Resolsution 2: Give More Pt 1

Man it feels good to have that first post done. It's been sitting as a draft for close to a year. It was like a treadmill that you bought in attempt to get in shape, but now is a really expensive place to hang clothes. It's done though. I feel good about it. I like the idea of minimalism, and it's something I might write about more in the future. 

On to Resolution 2: Give more Pt 1

I'll be honest. This one I haven't been good at. Over the past year I think it's safe to say I've given maybe total of a handful of change away. I mean I've donated a bunch of stuff to Goodwill after I've moved, but I don't think that counts. It's not like I was giving to a family who desperately needed a floral print couch with Dorito crumbs under the cushions. Goodwill just happened to be a lot closer than the dump.

It’s really easy for me to beat myself up for this. I can wallow in guilt and all that, but that’s just not helpful. Sure I can guilt myself into being generous for a while, but that never lasts and I go back to not being generous and then I feel like garbage about it and the whole cycle starts again. Instead of beating myself up I want to tell two stories. I believe that there are two primary ways of viewing ourselves, our resources, and our relationships with those resources that might give some insight into this idea of generosity.

In case you guys haven’t noticed it’s Christmas season out there. You can’t go anywhere without being run over by advertisements counting down the number of days left or telling you that you need to hurry because these supplies and prices won’t last. There are lists online of the hottest gifts of 2015 and you need to get them for your loved ones before they run out. Otherwise their holiday will be ruined! You don’t want that do you? And this all leads the frantic pace and constant stress and anxiety that leave so many of us just beat and secretly wishing that the holidays would just get over with already.

In marketing they call this the Scarcity Principle. It’s where the advertiser tries to convince us that supplies are running out or that we need to act now to lock in that low low price. It appeals to our caveman brain that still believes that we’re living in a cave and that if we don’t stockpile while we have the chance we’ll starve to death and become some saber tooth tiger’s next meal.

The thing is though, when you start to peel back the layers, all the marketing, the advertising, it’s all based on a particular way of viewing the world and it’s resources. Underneath it all is the belief that there is simply not enough. That there’s not enough money.  That there’s not enough time. That there’s not enough resources, and we run the risk of running out. So we need to accumulate all we can or else. This particular view of the world and it’s resources is built one built on scarcity.

This view has some pretty serious implications. There are around 7 billion people on this planet all with needs and wants of their own. But if there’s not enough resources for me, then there’s certainly not enough for them, right? I mean I have to take care of myself, my family, and my tribe first? We all need to get all we can, even if that means that some people are left without. They, of course, will attempt to do the same thing.  Can you blame them? Inherently this view places us in a state of competition, tension and violence with the world around us, with our neighbors, with the environment, with everything.

Is this really the way it is? Is there really not enough for everyone? Is it the case that human relationships are inherently based on competition, tension, and violence? Is the cold hard truth at the center of it all the fact that there’s not enough to go around and some people are just going to have to go without? 

Is scarcity really at the heart of it all?

Or is there something else?

That’ll be part two.
Peace

Resolution 1 Part 2: More experiences.

And I’m back after almost a year hiatus to finish Part 2 of my first New Year’s Resolution - Fewer things, More experiences.

This is one resolution that I'm happy to say I was able to make some progress This last year I was able to go to Ireland on a rugby tour. In addition to playing some of the best rugby I've ever played; I met wonderful people. I watched the St Patrick's day parade in downtown Limerick. I drank with locals in a bar until 3 in the morning singing Johnny Cash songs. I learned to pour the perfect pint of Guinness, and I have the diploma to prove it. I broke almost every single rule my parents gave me as a kid about taking food or rides from strangers. Later in the year I got the opportunity to visit a friend in Anguilla. I was able to spend a few days sitting on deserted white sand beaches watching the surf crash. We drove ATVs from one end of the island to the other, and I’m pretty sure that I’m doomed to get skin cancer after the resulting sunburn.

Experiences are what make life great. When I look back and think about all the important, beautiful, and memorable moments I've lived through, they were almost never because of what I had acquired. I've never looked back and thought, "Man I remember the good old days when I had dishes and plates that matched and weren't hand-me-downs from my parents." They were moments. It was the music of a local band playing in someone’s living room. It was laughing until I cried at the dinner table. It was holding my nephew and niece for the first time.


It doesn't have to be big stuff. For me a lot of this has been tied to travel, but it doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to fly off to Europe on a whim and live out the plot of Eat Pray Love. It can just be little things. Take time to catch up with an old friend. Learn a new skill. I learned to ride a longboard this year. For a month my elbows were nothing but scabs and I could have sworn I had fractured my collarbone. But now I can add “Proficient at Longboarding” to my resume and who doesn’t want that?


To go back to my original point of "Fewer things" I'm not saying having stuff is bad. I love stuff. I love my stuff. It's just that I'm going to remember and cherish the fact that every year my brothers and I go out and play paintball in the mud and snow the day after Christmas far more than I'm going to cherish the paintball gun that's in my closet and gathers dust the other 364 days out of the year.

x

Just Finish Something For Once

I struggle when it comes to finishing things. Just look at my blog post entries for the last year. I started with this really great idea to talk about these resolutions and how I was gonna work them out and I was gonna tell you all about the great stuff that was going to come about because of it. It was going to AWESOME.
I didn't make it to the end of January.

The thing is I do this sort of thing all the time. I come up with a great idea for a project and I'm really excited about it. It's going to be the best thing in the world. So I start putting work in. I get momentum. I see progress. But inevitably at some point the excitement fades. It's no longer fun. The progress isn't as evident as it used to be and I get get discouraged. Then a million distractions start to pile up and they all promise to be the next big thing and that the current thing isn't really where it's at.

I struggle with discipline when it comes to working. I'm realizing that maybe projects can't be powered off of excitement alone. Motivation isn't enough. At some point the excitement is gone and the only thing that you have left is grit and self-discipline. Discipline shows up and gets the work done when motivation takes the day off. I have a lot of cool of ideas for projects that I want to start on in the next year and I know that none of them will get done if I don't have the discipline to see them through.

So yeah, I'm gonna finish something. I'm gonna finish this list of Resolutions by the end of the year. I know it's gonna be sloppy. I'm probably gonna hate seven out of every ten words I write, but my procrastination is really good at disguising itself as perfectionism. I'm gonna have the next thing up tomorrow evening.
Have a good one guys.

Resolution 1 Part 1: Fewer things

Sorry for the delay in posting this one. School and rugby started back up and I've spent the last two weeks trying to remember how to learn and regretting every piece of junk food I shoved in my face hole over the holidays. 

So let's get to this year's resolutions. I’m breaking the first one into two parts. Here’s the first half

I like books. I really do. I love reading. I've got a wish list saved on Amazon of all the books I want to get around to read. They’re the one thing I can almost always justify spending money on. They sit on my shelf and I look over at them as I’m playing PlayStation and they make me feel smart. And I think that’s a problem. 

It’s not just books though. It’s things in general. I like having them. I like surrounding myself with stuff. I like having all three of Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies even though I haven’t watched any of them in months. I have an old softball mitt that hasn't caught a softball in over a decade. I keep it around because… I might need it? Really? No one wants me on their corporate cup softball team. Why do I have all this stuff? It’s like I’m nesting.

I listened to a podcast the other day about this guy who’s a professional adventurer. He spends his time kayaking around Greenland or longboarding across Australia. He talked about how just about everything he owns has to fit into his backpack. He just doesn't have room in his life for a whole lot of extra stuff. 

I remember coming away from that thinking, “Man, I want that kind of life.” I want to be able to go have awesome experiences like that. And I’m kinda thinking that my stuff, this nesting instinct that I have prevents me from getting that. Sometimes I feel like Bilbo Baggins at the beginning of the Hobbit, all comfy in my hobbit hole but forgetting that real life, the stuff that really matters is outside. 

This isn’t meant to be a rant against having things. I still like things and I still plan on getting more. I just want to see if I can change my perspective on them. Do I really need all the stuff I’m acquiring? Do I really need to get all the Avenger tie-in movies? Is that really going to make me happy? Am I going to be an old man talking to my grandkids saying, “I spent my late 20’s collecting all the Marvel universe movies.”? God, I hope not. I want something more than that. We’ll get to what I think that might be next time. 

Peace

But first a little back story

Alright before I get into my resolutions and how I'm trying to live them out, here's a little back story.

It started back this fall. I play on a men's rugby club, and up to this point I've always been pretty "ok". I went to practice. I played as hard as hard as I could. I'm just not that good. Over the last few years I kinda ended up falling into the role of team smart ass. A role I was good at. I was always the first with a smart comment. I was the one usually talking trash on the sidelines. I would have made a great scrum half (That's rugby humor. I don't feel like explaining it.)

Rugby just wasn't a priority to me. I liked it and I tried hard, but for whatever reason (probably because I'm just not that good) I didn't commit to it.

At some point a midway through the season. I got the opportunity to change that. It was a home game and a girl who I had a huge crush on was going to be there. She ended up coming right as the game started. Now the pressure was on. I had someone to impress. I ended up playing my ass off. It's like I found another gear that I didn't know was there. I ended up playing one of the best games of my life. We won and it was amazing. For once I felt like I could actually take some of the responsibility for that victory.

Now that girl is my girlfriend, (probably in no small part to how I look in rugby shorts) and I walked away from that game thinking what if I played that way all the time? What if I really committed to this team for the rest of the semester? So I did. I broke my nose the next week at practice, but I kept at it. After the last game of the semester the coach told me, "Great leadership out there." It was one of the best compliments I've ever gotten.

For some reason this attitude of asking myself "What would happen if I gave myself to this (insert something important here)?" began to touch on other areas. I started doing better in school, and I finished the semester with some of the best grades I've ever earned. I got a new job that's laying the ground work for a rewarding career. All because I asked myself, "What if I really dug in here? Where could this take me?"

I read somewhere that you spend the first quarter of your life learning how to duck responsibility. I'm really good at that. But now I'm starting to see what great things could happen if I do the opposite and start to take responsibility for my life.

And here I'm at the beginning of a new year and I want to keep that momentum going. And that's where these resolutions come from. I hope you can hang out for the journey. It's looking to be a good one.

Peace

New Years Resolutions

Hey everyone, you’re reading this and I appreciate that. I really do. Thank you so much. You're the best. Let's get coffee.

It's a new year and resolutions are all over the place. I've never been a big fan of them. I have a hard enough time remembering to brush my teeth and most resolutions usually get tossed by the wayside before February gets here anyways. But this year's going to be different. I'm going to make my attempts at them public. That way if it all goes bad we'll all at least get a good laugh over them.

I realize that the best resolutions are supposed the be the ones that are objective and concrete with hard measurable goals. I also realize that what I have are really vague and fuzzy. So maybe these are going to be more like rough guidelines or suggestions that are open to interpretation. As we go we’ll get into some specifics as to why I've picked these and how I’m trying to give them legs. But for now here they are.

1. Spend less money on things and have more experiences
2. Give more
3. Read more
4. Build relationships that make you more awesome.
5. Fail more
6. Try to live everyday like its the 2nd time
7. Let the people you care about know that you love them
8. Remind yourself that it’s all water

There’s no order to them. I don’t know if any of them are any more important than any of the others. Maybe as we go through them that’ll change. Maybe we'll kick a few out or add some more. Who knows? I hope you stick around and find out. 

Peace