Month: July 2018

I strive to be as genuine as possible. To do right in the midst of adversity. To be a gentlemen and a leader. To expect success and embrace responsibility. To keep an eternal perspective on the good things unseen, and be wary of being caught up in tangible, short lived things of this world. To have an eye for beauty and goodness; a heart for people.

A pen pal is a luxury. I could never take it personally. 

Camus has a quote that I often use to contextualize all my relationships: 

“When I was young I asked more of people than they could give: everlasting friendship, endless feeling. Now I know to ask less of them than they can give: a straightforward companionship. And their feelings, their friendship, their generous actions seem in my eyes to be wholly miraculous: a consequence of grace alone.”

I’m currently in Chicago for work. I was in Portland from Thursday until today for a “sales meeting”, which really was no meeting at all, just a company wide white water rafting trip with one of our channel partners. I manage the northwest, and one of my distributors invited me and a colleague to join in on the activity. I thought it’d be an opportunity to bond with some of the sales guys, but it was just a rafting trip, then it was over. No real discourse or relationship building. My colleague and I did manage to go to some restaurants and drink heavily. 

I’m not a big drinker, but my colleague is. Definitely an alcoholic. He’s a muslim too— no pork, but tons of alcohol. Great guy. Kind guy. Gentle spirit. Anyway, I found his propensity to over drink notable. Finding an excuse to go out of his way to not only consume alcohol, but over consume it. And when I’m with him, I’m just along for the ride. It’s part of the bonding experience, I tell myself. 

Behaviors like this always raise flags for me. I tend to probe the depths of people, try and figure out what makes them tick. Ask questions, get vulnerable, and really explore their inner world and motivations. I find that when you spend time peeling away the layers, you find a very predictable machine. 

Well, during dinner last night I discovered probably the biggest reason he over drinks, though he didn’t say it directly: his father was murdered about 10 years ago. That’s heavy shit. His father immigrated from india, worked his butt off an a CPA, and managed to buy several small businesses. One of his associates encouraged him to go into the liquor business. He was about the sell it off and retire. A black guy and two Mexican guys come into the store and fire off rounds at him and steal $150. His father dies. Terrible tragedy. 

Now I understand why he has this vice, and I’m much more sympathetic to it. 

Anyway. I’m in Chicago. Laying in bed. My laptop is propped up on my lap, and the screen is illuminating my face, and the skyscrapers show outside my window, with all the little gems of light dotting the buildings beyond. 

It’s a strange feeling to realize that you’re not a capitalist, but also not an idiot. 

I’m struggling with feeling like I have a place in the world. I can do anything, but there’s not much it seems I enjoy doing. The thought of being a therapist resonates with me, but so does every other occupation. I just like understanding. I love reading, and problem solving, especially with people. I’ve been consumed with math and physics lately. I wish I had a mentor to guide me along, and direct my steps.

I’m an ENFJ. Though, sometimes an ENTJ. I’m not sure how accurate it is, or how much weight I should place in it. 

I drank several beers and had a burger this evening. 

I have a laboratory expo I’ll be attending until Wednesday, then I head back to the bay. The American Association of Clinical Chemistry. I’ll be meeting with customers, and colleagues from Japan and Germany.

Portland was nice. I could see myself living there. The fact that an apartment is $1000 a month blew my fucking mind. I pay $1800 and I have a roommate. A one bedroom apartment in the bay area is between $3000 and $4000+. Absolutely ludicrous. But Portland was low key. Not a lot of traffic. People were nice. Things weren’t expensive. Great restaurants and beer. And the trees. Oh my. I love trees, and nature, and pretty much environment that isn’t fabricated, manufactured, and sterile. 

Regarding the Russia bullshit… i just.. It makes me depressed. My father is a hardcore, evangelical, young earth, pro Trump republican. You can imagine our relationship. Although, I’ve grown less hostile to him, and more accepting. 

These people live in an alternative reality, and while I understand that reality, I also struggle to figure out how reluctant they are to engage with the same “facts” that seem so compelling and persuasive to me. Like, at the end of the day, I don’t have a stake in any agenda. I just want to observe facts as they comport to reality, in the natural sense. I don’t want to distort in an effort to twist things in favor of assumptions that are ideological, or emotionally charged. I want straight logic, and I want that logic and the objective realizations to speak for themselves, and paint a picture thats irrefutable, and universally obvious. But somehow, there are alternative narratives that seem incapable of doing this… the extreme right and extreme left. And they both just sicken me. 

Trump is everything I loath. Everything that associates with him is just garbage, lies, trash. It’s just such an embarrassment. 

The Russia thing is so impossibly obviously true, it blows my mind. 

I still cannot believe that anyone questions it. That there are people who deny it, who think its the media, or deep state. I just… I just… I don’t know. 

I just hope Trump doesn’t do irreparable damage. He’s fuckin up all kinds of institutional structures, seeding federal courts with ideologues, and just undermining all kinds of conventions that brought stability to this country. 

I dunno. 

I drank a few beers tonight, and I feel drained. I didn’t do anything but travel today. 

I’m reading the book The Three Body Problem. It’s damn good. 

I’m suppose to be in a good place in life. I make good money. I work for a good company. I have a great job. I live in a great neighborhood, in the Bay Area. But I suffer from a perpetual existential crisis. I wonder if its chronic depression (my most recent psychotherapist things I have some kind of deep depression, like maybe genetic, or inflammation, or something). I just think that I grew up morbidly depressed, that’s due to a crazy ass upbringing, and now its my default mode. But the thing is, I’m not sad. That’s what I tell people. I’m not sad. I just don’t feel. I’m not “happy”, though I certainly can be. Life is gray. It’s trivial. I think, however. I think of enormous possibilities. I have these inspirational enthusiasms that take my imagination to all sorts of places. But I’m simultaneously discontent. It’s like a spiritual issue. Whatever that means. Like, there is no value. I have my ideals, and I clutch to these at whatever cost, but I often find myself clutching nothing at all. My ideals are made of nothing. So I reach and try to grasp, try to find footing, try to hold onto something worth while, something that’ll provide some existential stability, and I continually come up empty handed. 

So what is life. Another degree? A challenging degree? Consistency at work? Savings? A professional title? Influence? Power? Writing creative works? Producing art? Making businesses? Getting involved with politics? Instagram pictures of a picturesque life? The dog? The girlfriend? What is it? Is it being a traveling blogger? Being one of those four hour work week bros? Going into medicine? Health? Is it looking good? Or… is it being content? Satisfied? And just… accept what is. Not desiring or asking for anything more than what I have. And just… be a vegetable. Grow nice and healthy, without wanting more. Is this what billions of years of evolution has fated for me? 

So what is it? No one can answer these questions. My therapists don’t have a clue. I feel like no one has a god damn clue. 

“The meaning of life is to create meaning”. 

Like… thats great. On what timeline. How long can I sustain that meaning? Because, I can have meaningful things for moments, minutes, hours, week, months, even years… but I can’t sustain it forever. Meaning and fulfillment seem like sick jokes. Is that what life is about? The will for meaning? 

In all honesty, I just want to live. In the woods. Escape from people. I want my books. Maybe a few dozen. Maybe all of them. And journals. And nature. I want to kill and cultivate my food. Cook it by fire. I want to struggle. I want to suffer. I want my suffering to provide my meaning, not these social psychological games that seem endless. And I want to bath in the beauty of nature. I want her to try me, to teach me. I want to watch her, to learn from her. I want me and nature as close as possible. If it kills me, so be it. But the psychological games society plays, the branding, the signaling, the manipulative propaganda, the hive mentality, the irrationality. 

There are great things happening of course. I just struggle to frame all the greatness into some cohesive purpose beyond “self preservation”. Perhaps that’s all it is, but there’s no moral imperative guiding it. Framed in that way, its whatever it takes, and right and wrong is a justification of survival, of the tribe, of the greater good, of the greater good that I identify with. 

Anyway. I’m rambling. 

Information is so ubiquitous, “wisdom” is so common, accessing knowledge is so easy… that everyone is struggling to make sense and meaning of it all, and when we do, we want to share it with the world, lead society out of darkness, evangelize the truth, and have everyone appreciate the weight of our words and wisdom.

The entrepreneurs. Life coaches. Therapists. Political opinionators.

That’s like the trajectory of everyone.

Which again makes it meaningless.

The blind leading the blind.

I’m in a perpetual existential crisis. Not sure if that’s my default, or what. Existential crisis in the sense that, wherever I’m at, I recognize that my choices and daily decisions and goals could place me somewhere else, and the choices seem arbitrary in the scheme of things, but there are these idealized states that seem so attractive, so I’m constantly reevaluating my priorities and choices in the hope that my next set of decisions will lead me to these ideals, but of course even when the ideals are realized, they seem as smoke and mirrors, as if there was nothing there to begin with, so it really causes me to reflect on my judgment, and motivations, and approach.

Happiness and satisfaction are these elusive states.

I’m probably chronically depressed. But that’s okay. I can be happy. I can smile. But on an existential level, I’m not okay. I don’t like where I live (where I live in absolutely fine. It’s a great place prima facie). My job with the company is great, in the sense that the team is great, the company is treats me well, my manager is understanding and kind and realistic, and I make more money.

But I’m in debt. I could be debt free in 2.5 years if I just funneled 40% of my paycheck to it every month. Which is doable. Wouldn’t be a big sacrifice. But, it’s just like this purgatory. What is life. Paying off perpetual debt? I have been saving money for assets… maybe a cheap piece of land in Idaho or Montana, and a build it yourself cabin. Somewhere I can escape to, if I decide to disconnect.

I have not worked out more than a week at a time in 6 months. I am 6 months drug free, and hormone free. I am out of shape. Getting fat. Or at least more fat than I’ve been ever. I’m okay with it. It’s almost something I’m aiming for. Which is a weird feeling. I like want to feel the weight of disappointment and disgust. I do feel a growing urgency to reestablish a workout routine. It’s on the horizon, the maniacal urge to move and be active and fit again is materializing.

I visited my best buddy and my place in Nashville a few times the past few months. I go on weekend trips. Just a couple days. It’s nice to be there and see him and his wife and his life. He’s doing great. I miss him.

G and I are still together. We’ve had ups and downs, but we worked them out. We’re in a good place, I think. Minus the fact that I’m in an existential crisis and that influences the fate of the relationship. But we have a stable relationship. She’s stabilized. She trusts me. She’s still needy from time to time, but that’s girls. She loves me and she’s there for me and it’s nice having each other. I don’t know what the future holds. She’s a good person. A loving person. And a hard worker. These are all good things.

So yea. I don’t know. There’s a big void in my life. I’ve tried not filling it with vices or fixations or obsessions, but rather allow myself to be.

I’ve been reading voraciously. Maybe 1-2 books a week. It’s been nice. It’s definitely become a nice habit. It fills my time, and my mind, with good things.

I’ve been studying for the GMAT inconsistently. I just want something to work for. I’ll study for two weeks then not for two weeks. It’s been off and on, but overall the urge for An MBA is sticking with me. Wish I could get on a hardcore schedule.

I’ve been detaching from social media, and it’s been mostly great. I deleted a lot of my apps. I try to just not pick up my phone. I still read a fuck ton of hacker news articles, but on the whole it’s less stupid bullshit.

Just living. Thinking. Waiting for an opportunity to see things differently, to engage with the world differently, with my self differently.

I need something. Feeling mostly alone and disconnected. Would love to get excited about something. Inspired. Energized. Something with a purpose that pulls me, that lifts my spirits.

Hello world.

What is life, anyway. We speak of dreams, of goals, but there is a purgatory waiting for us from now until their achievement. After living through the purgatory time and time again, it’s understandable when I get a little wary of the next goal.

So. My life. I’ve been reading some books. Mostly about ideas. Sometimes math.

My life is fuckin pathetically boring. I work. I have a good job. My life is “good”. In the sense that it’s regular, stable, predictable. All things I struggle to embrace. Life is stability, but creation is chaos.

This weekend I did absolutely nothing on Saturday. I read. I listened to books on tape. I slept in. I worked on some GMAT for an hour or two.

Saturday night I picked up G and we came home, made guacamole, and watch a movie. I can’t even remember which one. As we went to bed she wanted to make love, and I didn’t, so she got up and went outside to have a beer and smoke a cigarette.

Recently I haven’t really been in the mood for sex. I don’t know if its my overall lack of enthusiasm for life, or low T, or my lack of desire to fuck myself since I’m so out of shape and haven’t been working out. But her sex drive is always through the roof. And she can get whiney and sappy and just needy, and it turns me off. Let me chase. Seduce me a little babe. Don’t just melt all over me. It gets old.

Sunday morning I made breakfast. Then we fucked good and hard. Then we got my motorcycle ready, got it washed and fueled up, and embarked on an 8 hour trek to the pacific coast, through red wood groves, stopping at little dive bars or deli’s or nature walks along the way. It was resplendent weather. Radiant and rejuvenating.

We got home and watched Generation Iron 2. I think I saw it already, but I wanted her to see it and get a glimpse of what that underground world was like. She wasn’t into it. She loves my masculinity, but she isn’t a big fan of huge muscles.

I didn’t want to fuck again. Oh well. She was mad, and did the whole cigarette and beer thing again while I passed out. We woke up this morning and fucked again. She was happy. She just needs dick to feel good and secure.

Anyway… I’m in an unhealthy place. I’m not like, sad. Although, I’m depressed and unsatisfied. I feel dead inside. I long for stimulation, for meaning, for purpose. The thought of a secure, unstimulating job just wrecks me.

A part of me thinks about working for this company for years to come, and I think how blessed I am. Then I think about how this is my life, and the only one I have, and how sad that it. That i’ll slave away to play this game, this debt game, this paycheck game. For how long? how long must I play? I can realistically pay off $50k a year. That means in 2.5 years I’ll be debt free, and 34. Not cool.

I need to write more. More poetically, with more reflection, not just typing stream of consciousness.

I posted on Craigslist about a secret society, about a game. The rules? Protect the game. Promote the game. Enjoy the game. I got several people asking me to play. I think what I’m gonna do is come up with a game where people receive instructions where they go to a location and find a cache left by someone else which contains the next set of instructions. And the game keeps adding one person after an iteration, and soon there will be hundred of people going on adventures, planting caches of instructions for others to find. At the end, the instructions have them meet at a location, and everyone unknowingly meets.

I need to think about this… and plan it. It sounds complex, and it is, and it’ll depend on everyone collaborating and working together and doing it.

I may just begin my planting something somewhere and giving someone instructions to go get it, like an easter egg hunt. Could be fun! And stimulating, and alleviate boredom.

But what I really want to do is start a cult, or a secret society…

There’s a resurgence of interest in the use of LSD for a variety of therapeutic purposes. I’d like to recount my own stance on the topic, provide some insight into my history with the drug, as well as some advice for would be psychonauts.

To begin, I’m a huge proponent of safe psychedelic use, specifically LSD.

Why?

I was massively depressed and suicidal growing up (I had family problems, and two of my best friends killed them selves at 13 and 17). I dropped out of high school. I was homeless and estranged from my family.

At around 17 years old I experimented with LSD and mushrooms, and while I didn’t realize it then, my life massively changed for the better. Maybe I grew up. Maybe I took responsibility for my life. Or maybe… there was a synergistic effect that accompanied my psychedelic use. Of course, my religious family thinks it was all their prayer and god’s work… because it is a miracle. I should be dead, or some deadbeat loser living in a gutter.

However, as I’ve grown older, the more I believe that my psychedelic use had a profound impact on my mind, and my ability to perceive the world and my sense of self differently, in an empowering way, which allowed me to break from from self-limiting perceptions and beliefs.

I ended up attending a top 12 university, and achieved more than I thought was possible in those adolescent years. I worked hard and thought big. It wasn’t that it imbued me with special powers, it simply revealed a way of looking at the world that was much more elastic that anything I could have imagined.

Most of my friends at that university experimented with LSD, and none of them are what you would call crazy or possess poor judgment. Quite the contrary. They all are doing amazing things. They’re all deep and insightful, and righteously responsible.

Years later, when I thought about powerfully it reshaped my notion of reality and transformed the potential living within me, it prompted me to become an evangelist for psychedelic use. I share it with whomever I feel would benefit, educating them on the research, on the negative stigmas, and emphasizing how necessary it is to respect the substance and approach it with care and good intent.

Psychedelics have gotten such a terrible reputation. I believe they are immensely helpful for anxiety and depression, specifically LSD.

I believe psychedelic therapies needs to be adopted as an alternative to current psychiatric therapies which are toxic and destructive and deadening by comparison. (I was on countless drugs growing up, dozens, prescribed by psychiatrists… they did nothing. Just made me more dead inside.)

I also believe psychedelics open the mind in ways that only radical life experiences can.

I think this mind expansion can be useful for learning, creating, and perceiving new ways of looking at the world.

And while I’ve yet to see it negatively effect anyone other than a bad trip, which, seen in the right light, can be a therapeutic experience, I know they need to be respected and understood.

I also realize that some people with a family history of mental disorders like schizophrenia, would be better off staying away. For example, some people have used psychedelics, and they go crazy. But I ask myself: how many of those people were crazy to begin with, before we framed their condition through their use of psychedelics? How many would end up like that if they never tried psychedelics to begin with?

I tend to think that the fear is over dramatized.

But I do emphasize respecting its use in a profound way.

It changes you.

The upside is that real LSD is so rare, and distributed by so few people, that the chances of people finding it and abusing it or using it irresponsibly are slim.

The first time I tried it was with a musician buddy: long blond hair, torn denim jeans, long sleeve thermals top. We met in jazz band. He was a transfer spring senior year, and we hit it off, and instead of playing with the band, we jammed out in the band closet and talked life and music theory.

While he was no guru, he had some experience, and he was one of the few and first people that had access to real LSD-25 (he was from a hippy town in CO). At the time, I was extremely interested in being able to see the world differently. I was suicidal, and desperate to escape from this internal mental hell that I had been living with for years, and trying to escape by more destructive means.

The first experience entailed a sleep over. We each took one hit. It wasn’t that potent; it really didn’t do much. We talked about life forever. Girlfriends. Family. Just life. Laughing. Listening to stories.

I was expecting mass hallucinations, but there was none. Just colors. Everything had more potent color. Vivid. Almost a halo of rainbow. I had a giddiness. But no hallucinations like I was expecting.

We walked some suburban woodlands for a bit and everything was magical and exciting. I couldn’t sleep, and was hoping for the marshmallow dinosaurs and electric zebras to manifest, but they never did.

The whole experience changed what I thought of psychedelics. I thought it’d be a more visual experience, but it ended up being much more psychological. 8-12+ hours in total.

My first time on mushrooms I was in a group of best friends. My friend and I had ventured into Florida cow pastures, donned in camouflage, the days after rainfall and had picked a pound or more. The Internet was crude back in 05, but we found resources for safely identifying them.

As a group of 7, we divided evenly and consumed. Probably 5 shrooms a piece of varying size. They were not dry. We ate with brownies and milk.

It was intense. Hilarious. Colorful. At times overwhelming. Smiling. Laughing. Confusing. We walked, we talked, we looked at the moon and stars, examined frogs and flowers and grass and trees.

All in all, a lot of bonding. It was an amazing experience. 4-6 hours in total.

Dosage is approximately 100-150 mcg per tab. If it’s older, and not well kept, potency will diminish. Liquid is harder to determine, but one drop is approximately the same as one tab.

If you take 1 tab, don’t expect anything dramatic. Mostly a body trip. But depends on mindset.

If you take 2 tabs, you will have a more powerful experience. More visuals.

As you take more, the trip is more intense. With that intensity comes a lot more unpredictability. Your mind produces all kinds of images and connections, and you can get absorbed in those manifestations, for better or worse.

For any trip, set aside the day.

For LSD, it takes about 30-90 minutes for the initial effects to begin.

There is a period where you begin to peak— anxiety heightens, excitement peaks, things begin to jitter and perceptions loosen. There is usually an uneasiness, a giddiness.

This state is dose dependent, but usually lasts between 2-6 hours.

After the peak, the come down and “reintegration” can last another 6 or more hours. This period the mind is no longer “peaking” with energy. It’s making sense of the new perceptions, and integrating them back into a functional whole.

There are major perception changes on a trip. Senses. Time. Space. Things and perceptions warp, and you gain an awareness of how flimsy and unreliable our perceptions really are.

When you go to sleep, you wake up as though nothing happened, except that you have memories of this experience that resemble a powerful dream. There are no lingering side effects, other how powerful the experience was, how deeply it affected your notion of reality.

I usually feel very refreshed, as if the world was anew. Like the cobwebs have been cleaned and the fog lifted. There is a clarity.

One thing I always tell others and remind myself is that the entire trip is a manifest of my mind. It’s not outside me, it’s inside me. As a result, there is no reason to lose control. Do not react hastily to thoughts and feelings and perceptions. Accept them. Embrace them. Reflect on them. They are you. They are apart of you. You possess them. Do not let them possess you. Do this, and you will never have a bad trip. I have safely tripped more times than I can count.

When you’re approaching a trip, there are two aspects that are most important for preparing the experience: mind-set and setting.

We could discuss what set and setting entails, but that’s a long conversation. In short: good attitude, good vibes, safe setting, comfortable and familiar. In your home. In familiar nature. I’d avoid public places and people.

And it’s preferable for the first number of trips to have a safe and understanding “sitter” or “guide” there who is reliable and calm and supportive.

As you gain experience, you can explore the bounds of set and setting, to push your mind to places for therapeutic purposes.

Psychedelics amplify whatever thoughts or surroundings you’re in. They turn up the volume, so to say, for good or ill.

The bad trips are the most therapeutic. You’re working through repressed thoughts and feelings that otherwise go unnoticed or denied or suppressed as a natural psycho response to pain.

Ridding self deception is the root of all therapy.

When that negativity comes to mind during a trip it’s often uncomfortable as hell. You work through it. You accept it. You embrace it. You see it in the right light, with the right perspective.

What you don’t do is resist thoughts or feelings or experiences. That only causes more problems.

You can’t run from yourself.

I’m half convinced I’m dreaming, and this bizarre circus of reality is nothing more than a cruel illusion. I can’t stand media, and I can’t stand social media most of all. I can’t stand politics, I can’t stand consumerism, I can’t stand the absurdity of our world. Everything is a charade. Everything is a joke. There is no up or down. No right or left. No good or bad. It’s all tribalism and self righteous outrage and virtue signaling. There is no credibility. There is no authority. Truth has become an instrument of power: power to dominate the narrative, regardless of consequence.

I just cannot understand what the common man believes anymore. I can’t believe anything from the talking heads on TV.

Twitter is a joke. Everyone is a joke. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone thinks their opinion is more right than anyone else’s. Everyone weighs in on everything, like it matters. Opinions appeal to popular sentiment become truth. It’s an ocean of bullshit. Whatever gets more likes, whatever gets more attention. False or deviant shit gets outrage, which the righteous respond to and get likes, and the false shit becomes elevated as legitimate and worthy.

Washington DC is a joke. These politicians are all jokes. They’re all power hungry idiots. They’re all products of our narcissistic culture. I can’t bear to listen to them talk. Like they have any authority. They’re all petulant children. They’re all daft. Dumb. Stupid as shit. Just arrested with self importance.

Our culture is glued to data. It’s the matrix. We plug in to our content feeds. Content is king. Data is king. We read and consume data. It shapes our worldview. Tech companies are worth billions because they capture our attention. That is their value proposition: eyes on their platform, consuming their content.

This is the world we live in.

What is true? Our opinion about facts? What facts? The facts we get from the Internet? How to verify? Who’s authority? It’s all arbitrary. Simulacra and simulation.

It’s a virtual reality.

All order is the result of gravity, is the result of mass, is the result of attraction between and among particles. This orders elements, and life. Mass is responsible for all complexity.

Gravity is order.

Mathematics only makes physical sense when gravity or mass is introduced.

There is a deep relationship between mass and mathematics.

I’ve been in Florida the past week visiting my family. My parents rented a house on the water in Palmetto, FL. I’m on a flight home to San Francisco, heading to Chicago O’Hare before switching planes and flying to SFO.

It’s near impossible to capture how often the inspiration to write occurs, but I feel inept. It’s wrong, of course. Writing is writing. Is breathing. There’s no formality to capture.

I’ve been studying for the GMAT, albeit slowly, and not very intensely. This is something I stand to correct in the upcoming weeks. My sole goal is to achieve a 750+ on the GMAT, with the intent of going to Berkeley for a part time MBA program.

I’ve been reading more diligently, though I’m struggling to determine the net benefit beyond checking off books. I want to reflect more often on the content of my readings. I’d like to to apply to all the content I consume. I want to write a blog post on everything I consume, be it Twitter, Hacker News, Audio books, or regular books. I need to cultivate a network of associations that I can leverage in reasoning. My cathedrals of thought are in need of maintenance and major repair.

What is the point of reading, or consuming, if there is no building?

Content collects like timber, steel, cement, stone. It’s up to me to fashion it into something indestructible. When chaos and pain and fury present themselves, I am steadfast, strong, and fearless.

I’d like to collect, and build. What is learning if not by doing? There is nothing passive about knowledge. It’s strength lies in its application.

My goal is to strengthen my mental capabilities, my cognitive capabilities, so I can compete, and add value to whichever cause I choose to undertake.

My current cause is overcoming the GMAT. Its my dragon, my serpent, that I must slay if I wish to transform my self, and transmute mind into something more powerful.

Part of getting into Berkeley will mean I do something more than what I’m doing. In addition to studying for the GMAT and working, what else can I do to bolster my standing? What can I do, create, build, work on, start up, volunteer for? My life and actions need to communicate more than average. It’s important that I move forward. There must be a plan, and I must take full responsibility for all the actions that would cause that plan to come to fruition.

What steps can I take?
Excel at my job; demonstrate excellence; go above and beyond at the work place.
Visit Berkeley campus regularly; establish a sense of place there, root my desires, my dreams.
Visit the admissions department; meet the admissions team; learn about what I can do to get in.
Study for the GMAT; study regularly, with intensity and focus; take a practice test once a week, the full 3-4 hours, every Saturday morning, without exception.

I need to explore the fields of consulting and private equity. I’m split between these two fields. McKinsey. Boston Consulting Group. Accenture. Deloitte. PWC. I’m not even sure what private equity fund I’d apply to, which is prestigious, which one focuses in the field I’m interested in.

Whatever field I decide to enter into, I’d like it to relate to automation. Doesn’t matter if its business automation, or industrial automation, or any type of applied computer automation. Automation in general. Sales processes.

What industries, what businesses, what companies can automate? Automation is for mass production, for repetitive value-add processes. Artificial intelligence, data collection.

Private equity. Identifying niche companies and acquiring, merging, consolidating. Buying companies and reorganizing resources, restructuring organization, management, finances, goods, redirecting market strategy.

I don’t want to stay in sales forever. It was a means, but it is not an end.

I want to lose weight. I’m probably 207lbs, but rather being 7-10% bf, I’ve lost muscle, and accumulated fat. I’m more like 15-17%. I’d like to be thin again. Get may waist down to a 31-32, rather than a 33-34.

I will run more. Daily disciplines. Struggle. Just decide on a time, and a duration, and do it. Its routine. Make it routine. Accept the pain and discomfort as apart of the process and growth.

My niece is six months old. She’s so precious. It makes me think of having a family. One day.