Building The Blog- Never Say This To Me

"I want to swim away but don't know how
Sometimes it feels just like I'm falling in the ocean
Let the waves up take me down
Let the hurricane set in motion, yeah
Let the rain of what I feel right now, come down
Let the rain come down"


When I realized that I have begun to dislike every picture I see of me it became apparent that it was time to make changes. Not a change, but changes because the reality is that the reasons that I grew to be unhappy with the pictures made it impossible to limit it to one.

The funny in a not so funny thing here is that this isn't because I don't like the way I look physically. I am not thrilled by my appearance, but some of that is due an unwillingness to accept that I am not 25 anymore. In fact regular visits to the gym have made a significant difference in my appearance. I feel stronger than I have in quite some time so that pleases me.

What doesn't please me is the look in my eyes. Unless you know me really well you won't see or recognize it. The anger and frustration- the lack of satisfaction and fulfillment are so obvious to me. The only reason that you have any inkling is because of the words that I share here. You don't see how I have withdrawn into a cave and pushed people away.

"As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way." Ralph Waldo Emerson

I know who is preventing my success and he is me. Yep, old Jack is the reason why he is not living the life he wants. That is not say that I have a particularly bad life because I don't. I have a lot to be thankful for and I am. I am also aware of my predilection for being hard on myself. Some of the challenges I face are things that have nothing to do with me or were outside of my control. Yet, it doesn't matter because I still beat my chest and wonder if there isn't something that I should have seen or done.

That last line is troublesome because I find myself walking the tightrope of responsibility. It is bootless and useless to beat myself up about what I could have done because...I didn't. And as I said in some cases it wouldn't matter because the situations were never under my control so it is reasonable to relax a little. That makes sense to me and I am working on it. But that tightrope of responsibility says that while I can ease off I must also accept a portion of accountability.

Although if I abide by the rules of the blog I need to continue to peel away the layers and ask for forgiveness. It is not from you or from anyone you know, but from me. I need to forgive myself for not being smarter, better, stronger etc. I am not good at it, but I am working on it.

"An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory."Ralph Waldo Emerson

Old Ralph Waldo was a very sharp man, far more than I gave him credit for. Of course my first exposure to him was when I was in the 9th grade and I didn't know a damn thing then. The problem of course is that I thought that I did and consequently created more issues for myself.  Back in the day we might have called it Schlattered, eh Shmata Queen.

Anyway, the point of the second quote is that there is a time for words and a time for action. Back during the early days of the space race scientists thought that they knew what would happen if they sent man up into the outer reaches of the wild blue yonder. They were pretty sure that their theories would pan out and the guys in the flying tin cans would come back safe and sound. So they stuck these men in suits, stuffed them into cans and attached them to big rockets that flew into space.

And as we know most of the time it worked- they went up and came back down in one piece. Action proved theory to be correct. But bringing it back to the egocentric ramblings of your author it means that if I want to make changes I can't spend years thinking about them. It means that it is better to move sooner than later. And that my friends has been a bit of a bear for me, I am slow to change and to make change. I have been prone to stay in my comfort zone.

"Always do what you are afraid to do." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson is dead on with this one. It is something that I know from experience is worth doing. Because even though I may be reluctant to make changes I have done so on many occasions. In some cases I have made more radical changes even though my I was truly uncertain. Quite often I have found that this has led to very good things and has helped me to avoid over thinking.

This is all tied into why I am going to leave Blogger behind and adopt Wordpress on a full time basis. It is also why I am not going wait much longer to unveil the new blog. While it would be nice to have the luxury of waiting  until it is perfect I don't think that will be smart or useful.

I don't need it to look like I have a crack team of designers and programmers working for me. There aren't any Application Engineers on the payroll, at least not yet.  2011 has just started, I need to save some goals for down the road.