The View

I've done many things just to see what I was really made of, sometimes that meant not liking the view. Does that mean I regret going balls out on some things. Hell no. In fact in retro I wouldn't do much differently. Without knowing what the view was, I would have always wondered.

I am not made up of sugar and spice and everything nice maybe, but I do have a little bit of that in me. I'd like to think its a pretty good recipe, but even coca-cola changes the recipe up every now and then. I think I am ready for some new ingredients, maybe even work on the packaging.

Random? Hella. But makes sense to me. I guess you kinda have to be here to get it sometimes.

Carfax

But for ex's...ExFax.

www.exfax.com Don’t take chances on your next ex. Get EXFAX Reports!

The first step to protecting yourself against buying used cars with costly hidden problems. EXFAX searches its nationwide database and provides a detailed ex history report in seconds. Just enter their name below.


Why does this not exist? Just type the name of a potential partner and you could see all the past owners and what they have to say about that ride, not to mention how many miles she really has. I was talking to Sherry yesterday and this hit me. Screw my MarryTommy.com site, I think I need to come up with a relationship checker.

Anyways, one can dream right? Back to work. Later gators.

Lessons Learned

Syke. Well maybe. I really just wanted to use syke, back in middle school that was my shizzy. My guess is that many people don't remember this fad, but for those who do many LOL's. All you youngins most likely think I misspelled skype or something.

1. syke
	Basically street slang for pretending, used in place of "playin" or "jokin" yo momma just fell down the stoop... SYKE !

2. syke

a common misspelling of " word psyche"

"you're hot... Syke!"
"you moron, it's spelled psyche!"

Have I learned all of my lessons? Nah. Not even close. I have some patterns that are pretty easy to pick up on. Will that ever change? Only time will tell. Some lessons are really never completely learned, and we must learn them over and over again.


Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
-George Santayana

Boy does this one ever hold true.

Fear

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear."
-Mark Twain

Brilliant. There are so many brilliant people out there and that is one of the reasons I am either always reading a book, or reading online. I came across this quote from Mark Twain tonight and it made me think. Actually I was reading one of FDR's biographies and paused thinking about his inaugural speech. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. I guess at that point I was kind of stuck on this fear thing. We all have fears, we just don't always have the courage to face them. No one is born with courage, nor is anyone born with fear.

Without anything to be afraid of there is no need for courage, its just another everyday happening. Courage is being afraid, but manning up and taking care of business anyways. How awesome it must be to say some shit like that one day and be quoted by millions of people.

I am far from fearless. I am not afraid of the normal things. My friends are all afraid of dying, spiders, gang members, STD's. OK. I am afraid of STD's, I prefer not to die right now but am ready to go whenever, spiders I can step on and I grew up in SoCal so gang bangers make me chuckle. Other than heights and relationship things I don't have too many fears. Sharing things, that's always been a fear of mine. Maybe more will hit me later. Maybe I will stay in denial about them for another few years. Maybe I should be afraid to die, maybe that is a whole other issue.


"Nothing is life is to be feared. It is only to be understood."

-Marie Currie

That sounds pretty awesome as well.

The Ripple Effect

Never underestimate the ripple effect of your actions. How you affect others just by being who you are and what you stand for is something you will never know. Everything you say or do has an affect on someone other than yourself. Just as the rocks skipped across the lake, even perceived simple actions create ripples in the lives of people that you love and even in ones you have never met.

As a soldier you are stronger and more skilled than your civilian counterparts. You are a walking, talking billboard for the lifestyle you have chosen. It is a big responsibility, something that I don't always remember.

I'm not trying to point out other peoples ripples, don't get me wrong. I can only control my ripples, that is enough for me to worry about right now. I guess I need to think about the rocks I throw in the pond a little more closely from now on.

Grace

Ungrace. Grace. Maybe both. As a young whipper snapper I had dreams, and as a child I hoped I'd live a life that exceeds those dreams and as those dreams collapsed and the reality of real work, real problems and real world set in, you have gotten life often in ungrace. I am not even sure if ungrace is a word to be honest but its the opposite of grace here. OK? My online dictionary isn't feeling me with ungrace but I'm sticking with it. Falling from grace I guess lands you just south of ungrace.

No one ever grows up saying I am going to get divorced, lose my house, get cancer and become an alcoholic. Really if anyone does this their parents need to be smacked or better yet ground and pounded. Crushed dreams are never part of any ones grand plan. Often you end up in the valley even when out sights are set way up in the mountains. Sometimes you get blind sighted, that is just how life works.

Sometimes you have to hit a new low, to truly appreciate grace. I have hit ungrace, several times it seems. In a world that turns more upside down than right side up to love and accept someone regardless of their failures and flaws is a small breath of hope. This is something I can work on. I am not a bad person, I am perhaps my harshest critic but I can be very unforgiving to those who have shown to me that I can not trust or to those that have hurt me. I'd like to learn to deal with this better, and even change if possible. It truly gets harder to change the more 29th birthdays I have in life. There are many things I need to change, I just need to dedicate myself to finding those answers and when I can't find them I need to ask for help.

Needless to say this has been a trying few weeks. This week more so than others and I have been forced to think and do some soul searching. I have failed at many plans, often set my expectations high and fail to meet them. Does that mean I should give up, or lower my expectations? I don't think so.

To those I have let down in life I am sorry. To those that have never let me down I can never thank you enough. I love no. No homo. I had to call it, because I have some dudes that have always been there for me as well. I say this knowing that only a handful of people have this link as of now and I only publish a blog out of 100 I write. Even then I will go back and play indian giver with the ones I no longer want to be public. Maybe that is something I can change as well.

Interesting Parable

Once upon a time there lived a sea lion who had lost the sea.

He lived in a country known as the barren lands. High on a plateau, far from any coast, it was a place so dry and dusty that it could only be called a desert. A kind of coarse grass grew in patches here and there, and a few trees were scattered across the horizon. But mostly, it was dust. And sometimes wind, which together make one very thirsty. Of course, it must seem strange to you that such a beautiful creature should wind up in a desert at all. He was, mind you, a sea lion. But things like this do happen.

How the sea lion came to the barren land, no one could remember. It all seemed so very long ago. So long, in fact, it appeared as though he had always been there. Not that he belonged in such an arid place. How could that be? He was, after all, a sea lion. But as you know, once you have lived so long in a certain spot, no matter how odd, you come to think of it as home.

~ The Journey of Desire, John Eldredge