overcome yourself, not obstacles…

For quite some time now, I have told my self that there are no easy avenues in life – you simply cannot go around having wished granted, and things falling into your lap. Life is hard. It takes guts sweat and blood to achieve anything great in this life…or maybe not. Maybe it takes something else…

The old adages such as “if it is too good to be true than it probably is” or “nothing in life that is worth anything is easy” – these are good maxims to go by – I could agree with this to some extent. There are a lot of things in life, that if obtained without some sort of sacrifice, or hustle on your part, then you may have less respect for that which you have just received. I also agree on a certain level, that benefits that you may reap by chance, or “luck” may also be a very dangerous thing, because it didn’t take any discipline to obtain it. This is not bad advice. However, I am starting to think that these ideas are primarily, western indoctrinated philosophies or psychologies, that are starting to become outdated, and may soon be a farce if you want them to be…
I am not undermining the virtue of hard work here, but I am saying that perhaps instead of swimming up stream, there is a more efficient means of achieving all that you have ever desired. A more dynamic, matter-of-course method of harmonizing with the circumstances of your world instead of fighting them… I will tell you why…

Fundamentally, we all know that the earth is round, and it revolves around the sun. This was not always so. The world believed at one point that the earth indeed was flat and that the universe was a geocentric one. We all once believed in the Easter Bunny until we discovered otherwise. The point I am trying to make is that these ideas that we have established, are sometimes bound by our capacity to conjure or describe them. Laws and absolutes comfort us – it lets us know where we stand – a standard. Infinite possibilities scare us. The idea that there is so much out there that we do not know or even have the intellect to process, makes some people very uneasy – and of course there are others who don’t care one way or the other…to get back to my point (which I haven’t made yet ) without taking too much of a stream of consciousness detour is that I have been thinking seriously as of late about the power you have within yourself to discover things and even to change things – your reality, anything… be it physical things, conceptual things, defying physical laws of nature…or maybe just bending them by coming to a new understanding of your place in all of universe. I think that self deprecation is overrated. You don’t have to be tough on yourself anymore. There is nothing noble about suffering for any sort of plight or cause or goal anymore. The new era is coming where this kind of zeitgeist is outdated and archaic. Why? I will tell you in my next post…stay posted…(don’t you hate that?) I have to get the answer to two more questions…

Drink, eat and be merry – but mostly drink

There has been so many holistic alternative medicines and therapy these days, that it seems easy to dismiss all of them as just another scam to get a health conscience public’s money. Maybe one in a hundred provide any kind of benifits, and those are probably too minute to notice in any sort of tangible, life improving way. There are countless diets and supplements all claiming that they hold the secret ingredient that will make your life longer, more enjoyable, and more fulfilling…well, here yet is another one.

The idea of the French Paradox – being how does a society of people with such a high intake of saturated fats have such a low rate of heart disease and other related diseases??? The answer is in their daily wine consumption. These people drink – I mean DRINK. What they drink is red wine by the gallon. Featured in Fortune magazine last month was an article dealing with a certain ingredient called Resveratrol a phytoalexin produced by several plants and especially any vine type grape bearing plants. It is found in the skins of red grapes but not nearly enough apparently to ward off any kind of coronary heart disease – so they say…they do make concentrated supplements of it however – that are currently being developed into semi-wonder drugs. The idea thus far, is that Resveratrol can stunt the aging process. Given in strong enough doses, it can prolong life 20% – so the theory goes. The studies have also found (through mice) that it wards off weight gain and ignites cellular regeneration that in theory in humans, could reverses the aging process and be used as a cancer treatment in the future. Not only will stop the cancer but actually reverses it through a process that induces apoptosis, which means it may kill cancer cells.

I know people with Cancer, as i’m sure everyone has known or knows someone presently, so i am always curious what kind of treatment is on the horizon. You never know…

Now I am prone to get caught up in this type of thing so take it with a grain of salt…but I’m definitely increasing my wine consumption! Read the Fortune article here – they are much more informative and articulate…enough so to make me want to write a post on it…interesting stuff though…




A page a day, a day at a time…

Time management hasn’t been my strong suit. With that said, I still resolve to chip away at small goals that i have made for myself, whilst often being disappointed with the amount of time that i am actually able to free up for these activities… i try and remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day.

We all wish that there was more time to do the things we love – of course we do. Just because we all share this lament doesn’t necessarily condemn us to accept it. So many times, i hear the old adage “life isn’t fair” when what people really should be saying is “stop bitching” and just go do whatever it is you are moaning about, or at least try. So many times i have wished for a benefactor to swoop in and fund my most creative and bold pursuits, taking away the burden of distractions – for what is out of my grasps when i have the time to put all of my energy and soul in to a project? There would be endless possibilities. So, i suppose what i am getting at is that the hardest part about life is the juggling act. Keeping three or four things in the air at the same time without dropping one. Balance. It seems the hardest thing to achieve at this juncture.

Simple things like working out four times a week or finding time to go shoot become enormous obstacles in the wake of poor time management. So, i have resigned myself to doing three or four things that are important to me daily- no matter what – in order to foster and establish the tools for a good foundation for some future goals.

One of many goals i have designated for myself is authoring a work. Mrs. parks and i would like to co-author a book someday. This has been frustrating for us for the reason that when we envision writers, we see someone in a bathrobe slaving away all day at a type-writer with cup of coffee and a cigarette. This sounds appealing to us in a romantic, seductive sort of way, but that isn’t quite realistic, is it? It is the romanticized idea of a writer that we have conjured from movies or other books or what have you…The truth is we have to make time for it inbetween everything else. We really have to take it a day at a time, writing at least a page a day. Days when we are tired from work, and want nothing more to sit in front of the TV we have to muster up the discipline to write that page. This speaks about any and all goals we have. If we can’t be disciplined enough to balance our time more efficiently, we will never be able to finish any side projects. It has to be important. Otherwise all we will end up with is a pension and a gold watch after thirty years, and who wants that? Things are never permanent unless you want them that way. If you lack the discipline to change your life than it will undoubtedly stay the same. The time is precious that we have, and the is no sense in whining about what we wish were different – change it. You’ll find, surprisingly so, that so many of the things you want to change so desperately, end up changing you in the end, and quite often sneak back into your life in some weird cosmic way later on. Take things as they come, confront them head on and then move on to the next, a page at a time…

actually, this is a copy of the email i sent to myself…too ambitous? Not for some…

Look up and find out how to get short stories published.
(write a page a day)

Find instruction on how to take better photos.
(weekends go shoot)

Find out how to start an online company.
(any spare time)

Build my work out bench.

Workout.
(3 times a week at least)

Vitamins.

There is S**T in the meat.

The Book Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser is a book i haven’t read, but now that it has been optioned into a motion picture, i feel obligated to see it after what i read in Schlosser’s Rolling Stone article. The article traces the origins of the fast food meal, and its transformation into the now common American staple, that a majority of Americans eat on average four times a week.

McDonald’s, a big player in this dominant industry,  is looked at in detail from its conception to the monopoly it has become today, with its famous advertising symbols, the golden arches becoming more recognizable than the Christian Cross. Even more disturbing, the in detail description of the procedures, trends, and standards (and the failure to adhere to these standards) of the agricultural industry along with its meatpacking plants are enough to make me go vegetarian. The conditions are completely unacceptable, unregulated for the most part, and far far below what is considered industry standard. The short descriptions is reminiscent of SinClair’s The Jungle.

Basically there is shit in the meat. Not to mention a number of other vile and dangerous pathogens and bacteria such as E-Coli that go unchecked are shipped out to thousands of Fast Food joints nation wide. There are numerous concerns that go beyond the fast food counter that often go unchecked such as factory safety conditions, immigration, sanitation, worker abuse, other socio-economic issues that have repercussions far reaching into the American landscape. It is truly a small slice of the drive of greed and power in the American corporation psyche, and how the system that supports it, is the very system that is raped. Beyond general promotion of health concern, this is truly ugly.

I might even read the book…definately seeing the film. If you read the article it will make you simultaneously nauseated and furious, a condition that could induce projectile vomiting or death.

Utube Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfPYbFCLZ5o