Personal Development

Every time I read Steve Pavlina's blog (Personal Development for Smart People) I get inspired to become better, to grow. I stumbled onto the blog by accident when I was googling around to help me become an early riser. Actually my goal was even simpler - how do I make myself get up when my alarm rings? From the everyday, to the metaphysical - I found so much content on the site that really struck a cord.

I've been trying to better myself, consciously, over the past year or so. I can't say I have made much progress, but I also can't say that I have applied myself fully. It's the first time in my life that I'm making a conscious effort to grow myself. Of course throughout high school and college I was bettering myself too - I learned a lot, I got some exercise, I did pretty damn well overall. I did some meditating back in high school, did some yoga. Now that I think about it, I guess I haven't been all that unconscious about my growth. So let me rephrase that - during the past year I have been seeking outside sources to help in my growth and have re-awakened my desire to grow.

Previously I did things on my own. I wanted to develop myself, I wanted to help others so I volunteered, I challenged myself. I was shy and quiet but I held a volunteer position where I had to speak to visitors daily telling them about animals in the Aquarium when I was 14. When I was in college I spent a summer standing on the streets of Manhattan asking people for money... for what I thought was a good cause. I volunteered doing trail work when I was 16 and planned a trip to Thailand to study Buddhism as a junior in college. Unfortunately the trip to Thailand didn't happen, but I did travel to South Africa the next year to work with baboons for 6 weeks. These were all conscious growth efforts on my part. Of course I wanted to help, but I also wanted to become better and to know myself through these experiences.

I guess I can say that now is just the continuation of my personal growth. It's become more dire and important to me to do this now, and not let it go. Possibly because now I'm out of school, and personal growth takes more effort. It's easy to slip into a daily routine, just going to work everyday. I don't want that to happen. I don't want my curiosity for life and self-awareness that I've developed over the last 8 years to just disappear and be forgotten.

So, where am I going? What have I been doing?
I've been trying to learn about time management and procrastination. I read "The Now Habit" (Fiore) while I was in South Africa, and I'm now reading "Getting Things Done" (Allen). I'm doing yoga once I week. I still do taekwondo. I trekked through Peru last month for a couple of weeks. These are just things I'm doing, tasks. But what's my goal? Why am I doing THESE things and not other things?

My goal is personal development. I want to re-connect to myself the way I used to be connected back in high school. I used to feel a connectedness with the world back then. Something happened, I got to caught up. I think I can become re-connected, and in a more meaningful way. I'm more mature now, I'm more aware of the things happening around the world. The things I've seen in my travels shouldn't make it harder to connect to the energy I've felt before. It shouldn't make me skeptical and dark. It should help me reach a higher understanding.

I feel that I am ready. I'm ready to expand my mind.

Thanks Google

"There are many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of hearts broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream - whatever that dream might be." --Pearl S. Buck

Showed up on my iGoogle page just now. Appropriate in light of the current state of things in my life.

And So It Goes

Just yesterday I recalled my old dream of becoming an astronaut. It was by accident really, we were talking about the Challenger Shuttle catastrophe and about Richard Feynman and then suddenly it all came flooding back to me. Everything that used to inspire me and drive me to work my hardest since freshman year in college. It used to be a distant, but concrete goal that I could focus on and could use to further expand my interests.

The revival of my dream came not a day too soon, I've been in a slump this whole year for no apparent reason. I've been feeling tired, unmotivated, and stressed. I couldn't understand what was happening to me - I didn't recognize my old self in this new apathetic, tired, lazy me. I've been sleeping too much, procrastinating, searching for some new meaning, something important.

The thought alone rejuvenated me. I walked around all day smiling. I thought - it doesn't matter if I don't become an astronaut, but now I know where to aim and what it is that I've been missing so much lately. It gave me something to work towards. So what if I'm taking a job in technology/software next year? So what if it's not scientific enough? I can come home everyday and have a dream to work towards. I can take concrete steps to help me decide what to specialize in once I pay off my loans and am ready to jump onto the PhD wagon. It gave new meaning to my desire for PhD. My desire before was based on the vague feeling that I just haven't gotten academia out of my system yet and that I wanted more. Now, the PhD could have a greater purpose, a concrete goal.

All that came crashing down today with these words:
P: this NASA idea sounds great. but i'll have to pass on that.
P: Thanks anyways though
P: i know you were thinking about my best interest when you made up your mind about that
P: but do your thing. Good Luck

Yes, that is my boyfriend's response to all that I just explained above about NASA, astronauts, PhDs, and goals.

It's sarcasm, by the way. And not the friendly kind. It's the kind that goes hand in hand with the long diatribe I wrote long ago about having to choose between following my dreams and holding on to my relationship. Not much has changed.

I'm graduating!

Today, I satisfied the very last of the requirements necessary for graduation. Nope it had nothing to do with world culture, or labs, or art, or philosophy. Today I finally took the swim test. Now even if I fail every single class this term, I will still graduate (with a single major instead of a double, but hey it feels good to say that anyway).

De-icing

De-icing techniques

jabbing violently with the ice scraper
pros: it's fun, and nice big chunks of ice come right off
cons: too easy to get carried away, scratch the paint and/or windshield

using scraper as lever to lift the ice off
pros: no scraping sounds, can get even bigger chunks of ice off if you're good
cons: shitty scraper bound to break in half under the weight, it can be tricky to get under the ice

scrape, scrape, scrape away
pros: no damage to windshield, gets the job done... eventually
cons: flying shards of ice, boring, scraping sounds hurt your head, arms get tired

Being Light-Minded is Hard Work

Africa.
A place that hasn't entered my mind since Heart of Darkness, freshman fall in college - at least not that part of my mind that's personal, adventurous and creative. The genocide in Darfur and famine in Niger go into an entirely different part of my mind. But enough about the negative.

In just 5 short months I'll be spending 6 weeks frolicking, getting bitten by, and changing nappies of baby baboons in South Africa. With my boyfriend.

On (what some might call) a whim, we applied to a volunteer program in a baboon sanctuary. My boyfriend actually heard of the program back in September, but at the time we neither had the time or the money to be able to think about it seriously. With the prospect of me graduating this June and getting a sizable signing bonus from my employer-to-be, we were faced with the dilemma of how best to waste this money without doing something silly like putting it down on a house, investing it, or saving it.

I wanted to go study Buddhism in Thailand. I had made plans to go do just that about a year ago, when I had a term off from college. Instead, I got an internship... by accident. The internship was with my current employer-to-be (who gave me an offer for a full time job at the end of the internship). Thus I figured it was only fair that, having sold my soul to the devil (err.. corporate America) last winter by choosing an internship over Buddhism, that I should redeem myself by at least going to Thailand before I started my full time job at this same employer in the fall.

However, there were a couple of problems with that. Mostly, the fact that I would be leaving my boyfriend back home. I invited him to come along, of course, but Buddhism and Thailand just don't strike his fancy quite in the same way they do mine. To him, it was a huge waste of money (even more so than putting it down on a house).

**drum-roll**
enter Animal Planet, baboons, and South Africa

We both love animals. A lot.
So I did some quick research and realized that we could afford to do the baboon thing for 6 weeks together. Now I'm not sure if we'll have enough money to put down deposit/security on an apartment we need to rent when we come back so that I can start my new job, but... those are just technicalities and mere details.

Africa, here we come.