So allow me to center my interpretation around the book which is heavily referenced in the movie (especially the directors cut), The Philosophy of Time Travel.  If you take a few minutes to read this, the movie, and my interpretation will make a lot more sense as the entire plot of the movie can be explained by it.  I will segment my interpretation, chapter by chapter, to directory correlate to the above “book”.  All quoted items through this article are quotations from The Philosophy of Time Travel.

The Tangent Universe

… Incidents when the fabric of the Fourth Dimension becomes corrupted are incredibly rare.

If a Tangent Universe occurs, it will be highly unstable, sustaining itself no longer than several weeks.

Eventually it will collapse upon itself, forming a black hole within the Primary Universe capable of destroying all existence…

Shortly after the start of the film Donnie is awoken to a voice, the voice of the giant rabbit Frank.  From this point forward Donnie is living in the Tangent Universe.  The Primary Universe is the normal world.  The Tangent universe is the highly unlikely occurance mentioned in the above quote.  During his first encounter with Frank he is told that the world will end in approximately 28 days.  This is the length of time the Tangent Universe will exist for.

So this sets the stage for the rest of the movie.

The Artifact and the Living

When a Tangent Universe occurs, those living nearest the Vortex will find themselves at the epicenter of a dangerous new world.

Artifacts provide the first sign that a Tangent Universe has occured.

If an Artifact occurs, the Living will retrieve it with great interest and curiosity.  Artifacts are formed from metal…

The Artifact in this case, is the jet engine which crashes into Donnies house during his meeting with Frank.  The next morning when he wakes up and returns home, he sees that his house has been destroyed by this jet engine.  More importantly, it landed directly in his bedroom, and he should have been killed.  It is eluded to several times that the FAA has no idea where the jet engine came from.  Meaning that no plane crashed, nor landed, missing an engine.  This makes the item an item of great curiosity, as well as solidifying the existence of a Tangent Universe.

The Living Receiver

The Living Reciever is chosen to guide the Artifact into position for its journey back to the Primary Universe.

… The Living Reciever is often blessed with Fourth Dimensional Powers.  These include increased strength, telekinesis, mind control, and the ability to conjure fire and water.

The Living Receiver is often tormented by terrifying dreams, visions and auditory hallucinations during his time within the Tangent Universe…

Donnie is the Living Receiver, meaning he was chosen to “guide the Artifact into position”.  This basically means that he is responsible for making sure the jet engine crashes into his house after 28 days and kills him.  Though he does not realize this fact for most of the movie.  If he does not fulfill this task, the Tangent Universe will consume the Primary Universe.  Basically, the Living Receiver has to save the world, but no one will ever know he did.

He is tormented by dreams/auditory hallucinations, seeing/hearing Frank, and he exhibits some of the other prescribed traits.  He somehow managed to lodge an axe into a solid bronze statue, and he “conjured” fire and water when he flooded the school and burned down Cunninghams house.  Although I think they could have done a better job with the “conjuring” since you don’t need special powers to use gasoline to light a fire.

Also, the watery tubes he can sometimes see coming out of peoples chests are his way of seeing into the future, which also appear as water, what the book claims the the Fourth Dimensional (time) construct is made of.  As well as using his powers of telekinesis to guide the artifact back into position at the end of the movie by using his mind to rip the engine off the aircraft.

The Manipulated Dead

The Manipulated Dead are more powerful than the Living Receiver.  If a person dies within the Tangent Universe, they are able to contact the Living Receiver through the Fourth Dimensional Construct.

The Fourth Dimensional Construct is made of Water.

The Manipulated Dead will manipulate the Living Receiver using the Fourth Dimensional Construct.

The Manipulated Dead will often set an Ensurance Trap for the Living Receiver to ensure that the Artifact is returned safely to the Primary Universe…

The Manipulated Dead in the movie are Gretchen (Donnies “girlfriend”) and Frank.  This is because at some point within the confines of the Tangent Universe they die.  This is how and why Frank can contact Donnie, independant of time.  Gretchen also plays what seems to be a more subconscious role in setting the Ensurance Trap.

The Ensurance Trap is basically the Manipulated Dead’s way of making sure the Living Reciever does what he needs to do, and is essentially given no other choice.  In Donnies case, the series of coincidences which occur leading up to Gretchen dying, and him shooting Frank.  After those events occur he either understands his purpose in the Tangent Universe, or he simply has no other reason to live, so he sacrifices himself to guide the artifact into its position in the Primary Universe.  That position of course, is in his bedroom, while he is still in it.

The Ensurance Trap is the sole purpose of the Manipulated Dead, and is the only reason those two characters are in the plot.  Every interaction Donnie has with them leads up to the ending.

1. Frank tells Donnie world will end.
2. Frank convinces Donnie to flood the school
   1. Donnie meets Gretchen, due to this.
   2. Consquently, his teacher is fired due to the book “The Destructors” she had them read.
   3. When she is fired she writes “Cellar Door” on the chalkboard.
3. Frank shows Donnie the watery plumes from peoples chests, leading him to find his fathers gun.
4. Donnie finds wallet, which leads to him burning down Cunninghams house.
   1. Kitty stays home to defend Cunningham, forcing Donnies mom to travel with the dance team.
5. Due to Frank, Donnie becomes curious about time travel, science teacher gives him Philosophy of Time Travel.
   1. Donnie writes letter to “Grandma Death”
6. Donnies mom leaves, enabling him and his sister to throw a party.
   1. Gretchen’s mom runs off, leading Gretchen to Donnies house.
   2. Gretchen and Donnie further solidify their relationship via sex.
   3. Frank is driving to the party with Beer.
7. During Halloween party Donnie realizes how much time he has left.
   1. Suddenly something clicks in his mind, and he goes to Grandma Death’s house, notably into the “Cellar Door”.
   2. A quarrel happens with he and some thugs.
   3. Frank drives down the road, due to the quarrel Gretchen is in the street.
   4. Frank has to swerve to miss Grandma Death who is in the street, only to read the letter Donnie sent.
   5. As a result of swerving, kills Gretchen.
   6. Due to Frank killing Gretchen, Donnie kills Frank.
8. Donnie realizes what is going on and fully understands the book now, goes home, and sets everything right by allowing the aircraft engine to kill him.

The Manipulated Living

The Manipulated Living are often the close friends and neighbours of the Living Receiver.

They are prone to irrational, bazaar, and often violent behavior.  This is the unfortunate result of their task, which is to assist the Living Receiver in returning the Artifact to the Primary Universe…

The Manipulated Living are everyone else in the movie, other than Gretchen, Frank, and Donnie.   They play a seemingly unconscious role in the Ensurance trap, whereby they act “bizzare” because they are somehow alert of the fact that the world is ending, and are acting irrational in order to save it, even though they are not conscious of any of this.

There are not really a weath of examples of the “bizarre/violent” behavior without stretching, but here goes.  Kitty, the health teacher, is obsessed with two things, one, the cult-like “fear/love” system by Cunningham, which ultimately results in her leading his defense team when he is found out as a child pornographer.  Which in turn, leads to Donnies mom having to leave.  Also, she is obsessed with the dance team, Sparkle Motion, winning the talent contest.  Because if they don’t, the artifact cannot find it’s place back.

Other small things are how his parents act, father being glad Donnie got suspended, mother asking for a divorce which never happens.  His shrink giving Donnie a placebo pill (which further argues that he is not insane).  Teacher writing “Cellar Door” on the chalkboard, teacher making Gretchen pick a seat “next to the cutest boy”, teacher making them read/watch very questionable material in class.

A lot of people just act a little “strange” throughout the film.

Dreams

When the Manipulated awaken from their Journey into the Tangent Universe, they are often huanted by the experience in their dreams.

Many of them will not remember.

Those who do remember the journey are often overcome with profound remorse for the regretful actions buried within their dreams, the only physical evidence buried within the artifact itself; all that remains from the lost world…

The movie ends, with the key cast members all waking up from what appears to be a dream, or in some cases, a nightmare.  The teachers wake up happy, they still have their jobs, and feel somehow content with their role in setting things right in their dream.  Cherita wakes up happy having remembered when Donnie promised her everything would be better.

Kitty wakes up remorseful after realizing that she devoted herself to a pedophile.  Cunningham wakes up horrified, remorsful of being a fraud and a pedophile (whom, according to the cryptic Donnie Darko website later commits suicide).

Frank wakes up rubbing his eye.

Others, such as Gretched and Donnies mom, seem ignorant to the occurances other than having a strange familiarity with one another at the end of the movie, even though they never actually met.  The therapist also wakes up in the middle of the night but I am really unsure as to why.

Summary and Conclusion

To summarize the above:  A rift happens at the beginning of the movie splitting the universe into a tangent.  The movie entirely takes place within the tangent, where everyone in the movie is, consciously or unconsciously, working toward closing the rift to ensure the real world doesn’t end.  Donnie is the unfortunate individual stuck in the middle.  In order to make things right, he needs to make sure the jet engine kills him before the rift sucks the real world into oblivion.  The entire movie is centered around setting up/making sure, Donnie does just that.  By the end he understands fully what is going on, and fulfills his destiny.  He dies, and the world goes on as it was supposed to.

I believe that the writer/director have made it quite clear at this point that The Philosophy of Time Travel should be taken as canon.  As such, the movie is a pure sci-fi tale of time travel and parellel universes.  While I think other interpretations are interesting to read, I do not believe that is how the movie was meant to be recieved.  Especially with respect to the “emo” crowd.

I do not believe it was a tale of a troubled young man, who saw the future.  Saw the future and saw himself causing all sorts of damage to the world, due to paranoid schizophrenia.  Later killing himself to save the world from his dastardly deeds.  I believe the addition of the scene where his doctor talks of giving him placebo pills further solidifies the fact that even she did not believe him to be ill.  So please, emo kids, pick a different movie to love so I don’t feel gay when I watch Donnie Darko.

Once a week, everyone in the gifted program (there were about 10 of us), would get bussed off to a special building to be taught special topics. Leaving class on those days, to leave the others behind, knowing that they all knew who we were, and where we were going, was a good feeling.  It was my first taste of pride.  Proud of myself for being noticed as something more special than the others.

Yet, I do not feel I used the tools given to me in any special way. By the time I was in high school, I was enrolled in all advanced placement classes, and I was over 6 feet tall. Looking back, had I tried, I probably could have been a star athlete in the sport of my choosing, or maybe a star student. I probably could have gotten scholarships, or into Ivy League schools on either academic or athletic merit. But I didn’t.

I used my gifts, to enable me to be lazy. I could sleep through class, skip homework assignments, write book reports on books I had barely skimmed through. I could skate by without even trying. Sad thing is, this trait followed me through college, and into my adult life, and I behave much the same now. I appear to excel at things when in reality, I am hardly even trying.

When it was time to take my SAT’s, I didn’t care. I knew I could get the score I wanted. I didn’t prepare, I didn’t study. The night before I stayed up too late and got to my test 15 minutes late, having forgotten my pencil, and my calculator. I took the test, without a calculator, using a borrowed pencil, and finished first. I scored 1450.

The difficult thing is, pride. I was later told by my mother the score I got on the I.Q. test. I don’t take it for much since I was probably only 7 years old when I took it, but the score she told me was 157.  While I am almost certain that number is a lie.  I was proud of it. Not only was I proud of it, I was cocky about it. I did not openly brag, and did not appear cocky, but in my own head, and in my own life – I was cocky. I knew I didn’t have to try very hard, and as such I didn’t.  The gifted program, and that number, made me so cocky and proud, that I was probably worse off.

Now I realize, perhaps, I am not really all that smart after all. I see kids who I easily out performed in high school with doctorates from the finest Ivy League schools, scholarships, everything I didn’t get. I graduated college and took a high paying job right away. A job in a field I do not like. A job I am still in today. All because I was lazy. I was, and still am, complacent.  If I was smart, I would have recognized the power of what I had, and used it in a much better way.

There is a phenomenon where I feel some people are too smart for their own good.  I have had a theory about it for a long time, but I never actually applied it to myself, until now.  The theory is that some people are so smart, they are stupid.  Not in the savant sort of way, but an entirely different way altogether.

One of my best friends growing up, is who gave me this idea.  He was easily smarter than I ever was, or ever will be.  Yet, the decisions he made, were terrible.  He saw the flaws in society, and rebelled against them.  He saw the flaws in the school system, and as such, dropped out of school.  He was smart enough to recognize the flaws in the world, and probably how the fix them.  But he was too dumb to realize that he was better off playing along with the system, and taking advantage of it.

I have coasted through life on raw intelligence alone, but I lack any sort of real drive.  There are things I want to do, things I wish I could do.  There are ideas I have, and dreams I dream.  I see a world full of things I could do, becoming things I could have done.  I have some major personal flaws which intelligence cannot outweigh.  I lack drive and motivation to be something more, and I contain just enough pride to the point where I still feel like I can sit up on a perch above everyone else.  Expecting people to simply recognize something in me that third grade teacher did, and handing me an opportunity to be something more, again.  My mind races all the time.  I become easily stressed out and overwhelmed with my own ideas.  I am perpetually depressed.

The tunnel is short.

I need an outlet.  I need to start doing things myself, before everything I want to do becomes something I can no longer do, but merely something I could have done.

I want a Red Ryder carbine-action, 200-shot, range model air rifle with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time.

The types of features I am talking about are a very specific type.  I cannot in my right mind suggest that everything considered a “feature” is a bad thing, however, I can suggest that the vast majority of things both tangible and intangible, are by and large, useless widgets that appear to add value to a particular item.

When I was building this website, I had to resist the urge to add feature after feature to the design.  I, myself, am an admitted feature whore where I tend to want to do things because I can.  Some of that has slipped through in elements like the mostly useless expandable footer, while I somehow managed to resist the urge to add a color picker so the user could dynamically change the background color.  Similarly, when Ralphie finally got his Red Ryder BB-gun, how many times do you think he use the compass?  My money is on none, same as the average user on this site likely does not even realize the footer is expandable, much less care.

When I first saw the feature list on the release of the iPhone 3 GS I was somewhat releived.  Apple didn’t really go overboard on adding a ton of new features, for the most part, all they really did was improve something which was already pretty good.  They made the camera a bit better, made the device as a whole a bit faster, and tweaked and improved a few other elements.  What I could not understand is, why the hell did they add a compass?  The answer is, because most tech nerds, geeks, and gadget lovers all have one thing in common – just like little Ralphie, we love features.

To liken the addition of a compass to one of the greatest selling toys for adults in history to the compass in that old Red Ryder bb-gun just seems logical.  Imagine how useful it will be for you, here I’ll even help a bit:  You are out in the woods, lost.  No cell phone signal but conveniently you have your iPhone with you.  Nothing else, just your iPhone.  Oh, and it has a good amount of battery left.  You are paniced trying to figure out how you can get yourself rescued.  You break out your trusty Compass app and navigate yourself to safety!

Right.  Problem is, the above scenerio, will never happen.  What will happen, though, are things like this: TwittARound.  Some clever developers came up with a way to make the otherwise useless compass feature of the iPhone, even more useless!  Just what I always wanted, the ability to spin around in the circle watching the twitter activity of nearby people.

The iPhone’s compass, and the app that uses it in such a usless way, are the perfect embodiment of a misuse of features.  The age old addition of a compass to anything, makes us want it more.  Many times in my life have I been duped into buying things by getting sold on features which I ultimately never used.  Cell phones are not the only offender.  Computers, game consoles, cars, pretty much any product on the shelf has some sort of feature we either don’t understand, or don’t need.  Yet, that feature is the single thing that made us actually buy said item.

Everything right down to toothpaste and shampoo has usless added features.  I remember a while back “Herbal Essence” shampoo commercials touting that their shampoo’s now feature Hawafena!  What the hell is Hawafena?  I have no idea, and apparently no one else does either, but people wanted it.

Luckily for us, things will always have features.  The only thing we can do is become more conscious of what features we need, what will use, and what will will not.  It seems that product marketing is already making a return back to simplicity, if not good old minimalism – which will be a topic for another time.

Could this be you?

Whatever the situation may be for these people, you can bet that McDonalds is very happy about it.  But the situation itself still boggles my mind.  How does a person find themselves working these types of jobs so late in life?  I suppose I ask myself the same question about homeless people, since I don’t really understand how anyone can be entirely homeless.  Maybe temporarily, but not permanently.

It is very hard to have insight into the things around us we have not experienced first hand.  Perhaps these ill-employed people are in fact ex-convicts, ex-drug addicts, or just plain old american fuck-ups*.  Perhaps someone should film a documentary about these people.

When you were a child, you had high hopes.  I can say that with relative confidence as I have never heard a child say “I want to be a trash man when I grow up!”  Although, when you look around, as it turns out, the vast majority of the world are working in jobs I would never dream of working in, and without them, we would be pretty screwed.

So how does it work?  What would happen if the dreams of every little child were to come true suddenly and everyone was blessed with quality parents, a quality education, and most importantly, quality decision making abilities?  When I walk down the street, I see fast food restaurants, video stores, nail salons, mega-stores, and trash trucks.  I suppose most of these businesses were founded under the assumption that there will always be someone to hire for $7 an hour to do this type of work, but what if that wasn’t true?

I once saw a movie called A day without a Mexican, which was a fictional depiction of what the United States would be like if all of the sudden every illegal immigrant were to disappear, and the reality of that situation was fairly bleak.  As mentioned above, I would love to see a similar depiction of a world where all of the sudden everyone was educated and trying to all work as doctors, lawyers, or other types of professionals, shifting the balance forever.

Every president makes a speech about how they want the youth to be educated, most parents do their best to ensure the best for their child, but the reality is, the world needs people to work in these jobs.  I imagine a future like the one portrayed in GATTACA, where there is a clearly defined caste system which forces a low class to always exist to carry out…the jobs no one wants.

But then again, I guess there are always robots.

Look Familiar?

*Please do not mistake what I am saying as a generalization that anyone who has a crappy job late in life is a “fuck-up”, I apologize in advance if you are offended.

A friend is someone you can trust, someone you can rely on to be there even in the darkest times, and most importantly, someone you enjoy being around.

I think a lot of people today skip the first two parts of my definition, and go right to the enjoyment part.  I imagine that  a lot of people hold like-mindedness paramount as well.  For me, having a like-minded friend is a bonus, but not at all important.

Growing up, I always had lots of friends.  Some of that was interrupted when I moved away from my original home town when I was twelve years old.  But I slowly gained a new “core” group of friends at my new school.  Many of those friends I am still close with today, many of them I am not.  When it comes to friends, as I have gotten older, I have also become a lot more picky, as such, I have decided not to be friends with certain people anymore.

As you get older, the opportunities to make new friends often lessen, combined with having less time than you had in times past due to family, or kids, or job obligations, making new friendships and properly nuturing those friendships can prove quite difficult.  This is where I find myself:  Wishing I had more quality friends, but struggling to find them.  Most people would just look back to the old addage:

I would rather have 1 great friend than 10 good ones.

I am not sure, though, if that is always a true statement when people say it, or if it is just something they would like themselves to believe.  Personally, I think I would love to have 10 great friends.

Over the years I am purposely ended a lot of friendships.  I do not regret these choices, as most of those people were simply not good matches for me, and my definition of friendship.  Although it can become a little awkward when mutual friends of myself, and those I am no longer friends with, are brought into the picture.  It is very hard to explain to someone why you do not wish to be friends anymore, much like breaking up with a girl, except with old friends, there is always someone in your life with a connection to those old friends, and always someone who again wants you to justify to them why you cannot be friends anymore.

In middle school and high school, as I mentioned before, I had a great core of friends.  Toward the middle of high school, for reasons I will never know, I became a very popular guy, and suddenly I had literally, hundreds of friends.  If I had to guess, I’d say it was due to the very party friendly atmosphere which was my house, and nothing more.  At the end of high school, something very interesting happened:  I went to college.

I do not want to sound like an elitist or anything, but, the majority of my original friends, did not attend college.  All those people I was friends (partied) with toward the end of high school, simply disappeared.  Most of my core group of friends stayed home, sat around getting stoned, working at dead-end jobs.  In fact, most of them still live at home with their parents and they are almost 30 years old.  At some point toward the end of college, long after I had quit doing any sort of drugs, mostly quit partying, and had made a life and a career for myself, I had only a couple of friends left.

I do not feel bad that I basically wrote off a lot of my old gang for nothing more than being a bunch of losers.  Mostly because I am friends with a small portion of them, and I do not judge them at all for their choices in life.  The thing that keeps me friends with them fits my definition:  I can trust them, I can rely on them, and I enjoy being around them.

Those who I am no longer close to are very spiteful toward me, and they feel as if I had passed some sort of judgment upon them for not living up to my expectations, I only wish I could make them realize that is not the case in the slightest.  The truth is, anyone I am no longer friends with, betrayed me, more than once.  Maybe I should be more forgiving?

Either way, the real point of this is about the sources of new friends.  For me, there are really only a few ways to meet new people:  At work, locally via clubs and meetup opportunities, and via the internet.  Since I am a bit anti-social by nature, I do not generally venture out into the public or join some sort of club with the intent of making new friends, and having worked at the same place for over 3 years now, my options of socializing with co-workers have been exhausted, so I have found myself with a couple of very high quality friends whom I met online.

When I tell people that I met my fiance on World of Warcraft, or that I spent 4th of July weekend with a couple whom I regularly talk to on Twitter, I am normally met with a bit of an awkward look.  I don’t mind though, because the people I have met online have turned out to be some of the best friends I have ever made.  I think that more and more, people are meeting their best friends, and future wives, online.  Any why shouldn’t they?  Why should this be considered taboo?

To me, the internet is just as viable a place to meet someone as the local bar is.  Sure the initial meeting can be a bit awkward, but once you have spent 3 years talking to someone online, you tend to have a pretty good idea of what you are getting yourself into.  If you have spent a good amount of time talking to someone online, chances are they can become a great “real life” friend.  If you have ever considered meeting someone online, but have been nervous about it, my advice is: do it.

Me with Jzy (on twitter)

Shows like Heroes, Lost, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and many other television shows, mostly in the science fiction genre, have a few things in common.  That is, high production costs, huge casts, extensive writing, and most importantly, a relatively low draw in terms of audience and ratings.  Shows of this magnitude are essentially movies, movies which are over 100 hours long.  Since network television produces these shows purely off of ad revenue, it is not hard to imagine an end to it all.

“It’s going to be one of the last huge television shows in terms of size of cast and scope of production,” predicts Bender, in town to lead a master class at the Banff World Television Festival.

“Given the fact that network television is changing, it may be one of the last great rides of this kind of big epic storytelling.”

This he attributes to a combination of factors: the collapsed economy, what the networks are looking for in new programming, and the sheer cost of mounting a show like “Lost.”

Citation

I have never been a huge TV nut; I never sit down at 10pm on Tuesday nights to watch a show.  I either record it on my Tivo, or I buy/download it later on after the fact.  I would venture to guess that I am a part of the vast majority of television fans, especially fans of shows in this genre.  As such, it is not hard to figure out why the top rated shows on television are reality shows like The Bachelorette, talent shows like American Idol, generic sitcoms, and of course, crime dramas like NCIS, CSI, and Law & Order.  All of these shows are not only far cheaper to produce from the networks perspective, but they are far easier for someone to just watch at their leisure, without 5 seasons worth of plot and story line to worry about.

Bender says TV’s thematic pendulum is swinging away from serial television towards more stand-alone dramas. Procedurals are popular with networks, he notes, because it’s easier for audiences to drop in at any time.

Citation

But what will come of the good old-fashioned epic science fiction story, or drama?  The days of shows with long, intricate contiguous plot lines, I fear, are over.

I can only hope that cable networks such as Showtime and HBO can pick up where the networks are leaving off, and it seems they already have by giving us amazing shows such as Dexter and True Blood.  If this turns out to be the case, then I will glady pay to stay a subscriber, much as is the case with me and satellite radio.  You can’t really put a price on good entertainment.

The Glory Days...

After getting level 80, I decided to start my own guild, part of which I outlined in this post.  Which as you might notice, is one of the last posts I made prior to my hiatus from blogging.  I must say that it was a valuable experiement, and I did enjoy the experience quite a bit.  The guild was very successful but ultimately didn’t work out.  After I decided to quit leading my guild, I made an even smarter decision on how to use my time:  I joined one of the top guilds in the world.  This was quite an eye-opening experience for me, and after participating in the progression rush after Ulduar launched, ending with a Server 1st, US 25th Yogg’Saron kill, I decided it was time to call it quits.

Quitting an MMO isn’t all that difficult to do, I have done it a few times.  It’s the letting go part that is hardest.  The friendships you make, the sense of achievement you get while playing (especially with WoW’s insanely addictive achievement system), and leaving the characters you worked so hard on behind, to rot.  For me, I have not only a top notch level 80 warrior, but 3 other level 80 characters.  A paladin, shaman, and warlock.  A testament to the amount of time I spent (wasted), playing WoW.

But now, I am back.  Back from the depths of the ultimate time waster.  Back to make an account for all those who are currently addicted to, or pretending not to be addicted to, an MMORPG.

I'm done, forever.

I am an introvert to begin with, always have been.  I am not a outgoing social butterfly, but playing an MMO to such an extent as I was only magnifies the issue.  When you are like me, and your only real responibilities include work and paying bills, it is very easy to get caught up.  I would hope that those who have kids are a  little bit more responsible with their gaming habits, but as I have witnessed first hand, that is not the case.

My entire life was basically dictated by WoW.  My raid schedule, content releases, etc.  Wake up, go to work, come home, play WoW.  All the while, eating like crap, and getting almost no exercise.  Now granted, this schedule isn’t all that much different than it would be for most people my age, except you’d substitute “Play WoW” with, “Play Xbox” or “Watch TV”, but it is all the missed opportunitues which became replaced with “Play WoW” which concern me.  Write a blog post?  Go out with some friends?  Go visit family?  NO!  Play WoW!

It’s amazing how many things you miss out on that you don’t even realize.  Now that I haven’t been playing for almost two months, my social life is extremely active, my family life is much better, and I am overall much happier.  Being a gamer at heart it is going to be very hard to avoid the allure of MMO’s forever, especially since they seem to the wave of the future in terms of gaming, but it is just something I have to do.

Either way, I look forward to writing again, and if you ever find yourself in a position where you even begin to feel like you are playing video games too much, you are, and it is best to quit while you’re ahead.

Try to get some rest
Count backward from ten

You’ve gone too long without sleep
I know you won’t rest stressed, so give up
Just give up
And don’t say no to pills
Atavan won’t kill

You said, “My life’s like a bad movie”
I said, “That’s true of all us”
You said, you said, “I’ve got to wake up so fucking early”
And I said, “Maybe the director’s turned on us”

Outside the 5 sounds like the ocean
Relax, don’t keep your eyes open
Don’t look at the clock
Your brain will never stop

You said, “My life’s like a bad movie”
I said, “That’s true of all us”
You said, you said, “I’ve got to wake up so fucking early”
And I said, “Maybe the director’s turned on us”

Don’t say no to pills
Atavan won’t kill

Alias – Watching Water

intake ambiance, a tool for meditation.
progressing towards the clouds at with whom i am complete.
defeat the chains that restrain an eager sensation.
equal balance in and out, all inhibitions shall deplete.

i’m trying to break this writer’s cramp, massage my hand and day dream,
out the window, innuendo, watch the water find its path down the glass.
it seems erratic direction its only perfection,
rest my head inside my hands, pace back and forth inside my mind.
i wish sometimes i wouldn’t reminisce so much,
such things tend to make one reflect and disect situations to an extreme.
hard now to redeem what was there before, no more,
gone are those days and ways have parted,
gone from feeling solid trust to outsmarted.
anyway, i’m now moving on to a distance far from yesterday,
it’s best this way, i felt as though i’ve miss this moment of truth.
outcome uneventful, i’ve lost the ability to heal sentimental,
i can stare at a puddle and see a million places i love.
it comes from thoughts of places i’ve been,
places i will never see again,
send my love to all who were there wishing i could crawl back in,
but, i’ve transformed and the pieces wouldn’t fit,
so the sore necks will cease.
eyes searching to the sky to try to find some form some peace,
and i keep pulling up blanks,
yet i’m wearing this mask for the sake of others.
we all miss things, i suppose, i must let go, well i’m not ready.
just let me sit in silence and soak in what’s trailing down the window,
to cleanse my emotions, to begin the process of preparing myself.

i watch the drops join its friends and become one with the crowd,
relating all too well, forcing me to sigh out loud.
look into clouds to envision the inside of my head,
i’m turning leaves at this turning point remembering what they said,
as they drove off one by one, they left, taking pieces of me
until i felt empty inside.
already looking forward to that day when i’d be returning,
and i hadn’t even left yet.
from then on, i took the inside-out approach.
your granted lots of time to think when your new position is coach.
and your team is sleeping the whole time,
when it’s 2:40 in the morning and you’re in the middle of nowhere,
with the buzz of the a.m. radio as the only one that’s there.
you think alot about life, it’s where it all began for me,
and the more i thought the more i began to clearly see absolutely every aspect of my life in a new light.
i figured out my rubix cube, well i got it somewhat right.
and things are coming together as i slowly come undone,
and the occurance known as it is swept under the rug,
and now my burden ways a ton, but it only makes me stronger,
and i refuse to break. i’m letting things pass by for the family’s sake.
just give me a picture of the truth, so i can hold it near,
and watch the rain fall, syncopated with one lonesome tear.

Lately I have been on this growing trend of alienating myself.  Everyone is annoying and everything is an inconvenience.  I truly enjoy a quiet weekend at home with my girlfriend and my dog more than any other activity in the world.  Am I an introvert?  Is there something unhealthy about this behavior?  I can’t help but to feel that I am somehow wrong in what I am doing.

As a little background on me – All through high school I had a very tight-knit group of friends consisting of about 10 people.  We were always out doing crazy stuff.  I had a very fun-filled and active childhood, and adolescence.  College was even better.  I had tons of friends, was always out doing something crazy.  I partied my ass off.  Once I graduated and got a job I basically went into a totally different mode in my life.  The mode I have been in for a while.  I don’t use any drugs, I get drunk maybe twice a year, I only party on majoy holidays, and in general, I just love to relax.  I barely answer my phone because I don’t want to be “bothered” and I rarely sign onto instant messengers anymore.

Strange thing is, I am completely happy with my quiet and uneventful life.

What I am wondering is:  Am I actually happy with my calm life due to having “been there done that” when it comes to an overactive social life and partying, or am I misleading myself and I am not actually happy at all, and my solitude is merely a symptom of some sort of deep-rooted depression?  I have no idea, and I wish I did.

I would hate to realize the wrong thing later on in life and have no friends to turn to.  I started thinking on this subject late last night for some reason.  Maybe it was after I had an argument with a friend, maybe it was after watching The Basketball Diaries.  Either way, I am begining to wonder, why do so many people adore me so much, and why do I push them away.

I know that as a friend, I am a very good person.  I realize I do have many good qualities, but I also feel I probably have more bad qualities than good.  Why do I deserve so much love in my life?  Why am I so hell-bent on being totally independant and nearly alone?  I think I have abandonment issues.

Simulation games have proven excellent tools for training people in manual skills; for example, X-Plane, a flight simulator that runs on home computers, has been certified by the Federal Aviation Administration. But accidental learning transcends intentional training. When role-playing gamers team up to undertake a quest, they often need to attempt particularly difficult challenges repeatedly until they find a blend of skills, talents, and actions that allows them to succeed. This process brings about a profound shift in how they perceive and react to the world around them. They become more flexible in their thinking and more sensitive to social cues. The fact that they don’t think of gameplay as training is crucial. Once the experience is explicitly educational, it becomes about developing compartmentalized skills and loses its power to permeate the player’s behavior patterns and worldview.

So what is raiding?  What is a guild?  For the un-cool, I will tell you.  Raiding in WoW is the term used to define the act of killing creatures in the game which take many players to kill.  In the case of WoW, most raiding constitues 25 people.  A guild, is a group of players who play together in the game almost exclusively.  A raiding guild, is a guild which has a primary objective of raiding together.

As you can see, coordinating all of this effort, takes leadership skills.  This aspect of the game is what makes it fun for me.  Sure from the outside looking in, I am a full grown adult playing a cartoonish looking video game.  Spending countless hours of my time working toward intangible goals and virtual wealth.  The rewarding nature for the game, for me, has never been the item rewards, the virtual wealth, or the prestige of being the first guild on your server to kill the hardest boss.  For me, it is fun to see my hard work toward leading a group of players through a difficult encounter and seeing how excited people are when the hard work finally pays off in a kill.

It gets complicated here.  This is because these bosses in which you “raid” are generally very difficult, and this is why you need a coordinated guild to do it.  You cannot simply assemble 25 random people and expect to win.  You need a well balanced group of skillful players who are willing to die over and over together at the expense of their real world time, and in game money, toward the effort of learning how kill, and ultimately killing a boss, to reap the rewards.  The rewards, are the next layer of complexity.  Since these bosses generally yield 2-4 items each time you kill them, and 25 people kill them, you need to have a fair method of distributing the rewards to your players in order to motivate them to come back another day to kill another boss.

So does this have any real world value?  Do you actually need real world leadership skills to accomplish success in the game World of Warcraft?  My answer is yes, and the point of this post is to explain why.

Creating your guild

Creating and leading a guild in world of warcraft is quite easy.  All you need is a little bit of gold, and ten other players to sign your “charter”.  Once you have done this, you have a guild, you are a guild leader.  Anyone can do this, even a six year old.  However, if you want the guild to be anything more than a glorified chat room, it takes a bit more.  Most raid guilds start off by having a website, and something called a Ventrilo server used for voice chat based coordination during raids.  As you can already see, creating a website and managing a voip server is already above the heads of most teenagers.

I started by doing just what I outlined above.  I assembeled a few of my friends, formed my guild, and there it was.  My very own glorified chat room.  After I had established my guild, Solipsis, I had to make a website for it.  As an aside, having a cool guild name is always a plus, and my guilds name is totally badass.  At this point, two other things need to happen.  You need to recruit players into your ranks, and also establish a couple of co-leaders which are deemed “officers”.  You can compare an officer in a guild to something like a member of the cabinet in the presidency.  They assist the leader of the guild on all issues and provide additional leadership assistance.  Choosing capable, high quality officers is crucial to the success of a guild.  You cannot simply choose power hungry teenagers.

Now that you have the backbone of your guild in place (Leader, Officers, Website) there is some clerical work to be done.

Establishing Rules

While you could simply amass a ton of people and allow them to run amok, this was not my goal.  My goal for a successful raid guild was to maintain an active roster of as few people as possible, and also maintaining a level of maturity and respect around the server at large.  This means you need to establish many sets of rules and guidelines which denote the types of players which may be in the guild, how they should behave, and how they should always behave to remain a member.  Other rules are also in place to facilitate the raid aspect of the guild.  This includes a raid schedule, attendance guidelines, and a set of rules which describe how the loot rewards are to be distributed.

If you do not have a good set of rules at the onset which people agree with prior to joining your guild you will find yourself dealing with a lot of issues later when the expectations which you had build up your mind do not line up with the desires of your players.

Something to always keep in mind when making the rules for your guild is that it is just a game.  As such, you do not want to lay a strict set of rules upon people which will ultimately hinder their ability to have fun, which is the overall point in all of this.

Building a roster

Arguably the hardest part.  Once you have a guild and its backbone, you need to seek out players who not only wish to kill bosses, but want to agree to the rules you have set out in your guild.  You need to really sell your guild hard to get good players since there are literally thousdands of guilds for players to choose from.  The criteria for most players who wish to raid are simple:  How good is the guild, how capable are they of killing bosses?  What is their raid schedule, does it fit within the schedule of real life?  How is the overall atmosphere of the guild (serious, fun, mature, immature)?  How do they distribute their loot?  How is their reputation amongst the other guilds on the server?

This part takes the most time and patience, and can be very arguous.  Many times you will get very nice people who try very much, but simply lack skill.  You as a leader need to decide how to handle things like this.  On the contrary, often times you will find extremely great players who are very problematic attitude wise and very difficult to keep happy.  Hopefully after some time you will have weeded out the people who do not quite fit in line with what you are trying to achieve and wind up with a roster you are happy with.

For me, my goal is to have a group of players leaning toward the side of “hardcore” yet still do not take the game so seriously that it becomes a job.  I do not generally want too many players under the age of 18 unless they seem quite mature for their age.  I want to have at most 35 people in the guild who are looking to raid so that I do not have a huge pool of people to rotate through, and I want the guild as a whole to be pretty tight knit and friendly toward each other.  These are the types of things you will decide for yourself, should you ever try to lead this sort of effort.

Leading the raids

This job is not always let to the actual guild leader, as in many cases, a raid leader needs quite different qualities than a guild leader does.  Similar to the differences of the president vs the secretary of defense.  In my case though, I lead my own raids.  I enjoy this aspect of the game the most.  A good raid leader needs to be firm and strict, but not a complete bastard.  You also need a major heap of patience, which I generally lack.  I feel that raid leadership for me is an experiment in exercising my own ability to be more patient in general.

When you wish to lead a raid, you need to assemble your 25 players.  Decisions need to be made based on the players you have on hand, and in most cases you will have more than 25 people to choose from if you are doing a good job.  The people not chosen to raid on a given night will generally be upset by that fact, but again, if you are doing a good job with the guild as a whole they will be more than understanding of it.

Bosses in WoW can be quite complicated.  They require a lot of coordination and every player needs to execute properly for you to be successful.  This can range on a huge scale of responsbility and difficulty.  The responsbility of the raid leader is to coordinate this effort, develop and refine your strategy, and ensuring the players in the raid are doing their job.  It can be a real test of discipline to not get angry and upset during this process, especially if the same players continually make the same mistakes.

A raid kill.

Ideally though, if you have done everything right up to this point, your hard work will pay off and you will kill the magical internet dragon without making anyone too upset and it will drop magical internet swords.

Keeping people happy

The bread and butter of keeping people happy in a guild in wow is to keep feeding them boss kills and subsequently, loot rewards.  Sometimes a boss is so difficult that it can take many hours of the course of several days or even weeks, to finally kill it.  This can be very frustrating and if your guild suffers too much difficulty on a boss for too long you will ultimately lose players.  The easiest way to counter this is by keeping the best possible players around and making sure that you spend a signifcant amount of time killing the easier bosses which you can easily get loot from as often as possible prior to the nights which you plan to spend countless hours learning a new fight.

Tying it all together

So how does all of this apply to real life?  Well, in reality, it doesn’t.  But if you take the skills you learn in the game as a leader and apply them to your life, it absolutely can.  Think of what you are doing, and compare that to say the manager of an it organization.

• Coordinating a large group of people toward a common goal
• Recruiting capable people to fulfill a role and do a job
• Rewarding your people and keeping them happy
• Maintaining patience and professionalism at all times
• Resolving inter-personal conflicts in a diplomatic way
• Choosing others to assist you in your leadership
• Developing and executing plans, goals, and strategies toward the betterment of your organization
• Building friendships and relationships which can transcend the game, or work

And these are just a few of the things you can gain from something most people view as just a game.

For an interesting read on someone who made the transition from guild leadership in wow, to a real world management position, wired magazing published an article a while back about this very subject.

In this way, the process of becoming an effective World of Warcraft guild master amounts to a total-immersion course in leadership. A guild is a collection of players who come together to share knowledge, resources, and manpower. To run a large one, a guild master must be adept at many skills: attracting, evaluating, and recruiting new members; creating apprenticeship programs; orchestrating group strategy; and adjudicating disputes. Guilds routinely splinter over petty squabbles and other basic failures of management; the master must resolve them without losing valuable members, who can easily quit and join a rival guild. Never mind the virtual surroundings; these conditions provide real-world training a manager can apply directly in the workplace.

If you are a World of Warcraft player feel free to contact me!  I play a warrior named “Disrespect” on the realm “Stormrage”.

XKCD is pretty good.

Some of the things I have learned which have helped me enjoy writing this blog, despite the fact that it does not get much traffic, are pretty obvious.  Others, not so obvious.  Most of them, I don’t even follow now, from a “lessons learned” standpoint.  However, I am aware of them, and I am slowly adapting my style to utilize the things I have learned to make this blog better.

Write often, keep a consistent schedule. This, I am really bad at.  I used to be much better with it but as of recent, I have had trouble motivating to write.  Since this blog is mostly for me, and clearly not for ad revenue, if I dont feel like writing, I don’t.  That being said, when I do write more often, I see an interesting increase in traffic.  Hmm.

Don’t get discouraged if you don’t get a lot of traffic. Much in line with the above, building up an audience takes time.  Some blogs manage to become overnight sensations but there are usually a lot of other factors that play into that.  If you truly want to be successful and perhaps even make money some day, you need to just write, write, write.  Even when no one is reading.  I go through phases of becoming discouraged by this very phenomenon, but whenever I see a valuable comment on my blog posted by a complete stranger, it feels good.

Quality not quantity – or – less is more. This is not about the number of posts you make.  Clearly you should post like 100 posts per day if you can. (/sarcasm?)  It is more about the length of your actual posts.  I have a tendancy to be very long-winded.  I am working on keeping my posts a bit shorter.  It is easier to write short posts, and easier to keep the attention of your readers.  Oh, and, pictures are good.  People like pictures.

Would I read this if it wasn’t my blog? Meaning, is what you write interesting?  I try to keep my blog pretty interesting, and I try not write about what I ate for lunch, why I’m upset with my dog, or other personal nonsense that is best kept in a secret journal.  If you want other people to read your blog, you need to realize, most people don’t care that much about YOU.  If you have an interesting opinion, some valuable knowledge, or something else you feel is worthy of someone elses time, it is worth posting.  If you are going to write about some personal nonsense that only dear ol’ mom would care to read, save the internet some megabytes and don’t post it.

Anyhow, yeah.  50th post!  See you at 100.

Can a butterfly flapping its wings over the ocean in Florida cause a tidal wave in Australia?

Well, to answer the above question, I would think not.  The context of what I am going to talk about here might even be best described as the domino effect, but, I think butterfly effect sounds way cooler, so lets stick with that.

In my life, many things have happened.  If you trace any one thing back, you can surely account each thing happening back to the decision to do something else.  As a ficticious example:  If I hadn’t decided to start smoking again I wouldn’t have been out at 4am driving to buy a pack of smokes when I got hit by that drunk driver.

You can pretty much trace everything that happens to everyone, backwards, indefinitely.

A friend of mine, loves to do this to me.  You see, about four years ago I was working on my car and he came over with this awesome new game that I had to try.  That game was World of Warcraft.  After a few hours of playing I decided to get my own copy.  Some of his EverQuest friends were playing on the “Stormrage” server, so thats where we decided to play.  You see, it is entirely because of him, that I play WoW on the Stormrage server.

This is where it gets interesting, and funny.

You see, I met my current girlfriend in WoW.  I know it sounds pathetic to meet someone in an online game, but that is a topic for an entirely different post, and something I am not ashamed of at all.  Anyhow, from time to time, my friend loves to account everything in my life, to himself.  “You know, if I hadn’t gotten you to play wow, you would have never met Cass, so you never would have gotten Dirk, and you wouldn’t live here, or work there.”

The funny thing is, he’s right.

However, before I can give him any credit for anything in my life, the question must be asked:  Does this sort of domino effect even matter?  While I recognize that he is entirely joking when he says these things, and I do not take it seriously at all, it is an interesting concept.  How does one action, or choice, affect you throughout the rest of your life?

Like I said before, almost anything in your life, someone elses life, or the world in general, can be traced backwards from event to event, all of which lead up to the current reality.  Some people believe that every choice made splits the universe into separate universes, each containing the possible outcomes of every choice, everyone has ever made.  This is known as the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.

Regardless, its neat to think about.  How many choices did you make just today, which could affect the way the rest of your life turns out?

Truth is.  I simply love challenging myself to do better, to be better, and to always aspire to be what I feel I have the potential to be.  I can be a poor communicator though, especially face to face.  If you were to ask my girlfriend Cassandra to describe me in as few words as possible she would probably say “He’s a teddy bear.”

A teddy bear.  Right.

In true teddy bear fashion, I just wanted to take a piece of this blog and dedicate it to the two loves of my life.  Cassandra and Dirk.  Since I know she reads every post, and never says anything to me about it.  Since I know, sometimes reading my posts can probably lead her to question herself, and question my happiness.  And since I know, I’m not always good at expressing myself face to face, even to her.  I figured I would say it to the world.

Cassandra

I love you Cassandra.  You make me as happy as a miserable fucker like me can be.  Never question yourself, and never question my happiness or my love for you.  Especially not based on the cynical ramblings on my blog.

You are always happy.  The opposite of me.  Always offering perspective and keeping me on level ground.  Always cheerful and willing to do anything.  Always smiling.  You have an unstoppable smile that infects everyone around you.  You have an amazing ability to find the positive side of every situation.

You are hard working.  Never taking a day off, despite me using any excuse to stay home.  You have made a life for yourself and proven to everyone who ever doubted you that you are an achiever.  You take pride in your work and you always exceed expectations.  You are very mature and responsible.  I look up to you very much for your drive and motivation to do better.

You are supportive.  Everything I do, even this little silly blog, you stand behind.  You actually read what I write, and leave the occasional comment.  You push me to work on the things I want to work on.  You never discourage.  You make me believe anything is possible.

You are positive.  Impossible to discourage.

You are fun.  No matter what it is, from sporting events, to playing video games.  Always up for anything.  No suggestion is too crazy.  Nothing is too lame.  You will try anything, go anywhere, talk to anyone.  You have a passion for life I only wish I could begin to emulate.

Most important of all, you are you.

And to Dirk, even though you can’t read.  You fill a gap in our lives that nothing else can fill.  You can make me smile when nothing else can.  Your unconditional love toward us and the way you are always happy makes me envy you in so many ways.  I love you little man.

Everyone should own a dog.

The two of you are my life.  Even though I might not show it all the time, and every day isn’t perfect.  You need to know that if it wasn’t for the two of you by my side, I really don’t where I would be right now.  So to all of the readers out there who are not Cassandra or Dirk, now you know who the two loves of my life are, and maybe, hopefully, you might think I am such an emo angry bastard anymore.  I’m just a teddy bear.  Someone who just probably cares too much about the things few people even think about.

While I know it is probably out of place for my to call myself a “writer” since in reality, having a blog hardly makes you a writer, it is something I am actively doing, and actively trying to become better at.  I doubt I will ever write a book, or even a short work of fiction, but I do enjoy posing questions, and jotting down thoughts.  So, for the sake of this article, let me call myself a writer.

Kurt Vonnegut

Today on Twitter, one of the few people I follow, DoshDosh, posted a link to an article: vonnegutSTYLE.  As I am sure you do not know, Kurt Vonnegut is my favorite author of all time, hands down.  I have never been much of a bookworm, but I believe I have read almost every one of Vonneguts books.  His writing style is captivating, and his stories just, amazing.

When I saw the link DoshDosh posted I immediately clicked on it. As someone who is still in the infant stages as a writer, and actively developing a style for myself, the idea of getting advice on style from the master himself was something I could not pass up.  So now, as per his recommendation, I suppose I shall try to evaluate my own style against his guidelines publicly.  I hope you can offer me any feedback or constructive criticisms you might have.

Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you’re writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead — or, worse, they will stop reading you.

-Kurt Vonnegut

1. Find a subject you care about
   This is the entire point of this blog.  I feel I only write about things I care about, without compromise.  The issue lies in the fact that often finding such inspiration to write comes in waves.  I find a direct correlation between my moods, and my passion to write.  I feel it is good on one hand, where my output is only of a certain quality, to me.  Yet bad, in that I do not write nearly as much as I would like to, since I cannot force myself to have a topic worth writing about all the time.
2. Do not ramble
   I feel I need a lot of work in this area, as most of my posts could be regarded as pure rambling.  I would really love some input with respect to this.
3. Keep it simple
   I consider myself a good communicator, yet, you will never see something as simple and powerful as “To Be or Not to Be” come out of this blog.  I feel I have a good mix of complexity in my writing while it is still easy to understand what I am trying to convey.  I am not an english major and I not studied literature, so I am sure I could use a lot or work in this area.
4. Have guts to cut
   In the article, Vonnegut describes this as basically getting rid of useless words and sentences.  Do not try to fill your writings with too much fluff.  I think I need to work on this a good bit.  I can be a bit wordy and repetitive at times.
5. Sound like yourself
   I feel this is one of my strong points.  With me, what you read is what you get.
6. Say what you mean
   While I would like to think this is true for me, it is a tough point.  I realize that this blog is totally public with my name attached to it, and unlike Vonnegut, writing is not my livelihood.  I often find myself censored by the very premise of the wrong people seeing the wrong things written here.  In most cases I do say what I mean, but not always.
7. Pity the readers
   Basically what he is suggesting here is that you make what you write easy to read.  I’m pretty sure I could use some work here as well.

The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don’t you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.

So, in closing, I suppose it is helpful to step back and evaluate yourself every once in a while, but I think the most important evaluations come from those other than yourself.  Based on the guidelines set fourth by the great Kurt Vonnegut, I ask you:  How am I doing?

This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

I am not usually a very sappy person.  I am not sure I have ever really been so impacted by a speech, especially by a politician, but it was a pretty legenary speech.  Barack exhibits passion for his job, his country, and most importantly, his family, that few have the strength to exhibit.  Look at what he has become.

It makes me think, what is Inspiration, what is Passion?  I consider myself a very passionate person, but do I even really know what that means?

At work, sometimes I fight hard for something I believe in.  I feel it would be what most people would call passion.  In life, I do the same.  Problem is, many times passion gets labeled as anger, frustration, or various other negative things.  How can you take passion toward something and turn it into something inspiring, rather than something negative?

Often times, fighting for a cause, or fighting for anything you are passionate about, leads toward a rocky path.  A path that is often a very hard one to traverse.  You will meet hatred, resistance, and other people who want to stand in your way.  Often you will want to give up.

I believe that successful acts of passion are acts which often lead to inspiration.  They allow short-sighted defeatist people, like me, to see that sometimes, just sometimes, if you try hard enough, and don’t give up, you can make things happen.  The tricky part is not allowing passion to become anger.  Not allowing it to become frustration, and allow it to become…inspiring.