Everybody has their coping mechanisms.  Some people eat, some drink, some work out, some clean – me, I drive.  When I get angry, when I get overwhelmed, when I want to go out and clear my head, there’s nothing that’s quite as soothing to me as getting behind the wheel, filling up my tank, and blasting it down long and winding country roads – or whatever’s closest to ‘em where I’m at.

There’s something about driving that really gets me.  I could drive forever.  Not the bustling, busy city streets with stop signs, traffic lights, and pedestrians – no, that only serves to further whatever tendencies of rage I house within my head.  When I’m driving in the city, I wish I had a fifty-cal turret-mounted to my vehicle.  But when I’m driving out on the back roads, I feel serene.

It’s such an all-encompassing experience.  I’m strapped into a metal box on wheels going a hundred, hundred fifty kilometers per hour.  The window’s down, the music’s cranked, and I’ve got a cigarette in my hand.  Just watching the world go rushing by, watching the rain falling on my windshield, watching the sun go down…  Me and my car.  Me in my car.  Me as my car.

There are a few things in life which I think are transcendental experiences.  For me, these are when I am not doing something, but when something is happening through me, or when I think I’m channeling something completely other to myself.  This experience, to me, is perfectly summed up in one quote from Bruce Lee’s Tao of Jeet Kune Do:

I’m moving and not moving at all.  I’m like the moon underneath the waves that ever go on rolling and rocking.  It is not, “I am doing this,” but rather, an inner realization that “this is happening through me,” or “it is doing this for me.”  The consciousness of self is the greatest hindrance to the proper execution of all physical action.

That’s from the very first page from the first chapter, On Zen.  And I do think that when I’m in that zone where I’ve gone past the self that I’m starting to find my path to the Tao.  Martial arts is an obvious one.  When I’m really in the right frame of mind – which is no mind at all – I am greater than myself.  Acting – when I used to act, anyway.  When it wasn’t just memorization of lines and blocking and thinking about what I’m doing, what I should be doing, and what I’m going to be doing next, but when I actually become the character and realize him in my body.

Writing, too, though this happens much less often for me nowadays if at all.  Writing and music both.  I used to call it the muse, but to me, what I call the muse is part of the Tao.  It’s when I can write something – a piece of poetry, lyrics, music, stories, what have you – without even knowing what I’m writing.  I’m not grasping for my theory or reaching for words.  Something just flows out of me, and that’s when I know it’s real.  When I’m thinking and writing, trying to force something out, I know it’s not true writing.  I remember some times when I wrote something, looked down at the page, and couldn’t understand what I’d written until someone else read it and explained it to me.

Driving can sometimes be a Zen experience for me.  Seriously, stop laughing.  I know it sounds retarded.  But there’s just something so liberating and open about just driving without knowing where you’re going.  I don’t think, I don’t react – I just drive.  The roads open up before me, and I choose to go down them or not.  I drink in the sights and smells of the world around me.  I am invigorated, renewed, I am alive and in motion.

I’ll catch myself singing along to the music without even knowing that I’m doing it sometimes.  I’ll open up my mind and think.  Receive without transmitting.  I let it all flow through me.  I know that this probably sounds less like a meditative experience and more like just dangerous driving – if it sounds like that, then in my defense, I think I’m just describing this extremely poorly.

A meditative experience – in my eyes – is not necessarily analogous to sitting down in an empty room, hands folded in my lap, eyes closed.  It can be very passive, yes, but it doesn’t mean inattentive or unresponsive.  Fighting is a meditative experience.  Improvising jazz on a live stage is a meditative experience.

Does it sound like hippie horseshit?  Sure, you know, I can admit to that.  Even as I’m writing it, I’m kinda shaking my head because it all sounds so damn silly.  But I find peace in it.  Just the other day, I went for a drive.  Only about an hour’s worth, really, and the whole ordeal took me about eight hours total – I had to take my car into the shop to get a bunch of work done on her first, and then had to take her back into another shop when I hit the first town (I’d left the car for months while I was away) for more work.

Even after waiting for hours upon hours for mechanics to work their magic and dropping an unexpected amount of money on repairs, not to mention all the shit that made me want to go for a drive in the first place, I finally hit the road again.  It was dark, and it was perfect.  It’s so different from being in the city, where I’m just frustrated and angry and so different from being on the big highway, where I’m just bored and half-asleep (as well as frustrated and angry, most of the time – on the 401, at least).

I think that I love driving like that almost more than anything else.  It’s more calming than my other relaxations – and it comes to me easier.  If I won the lottery, I’d love to get a place out on the edge of some town with a nice, powerful, but old car and just drive.  New cars are nice – and I’d rather have a new car than the one I’ve got now, don’t get me wrong – but old vehicles with ‘personality’ are the best for cruising, I find.

Ride on.

Although it stands to reason that a samurai should be mindful of the Way of the Samurai, it would seem that we are all negligent. Consequently, if someone were to ask, “What is the true meaning of the Way of the Samurai?” the person who would be able to answer promptly is rare. This is because it has not been established in one’s mind beforehand. From this, one’s unmindfulness of the Way can be known.  Negligence is an extreme thing.

When I began training in Kendo many years ago (as well as other arts like Kenjutsu and Iaijutsu), I picked up a copy of Hagakure, the “book of the Samurai”.  It was more as a point of interest to the mentality and philosophy of the warriors of old – but alongside the Tao te Ching, it ended up being one of the few books that entirely changed my life.  The quote above, which is the first verse of Chapter One, is one of the main points of the philosophy which hit home for me.  The necessity in meditating upon that which guides our lives and our beliefs, such that when it comes time that you are asked a question or forced to make a decision, you know where you stand without a doubt.

I could sit here all day and quote-spam from the book, but that’s not my intention.  Rather, I’d like to focus on that one thought as the main point for this post.  Obviously, I’m not expounding on the true meaning of the Bushido but rather expanding it to encompass what beliefs and principles you believe in – more specifically, what beliefs and principles I believe in.  Meditative reflection is something I’ve fallen out of touch with as I’ve moved farther and farther away from such practices, and that’s something I need to correct.

My upbringing was a Christian one.  My parents were extremely conservative and religious; we went to church every Sunday, paid our tithes, memorized our Bible.  I was on the worship team, went to canoe-camping retreats, all that stuff.  And the thing about religion is that it really makes you think about what you believe, whether you agree with your holy text (or equivalent) or not.  When the religious aspect is taken out of religion and it’s viewed as a philosophy, it’s a very effective model in many aspects, or so it seems to me.  A convocation of those of like beliefs, supporting each other.  A meditative ritual, often times inwardly reflective in nature.

I knew then what I believed and what I held as right and wrong – because I was forced to contemplate the regulations of my religion.  When the church said that homosexuality was wrong and a sin, I disagreed.  Lying and stealing were also wrong, with which I agreed, but with which I didn’t comply.  But whether or not I agreed, whether or not I acted upon those convictions, I had thought about them and knew where I stood in principle and in practice.

I fell away from religion during my latter years of high school for a multitude of reasons.  I underwent a long period of philosophical self-examination and doubt.  But the farther I went away from religion, the lesser my questioning of morality, ethics, and principles.  It was no longer a routine thing for me to ponder questions of right and wrong and where I stood in the grand scheme of things.  Kant’s Categorical Imperative was collecting dust on a shelf in my brain.

I had no Scripture.  There was no God for me to speak to.  So I fell out of constantly re-acquainting myself with my own beliefs, fell out of that meditative relationship with the Oneness or the Spirit or whatever you want to call it.  And this is a dangerous thing – for you to be obscured to your own self.  I got lost in the haze of secular life and forgot the connected spiritual essence of being.  I was disconnected from my wonder at the world, the exuberance of existence.  I unwittingly became less of an atheist and more of a nihilist.

There’s a difficulty with atheism, or at least in my experience.  Those of us who have become disenchanted with religion or disenfranchised from previous belief systems are left scattered with a generalized label: Unbeliever.  When asked what my religious or spiritual beliefs were, the best I could muster (half-jokingly) was “Semi-Taoist Existentialist”.  But the problem is that it’s so hard to find others who believe as you do, especially since there are so many areas in which disagreements arise.  The nature of the universe, the origins of life, afterlife, morality and ethics, philosophy, sophistry, the list goes on.  If the Church has splintered into so many factions just from one purported set of teachings, how can atheists find like-minded and like-hearted groups to form a community?

Many simply agree to disagree.  They are united by their atheism and their atheism alone (or agnosticism) – but this is hardly ideal, as you can’t share your values with them and become fully supportive of one another.  It’s good in the way that discussion is fostered, if arguments can be kept civil, and it allows you to debate the merits or downsides of your beliefs and in so doing strengthen them.  But when most if not all of your interaction with your fellow-community is comparative or detractive instead of reaffirming and supportive, it doesn’t have the opportunity to build and grow.

Atheism is defined not by what it is, but by what it is not.  This is obvious just from the name alone.  Under the broad umbrella of atheism are many different groups which covers many people, and many of these people can find a community of their own and flourish.  But for those of us without an easily unified set of beliefs, those of us who pick up bits and pieces of different philosophies and create a system of their own – we’re often left behind.  Again, that’s the nature of the beast.

I started this post thinking that I was going to talk about my own beliefs and try to lay them out – for my benefit as much as others’.  But it’s obviously taken a vastly different tone, although tangential to my original trajectory.  I’m not trying to say that all or even most atheists are as lost and isolated as I feel that I am at times; but that coming from a religious tradition, I feel a distinct lack of something at least in my immediate community of peers.  When you don’t have a God, to whom or what can you sing songs?  Music being what it is for me, it’s hard to imagine spirituality without music.  When you don’t have a Scripture, what do you study?

There exists a necessity, I think, for individuals to create their own scripture, to define the narrative of their beliefs and principles, and to codify them for themselves.  This is especially true to those who fall outside of belief groups where they have a community of belonging, when they are philosophically or religiously isolated; it’s important for you to spell out who you are and what you are.  Not to say that we are defined by our labels or generalized descriptions – “Semi-Taoist Existentialist” really raises more questions than it answers – but because it’s important to be thoroughly self-aware.

Negligence is an extreme thing.

I don’t know if this is a recent trend or not – I highly doubt it – but a theme has been making itself very evident to me lately all over the place.  In real life, in articles I read all across the interwebs, it seems that a large amount of people are trying to deal with the adjustment of moving from a school environment into what we call “the real world”.  While some have been able to transition with relative ease, others are struggling with the differences.  There seems to be a period of chaos in moving from the world of academia into the career life.

Let me start off by saying I went to private school.  I don’t like to tell people that, because invariably, whenever I tell someone that I went to private school from Grade 6 until graduation of high school, the response is always the same: “Oh, you were a rich kid.”  To be fair, my family was fairly well off.  My parents put me through piano lessons, martial arts, and all that jazz.  I’ll never understand how they managed to do so, and still puzzle over it to this day.  While they were international bankers back before we moved to Canada, they now own and run a small post office/gift ship in Toronto.

Anyway, back to my point about school.  It was a private gifted school for which I passed my tests in Grade 5.  It was a school that offered primarily only “academic” courses, focusing heavily on math and science – there was no Home Ec, no Gym, just Physics and Calculus and Biology and the like.  The only “non-academic” courses that were offered were Theater, Music, and Art – and even then, it wasn’t an option to take throughout all of high school.

My memories of high school are fond.  Granted, my high school experience probably differs greatly from many others’.  For one, I skipped nearly all classes in my final two years.  I think the only classes that I showed up consistently for were English and Philosophy.  I spent most of my time playing guitar in the common room, smoking in the back of the school, out playing pool with friends (who were, uh, also skipping class), or just… not going to class.

Ironically, I was heavily involved in the school.  Being what it was, it had a very small student body – at my time there, I believe the numbers peaked at 350 students for all of grades one through thirteen.  For American readers: yes, we used to have a thirteenth year, the last year of high school, which no longer exists.  I was in the last year to experience that wonderful transition.  I was on Student Council all the way through, staying Vice President in my last two years.  I ran extra-curricular activities, watched over kids during lunch hour, did the morning announcements every day, and played on almost every sports team.  I was in just about every play and musical as well as Captain of the Improv Team.   I was in a band, dating girls, doing my High School thing.

I thought I was King Shit of the world.  I was popular, I was cool, I was invited the parties and enjoying life.  I was doing well in school, eventually graduating with around 95 average for my top six classes, which would get me easily into university.  University – that shining, glimmering, golden goal.  The light at the end of the tunnel.  My gateway into the Real World.  All throughout high school, I couldn’t wait to go to university.  To live on my own, to be able to study what I wanted to study (and I told myself that I would actually start applying myself there, whereas I just winged it in high school), and to prepare for the rest of my life.

The first problem?  I chose Fine Arts Theater as my major.  I’m being facetious, of course, but it did present some real problems for me.  It was a very specific major with very specific application.  I narrowed down my field of opportunities from the beginning by making that choice.  I disappointed a lot of people by choosing that major.  First amongst them, myself.  By the middle of the first semester, I was already thinking about transferring out to University of Toronto and into a different program.  By the second semester, I wasn’t even attending most of my courses.

I can’t say for certain how much of that is because of my program and how much of it is because of the university experience itself and how much I was let down by my grand expectations.  I had high hopes for the York University Theater program, especially since they were touting Rachel McAdams as a graduate, and hell, she made it big.  But first year was a joke at best.  There was so much to learn on the technical side of stagecraft, and those classes I enjoyed to the fullest (minus the part where they slave-labored us as part of the course) – but just about every other class had me going, “Seriously?”  The one class I was taking out of my major, Philosophy, was mind-numbingly painful.  The Teaching Assistant knew more than the Professor did.  I started going only to the discussion groups, and skipped the lectures completely in favor of just reading the assigned texts.

I thought that University would be a shining beacon of intelligence.  I thought that I could drink my fill of the wisdom of my superiors, enough to start vomiting my own half-baked awesomeness once I was finished.  But I soon found that it was full of mediocrity – at least in my experience – and that moments of true learning had to be laboriously hunted down and shot.  I had a small group of friends that I would hang out and talk with, and largely ignored everybody else on that campus.  The level of pretension and jargon-slinging were just absolutely incredible.

This is starting to sound like an incredibly bitter post against education, and that’s not my intent in the least.  Case and point: I’m trying desperately to get back into university this year, hopefully by the summer semester, to complete my undergraduate degree at Queen’s University.  It’s one of the many reasons that I joined the military, because they’re willing to pay for my education.  What I’m trying to say is that I was very disillusioned with my first university experience.  It seemed like everyone was having a a themed party and I showed up completely out of dress and got handed the skunky beer.

I think that out of all of my friends, I hit the “Real World” first.  By nineteen, I had dropped out of university and enlisted in the military.  I was working full-time for the first time in my life, and it wasn’t a coffeeshop or a restaurant – I was firing live ammunition, living out in the field, slapping on cam paint and HOORAH.  I had a child to look after, a family to provide for, bills to pay, debts to manage, ridiculous supervisors to appease, insufferable coworkers to handle, and so forth.  Not to say that military life is necessarily Real World – it can be very much a macrocosm at some points – but you get the gist of what I’m saying.

So here I am.  I’ve spent three years in the military exactly to this date.  On 21 Feb 2007, I showed up for Basic Military Qualification, AKA Boot Camp, in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec.  And now I watch as many of my friends struggle to transition out of the University life and into their own, trying to find their way, trying to figure it out.

I think that the education system gives us this impression that there’s an endstate to all this.  I don’t quite know what “all this” actually is, but there it is.  But so many people are fighting even just to find a job or an internship.  A large number of them have gone abroad, traveled much, and accomplished great things.  But an even larger number of them have retreated back into the education system, going for a second degree or a graduate degree in the hopes that it will help them in their future lives.  Some have just gotten out of university and gone into college for something applicable that they want to pursue.  Others languish.

I say “retreated” back into the education system not necessarily because these people were frightened off or anything – many of them had a graduate program in their sights before they even began undergrad – but because in my eyes, the education system is a fortress.  It’s something completely apart from this thing that they call life, and in many ways, that’s a good thing.  It’s an isolated, fabricated environment dedicated to students learning.  But what are they learning?

They say that school teaches us how to think, how to analyze, how to question and come to our own conclusions.  I disagree.  I think that at best, school teaches us facts and information.  It teaches us how to learn.  It’s up to us, then, to figure out how to process that information and transform it into something relevant and real – to bring the theoretical into the realm of the practical.  Some of us go through internships and work terms to help ease us through.  Some of us hit the ground running.

I’ll try to refrain from speaking generally because I know that my experience doesn’t necessarily mirror many others’ for whatever reason.  For myself, I had a hard time adjusting.  In school, I was friends with many of my teachers.  Even though I skipped most of my classes, they were still people I would talk to and joke with, people that I had respect for and people who (I hope) respected me in return.  I got good marks on my assignments.  I did well on my exams.

Well, that doesn’t count for shit out here.  Nobody really cares that I went to a good school and got good marks.  Nobody cares that I gave a seminar minutes after getting a tooth literally knocked right out, bleeding all over my presentation (well, except that it makes for a good story).  All that really matters is: how good are you at doing your job?  There are guys that I work with who failed out of high school.  There are guys that I work with that have college or university diplomas.  But when it comes to your evaluation as a person, your worth as a soldier, nobody really cares about that expensive piece of paper.  And to be honest, I prefer to work with a lot of the guys that struggled through school instead of those who excelled in the system.  They’re smarter, faster, and get the job done better.

So where does that leave me?  I’ve never believed that the education system was an effective model for personal growth.  I believe that it does work for learning, and learning how to learn.  And I do want to learn.  But for me, it’s a means to an end.  Undergraduate is the new high school, everybody knows that – it’s hard to get credibility in the world at large without at least an undergrad.  Even then, it’s nothing special.  Hell, even a Master’s doesn’t impress half the time.  Moreover, from my group of friends at least, having a degree doesn’t even mean you’ll find a decent job, or even a job in the field you studied.

Part of what makes the whole deal so hard, as many articles I’ve read have quipped, is that students are often coddled throughout their educational careers.  There’s a fair bit of handholding and inspirational talks from teachers and professors, helping that struggling student across the finish line.  Everyone is told that they are unique, special, smart.  In the scheme of the macrocosm, they feel connected and important.  But once they get out of school, how much of that is relevant and applicable?

In the end, the world is what we make of it.  I think I could’ve had a much easier time of things if I’d been helped along, which is where I think parents come into the picture.  Parents should be the one helping their children through that transition, and kids should be free to reach out for their parents for advice and assistance.  I’ve never had a good relationship with my parents, personally, and I was actually disowned slash cut off slash whatever you want to call it by the end of my first year university.  My father figure through school was my Theater teacher, which I think contributed heavily to my choice of major.  Look, I can sit here and talk about daddy issues all day, but my point at the end of the day is this: let school teach facts and learning.  Parents should be the ones teaching Real Life.

I thought that by the time I got to University, I knew everything worth knowing.  Who am I kidding, I thought that by first year of high school.  Who needs parents?  They’re stupid and they just get in the way.  They live in a whole different world, and they don’t understand how anything works nowadays.  The typical teenage stance.  But I’ve come to realize just how much of an impact they could have had on my life had we had a real relationship.  And how much I’m missing because we didn’t.  Yes, especially with my father.

What I couldn’t receive from the wisdom of my parents, I’ve had to learn the hard way.  Through fucking up.  Over and over again.  Hell, half the shit that they tried to teach me, I discarded and learned the hard way.  But through that experience, I smartened up a bit and realized that yes, my parents are ridiculous; yes, they have no idea how much the cultural climate and the world around them has changed; yes, they are conservative relics of the old country – but they know what they’re talking about.  They’ve done their fair share of fucking up and learning, and they’re trying to teach me so I don’t have to go through that pain.

It goes hand in hand with schooling.  Just like you should be learning in all the time that you’re at school but not in class – the schoolyard politics, the socialization – you should be learning when you’re at home.  If you ask me, there should be a three to five-year gap between high school and university to let people out into the Real World and learn before committing themselves back into the hands of the education system if they so choose to do so.  I think that would be best, and that University (or College) would be far more effective at that stage of personal development rather than going back-to-back with high school.

What a completely unstructured and all-over-the-place post this was.  Cut me some slack, I’m still getting back onto my blogging legs, and I’ve only had one coffee today.

Image from http://jangosteve.com

A great little blog post popped up on my Recommended Items list in Google Reader which caught me just from the title.  Intrigued, I decided to go and have a read.  In the article, Steve Schwartz discusses the scenario of people who feel like they have no clue what they’re doing but appear to be recognized and praised by others as being not only competent but exceeding expectations.  Of course, the piece spoke directly to me – and I think many others of us as well.  So here I ramble on.

I’ve been meaning to write a post about this for a while, so I’m glad that this article gave me the segue to do so.  I am definitely one of those who has no clue what he’s doing but is often pointed out as the go-to guy, subject matter expert, or whatever you want to call it.  And the reason that this happens is not necessarily because I know more than others or have more experience than others – often times, quite to the contrary – but because I am thorough and complete.

Basically, it boils down to this for me.  I’m a jack of all trades but a master of none.  I’m decent and competent at most things I apply myself to, from music to martial arts to networks to writing and everything else; but I never really excel at any of them.  I know just enough to do most things that need to be done, and just enough experience to be able to execute it to standard, but when I have to go above and beyond the norm, it takes me a while.

But many people come to me for my opinion or help on certain matters (interestingly enough, I just helped a fellow webmaster faultfind some troublesome code).  Referring back to the originally linked article, that’s not because I have a broad Shit I Know field, but a broader Shit I Know I Don’t Know area.  What that means for me is that I’m forced to be thorough and logical in the way I conduct business – checking my blind spots instead of ignoring them, and considering dozens of possibilities that others may easily disregard.

A voracity for learning helps, but moreso a step-by-step thought process that doesn’t skip past any points.  Each consideration is weighed, calculated, then assessed.  What I don’t know or understand, I research as thoroughly as possible.  I contact friends, departments, experts, or just consult and brainstorm with those available to me in order to create as complete a picture as possible.  And I don’t consider a matter concluded or completed until it’s tested and confirmed to be working as it should be.

You’d think that these things would be par for the course for everyone, and for a lot of the people I know, they are.  They are just as methodical and thorough as I am, and will go far out of their way to find solutions.  Compared to these people, the only difference that I can find with myself is that I am more often than not able to convey my thoughts and ideas clearly and concisely without confusion.

There are many people who are great at what they do, but aren’t perceived as such.  Whereas others, like myself, aren’t very great at all but influence others to think that we’re awesome.  The difference is an important one to mark, and one that isn’t lost on me.  I think that what I can do and how I do it are good things, but I sometimes wish that there was some field or aspect in which I excelled.  Maybe one day, with enough time and experience, I can get there.

Remember: shit you don’t know you don’t know can kill you.

So almost a month ago, I set some goals for myself to achieve in 2010.  It’s nearly February now, and I’ve been out here on domestic operations for the Olympics for a while – things are starting to settle down a bit for me, but it’s been hectic as hell.  So I’ll review how I did for January and hopefully get back on track for the next month.

So, goal 1 was to blog once a week, every week.  That failed pretty hard; I managed to blog twice the first week and then went radio silence after that.  This should have really been the easiest one of them all.  So I need to catch up and get back into it – I’ll be aiming for twice a week in February.

Goal 2: university and grades.  I haven’t started yet, since I won’t be until at least the summer semester, but I’ve got my enrollment in and I’m just waiting to hear back now.   Goal 3 was regular exercise and I’ve been doing fairly OK with that.  I’ve averaged about five hours a week exercising, whether it was at the gym, going for a run, or doing martial arts.

Goal 5: Web stuff.  I’ve been reading up and making myself standards-compliant in the brain anyway, even if not in practice.  I’m planning on recoding one of my sites from the ground up to make it better, faster, stronger.  But that’ll probably not be until this operation is over.  So I’m doing OK on this one too.

6 and 7 are touch and go sometimes – I’ve lost a lot of my writing ability, but I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the novel project and refining some of the ideas I’d been working with.  I’ve got my guitar here as well and a little Roland Microcube and I’ve been writing some wicked riffs – now if only I could turn them into actual songs, I’d be happy.

So maybe it’s not so much a FAIL on these overall so much as that I’m disappointed with myself so far.  I can definitely kick this up a notch and do better.  Just a quick update for my progress so far – I’ll be posting actual stuff soon.

1. Blog at least once a week, every week.  If my plans are any indication, this is going to be the busiest year for me yet.  But I want to increase my online persona and presence instead of constantly diminishing.  And instead of only blogging about random thoughts and musings, I’ll also seek to expand my topics of discussion as suits my current projects and state of mind.

2. Start university again; maintain all courses above a 90. I don’t just want an above-90 average, I want all courses above 90.  I received approval last year through the Army to attend Queen’s University here in Kingston, Ontario (through distance/correspondence courses, of course) and I’ve been emailing back and forth with them to try and figure out how I want to start.  But in the end, it doesn’t matter; I want to start as soon as I can (summer semester) and kick ass fully and completely.

The last time I was in university, it was York University and I ended up dropping out, back in 2005-2006.  I finished zero courses and lived the unhealthiest life possible.  I finished high school with a 95 average, but that was without putting forth effort and dedication – meaning I had mixed marks ranging from 75 to 99.  That’s not what I want this time around.

3. Whip my sorry ass back into shape. I’ve had a billion and one excuses for not continually exercising and maintaining myself this year, and that’s crap.  I’ve gained some strength but lost my agility, coordination, and flexibility – not to mention that my cardio is completely in the shits.  This year, I will exercise regularly – regardless of whether I’m on leave, been working retarded hours, or stressed out to hell and back.  For me, this means at least five hours a week  of exercise.  An aside of this is getting back seriously into martial arts – re-training everything that I’ve lost or forgotten in the last five years and continuing to expand.  I’ll hopefully be tracking this on the blog so that I can’t just make excuses.

4. Whip my sorry brain back into shape. I’ve been lax and neglecting my mind.  I haven’t read, questioned, and examined the way I like to do; I can feel that my critical reasoning, quick thinking, and memory are far worse than they used to be.  The mind has to constantly exercised in the same way the body must be.  So.  I want to read at least two new books per month and be constantly learning something new.  University should definitely help with this.

5. Bring myself back up to speed on web-related stuff. Once again, I’ve been using the do-what-works approach and neglecting actually doing things properly.  First item on the list is bringing myself back up to web standards for XHTML, CSS, PHP, and SQL.  That shouldn’t take too long.  I also want to delve into Linux at least enough to competently manage a server by myself – I can do most of the basics right now, but that’s not enough.  I also need to get back into graphic design and actually use Photoshop CS4 in a relevant way.  If I can get myself back up to speed on those things, I’ll be happy – and can focus on getting back into actual programming for the next year.

6. Write, write, write. This was one of my only goals for this year, and it fell woefully by the wayside.  I need to challenge myself once again and write short stories and poetry to engage my mind, and make some headway on that novel project I wanted to have a draft of by this time.  Once again, I want a rough first draft of my novel done by this time in 2011.  And maybe I can actually do NaNoWriMo this year.

7. Get back in tune with music. I keep catching glimpses of riffs, getting them down, finding inspiration, but then not finishing any songs.  I have a collection of half-songs that just won’t go anywhere.  I need to get back into writing music and actually finish things even if they’re complete garbage.  And I have to start actually practicing more to re-gain my technical footing and music theory.  Additionally, I have to get a bass, because I can’t write songs on guitar alone – I need to be able to write both sides simultaneously (with vocals) because that’s just the way I work.

Seven goals.  Some of them seem a bit nebulous and undefined, but I do have definite goals for myself set in a measurable way, it would just take me too long to try and fully delineate them.  Basically, 2009 was a sloppy year for me.  I slid by by being good, but not great; and that’s not good enough.  In 2010, I want to push myself and get out of this lazy funk.  If I can actively assert myself instead of passively reacting to what comes my way, then I can start building more and more of myself as a strong foundation for what’s to come.

How much of this optimistic motivation can I maintain?  Who knows.  Hopefully, enough of it to carry me through all of these, because I do feel strongly about them and have for the past… however long.  All of these are more or less concurrent – on top of everything else I’m doing.  Back to Vancouver for the Winter Olympics in a few days, and then the G8/G20 summit after that, and then, hopefully, Afghanistan.  So I’m going to be a busy boy.  That’s when I thrive, though, is when I’m managing twenty different things at the same time.  I shine under pressure.

So let’s do this shit already.  I’m going to attempt to actively track these things on a weekly and/or monthly basis so I can keep myself motivated, and so you can point and laugh at me when I fall short.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We are all two people, if not more than that.  We’re comprised of personas.  There is no simple singular identity that comprehensively defines a person – or so I believe.  Maybe that’s only because I live such a fragmented life.  The person that you are with your parents is most likely not the same person that you are with your best friend, which is also probably different from the person you are at work.

I’m way the fuck out to lunch when it comes to identity.  Depending on who you talk to, I could be described as a die-hard Romantic or a completely unemotional robot Vulcan.  Some will say that I work myself to death and never accept mediocrity; others will testify under oath that I am one seriously lazy son of a bitch who wouldn’t get his ass up to put himself out if he were on fire.  There are so many conflicts and contradictions that it would be easier to say I am actually multiple people.

I think that most of us never really evaluate who we are – what that means, of experience versus evaluation, the cognizant versus the perceived.

I don’t subscribe to a notion of normality.  That happy family, everyone loving, everyone working out their differences, all in relatively perfect physical and mental health.  It’s a crock of shit.  You know what else is a crock of shit?  The world.  I don’t mean that in a punk-rock, fuck-the-man kind of way.  I mean to say, everyone’s a son of a bitch in one way or another.  And everyone, absolutely everyone, is screwed up.

What we’re interested in, then, is acceptable deviation for the preservation of society.  What is acceptable behavior, acceptable thought, acceptable personality – they’re in the best interests of keeping a functional world.

Are we happiest when we conform to what stabilizes society?  Or when we are true to our selves, the core of who we are?

Obviously, there are limits.  If happiness for you is going on a mass-murdering spree, then well, maybe that’s not the best idea.  But maybe if happiness for you is just being an arrogant, unbearable asshole, then that’s not so bad.  Or so I think, maybe because I enjoy being an arrogant and unbearable asshole far more than mass murder.

Nobody likes having to change themselves.  It makes them feel judged.  Psychologists will tout their objectivity and professional detachment (mine included, if you can’t tell that I’m a weekly fixture at the mental health department), but what human being has objectivity?  The very claim to objectivity, in my mind, necessarily says to me that you are either ignorant or a flat-out liar.  Anyone who has to defend themselves with a laughable phrase like that – “I’m not ignorant!” – is what they claim they’re not.

I’m just kind of jumping all over the place here.  I’ve been railing against this thing that is my life, this fragmented existence where I put on a different hat for each role I play.  A soldier, a son, a friend, a husband, a father.  They tell me that I can’t do that, that I can’t have this schism of being.  That I have to be one person, continuous and congruous.

Maybe I’m just being petulant.  But you know what?  I embrace my flawed mind.  I embrace my inconsolable rage and my sarcasm.  I honestly don’t care that some people think I’m an asshole, because the difference for me is that everyone agrees that I get shit done right.  After I’m done telling you how stupid your plan is and everything that will go wrong with it, I’ll tell you how to fix it and get things moving properly.  I’m not a jerk just for the sake of it.  I accomplish something with it in the end.

Justification, excuses, sure.  Do I enjoy ripping into people?  Sure.  And when people are just plain ignorant and flaunting it, thinking they’re King Shit, boy do I love to kneecap them with my verbal blackjack and grind their face into the dust.  Healthy?  Probably not.  Good social conditioning?  Not in any sense of the term.  But is it who I am?  To the core.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not riding the Asshole-mobile 24/7.  In fact I like to think that I’m a pretty nice guy most of the time.  But there’s a viciousness that resides in my mind, pacing back and forth with listlessness, and once in a while I’ll throw open the cage door and let it fly.

So, you know, probably for the best that I’m seeing a psychologist.  That’s the least of my worries anyhow, but the most visible.  But somewhere along the line, I really gotta ask: am I doing this for myself, because I really believe that there is something wrong with me (or that there is something strongly deviant enough from the acceptable societal norm that it disrupts my function) or because of external factors?

I think I’m probably the worst kind of human being I can be without being a murdering, psychotic bastard.  I can be mostly selfish, unrestrained, without much of a conscience, and I’m told that my lack of emotional connection gives me an inability to empathize with others even though I can sympathize with them from a rational standpoint.

I don’t have anything against people changing themselves.  I think that many people change for the better and that people can change and overcome themselves.  But I also believe that the core of a person remains regardless of smaller changes in the periphery of their identity.  And sometimes I feel like I’m being asked to essentially swap out myself for someone else altogether.

And I stop and think, this ain’t right.  I am who I am.  And I will always be who I am, to one degree or another.  I don’t think that I’ll magically and radically change in the next five, ten years.  I think I’ll still be (in the hypothetical words of some) a cold, calculating, rational robot-man.  Is that such a bad thing?  Fuck, I still think puppies are cute, so I can’t be that far at a loss for not being overly emotional.

At some level, I’m afraid to be able to make the change.  Something inside of me rebels against it and tells me that if I change that much, if I completely become a different person, then I will also lose the good things in me, few as they may be.  But those few good things I treasure above all else.  They are what make my flaws, in my eyes, worth it.

When asked why he became a doctor, Gregory House replies:

When I was 14 my father was stationed in Japan. I went rock climbing with this kid from school. He fell, got injured and I had to bring him to the hospital. We came in through the wrong entrance and passed this guy in the hall. It was a janitor.

My friend came down with an infection and the doctors didn’t know what to do. So they brought in the janitor. He was a doctor. And a Buraku. One of Japan’s untouchables. His ancestors had been slaughterers, grave diggers. And this guy, he knew that he wasn’t accepted by the staff, he didn’t even try. He didn’t dress well. He didn’t pretend to be one of them.

The people that ran that place, they didn’t think that he had anything they wanted. Except when they needed him. Because he was right. Which meant that nothing else mattered. And they had to listen to him.

Obviously, House is fictional and depicted as a superhuman genius.  I’m not saying I approach that.  But the rationale behind it is the same.  I don’t care what others think of me or say about me, because when shit goes down, I get to the solution.  Whether it’s at work, amongst friends, or something else.

This was just one huge self-serving post, I guess.  Just needed to write out some stuff that was in my brain.  I’m sure I’ll come out with some actual posts soon.

There’s a great Op-Ed in the New York Times by David Brooks, In Search of Dignity.  In it, he discusses George Washington, and how when he, in youth, “copied out a list of 110 Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.” Washington reportedly took them to heart and tried to practice them in all situations.  Brooks writes,

In so doing, he turned himself into a new kind of hero. He wasn’t primarily a military hero or a political hero. As the historian Gordon Wood has written, “Washington became a great man and was acclaimed as a classical hero because of the way he conducted himself during times of temptation. It was his moral character that set him off from other men.”

Not a lot of people like that around these days.

I grew up with a set of rules like this.  I never copied them out by hand, nor were there an actual formalized set of rules, but they were there; and the consequences for breaking them were severe.  This was the result of growing up in Korea, where tradition and respect were key in all aspects of life.

For example, in Korean culture, there is a whole separate way to speak to your elders and superiors, which is distinct from the way you would address equals or those beneath you.  I had myriad rules beaten into me – somewhat literally.  No elbows resting on the table during a meal.  Don’t scrape the spoon with your tongue.  Never leave food on your plate.  Never smoke or drink in front of a superior (Koreans turn away and shield themselves with one hand from their superiors when, for example, drinking at a work dinner).  All the way down to never stepping over any part of someone’s body.

Fundamental rules, these were to me.  Imagine the culture shock when I came to Canada.  People wearing shoes into homes!  Wearing hats in class – worse, talking to one another while the teacher was addressing the class, leaning back in their seats!  Chewing gum, no less!

It didn’t take long for me to assimilate into Canadian culture.  Soon enough, it was me who showed disrespect not just by talking in class but by skipping entirely, heading off with friends to go play pool, drive and smoke, play guitar in a spare room.  Not to say that this was the crux of Western civilization; far be it from the truth.  What I mean to say is that I not only broke out of the rigid strictures of my upbringing, but far surpassed boundaries.

In truth, I consider myself in my heart to be Canadian.  I have given up my Korean citizenship and passport long ago to become a naturalized Canadian citizen, and there is no country in the world I would rather live, no place I would be as proud of, no military in which I’d rather serve.  I have not given up my heritage.  I am fiercely proud of my Korean lineage and history; however, I identify myself as Canadian.

But there are things lacking in this new world.  Order, discipline, self-respect.  It appears to me as though my generation and the ones proceeding it have mistaken loud assertiveness and a commitment to reckless abandon as self-respect.  What I mean by this is that there is a mentality wherein you can do and say whatever you want, and you’re supposed to be respected for this.  It means you’re a free mind, strong, and self-confident even if – especially if – you’re going against the grain.

We’ve become miniature Hollywood wannabes.  We’ve seen what’s glorified in movies and TV shows – a wise-cracking smartass rogue who never admits defeat, always has a comeback, often resorts to violence leading to cool explosive scenes, drives fast cars, dates hot women, drinks liberally, and has some kind of grudge to bear.

We don’t got no grudge to bear.  We’ve grown up in probably what has been the most comfortable generation in the history of mankind.  Sure, some of us have had to trek through the snowstorm to get to school (uphill both ways).  But once we got there, it was nice and toasty inside.  Sure, I’ve taken my pennies and nickels down to the grocery store to get the cheapest scraps of food I could manage just to keep myself fed at least one measly meal a day.  But everything was right across the street at the 24-hour super-hyper-megamarket that sold everything from produce to clothes.

Don’t get me wrong.  We’ve faced our hardships, and some of us more than others.  And I might have suffered for a few years, but for the majority of my life, I’ve had it good and easy.  But that’s my curse, see, because I never had to suffer truly.  I’ve sweated, I’ve bled, I’ve starved.  Not for very long, but I have.  If I’d had to power through more hardships in life, I’d be a better person than who I am today.

That’s a very Protestant thing to say, I think.  It’s not suffering particularly that strengthens a man, but the length of experience one conquers throughout his life.  And I think that it’s a huge difference between Washington and ourselves.    There’s a different mentality, a different kind of self-reliance and steeled nerves.

Does it necessarily make us better people?  No, I don’t think so.  I don’t think that it in itself instills within us a dignity code, as Brooks calls it.  But I think it goes a long way to helping.  I think that people have forgotten the meaning of dignity, honor, that way of carrying oneself with a strength that cannot be easily crushed.  It’s something that is grown, it’s not innate.  It’s a culmination of physical precision and poise, a verbal marriage of prose and poetry, and above all a perspicuity of speculation and introspection that can be emulated, but not falsified.

Dignity.  Is such a thing possible anymore?  When gossip consists of following the lives of celebrities – or their deaths, even, in the recent case of Michael Jackson, when we know that the mass market consumes these ridiculous “goods”?  How do we preserve personal dignity in the face of the stark realization that humanity has lost its collective dignity?

And honor?  When those holding high office constantly perpetuate scandals, vomit lies into our waiting mouths, and lambaste their opponents with smear tactics that shames me on their behalf to see, what honor is left for the citizens to uphold?  In this market where the point is to get you to buy and buy again instead of trying to get you to make the right choice, the good choice, how do you hold on to your honor?

These have become byproducts of an age long dead.  These are concepts glorified in novels and stories of old which we daydream about – alongside chivalry and heroism.  We have been alienated from our own humanity; we have become byproducts of capitalism and bystanders of a world ravaged by – dare I say it – philosophical terrorism.

Once, we aspired to greatness.  We lived in the shadow of gods, blinded in their ineffable glory.  But then we lit ourselves a path and forged a new greatness, one unbound by mysticism – one founded obsessively and exclusively in the observable, the knowable.  Thenceforth we worshiped at the altar of science – which, like gods, was all-powerful and all-knowing.  But the difference was that while the will of gods lay forever without the bounds of our comprehension, science was a thing that though we might not understand it now, there would eventually be a way to understand even the most inexplicable wonders.

But once again the human spirit was shifted away into the periphery of things.  Are we defined by nature or nurture?  Are we creatures predestined by our genes from the moment of conception, or can our upbringing and social indoctrination give us the strength to overcome our basic genetic programming?  Are we machines of flesh and blood as bound to the limitations of our bodies and minds as are robots to their manufactured parts and given programming?

We watched the shadows on the wall for so long.  And we only emerged blinking from the lip of the cave so few hundreds of years ago.  We’re still shielding our eyes from the blinding sun.  But it’s now, the time has come.  It’s time to stop trying to block out what is painful but ultimately rewarding.  It’s time to rise to the occasion instead of thinking about it, planning it, theorizing about it, hesitant in the guise of caution.

This is our age.  It’s an age of interconnectivity, where the difference between Toronto and Beijing isn’t the time it takes to board a ship and cross the ocean.  It’s not even the speed of a piece of paper being delivered by post.  It is, theoretically, the speed of light.  The speed of information.  The speed of knowing.  This is it, we’re all one.  One people, one world, one humanity.

So let’s take back our dignity.  Let’s reclaim our honor.  Let’s not live in the shadow of gods or be dazzled by science – both are fickle masters, in the end.  And neither of them will help us or give us any insight into truth unless we dare to see with our own eyes, ask true questions from our own lips, and with these hands we were given take control of our own lives.

(from http://www.sinfest.net)

Click here to view the embedded video.

There are a couple things I miss from my old life. Not too many – mainly because I didn’t have to give up many things – but the thing I miss the most of all is music. Most specifically, the music I was making with the band that I had to leave when I joined the military.

I wish there was a way for me to describe what music is to me, what it does to me – and what it’s been over the course of my entire life. Music was the development of my freedom, my distinction, my personality. Music was my refuge, my shelter, my sanctum. Looking at my music library now, you’ll find stuff from Gordon Lightfoot to Simon and Garfunkel; Billy Joel to Elton John; Metallica to Blind Guardian; Dispatch to Phish; Queen to Scorpions; and the list goes on.

I began playing piano. I played piano from grade one all the way through grade eleven or so, going through the Royal Conservatory of Music programme. I never really enjoyed it, you know, when you play instruments at that age it’s forced upon you more likely than not; and so it was with me. I hated to practice, I hated playing to the metronome, I hated studying theory and chords and arpeggios and cadences. I never practiced my scales. I rarely even practiced my pieces. And still I went to competitions, and still I passed my exams. My piano teacher often expressed frustration and repeatedly said that if I would just put some effort into it, I could be a great pianist.

Trouble is, I never wanted to be a great pianist.

I must’ve gotten my first guitar, what, six years ago or so. It was a Yamaha Pacifica in a nauseating shade of light blue. I remember gripping a power chord, probably the simplest thing you can do on a guitar, and giving it a hard strum with the amp on overdrive. It made a good sound. A nice, hard sound. I’m only on my third guitar now, but I’ve probably put more practice into my guitar in the past month than I ever put into piano over all my years of playing.

Music taught me a lot of interesting lessons in life. One is that even if you don’t like something, if you try hard, you can get good at it. A corollary to that was that even if you have a natural talent for something, if you don’t put effort into cultivating that talent, then one who does not have the talent but does put forth the time and effort can easily surpass you. Talent could only carry you so far, short of being born an absolute genius. Refinement was the key.

Another thing I learned was that it didn’t matter how smart you were if you didn’t practice. You might be able to sight-read a complicated piece, figure out all the nuances of how it should be played, the dynamics of the piece, and be able to hear it perfectly in your mind as it should be. But unless you actually put your fingers to the keys, it doesn’t matter. Because you don’t play with your mind, you play with your fingers.

I picked up a keyboard the other week to do a bit of sampling and backtrack work for a collaborative piece a bunch of us have been working on over the internet. On a whim, I let my fingers take over. I still remember all my scales. Majors and minors. My arpeggios, my sevenths. I remember most of a piece that I did for a competition years and years ago. This strange thing called muscle memory, that’s what keeps all these things in my fingertips when I haven’t even touched a piano for over half a decade.

What music taught me over all these things is that nothing matter unless you have – whatever you call it. Heart. Soul. Feeling. Depth. Unity. It’s true on the piano, it’s true on the guitar, and it’s true of anything we do in life, not just music. My fingers can go through the motions. Sure, and that’s just noise. It’s vibrations in the air. That’s what I played for most of my piano days until the very end, until I started understanding music and not just playing it. When I took a piece and made it my own. Messy, cloudy, moody – mine. A thunderous cacophony of confusion and muddled emotions.

I spent a lot of time on the guitar. I played everything, but mostly rock and metal. Eventually my tastes calmed down a bit and our band began to transition, all at once, into a jazz-blues-funk rock fusion band. I learned to play the bass.

Music isn’t just background noise to me. Music is the very heart of life, the beating pounding drums of the rhythm that permeates through all our souls. When I listen to music, it changes me. My breathing shifts and goes in time to the rhythm of the song. I can feel my heartbeat sync. It alters my mind state, my mood, my thinking processes. It’s not just words and notes and noise. It’s a power, it’s a kind of magic that we humans have tamed, like calling on a distant god.

Not just that, but music isn’t something intangible. It’s something real, it’s something physical – for me, it is. Even when I’m sitting back and listening, it isn’t a passive experience. It is alive and active and engaged. I can feel the music moving in me, moving me, wanting to take my body and become something greater. When I listen to a track that’s brilliantly written with piercing, poetic lyrics, powerful music, and perfect mixing, it’s a religious experience. It comes above just enjoyment and it becomes spiritual ecstasy. It uplifts me, it brings me beyond. It inspires me.

If there is one thing I could wish to be, it’s a musical genius. Probably not, probably given the choice I’d wish for a billion dollars like most people. But I think that given a choice for my happiness, I would choose the first. It’s been so long since I’ve sat down and written a song, it took me about half a day to be happy with a minute-and-a-half segment on three instruments. And even then, I was struggling.

I guess I really don’t know where I’m going with this. It’s just been sitting on my heart for a couple days, but I can’t find the words – much less at 0300 hours – to describe how it feels. The trancelike state where I can feel the music, not just physically, but a spirit of the music that moves me. The uplifting unspeakable ecstasy as I am transposed from myself to the limitless, conjoined in the infinite, unbound by matter. The indescribable exhilaration of writing music with others who, somehow, are in tune with you and yet independent of you, compiling into a singular piece that is greater than all of you combined. Of giving birth to something greater than yourself.

For those who couldn’t tell, the clip at the top was a demo recording of one of our first songs from my former band, Dialogos.