Be careful at what you get good at.

I was listening to the Unmistakable Creative podcast with Jessica Abel. She brought up this line from season one of True Detective, 'Life's barely long enough to get good at one thing. So be careful at what you get good at.'

If your lucky you are good at many things, but there's that one thing your really good at doing. Why? Because you spent all of your time doing it. It's like the Gladwell theory of 10,000 hours. If you put enough time and energy into anything you can master it after 10,000 hours.

The energy part is important here. If your doing something for long periods of time mindlessly then you're not getting the most out of your time. You have to pay attention, hold focus and be mindful of the moment to keep improving at what you're doing.

In a 2014 article for Esquire Luke O'Neail wrote about this quote compared to Kurt Vonegut who wrote in his book Mother Night, 'We are what we pretend to be, so be careful what you pretend to be.'

As Marty says, 'Or you end up becoming something you never intended.'

What are you pretending to be? I've pretended to be a lot of things, that seems to be the only thing I ever do is pretend and never end up being anything.

I spend a lot of time getting good at playing the drums, but never became a drummer. Lots of time learning multimedia production, but never become a multimediaist (correct term? Not sure because I'm not one). Spent seven years as an English teacher and got pretty good at it, but never appreciated by my employers so I got fed up with the work, quit and left Japan.

 Now what? What's next? I'm 34 going on 35, my next step has to be a wise one. I should just throw it all out there and see if it lands, otherwise I'll move to Thailand and live out the rest of my days in wild wild west of Asian. Living the lazy life writing dime novels and self-publishing them on Amazon. Honestly, that doesn't sound too bad. I just don't want to hate myself for never trying to pursue something important, if anything we do in this world can be considered important.

But maybe that's a philosophical question for another day.

*This post started as an upbeat motivational piece, but ended up being a self-deprecating slap in the face as I am not feeling that upbeat at the moment, but working hard to lift myself up. I apologize for the sour tone, yet also don't apologize  for being transparent. Thanks for your understanding. At a later time I may take the beginning and rework it into something more beneficial to the human experience. Until then.

Back Home Again in Indiana

Indianapolis, Indiana. This is where I was born and raised for eighteen years of my life and returned when I was twenty five and now I'm here again at thirty four. This time I won't be here for very long as I am planning on moving to one of the big cities. Hopefully Denver or Los Angeles, but Chicago, Portland or Austin would be fun too. Indianapolis is just not for me, I've been trying to put it into words but for the most part everything is just too damn far apart.

At the moment I don't own a car, maybe that is why I'm feeling this distance between me and the rest of the world. Not to mention I just moved back from Osaka, one of the largest cities in the world. But I have been driving my mom's car and it still just feels like everything is far away. If I lived downtown I might not feel the same way, but the suburbs are a lonely and distant place. They use to make good movies about living in the suburbs in the '90s but not so much anymore.

Indiana is a very low city. Almost like Nagoya. Today was clear and sunny with blue skies so far, but not that far you could see the tallest building in Indianapolis, the Chase building. You could see it in two directions while going West and South. Indiana has a lot of trees though something the city doesn't have a lot of. Has, but not a lot of.

So I use to get loaded up and drive. Yes, drinking and driving. It was irresponsible and dumb. I crashed my car into a curve busting the wheel. The police showed up and took me to the drunk tank. Even then I didn't learn my lesson, the next week I got loaded and started a dumpster fire (I served my time for the drunk driving, but never got charged for the dumpster. That was ten years ago so I hope I beat the statue of limitation). I walked home over a mile, sobered up and drove home. I was really depressed I assume. After I lost my license I had my mom drive me downtown so I could attend my Master's program classes.

The point is now I'm driving again after seven years and it's freaky. I can drive, but I'm just not use to the speed anymore. People whipping by at speeds of 70 miles per hour. What a deadly mode of transportation. And traffic isn't any better. Waka Waka. (Reminds me of bad 90's stand up airplane jokes).

Meeting woman in Indiana is really tough. How does anyone meet anyone in this city? You have to go to the bar to meet and greet, but then drive home? If you can get yourself there without driving you can make it back home with an Uber.

But what's the point? Oh to have sex, that's right. Well good luck out there.