I suppose this isn’t a specific experiment, but more or less a decision to begin to start tracking my life. I think the time has come to start a log of my diet, sleep, money expenditures, time expenditures. We’ll start there and see if we can pull it together for a month (this should be challenging).
The fact of the matter is that I’ve allowed myself to be an underachiever for far too long. Fortune and Glory do not go to the unprepared. Prepare, tweak, experiment. It has been my goal to become superhuman. I cannot do that by firing into the dark.
My internal clock is wrecked. Over the past 2 weeks I have stayed up to watch SpaceX launch the Falcon 9. Then I stayed up to watch Dragon dock with the International Space Station. Then I stayed up to watch Red Bull Stratos postpone, then postpone, then postpone, then abort.
Last night I stayed up to watch Red Bull Stratos, postpone, then postpone, then postpone, then postpone, then, well, THIS!
So I watched the launch, the 2.5 hours it took to hit the ceiling, then I watched a man, 127,000 feet in the air (and I use the term air loosely). This man stepped out at the edge of space from a capsule…and jumped. I saw it live. When he pulled out of his spin and I got my breath it occurred to me that my face was absolutely covered in tears.
Friends, this is us.
Nearly once a month I watch the movie Vision Quest. In it, the protagonist Louden Swain trains to tackle his epic quest of defeating legendary high school wrestler, Shoot. His older coworker takes the day off of work to watch the match. The following scene sums up things perfectly.
Anyways, I then proceeded to go to sleep at noon. Now my clock is busted.
I’ve got a habit of looking back a lot. High School, the Marines, my marriage, college, whatever. I look back a lot and find myself missing much of the past. Yet, despite that fact I have never failed to always believe that the future will bring with it better days. Even on those times where I’ve felt so bad as to have suicidal thoughts, they’ve never been serious and has always been a reflection on present pain, not future hopelessness. The future has always been exciting.
Friday I turned 32. As is the case I found myself reflecting on my life, and the this last, most turbulent year. Turning on Sirius Lithium, 90’s alt rock didn’t help. This has been the hardest year of my young life. Over the course of the last year my ex-wife left me. The last few months were rough, but I adored her. I suppose were I not so naive I may have been able to see it coming, but I didn’t. I nearly shut down. I had suicidal thoughts then (again, never with any serious intent to act upon them), but even so always felt my future would be brighter than my past. I suppose you can’t keep a good dog down. I dumped myself financially, attempting to rebuild my life and my feelings. I moved 4 times. I battled my way through law school. I struggled though bar prep. I’ve completed my first week as a lawyer.
My future will be brighter than my past, and damn if I haven’t had past I should take some pride in. I’m still young, younger than many people in their early 20’s. I still feel like I’m a kid. In part this is because I’m in denial of my age. Now there are two forms of age denial: active and passive. Passive denial is simply putting your head in the sand. This is gonna catch up with you. Active denial is what I practice. It’s simply hard living. So long as I keep pushing, keep growing, keep moving, I’ll stay young until death. I have no intention of ever slowing down.
But again, it’s been a tough year. I’m damn lonely. I feel like a deployed Marine all over again. I feel disconnected from everyone around me. For my birthday I had dinner with my brother, then came home, smoked hookah by myself and so help me, talked to cam girls all night for the first time. I’m a different person than I was a year ago. I’ve dated girls, but never seem to want to keep them around seriously. I just want to get back to feeling for someone the way I did for my ex-wife. It just doesn’t happen though, no matter how pretty, intelligent, or nice a girl I meet is. I think sometime I will get around to it again, but I’m not sure I’m made of the stuff to be that guy right now, no matter how bad I desire it. But as with most things I have this unshakable excitement and belief that there are such better days to come, with or without a girl in my life.
Why am I so excited about the future? Well, I’m not sure. I think it’s simply because I like the person I am and insist that I keep growing. Maybe I’m just a pollyanna. Butmostly it is simply that I’m excited about being alive. This year I have been given a blank slate with which to start over. How often are we given such opportunity? And the direction I’m headed, I’ve got no brakes, no excuse for mediocrity. I can hardly contain the excitement with the man that will be checking in this time next year.
So the girlfriend and I are out at the range yesterday. Incidentally, she loves Zoe, my 1911. /squee/ Before we hit the range I decide to print off a few targets, among which was Hitler (for the girlfriend) and King George III (for myself). On the way back I decide to get a little liberal with the gas pedal to get the girlfriend back in time to buy tickets to the drag show. Next thing you know I’m pulled over the side of the road by a state trooper.
So he’s got me pegged for speeding. I have the wrong insurance in the truck. Yet for some reason this proceeds to be the smoothest run in with the police I’ve EVER had. No ticket, and this time it’s not for the dog tags in my rear view.
I get home and start to unload the truck. I notice in the bed of the truck, a nice big box to which was stapled a nice big Hitler, with a lot of nice big bullet holes in his grill. Where the box was sitting it was IMPOSSIBLE for the cop not to have seen this as he came up to the cab. I’m absolutely convinced Hitler got me out of a ticket. Thanks Hitler!
Amongst the 5000 articles I have read about Tony Sta…errr, Elon Musk, I read one recently saying that one of the original plans for SpaceX was to land a greenhouse on Mars.
General Badassery continues with our Kiwi friends. I very much hope that when aliens finally get around to thinking we’re ripe for the probing their commanders first take a look at how the Kiwis honor their fallen:
Well, I didn’t do too bad for a guy who was ranked 90 out of a graduating class of 96.
I wasn’t too nervous about the results until about 2 am the night before the results were to be released. Then it all hit me at once. But I’m through. The pass rate was 80% so I shouldn’t have been nervous, but there was a lot on the line. I have a strong feeling I was over prepared. But I earned this win. I earned this win because I don’t think anyone in the state worked as hard as I did for this. I earned this win while I sat in a strip club reading evidence outlines instead of putting a buck on a stage or getting a single lap dance.
I think I kept my nerves in small part because my very first legal brief ended up being one written to the state supreme court. I was typecast early in law school as a gun guy, but I’ve never been. I’m a rights guy. And this case will end up being precedent for the state on 4th Amendment issues. I ended up working obscenely hard on it and my concern kept my mind off the impending bar results pretty well. The supreme court rules only allow for a maximum of 50 pages on a brief. When I had completed it, we were at 51. Apparently they count the back cover as a page. Therefore we ended up ripping out the certificate of service and doing a separate one to make the 50 page limit. I’m proud, terribly proud of this work. I think we have a strong case and I consider myself blessed to be given the opportunity to make a case for the 4th Amendment so early in my career. (even before getting bar admitted!) I took on the law to keep the state in check, and that’s exactly what I have gotten to do. I am supremely thankful.
Mitt Romney finally tells the truth, and you people burn him for it. By the by, I totally stand by nearly everything he said here, though definitely not the SOFA.
