Vacation Ending

 My vacation is nearing its end and I've realized how much I do nothing. I really didn't do much while I was on vacation, other than household chores and going to a few places, I haven't really done anything noteworthy. I'm not really sure what I was expecting. I don't have any goals or aspirations at the moment. I've given up on having a social life outside of work. I don't have anything going on outside of work and its a job that is just a job to me. Its not bad or overly stressful, it pays all of my bills and more, but its just a job, not something I look forward to doing everyday. I'm just living life. It could be a hell of a lot worse, so I can't complain.

Maybe that is just how it goes. You keep your head down, work, try to find something that you enjoy at least once a day, and go to bed and do it all over again. Maybe this is what a stress free life is supposed to be like. I don't worry about much, definitely not money, I have a home, a car, and maybe that is all that I need. "Excitement" could turn into drama, which I don't care for. I like things balanced and smooth. The only thing I wish I could figure out is how to deal with boredom.

Vacation

 I'm on vacation this week. I haven't done much in the last two days. I got a refund check from the dentist that I went ahead and cashed. I added the money to the hobby fund. Looking back, I probably shouldn't have bought the Xbox One. My PS4 has showed me how much a reliable machine it is when compared to the Xbox. If it wasn't for the Halo series, I wouldn't have bothered buying one. We'll see how long I hang on to it. I went through more of my Magic cards that I had in my gaming bag. I separated those that were worth more than $5, and the others I decided that I'm going to give to my nephew. It's better than throwing them away anyway. I'll be giving him the bag too. I now have all my trading cards put away in my one storage container. I'm now debating about getting rid of most of my paints as I don't blame to paint many more miniatures. I have a few left that aren't painted and I figure those will keep me busy long enough. 

I still don't have any new hobby plans. I don't know if I ever will. Things have been weird. I haven't felt like doing much lately, I've gained weight, I'm definitely depressed. Only good thing is, that I haven't thought about the past very much. I haven't thought about much except about getting rid of things. We'll see how the rest of the vacation goes.

Xbox Adventure

 With gaming going to be one of my main hobbies moving forward, I decided that I wanted to play some older games from the Xbox360 era, namely the Halo series. Instead of buying a 360, I went for the Xbox One which I owned a few years ago, before I decided to sell it as it never saw any use. The Xbox One can play a lot of the original 360 games which made it an easy choice as most 360 games are cheap too. A new thing I'm doing is trying to only to use money I get from my hobbies to fund my hobbies. With some of the money I got yesterday from selling cards, I decided to put some of it towards an Xbox One.

I looked on eBay first, found a few, but I didn't want to take a chance of the package getting lost, damaged, or the console not working once I got it. I instead found one on Game Stop's website for $109 and ordered it for pick up last night. I got a notification early this afternoon that it was ready and went to go pick it up at a mall that wasn't too far from my house. The pick up process was easy and I picked up a game for it, The Master Chief collection, which would have all the games I wanted to play on it. This is where the first problem occurred. They didn't have the disk. The clerk said that they should have two copies off it, but it wasn't there. I told her it was no big deal and left with the large sealed box under my arm and awkwardly carried it through the mall and back to my car. I didn't open the box when I got to the car, as the mall has slowly been going downhill the last few years, and decided I'd open it when I got home. Before going home though, I decided to stop at another Game Stop to see if they had the game I wanted.

Thirty minutes later I arrived at the Game Stop. It was just me in the store so I was able to look through their Xbox One games easily. Second problem. They didn't have the game either. I was about to give up when I saw Halo 3 ODST and Halo 4 for the 360. Both of which would work on the Xbox One and were two of the games that were part of the Master Chief Collection. ODST was $6.00, and Halo 4 was $9. I grabbed both and then saw Portal 2 for the 360. It was $8.99. I decided to pass on it for the time being. At the counter the clerk rang up my two games and let me know that I had a $5 off coupon. That would make ODST $1. I went back to the rack and grabbed Portal 2. My total for three games was $19.25. An absolute steal in my mind. At this point, I decided to open the box to see if everything was there. The console was wrapped so I couldn't see it, but there was a controller (a red and white one) it was advertised as black, but it didn't bother me too much. All the cables looked to be there as well, so I was a little more relieved and decided to head home.

After I got home, I hooked up the console to my tv, turned it on, and to my relief it turned on just fine. It would have sucked to have it be a brick after driving thirty minutes to get it and being dumb enough not to ask any questions. After the start up screen it began searching for an internet connection. Problem three. It couldn't find one. I manually typed in the ID of my router, and received a message stating that the console didn't support the router type I had, which made no sense, as my old console worked just fine with the same router. After a factory reset, booting up in trouble shooting mode, and even going into my router to check the settings, nothing could get it to connect. At this point, I about gave up and figured it would be an expensive lesson that I would learn today. My last option was to try to hard wire it to my router. I didn't have an Ethernet cable so I once again had to drive a bit to get one. The place I went to had one option for it, a cat6 five foot cable. I googled if it would work, it said it would, so I bought it for $6.99.

I got home, hooked it up, restarted the Xbox and... it didn't work. This cheap Xbox was starting to not be so cheap. I guessed that the wifi card must have went bad and it crossed my mind that it could have been the reason its former owner sold it. I was getting ready to put it back into its box and forget about it for the night when the network screen changed to "connected." The Xbox was now wired to the internet. It went through its updates with no problem. I went to sync the controller and problem number four... of course it didn't sync. I updated the firmware on it, nothing. I hard reset the Xbox and the controller, nothing. This was a nightmare. Luckily, the type C USB cable still worked for it, and I had a pretty long cable for it. I was able to play ODST for a bit, so all in all, it worked out. I learned my lesson about used consoles though. Try to avoid them. Now I need to see if I can find a cheap wired controller at HPB or Goodwill. So at least I'll have something to do while I'm off next week.

Current Progress

 As I said I would, I got rid of some things today. I took the Pokemon cards that I wasn't going to keep and took them to a local card shop and sold them. I have no idea on the individual value that I lost on each card, but I really didn't want to spend the next few months on eBay trying to get the most for each card and then dealing with shipping each one that sold. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with the money. The hobbies that I have left don't require anything else. I am almost finished with reading one of the Halo Precursor books, so I'll put some money into the next book. I read the book series roughly ten years ago, but I don't think I got much from them last time. This read through has been different. I read Epitaph a month ago, and it got me into the mood of reading the precursor books again. The story of change and loss matches a lot of what I'm feeling. Epitaph did a great job of showcasing this. There is just something to the Halo universe that makes you feel isolated and awestruck that I feel few franchises can do, minus the Dark Souls series. 

Anyway, I also took my skateboard out today, and I admit that I was afraid before I got on the board as it felt that I completely forgot how to balance on it, but luckily that came back quickly. I road it for an hour at a park while listening to music. Its one of those activities that require a lot of focus, so it leaves little room for distracting thoughts which is nice. Hopefully I'll stick with it this time. I know I'll never be able to do any tricks, but if I could just ride it confidently, that would be a big deal to me. 

With all of this going on it has been easier not falling back into the past. The key for me is to keep looking forward to tomorrow. I'm off again tomorrow, so I figure I'll go and ride my bike for a bit. I'll see if I can find any deals at a Half Price Books, and then try to get the rest of the day planned out. I'm still searching for a new hobby/skill to keep me busy when it gets colder. I didn't get rid of many of my painted miniatures, as it is hard to get rid of them since I built and painted them. I added the ones that I don't collect the army for to the third spot in my cabinet. I don't know if I'll continue to add to my existing collection. My two armies that I collect have pretty much taken up all the space in my cabinet as is, and I don't want to store any. I have a few individual figures left that I can paint if I get bored, so I won't have to buy any. Hopefully though, I will be able to find something new to do. The key to the new hobby is that it needs to be cheap and more importantly, not take up much space. I might hit a Barnes & Noble near me tomorrow too and take a look at their hobby section to see if anything jumps out at me. I'm sure HPB has a section too.

Hobbies and Connections

 The plan to move forward out of this nostalgia depression is still being formed. However, I have plans shortly to sell off some of my old hobbies to clear space and hopefully inspire change. Some of them I can't bear to part with yet, and I'm not sure if this will hamper my efforts to move on. The reason I can't move on from all of them boils down to the size of a collection and the value of the individual cards. I played Magic the Gathering for years, roughly thirteen years from 2008 until 2021 regularly, multiple times a week. Its probably been longer than that, but after 2021, the times played got more sparse. That being said, I have quite a few cards that are worth money, some hundreds of dollars. There are also a lot of memories attached to some of those cards that I'm not ready to move on from. For the time being, I have the cards packed away. 

Pokemon, which I was obsessed with as a kid back in 1999, I picked back up during the pandemic. It has always felt a bit hollow though. I was into Pokemon cards from 1999 until late 2000, so not very long at all. I do regret that a bit, but I was getting ready to enter high school and I can only imagine the trouble that hobby would cause me. High school was already difficult for me without something like that. I picked up the hobby again to try to rectify that I guess. Really though, there were no concrete memories associated with the cards like there are with my MTG cards. I will be selling off most of my Pokemon card collection, choosing only to keep my favorite ones. These have been packed away as well, and I will no longer buy any trading card game franchise. 

That leaves gaming as my last active hobby, but I want to stress that it will not take over what I do with my spare time. I have a PS4 with six games that I play regularly. I want to get outside more, whether that is hiking, biking, or skateboarding, I just want to be more active. I picked a decent time of the year to start this, with fall starting to move in. When winter comes, I imagine my free time will be spent with video games, but I want to learn a new skill as well, though I'm not sure what that is just yet. 

I've learned over the last year that physical objects for me at least, don't hold most of my memories that I long to come back. Its the people. The people that I made a connection with using those objects and games. That could explain why all of these things on their own only seem to bring a hollow happiness and why it feels different owning them this time around. The world has changed much just in the last twenty years. I will never be able to go back to those times or those feelings. Getting lost in those moments will never help me be happy in the present. Its not worth it to look back anymore.

I Want to Document This

 It has been awhile since I've felt that I had a purpose. Friends and interests have come and gone. There is not much that remains of my old enjoyments. I've tried to find fulfillment in hobbies of my past, and yet, none have felt like they used to. I figured out that I was just spending money to try to feel some semblance of a better past. The truth is, that even the past is flawed. The items I bought and collected either had no connection to my past, or were idealized to the point of fiction. I collected cards, models, games, anything I remember from the past, even if I never had those items. If they were around at the time and unobtainable or unknown to me at that time, I sought them out to bring forth some kind of false closure that I felt I needed. In truth, the items represented the loss of an era. They were the loss of my childhood and early adulthood.

I am thirty six years old. The enjoyment of my life peaked in 2009, crashed in 2010, entered a revival in 2017, and has fallen and stagnated since 2021 with little expectations of it ever rising that high again. Most of the cause of these feelings have been the loss of friendships that have happened gradually. There isn't much left in terms of this. I blame no one for this happening. At this point, it just seems like the natural progression of my life. Though I am grateful for my wife and my family, I have no connection left to the hobbies that I used to love. Without friends and the things that used to bring me happiness I constantly ask myself, "So is this all there is?"

I'm to the point now where I have started to scale back or outright get rid of old hobbies, namely card collecting. While I can never get rid of all of my collectibles, I will not buy anymore, and the remainder of my collections will be stored away for the time being. I am not sure what I will move onto to pass my free time. I have kept my PlayStation 4, and will most likely continue to play games to help alleviate this new found boredom. I know all of this sounds dramatic, but I am at a crossroads in my life where I can either hold fast to nostalgia, that will slowly waste my life and leave me empty, or I can try to start over and figure out something that will give my soul meaning. The risk of course is that I get stuck in a nihilistic state where I find no point in pursuing anything due to the factors of money, possible loss of interest, or realistic expectations of such hobbies. I can't keep doing the same thing though and expect different results. This is the only path out of that maze. I'm not sure what I will find, but I don't have a choice if I want to be able to move on from the past.

Siddhartha: Life is a River

 

 

There are few stories that depict the human condition in a way that can resonate with everyone who reads it. That story is Siddhartha, written by Herman Hesse in 1922. A relatively short read of only 107 pages, it is a book that everyone who is trying to figure out life should read at least once.

The story starts out with a young man named Siddhartha, who is part of the upper caste system of India. He is depicted as a young man who is loved by all. He has intelligence, looks, money, basically everything anyone finds desirable. He however is not satisfied with this life. He feels that something is missing. This sets he and his best friend Govinda, on a physical and spiritual journey to find the best way of living.

I don't want to give away the entire plot of the book, but Siddhartha joins a group of ascetics, meets the Buddha, falls in love with a girl, changes his life style to that of a more materialistic ideal, but ultimately finds peace in the most unlikely place. It is the quintessential story of life. While reading this I found myself feeling like Siddhartha, lost, hopeful, inquisitive, and passionate for knowledge of all sorts. The story has this sweet melancholic feeling to it that is hard to describe, but the general theme of the story is that everything is intertwined, and everything returns.

Like many on this journey of understanding, Siddhartha's views and beliefs change like the seasons. People come and go like bends in a river, and you're left with just memories that have become lessons in the pages of the book of your life. Like for many, the answer to life always seems to come near the end, but maybe its for the best. Life is about the journey and this book depicts that incredibly well in such a short time frame. It is like you're riding a raft on a river, it moves so fast and fluidly, almost too fast to be able to savor the elegant descriptions Herman Hesse has written. But that is life. Life doesn't slow down, life doesn't wait, it continues to move even if we choose not to move with it.

If you're looking for a book that reads you, then Siddhartha is an excellent choice. Some things that I thought about while reading this book were:

• Is there any right way to live?
• People change, and this isn't their fault.
• Youth goes by so quick.
• If you can't do anything, you can at least think and wait.
• Don't base your beliefs or thoughts on one person or experience.
• Don't stop learning. Experience everything you can.
  
• Stop and listen to nature.
• Our time here goes by quick.
  

I recommend reading the book chapter by chapter and reflecting after each chapter. When I read it again I will do this. Though it is a short read, there is a lot of wisdom within the pages. Its not the kind of book to read and then set aside, it is really meant to be meditated on during the journey it takes you on. If you're just getting started on your journey of understanding, I can't recommend this book enough as a place to start as it is almost like reading the book of your own life.

Overcoming Yourself

 

 

 

Lately I've been reading some of the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, mainly Good & Evil, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I can't pretend that I've understood everything that I've read in both books and I'm only about half way through Zarathustra, but what I've been able to ascertain from Nietzsche is the need for humans to overcome themselves. Nietzsche calls this idea of a higher form of man "overman." The idea that a select few people will be able to "ascend" to a higher morality and state of being is something that I don't take great stock in. However, I feel that something else can be gleaned from this idea, the idea that we should always strive to overcome ourselves.

Early on in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche presents the "Three Metamorphoses" wherein the spirit of man changes into a camel, then a lion, and finally a child. I personally see the idea of the spirit as our own beliefs that we've carried with us since we were young. These are often superstitious beliefs brought about by our families and those that we spend a lot of time with. Either way, these are ideas that have been cemented in us by others. In order to move past this phase we have to start considering that maybe these beliefs and ideas are wrong. We have to start looking at other ideas.

The camel to me represents taking on new ideas and then traveling with those ideas into a kind of desert of ideas and moralities. Camels are beasts of burden that can exist and travel in very desolate climates. They are loaded down with supplies and rode across the desert to far away places. When we begin to read philosophy or religious texts we are loaded down with new beliefs/ideas, some beliefs/ideas that change the way we view reality, some that burden us with thoughts that we didn't know we had and thoughts that we did not want. The camel represents the start of our journey. It is up to each of us to decide what beliefs/ideas we will keep and what we will discard on this journey. Once we have decided what beliefs/ideas we will keep and focus on and what ideas we reject, only then can we turn into a lion.

Lions represent strength and power. As we go forth with our new set of beliefs/ideas, we will have to defend them from others who wish to take them away. We will have to establish our freedom. Freedom in this case means the freedom from being influenced by others who are not going the same way as us. It means not needing validation from others on whether our beliefs/ideas are correct. We must have the conviction to trust ourselves and to think for ourselves. Only after we accomplish this can we be what Nietzsche calls "creators." Only then can we graduate to that of a child.

The child represents creation. Children possess great imaginations and abilities to create. Essentially once we hit this phase, we have been reborn into something greater than what we were.

Its very possible that I misinterpreted Nietzsche on this idea, but this is what I personally believe each of these phases represent. The key piece of information here that matters more than anything else that has been written here is that we should always try to become a better version of ourselves. We all need to start a journey to better understand who we are, and by figuring out who we are, we can become better as we move through the phases. Its possible that most of us will never reach the phase of child, or even that of lion, but as the saying goes, its not about the destination, its about the journey. And to learn about ourselves even just a little can make a life worth lived.

Productive Work

When we think of work, what do we think about? Money? A job? A career? That's what I thought when I heard the word work. All three were what I pictured when I was younger. It started at the age of twelve umpiring baseball to make money so that I could buy a bike and anything else that I wanted. When I got older it progressed to working part time at a grocery store to save up for a car. And when I graduated college it meant finding a career to start a life of my own. Hardly at all did I ever think of doing something I would enjoy. I just wanted money so that I could move forward in life and for awhile, it was fine. I moved up in my company which happened to be the grocery store I started at, and all of my twenties were dedicated to making as much money and moving up as much as possible to make even more money. In terms of money earned, I succeeded. But at thirty four, I look back at the trail of blood, sweat, and tears I laid down just to get ahead, and ask myself, is it/was it worth it?

This thought led me to quit the company I worked for of nearly twenty years, and move on to another company of a similar nature. In hindsight, it was a panicked move, a desperate grasp to leave behind a company I hated. But now I'm back to square one and I quickly realized this time that this isn't what I want to do with my life. The word work has taken on a different meaning for me than it once did when I was twelve years old. I realized that what I wanted was productive work. I even took the time to create my own definition for productive work:

"Achieving or producing a meaningful result in an activity involving mental or physical effort."

Meaningful is the key word in the definition. I realize that I want something that makes me feel like I've accomplished something when I come home, something worth while, something I want to be doing. In my opinion work should be something that us as humans see as a worthwhile and rewarding endeavor. Doing something that we enjoy that provides us with a way of living can be a great pathway to happiness. 

The temporary goal of this blog will be to study what productive works looks like and how I can achieve the goal of finding such work that provides me with meaning and purpose.

M

Building Your Foundation

 

How to Be Free: An Ancient Guide to the Stoic Life (Princeton University Press)

 

"Some things in the world are up to us, while others are not. Up to us are our faculties of judgement, motivation, desire, and aversion. Not up to us are our body and property, our reputations, and our official position. In short, everything that is not our own doing."  -Epictetus

That is the opening paragraph to The Encheiridion, also known as The Manual, a book written by Lucius Flavianus Arrianus, based on the lectures of his teacher, the Greek Stoic philosopher, Epictetus. The book is believed to have been written circa 125 AD, yet its opening paragraph is still relevant today. 

The book is made up of fifty three tenets, or what I call tenets, that cover a wide array of topics including: family and professional life, illness, poverty, and death. All areas of life that we still deal with. For those looking to get into philosophy, mainly the philosophy on how to live a better life, I suggest starting with this book as it is easy to read and you can take lessons from it immediately without having to take a lot of time to analyze each tenet.

The Encheiridion is the only Stoic writing I still own, because it is the only one I feel that I still need due to its simple, yet life changing writings. Though today we will be only covering The Encheiridion, and why its important to understand its teachings as part of your philosophical foundation, you have other options if you want to learn more about Stoicism, such as The Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius, the last of the good emperors of Rome, Letters from a Stoic, by Seneca, and of course, The Discourses, by Epictetus. 

The first paragraph of the book is the foundation of Stoicism. We can only control what is in our power to control. Everything else beyond that is not within our control. When you try to control what you cannot, this leads to the feeling of anxiety which has crippled many in our society to the point of becoming a health crisis. Summarizing the opening paragraph, it is only how we decide to feel and act on a situation that is within our control. The Stoics believe that as long as your ability to reason isn't affected by anything, then you have no cause to worry. Because everything else doesn't matter in the long run.

"Right now, then, make it your habit to tell every jarring thought or impression: "You are just an appearance and in no way the real thing. If it involves one of the things not up to us, then say: It is not my business." Tenet 1

Anxiety is brought about when we feel that we're not in control of a situation, or something outside our expectations has happened that we didn't expect. The Stoics believe that these feelings that generate anxiety make us a prisoner in our own bodies. To truly be free the Stoics believe that we cannot be beholden to any master. What people think of us, our reputation, our financial situation, our bodies not cooperating, are all masters that most of us serve. They become the chains that bind us to our sad reality. With the advent of technology and social media it has become increasingly difficult to be happy. So how do we become free?

In order to be free, we have to realize what we can control and what we cannot. We can't control what people think, what people do, or how people view us. We have to utilize our minds as a safe space to keep out those negative thoughts and break those chains that bind us. Practice slowing down when something happens to you that you didn't expect, and think rationally about what it means in the grand scheme of things. Most situations that we think are dire, turn out to be nothing, not even a memory. Take the situation and use your reason to turn your anxiety into action or, just let the feeling go altogether. "It is what it is." By doing this daily, you'll create a barrier within your mind so that situations affect you less and less until you have mastered control of yourself, thus becoming free.

Identifying what is within our control and what is not, is the first step of laying the foundation to your new life. I encourage anyone who has an interest in being less stressed or anxious to pick up this book. It is the type of book that you can easily read in one sitting and reap the benefits for a lifetime.