Today is a special day. It’s my 25th birthday.
Today there is a lot to reflect on. It’s 10:57 pm right now. I’ve lived 25 years, and if life goes well, I got about 50 more good years.
Looking back, the last 5 years have been crazy. So much has happened:
I got internships, met friends, was in the newspaper; lived on my own, found love, won a hackathon, graduated college. I moved to San Francisco. I lost love, I got my first job, first raise, first promotion. I almost had a vasectomy, and then didn’t.
I’ve had a plethora of relationships, and a plethora of one-night-stands.
I went on my first backpacking trip, then another, then another. I fell in love with rock climbing. I re-fell in love with running. I ran two marathons, climbed a 5-pitch sport route, ascended the US’s highest peak, and witnessed 2 too many near-death experiences.
I traveled to a city on my own. I traveled to a country on my own. I traveled the WORLD on my own.
I got a new job, and just last week, I lost my position.
Now what does 25 mean to me.
25 is the beginning of life. 25 is the beginning of getting serious.
A month ago, on May 22nd, I made a promise to lose 30 pounds. Or, as I’m calling it, 25 at 25. For many reasons, some of them bad, some good. The main reason is to get better at rock climbing: the less weight you have, the less you have to pick ujp. I also want to be more confident. I want to push myself, and see what I can do with my body. I want to see what I can achieve.
I’ve already lost 14 pounds, in 5 weeks, which is not too shabby. I started at 189.6, I’m now 174.6. I believe in myself, regardless of whether others do, or even if others think it’s a bad idea.
I also got a personal trainer. I’ll try to pick up weight-lifting. By January 1st, 2018, I expect to be the fittest I’ve been in my whole life.
And that’s why fitness is such a great goal. It’s the one thing you can COMPLETELY CONTROL. You can’t control losing your house. You can’t control falling in love, or even finding love. You can’t control how much you can get paid. You can influence all these things. But at the end of the day, your fitness, and your health, and what you eat is 100% under your control.
Once you achieve your fitness goals, then you can say yes, I can do anything, as I conquered the one goal that requires me to do everything.
And my speculation is this: once you can accomplish anything, then of course you become more confident. And people see that confidence and they’re drawn to it — in your career, in your personal life. (It’s just like playing life on a bit easier difficulty).
And I hope this new found confidence will reflect in those that I date — no longer going for one night stands, or saying, “sure, an open relationship sounds fine”. I spent time on myself, mentally, and physically, and you’re damn right you’re going to date just me or nobody.
And this means dating people who share my fitness goals — no more (as my one friend put it) voluptuous woman. If I’m going to put this sort of effort in my fitness goals, I expect you too as well. It’s important to me that my significant other and I can do things together, and that doesn’t work when we’re on different levels of fitness.
There’s another big thing going on in my life right now. I’m moving: by Wednesday, June 28th, I’ll be living in Oakland, CA.
I’m dreading the move right now. I’m afraid it’ll push me farther from my friends, I’m afraid I won’t go out as much, I’m afraid I’ll get depressed.
But these are also blessings: it’ll make me focus more on myself, my fitness, my career goals. It’ll also make me focus on my security classes, and side-projects, and finally break into the security industry which I’ve been telling everyone I’m planning on doing for the longest time.
Moving to Oakland will also test me on a saying I’ve always held dear, but never really applied: “live below your means”. My Dad always used to say it(as I feel most dad’s do). But it’s a good piece of advice. Yes I could live in SF, yes I could stay in this fancy studio, but is it really worth the exorbitant price I pay? I think being humble is important to your character; and, at some point, if you do find yourself needing to live by such means, you’ll already be used to it.
I think this move also signals a change in my behavior: cut the fat out of my life.
I think life, like fitness, is about bulking and cutting. My first 3 years here in SF, I took every opportunity and said “YES“. But now is the time to say, okay, which one of these things do I really value, and which ones do I not care about. I think, for at least the coming months and year, I want to focus on:
-Focus on my fitness
-Building deeper relationships with friends and significant others
-Focus on my career
Everything else can go by the wayside.
And my way of cutting the “fat” out of life is to hit the reset button. I find it easiest to do this when you have a catalyst — change your routine, shake things up; like quit your job, move, travel the world, experience something life changing. This time, I happen to be doing two of those — changing jobs, and moving.
(I’m sure this “reset” technique is why I have problems maintaining relationships — family, friends, significant others. But that’s for another blog post).
So once again, let me press that reset button, but really hard this time. I want to make some big changes in life, so I’m going to have make some big sacrifices.
And I will start saying NO more.
No I don’t want to go to that party, I want to study for my class.
No I’m not going to drink that beer full of worthless calories.
No I don’t really want to go on that hike, I want to go climbing.
No, I don’t want to go on a date with you, it’s not going to go anywhere.
I think I read it in Steve Job’s biography, and it really stuck with me — that you need to cut everything out of a company, minus 2-3 things — and really focus on those things. That’s the only way the company will create good products. And I feel like that’s very true to life as well.
So what do the next 5 years hold? Things I want to accomplish:
-Move my career into security and start doing a job I LOVE and not just LIKE
–Buy a house(see: live below your means)
-Find a girl, and truly fall in love. Anything else(read: marriage, heart break, divorce) is optional
-Do a triathlon, then do that damn Ironman.
-Get really good at climbing.
-Find a city that I love, that is not the Bay, and move there.
But anyways, It’s late now, almost 12:30 AM, and I’m being melodramatic. While I am planning on doing the things I say, the words I have said that are not quantifiable you should take with a grain of salt. I will make my goals happen, we’ll just have to see if it’s an explosion or a slow burn 🙂
Now let’s step out of this close-up picture of immediate problems, and look at bigger picture.
I think though I may be on a “cut” phase of life, that I still have much to grow.
I was walking down the street the other day after a date that didn’t turn out how I hoped, and I was thinking of how it could have been better. Was I not interesting enough? Was I not cute/hot enough? Did we not have chemistry? Was she not interesting enough for me? Did I not find her cute? Did we not have much in common?
Which led to the thought: well what do I like? what do I stand for? Who am I? And I realized, I still don’t know.
I’m 25. And I’m still thinking about myself, and who I want to be, and who I am, and what I like, and what I want to do.
And of course you’ll always be growing, but I was still surprised by still how much I still don’t know about myself. I still ask these questions with a passion, with a loneliness and hunger, as if something was missing from me, and I had to find it.
And that’s exciting.
I often think of a comic I saw from Southpark(I know) in times like these.
While I’m not sad from anyone dumping me, I still have strong feelings such as these for life. And knowing I have still have as much of a fire for life as I did 10 years ago, knowing that I still have goals, desires and dreams, and the willingness to achieve those things. Knowing that I still have that fire, is the most beautiful thing in the world.
And having that fire allows you to experience ecstasy
And having that fire allows you to feel beautiful anguish
And having that fire allows you to create beautiful things
And having that fire allows you to experience beautiful things
Because having that fire is what it means to be alive
And that fire is why
Life is just beginning.