100 Push Ups!

Today, I took the initial test for the 100 push up challenge! I did 20 of the “good” kind and I honestly feel a little drained. It’s definitely been awhile.

Thunderstorms and kids

Last night, the thunder storm outside woke up my daughter. My wife and I got her and let her sleep in our bed for a while. It was nice for a while… hearing her breath and being able to comfort her…

Well, until she kicked me off of the bed…

What the!?

Yesterday morning, I took my oldest daughter to the park. It was great for both of us; we had the whole place to ourselves. She got my undivided attention and I got a moment to forget about the rest of the world and focus online on spending time with her.

As we were playing, a homeless man came by… Well, I assumed he was homeless. Like most Americans, I think that if you walk around with a shopping cart filled with bottles and cans and look like you haven’t washed in days –if not weeks- than you could very well be homeless.  He started talking to us but I couldn’t understand him very well. The whole time, I’m being polite but I’m not very open to having a deep conversation with him. I just want to spend time with my daughter…

So, he walks away and I continue to play with my child…

Then I look around and catch him spitting on one of her toys!

WHAT THE HELL!

But, I keep my cool… Why get mad? This guy has issues already. From the look of it, he’s either hit bottom or somewhere very close, like 1/X for very, very large values of X. Trust me, part of me wants to knock out what little sense he has…

But that won’t help anyone, my daughter didn’t see it. What would she do if she saw her father attack someone for no reason? Or worse, getting beat up by someone (which is probably the real outcome). A day from now, do you think anyone would care?

Well, homeless guy, I hope this has made you feel better about yourself.

Time to give up?

This weekend, my little world was rocked. Not by a single event but a collection of decisions and events. Things I have control over but for whatever reason have chosen not to pursue.
The most notable, not making getting my degree a priority.
Honestly, I could of had it months ago by writing 20 pages of bullshit, but a combination of childish disobedience to cave into "The man", not wanted to admit that it was time to grow up and... well, maybe part of me wanted to see how far I could fall. I'd been a very good student since before I can remember. It's one of the primary pillars that I had used to base my identity and when school was "almost" over, I didn't know what to do. So I didn't do anything...

And have been drifting since...

But I still had a couple dreams/desires...
The first, learning to dance: I sometime joke around with my friends that you don't really know what life is like until someone leaves you on the dance floor. That's the most vivid memory that I had when I was in high school. I didn't have a lot of self-esteem back then and I was caught up with the notion of what I was supposed to be versus just being who I was and on the way to what I wanted to be. In college, I vowed and eventually became pretty good at dancing. It became one of my passions and I took that feeling of accomplishment and used it as energy to improve other areas of my life. When I was nearing the end of school, I took some other dance classes but it seemed that I couldn't get that feeling again. I stopped doing as often and then I got scared to get back on the dance floor; the fear of comparing myself against what I was able to do and what I thought I should be able to do...

My other desire is to program in Cocoa. I've been playing with this dream for 6 years. Six years...
That's actually the first time I've actually thought about how much time I've put into just thinking about something instead of just doing something about it. I open the books, I do the tutorials, but I get stopped when I think about how crappy my code is going to be versus some imaginary other programmer. Honestly, it's one of the stupidest reasons not to do something... "I'm not going to do this because someone else can probably do it better, so I'm not going to even attempt to improve my skills."

So what shock me up?
I came across a blog entry by Aaron Hillegas (Leaving the Classroom), the author of Cocoa Programming for Mac OSX. A book that I've been lugging around a keystone of my fantasy of being a Cocoa programmer. In my dream, I was going to finish the book, go to one of his classes and become some kind of ubber programmer. Why was this happening? Why would he do this to MY dream!

He wanted to focus on the important things in his life.

And that's when it hit me...

I haven't been doing that. I've been just floating through life... Drifting along with these fantasies in my head. If these dreams were important to me, I should have been pursuing them.

I felt overwhelmed and I had to sit down. "What have I been doing all this time?" "What is important to me?"

My family is important to me.
My degree is important if only to make my parents proud.
Dancing is important to me.
And being a Cocoa Programmer is still important to me.

I won't give up. These are the things that are important to me.

Thank you for helping with my dreams and slapping me back to reality.

To my former hero

Today, I saw more of the real you. You’re human just like the rest of us. I don’t deserve to be treated the way you treat me. I’m not your dog.

And you are no longer my hero.

Linking Facebook

Well, I’ve just linked my facebook page with this blog. I’m not too happy with the EULA for both sites…

I know I don’t have a lot of content, but it’s all mine and I’d like to keep it that way.

So where’s the shake up…

Well, it turns out being a father of two and working full time can be kind of busy and I’ve found that it’s soo much easier to not do anything.

I haven’t added anything to my accomplishment calendar although I’ve done plenty of things… like… um… change diapers…