook left off – or investigate the sections I didn’t fully absorb while listening.

Working Toward Helping Others

I’m finding that a lot of people I care about struggle one way or another. Things like launching their ideas and working toward their dreams, or finding happiness in their routines and the people around them. A lot of people hold on to the past, dwell and soak in the negative, or simply just don’t put the effort into themselves to be able to rise above what weighs them down or discourages them. I hope that as time goes on I can work to be of assistance to them, or inspiration for people that can’t find a way on their own. Fortunately, I’ve gotten to a point where I’ve come to grips with the things that have bothered me for years, and spreading the sense of freedom I’ve gained from that to help others through the dark would be amazing.

Software and Math Books I’m Working Through

Other, more career-centered, books I’ve gotten recently that I’m studying include:

For learning C++:
Beginning C++17: From Novice to Professional (2018)
Mastering C++: A Step By Step Guide for the Beginner and Advanced User (2019)
Effective Modern C++: 42 Specific Ways to Improve Your Use of C++11 and C++14 (2014)
C++ Concurrency in Action: Practical Multithreading (2012)
Large Scale C++ Software Design (1996)

For getting better with C#:
Exploring Advanced Features in C# (2019)
Design Patterns in C# (2018)

For getting ready for Machine Learning and AI:
The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book (2019)
Coding the Matrix: Linear Algebra through Computer Science Applications (2013)
Linear Algebra (2011)
Linear Algebra (1971)

Bye

For now, I’ll keep working, a little at a time, toward this greater future I envision. That work includes posting more blogs like this one, adding content to my youtube channel at https://youtube.com/c/WillForbes87, and getting this website off the ground.

So that’s where I’m at. That’s the best introduction I could give to my life right now. Thanks for reading – hit me up any time at linkedin.com/ … stay tuned for more.