May 26, 2004

• okay everyone brace yourselves for a long post

  first things first…My birthday was tremendous! thanks to all of you who wished me a happy one

  

  I went to Tokyo Delve’s in North Hollywood for dinner and had many a piece of sushi while dancing singing and all around having a good time. How good a time did I have?

  

  is that the face of a man anything other than happy? I thought not. And, you will note, i got the corner piece of cake! Happy 23rd b-day to me (it was on the 17th)

  In addition to cake I got (to the tune of My favorite Things)

  Season 1 of the cartoon Futurama
  tibetan wisdom from the dalai llama
  a hip hop cd on which N.E.R.D. sings

  those were a few of my b-day received things

  a couple of movies by filmaker Quentin
  a set of scrubs with my name embroiderd in
  a satchel bag from gap, a store for clothings

  these were a few of my b-day received things

  There was laughter, there was good times, so much fun was had
  I got so excited that I wrote this song, and it didn’t go half bad

  Right. So that was the musical interlude. Next order of business, I have noticed that one or two of my fellow xangaers seems to be caught in a bit of a funk, what with the whole, what will we be doing after college and whatnot. Well, I personally will be going to grad school for a year, as the med school plans suffered a temporary setback, but c’est la vie. I came across this bit of Wisdom from Jon Stewart of all people, and I wanted to share it, because hey, it’s got same damn good points

  “So I know that the decisions that I made after college worked out. But at the time I didn’t know that they would. See college is not necessarily predictive of your future success. So how do you know what is the right path to choose to get the result that you desire? And the honest answer is this. You won’t. And accepting that greatly eases the anxiety of your life experience.

  I was not exceptional here, and am not now. I was mediocre here. And I’m not saying aim low. Not everybody can wander around in an alcoholic haze and then at 40 just, you know, decide to be president. You’ve got to really work hard to try to…I was actually referring to my father.

  When I left William and Mary I was shell-shocked. Because when you’re in college it’s very clear what you have to do to succeed. And I imagine here everybody knows exactly the number of credits they needed to graduate, where they had to buckle down, which introductory psychology class would pad out the schedule. You knew what you had to do to get to this college and to graduate from it. But the unfortunate, yet truly exciting thing about your life, is that there is no core curriculum. The entire place is an elective. The paths are infinite and the results uncertain. And it can be maddening to those that go here, especially here, because your strength has always been achievement. So if there’s any real advice I can give you it’s this.

  College is something you complete. Life is something you experience. So don’t worry about your grade, or the results or success. Success is defined in myriad ways, and you will find it, and people will no longer be grading you, but it will come from your own internal sense of decency which I imagine, after going through the program here, is quite strong…although I’m sure downloading illegal files…but, nah, that’s a different story.

  Love what you do. Get good at it. Competence is a rare commodity in this day and age. And let the chips fall where they may. “

  also thanks to Regina for pointing me in that direction.

  Thankfully, I have managed to give myself a goal again, since my number one fear is failure. And not because I am worried about what others may think of me. No, strike that. I don’t want anyone, especially not myself, to view me as a failure in any sense of the word. And as always, we are our own harshest critics. But to fail I don’t mean simply receiving an F in a class. That’s meaningless. Nor is it your run of the mill get back on the horse type of failure. Not everyone can succeed at everything on the first try, for without failure there could be no learning…No by failure I mean the mind-numbing terror one creates for oneself with the sensation that you won’t be able to realize self-made goals because you lack an essential something for its realization whether intelligence, physical strength, determination, spirituality, whatever. And for me certainly, but I think for a lot of people, the thought of failure is scarier than death. Death is a certainty. Failure on the other hand could spring upon you at any time, and you have to live with it once it’s passed.

  But does that mean you should set only easy goals for yourself? Of course not, because then there is no point to living either. Without some degree of uncertainty, where would be the value in accomplishment? Sometimes I wonder if I drive myself to hard, if by constantly taking a number of little risks I can razzle dazzle the audience, make them look the other way so i can slip the big failure by if it happens. Does that make the little risks any less valuable? No, but it does make me worry more about the big one.

  

  Yargh matey, Mr. Clean knows how ye feel. He be puttin out his own eye when he failed the white glove test

  Okay so maybe the post wasn’t as long as I thought it would be. *shrugs* Win some lose some. Back to my Japanese Paper

  -J

  “At one point, we decided to fight fire with fire. Well, Basically, your house burned even faster-Anonymous ex fireman”

   

  • 12:53 am
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