Acqusitions

It’s easy to aquire knowledge.

It’s easy to aquire skills.

It’s difficult to aquire wisdom.

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Thoughts and Feelings

I think I live mostly an emotional life.

It’s what I feel, not what I think, that drives most of my behavior.

And while I think I’m more intellectual than average, that still doesn’t mean that I am ruled by intellect, because I’m not.

Emotion is the leader and intellect is the follower. No doubt.

I’m not sure why I feel compelled to say all this, but I do.

So there it is.

Have a nice day.

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Dennis

I just got an email from an old friend and it was so nice to hear from him.

He’s taken a new position as the head of post-production at Pinewood/Shepperton Studios in Great Britain. This means he’s one of the heavy hitters at one of the most prestegious studios in the world.

Dennis is a truly amazing guy. Not only is he a genius; he’s your quintessential “self made” success.

I am truly blessed to know him.

Love you, man.

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Fourth of July Tractor Parade

For the holiday weekend, I went camping up at Randy and Alexa’s place near Kennedy Meadows. On Saturday, the locals had their second annual Fourth of July Tractor Parade. It was a real hoot. Five or six tractors, an old Model T, various kids on bicycles, dogs, and a few odds and ends and there you have it.

It was so cool because it was so down home. The parade route was about half a mile… down the only road, and there were maybe ten spectators sitting in chairs along the route. Maybe fifty people all in. And yet, that’s enough people to have a parade and for everyone to have a great time!

It was very cool. It made me feel glad.

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Motivation

Someone recently asked me what motivates me to lift weights.

I think the real answer is many things motivate me at some level or another and all those levels do need motivating so it’s truly not any one thing. But there is one in particular that I felt was worth mentioning, because it isn’t an obvious one to most people.

Motivation

The sheer animal exhilaration that floods me when it all stops.

When I’m no longer in the car on the way to work thinking about how I should tweak my next workout or change my diet.

When I’m no longer talking to a client on the phone and feeling my calves crying out for mercy after last night’s bombing.

When I’m no longer visualizing my lifts and mentally isolating each muscle while I’m getting dressed to go to the gym.

When I’m no longer thinking about all the fucking bullshit I think about every fucking minute I’m awake.

When all that just falls away.

It’s those few moments when the only thing that exists in the entire universe is the weight… and my all consuming passion to move it.

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ATT Nightmare

I’m writing this from work because my ATT DSL line has been down for three days now and I’m seriously pissed off about it. For three days they’ve been telling me it will be fixed “within 4 hours.”

Grrrrrrrr!

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Termites and the reinvention of a habitual offender.

I was watching a program about sociobiology.
It’s the study of how animals create the societies in which they live. Termites, for example, live in highly organized societies. They have soldiers, workers, nurses, etc. and each of them knows his job and does it automatically out of “instinct.” The organization of their society is programmed into their DNA.

So the guy who started this line of study started with insects and then expanded his observations on up the food chain to primates and monkey societies. Naturally, when he published his findings, his final chapter included some observations about how these ideas might apply to humans and this set off a firestorm of controversy because the existing dogma was that humans only have very basic instincts like the instinct for a baby to suckle. The idea that elements of human society are instinctual was heresy.

Fast forward to this morning… as I was getting ready to go to work, I was thinking about how we invent ourselves every day. Today I woke up and decided to be who I am. I decided to be the guy with a job who goes to work and does a good job and all of that. I decided to be the same guy I was yesterday and the day before.
I could have decided to walk out the door and never look back. I could have decided to be a guy who robs banks, or who cuts lawns, or who panhandles or whatever. Every day I have the choice of who I’m going to be.

I used to think that most of what I did was simply habit because I know how powerful of a force habit can be. Habit brings us the comfort of the familiar… for good or bad.

But now I’m wondering how much of “me” is learned behavior and how much is simply an expression of deeply programmed social instincts. Not that it really matters. I’m still faced with daily choices and I’m still defined by the choices I make, but it is interesting to me to wonder how much choice I really have in my responses.

I suspect that sometimes I’m a really big termite.

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Love Never Dies

I still love every woman I’ve ever loved.

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Olympic Trials

I’ve been watching some of the Olympic trials and I have total respect and admiration for those girls. Every single one of them has achieved something extraordinary and they’ve done it through extraordinary effort. Sure, it takes talent to get to that level, but you don’t make it on talent alone.

I find them inspiring.

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The iPhone and the iPod Touch

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