Business principles #1

Making your dreams a reality takes much more than the realization of your goal.
After reading dozens of self-help books, hundreds of blogs and pursuing my own personal struggle for success, I have come up with a general recipe, or outline, of key ingredients.
Since all I seem to be doing lately is writing about business, I figured I may as well start listing what I have drawn up from my own introspective contemplations.
Today I will spell out three concepts that I feel make up the category of "Drive" in pursuing an objective.
These are, in chronological order: Inspiration, Motivation, and Determination.
Of these three concepts, inspiration is the easiest. It can come from a thought, something you heard, something you saw or something you experienced. The inspiration is the root of the dream. I haven't met many people who have trouble finding inspiration, although many people say they are searching for it.
What I have found is hoards of people, myself included, who perpetually search for the motivation to take action on what inspired them. Having done this myself, I spent hundreds of hours searching the internet and talking to people to find some way of sparking the motivation to get started on an objective and stay consistent.
Since consistency is key, motivation is what must be maintained to see a project through, right?
Wrong.
The third and most important element in this triad is determination. That is the driving force that underlies all of what it takes to be successful.
Many people find it easy to start a project, and some are even able to stay motivated to continue with it, but for any project, plan or agenda that will take real time and yield true results, determination is the key (or determining) factor.
That internal drive that forces you to see something through is more essential to the pursuit of success than any other factor, in my humble opinion.
So many people spend time searching for the external motivation to do something that they ignore what it will take to finish. I believe that if we see things from the end and map our plan of attack backwards, we are much more likely to start, and finish.

Journey to Ixtlan

26 days and counting.

I have slowly come to realize that next year might be the most important year to date, in terms of personal and professional growth. I am excited beyond humanly concievable, but it is also overwhelming considering the task that lies in front of me.

Failure is not even a consideration, let alone an option. There are thousands of people who would love the opportunity to do this, so I know that I have to succeed and become one with destiny.
Goodbye sacred journalism. Goodbye roach motels and shoddy apartments. Goodbye taking it easy.
Step in line and join the corporate world. Easy now, this won't hurt a bit. Take it nice and slow. No need to rush.

Just a pinprick and after that you shouldn't feel a thing.

one tree hill

Like I'm riding this beautiful wave, but not really engaged in it all. Its like sledding down a steep swowhill with no trees in the way. Its like that.
Fifteen minutes past deadline and no one has said anything yet. Can I push it further? Maybe I should.
Maybe you should always push it further.
The lights go out at midnight. Then it's darkness. Just you and the room. And you're not really sure if that's even there. Alone in the dark.
If a tree falls in space -- pulled into orbit by gravity -- and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
What is the sound of one fool clapping?
If chess is an intelligent man's game and checkers is for fools, then what about Risk?

10,000 degrees

Its hotter than shit out here and the ground is starting to look like one big whirlpood of steaming sand.
A homeless man asked me for a dollar today and I sold him a bag of weed instead. I thought it was more appropriate.
I am one with the desert. There is no pain and no pleasure, just heat. I am the phoenix sun.
Not sure what I am going to do when this 88 cent bottle of sunkist lemonade runs out. But I will figure something out.
Nothing to write about right now, but still 18 minutes before I have to go back to work. Dont want to spend one more minute in this cesspool. The girl at the gym was cute enough, but she looked like she had a drug problem that couldnt be handled. She was spinning out of control, caught in this whirlwind known as the Mojave.
Oops, all out of soda. Going to have to find something else to pass the time.

An inconvenient proposal, a modest truth

I read that your net income can be calculated by taking the net incomes of your closest friends and averaging it.
Its scary how true this is. Lately I am tipping the average downward for a lot of my friends.

But it makes sense right? Rich people hang around rich people. Poor people hang around poor people. Middle class hang with middle class.

It would be incongruent for Donald Trump to be hanging out with a homeless person. Even if they got along, it would be awkward.

So how do we improve our lot in life if we cant just jump social classes with ease. Thats a difficult question.
My answer is this. Find a way to bring all your friends with you as you improve. In my circle, we all want to make it big. Not just mediocre, but huge.

At this point, most of us are starting to realize that takes education or hard work. Lotto thinking is a thing of the past. It really is a matter of making it happen. Thats the hardest part. Taking the risk and seeing where it goes.
I've never slept good, so now I read about investing during the night, while the rest of the world dreams of money.
Even though I have no money to invest.

Believing in signs is very important. Watch for them, and they will start to appear. And it would be best to follow them. Sometimes what you thought was a sign was not a sign. But you followed it anyway. After doing this enough, you learn to tell the difference.

It is too hot out here

Frying like an oven in the dry heat of the desert. 150 miles to go.
Nothing like being by yourself 14 hours a day. Thankful for my friends who I call every 5 minutes. Surprised they still answer.
The sound of the crackheads outside. It reminds me of a drug rehab. But not the fun kind. Not the kind you see on tv. No one likes to see the reality of it. The cracked freebase pipes, the burnt-out faces. The dirty fingernails.
It's been like this for too long now. What am I doing out here in the desert?

It's raining sunshine and I have no umbrella. Just this pocket full of sand. Drifting on a memory. Waiting for the dawn.

The television is my best friend. The internet is eternal.
Time passes, the world turns. I am.

Saturday morning cartoons

Lost in the desert watching Saturday morning cartoons for the first time in years. The fact that ninja turtles is still on blows my mind.
Somehow, the animation looks horrible compared to how it used to be in the 90s.
Apparently, the turtles are now living in the year 2105. How exciting for them.
Most of the rest of the channels have on computer animation cartoons, which also look very poorly done.
I remember when the first two computer animated Saturday morning cartoons came on TV. "Bump in the Night" and "Reboot". It was so unreal. I remember thinking that it took them days to put together each show. I watched them on principle.

Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons are also still on, just upgraded for the modern day. I wonder if TV will ever be able to recapture the grittyness of the 90s. That time in history where we were still testing the waters and pushing the barriers of censorship. We took it pretty far, in the end, until the great progressive movement that began in the 60s lost its steam somehow, and the conservativism that would define the early 21st century finally pushed back.


Was this post really about Saturday morning cartoons?

Box

Away with the wind. And the desert I am in. Again.
How does this keep happening? And whats the use of spending time chasing a dream that isnt as real as it seems?

So much for that. Its windy as shit and the dust is blowing around like some kind of dry monsoon. I am exhausted and hungry and bored and trapped inside this little room that is shrinking with every step. You can only hump a rock for so long, until you realize that you are humping a rock. But by then it is too late, and you feel uninspired and ashamed.

But not me. I enjoy humping rocks. I do it daily. Sometimes twice on tuesdays.

This post has been unhelpful in expressing what I am trying to say, so I will try again tomorrow.

Zero hour.