I'm in San Francisco for the winter break to meet a lot of friends. Guess who is based a half mile from where I'm putting up? =D I had lunch with the Posterous bunch, helped assemble some new furniture, followed by this great Christmas cake. These guys are just awesome. I'm going to be in town for a good couple of weeks so multiple visits here are guaranteed. So psyched!
One observation set me back. There are lots of people who wanted to do one thing but then got "practical" and did something else "first." The idea was that they'd be successful and sock away money doing the practical thing, and after that they could go back to the thing they loved. Bronson was sure that, among the hundreds of people that he interviewed, someone would actually have been successful with this strategy. It sounds so reasonable, after all.
But he encountered exactly zero people who pulled it off. Everyone who tried got sucked into the "practical" career and were never able to extract themselves from it. Too comfortable, too many expectations from friends and family, too easy just to keep doing what you're doing.
I cannot begin to explain how much I needed to read this. It’s like this article was written just for me. This changes perspectives for me. This article addresses the eternal question – “Should I really go for it?” This article is about building the gumption to leave what you’re doing and change your life. Make it what you want it to be. Because if you don’t make it change, it won’t change.
It’s hard. It’s hard to consciously bring yourself to a point where uncertainty rules your life. But you have to look at people around you who’ve done that and take inspiration. Then make that inspiration work for you. Despite all the resistance that will come along the way. That’s what I’m trying to do. This article goes on to say:
There's a quote that appears again and again in various forms: "close one door, another opens." It seems like magical thinking until you see it happen. And it only happens when you don't leave the door partially open, but instead firmly close it. For some reason, being certain that you're ready to move on does cause some kind of magic to happen, and I don't know why.
This doesn’t mean my life will magically change all of a sudden. It will be a long and hard battle – against my mind. And I will need to keep re-reading this article to remind me of my priorities.
I’ve been fortunate to be reading some really inspiring stuff lately, from people that I hugely admire. I intend to share them with you along with my thoughts on them. For now, do yourself a favor and read this amazing piece of text here.
Good luck.
And I loved it.
Yeah, it's been a couple weeks since I did this and I had wanted to write about it earlier but, you know, school came in the way. It was my *first ever* outdoor activity and for that I think I did fairly well. No, I didn't manage to go all the way up the "beginner-level" (my ass!) climb, but half-way up wasn't bad considering the bike ride up Baseline Rd. killed me before I even got to the Gregory Canyon trail head. And I promise you, I could've gone a lot higher had the drizzle not made the rock as slippery as it was. At the end of the day, if you ask me, I was surprised I could lift my weight at all :)I want to thank my classmate Ryan Mazer and his friends for organizing this awesome outing for us. I totally need to do this again.I'm hoping for more Boulder awesomeness as my life here continues. I really couldn't be happier. And I promise I'm going to post more often.
NSFW language, but totally worth it. If I can see something like this at Ignite Boulder 6 this month, I'd have totally got my money's worth.
Watch it.
