Reflection

When I first came  to Florida to live, I had a million and one aspirations. I was in the land of opportunity and had so many goals. I wanted to get into investing, particularly real estate. I wanted to start my own business. I wanted to continue my formal education. I wanted to grow as an individual. Years later, I have been able achieve a few things on my original list. Most notably, the masters degree that is still on its way in the mail. I had a multitude of opportunities to get into investing, but was always too afraid to really get started. Lucky for me the real estate market crashed followed by the stock market and I wasn't in either. I probably would have lost lots of money. Now that the dust has settled somewhat, I fell the call to get back the zeal I started with. I have even more reason to do so now that I am married and the wife and I are planning a baby soon.

I stumbled on a great article on Tim Ferris' blog that got me thinking about what to do with my time, now that I have completed my degree. I have a lot of bad habits to replace with good habits. One good habit that I have managed to cultivate over the last 2 years has been long distance running. Running and me have a long negative history. I used to hide in the bathroom during physical education class in high school so that I could spare myself the embarassment of running in public. People often said I ran like a girl. These days I have run a number of 5ks in decent times and am training for a marathon. I started running late in life, but I see a potentially long running future ahead of me. I think its the same with investing. I lost steam in that department. Besides the horrible economy, I think my real issue is lack of people skills. I have had this problem all my life, it was especially bad in high school. Running has taught me that, it doesn't matter how late you start, you can be still be successful. Success or not, I will die trying.

Waiting...

Waiting for my machine to shut down. Its taking way too long. They are supposed to move me downstairs to my new office home, but i cannot finish packing up my computer peripherals until this thing shuts down. It says its trying to install a Windows update, but i think its caught a snag.

Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Today was a productive Saturday. I started the day saying I was going to do some school work and actually did that. I got all my reading for the past week done so that is a great accomplishment. I got to reading an article by David Remnick about a newspaper in Israel called Haaretz. I read the piece in the most recent edition of the New Yorker. Yes, I read the New Yorker now. I don't know why I feel some sort of elitism when I contemplate that fact. In any event, the article was quite interesting as New Yorker pieces tend to be. It made me think about how much I don't know about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I hear snippets about the issues in the news, but those are just sound bites. The only way to really get a feel for the issues would be for me to read more deeply as I did today. I think its true what Nicholas Carr says about our generation. We read wide, but not deep. I think that subscribing to the New Yorker is one of the best things I could have done to reverse that trend in my own life.

First post for the year.

I preached today! As always I heave a sigh of relief for finally getting through it. Yesterday I spent a significant portion of the day reading my Bible and gathering my thoughts for what was supposed to be my grandest speaking achievement. Somewhere around the middle of the day I realized that I had set my sights a little bit too high. I don't know why I always do that. I tend to be very optimistic about what I should be able to achieve in a given time period. I started yesterday thinking that I would have my sermon wrapped up by noon and thus I would have time left over to do school work and a few other chores. I called my father later in the evening to get some advice at a point when I was felling particularly stuck in the preparation, but I got the answering machine instead. None the less he called me back and reminded me that it takes about 40 hours to put together a good sermon. I will file that away for next time.

Yesterday morning, I went running with some co-workers along the A1A. I love running along the A1A, it is a great change from the drab surroundings that make up my neighborhood. Apart from the occasional sighting of the ocean, I like the feeling of running with so many strangers. Apparently everyone likes to run on the A1A as I see runners of all ages, shapes and SIZES. I am thinking of running on the A1A next week as well. On the subject of running, I think my whole personality has begun to change ever since I began running. People always say that I seem to calm as a cucumber and that nothing gets to me. They say that only because they can't see into my head. But these days, it has become alot more true. Running really does mellow you ought and relieves your body of stress. I think it's also made my mind a lot sharper.

So that's yesterday, and this is today. I feel there is alot I need to get done today and I have no idea where to start. I was just fiddling around with my new kindle. I had the last version of the kindle, that is the one before the latest version but I have decided to give it to my father who loves reading maybe almost as much as I do. So, I spent the last 30 minutes or so transferring my books to my new kindle and then the thought occurred to me "This is just busy work and I am not working on any of the things that I need to do". Things like school work, or cooking dinner, or trying to figure out what is wrong with my mom's laptop or writing in my blog. Every week that I don't write in my blog I die a small death inside. I really want to make writing a regular part of my week. Just like I am dedicating all this time to weight lifting and running and learning spanish and developing my career and so on and so forth.

This has got to be the most rambling post I have every written. The question now remains as I wrap up. Should I post this so the world can see this piece of random garbage? Or should I just file this one away and spare everyone the agony. Since I know, no one is reading this blog, I might as well post it and cross my fingers.