The Myth of Wasted Time
Aug 27th
The alarm rings, set it for another hour.
Make it three.
Should write. The TV is more interesting. There’s a pile of books five years old that I’ve never touched. Get fifty pages in, turn the computer on.
Distraction, distraction, distraction.
Should. So many things I should be doing, but I can’t because the day is gone. Oh well; sleep and start again.
Repeat.
Kick myself for doing nothin’.
Repeat.
I’m trying to tell myself something.
Stop. Listen-it’s important.
So stop I did and I listened well. My goals haven’t changed nor have my passions but desperation was not a worthy fuel. It obscured my desires and made me think I had to follow a path other than my own to the destination of my choosing.
I’ve come to value action more than I used to. As a kid I did all my living inside my head. It’s great for simulations but the nitty-gritty gets lost in translation. It doesn’t matter if you think a plane can fly if you never try to get it into the air, likewise it doesn’t matter what you think you’re capable of if you never do it. It’s an ego boost without growth. That’s not my cup of tea, not anymore.
In the west we value action too highly. Not intelligent action, movement. Repeating patterns. Filling schedules. I could see through it-I always could-but I felt anxious whenever I broke the mold. I made a lot of progress by pushing through it but with each step I learned how tight I was wound.
Silence.
The things I thought were pushing me forward were just another way to spin my wheels. “There isn’t enough time.” There never is with that attitude.
Breathe.
It seems my going quiet had some people concerned. I assure you there is nothing to worry about. I’m fine-better than that, all told. I’m a bit “serious business” right now but my sense of humor ain’t gone, I’ve just lost my tolerance for anything that doesn’t connect from point A to point B. Everything came under examination and everything that lacks purpose will soon be quelled.
This blog is for personal development but more than anything it’s my soapbox. That’s always been its place. It may serve as a launchpad for something else down the road but today it is what it is.
My twitter and facebook may not be so lucky. I have ‘em because it was the thing to do, I had no inclination to use them otherwise. They haven’t fallen into disuse because I’m about to go a-culling, I’d forgotten I had them until I checked my secondary e-mail account. They’re gonna be gone this time next week unless something changes my mind.
Here’s to hoping I can lay some enlightenment on you and you on me, dear reader. Things are bound to get interesting.
By the by, til I get my about me dongle back up you can reach me at cadoblog [AT] gmail.com. Feel free to drop a line.
Dividing Phantoms
Jun 23rd
“I really wanna eat that ice cream.”
You’ve started a diet, you just did your workout for the day. You’re sore but you’re happy. You should be-you’ve taken your first step toward not being a fatass anymore. The fact that you’ve made the effort is something to be proud of.
“That ice cream would be really good after that run.”
But now the cravings set in and your real test is at hand. Do you succumb or do you resist? Do you eat half what you used to and then obsess over what that’s gonna do to your thighs?
“Ice cream. I want it. Now.”
But that’s not the real issue. Don’t get me wrong, the craving is a real, physical thing-the body wants what it has always had-but the question is what drove you to it?
Maybe you were short on time and you needed something quick and cheap. While I am of the opinion that McDonald’s doesn’t sell actual food the chemically enhanced gray lump they call a “burger” is a close enough approximation that it’s tolerable the first few times you’ve gotta choke it down. Once you’re past the threshold it’s like any other meal, except it’s far more addicting. They know it is, they made it that way. Everything from the salt content to their ad campaigns are engineered to make you want more.
And therein lies the key element so many people miss. They make the body crave it, yes. Humans are creatures of habit, certainly. Habits are hard to change. But it’s because of the emotional hook that bad habits have staying power.
Maybe you’ve never had a weight problem so you can’t relate to the above example. Howabout money? Everybody’s debated with themselves over whether they should buy something, and it’s usually something pretty trivial that they don’t need and if they leave it on the shelf their lives will not be significantly altered yet they can’t bring themselves to walk away. In the moment you’ll go back and forth with yourself weighing the pros and cons, treating the “issue” like it’s something of real importance, but take a look behind the curtain-what’s the process that drives it forward?
It’s always a distraction. If I eat the ice cream I don’t have to look at what’s going on inside of me. If I feel guilty then I get the high of processing an emotion without accomplishing anything. If I debate whether I should buy some cheap little trinket that’s another moment I can’t devote to something of substance. If I toss it in the cart that’s another dollar I can’t put toward something I actually want.
Not every decision is of utmost importance and not every bowl of ice cream is a cry for help but where there is addiction there will be phantoms and that is why clarity is so elusive. If you find yourself arguing within your own mind take a step back and ask what’s really going on because the answer will not be found in a list of pros and cons.
Killing Your Way to a Better You
Jun 17th
I touched upon this with my last post and I’m going to continue it here. There’s an old saying: “If you see Buddha on the road, kill him.” Substitute your own name and you catch a glimpse of what it means, but only that-it speaks of a truth which cannot be conveyed, it must be experienced.
It starts with the realization that you might not be who you think you are. Perhaps you’re shaken by trauma, or a force of habit puts a hard limit on what you’re able to accomplish. This creates a bit of friction and within it there’s a voice that tells you that you’ll never do what you intend to and that things are best left the way they are. Gain a little momentum and it will do everything it can to shut you down. Perhaps it’ll reference a childhood fear, perhaps it will tell you how many times you’ve failed before, but no matter your aim its sole purpose is to maintain the status quo.
It’s not a flaw within the system, no, it’s doing exactly what it evolved to do. We’re primitive creatures with a brain built on top and though our higher functions meld seamlessly with primal drives they don’t always get along and a great deal of inner conflict results. To kill oneself in the sense Buddha spoke is, at least in part, to de-automate your choices and put control in your hands.
But the drive for self-preservation is strong and we reside in a world where any disruption to our day to day life could have fatal consequences were we still in the jungle. Evolution doesn’t optimize, it finds something that works and sticks with it. By default we do too, thus if you’re afraid of conflict the fact that you’ve managed to survive that way will make it quite difficult to alter the pattern.
But there’s a point beyond thought when you’ve taken action that clarity sets in and the voice goes quiet. The old limitations fall like a second skin and, though it lasts for just a moment, repetition will anchor the change and when it does your instincts work off a new set of criteria. This isn’t a struggle against the person that you were, against the drives which tormented you, rather it’s acceptance of them. Allow them to be what they are and they will serve you. Fight and you will never rest.
The hardest thing to do is to quit fighting and the moment you accomplish that you slip the knife between your old self’s ribs. In western society we value doing and indeed there’s much to be gained but sometimes the most powerful action is akin to doing nothing at all.
I doubt that’s all Buddha meant and I’m sure it’s not the only way to interpret what he said but as I see it that’s one of those statements which is intentionally ambiguous. There are layers of meaning, not one right or wrong answer, and if it delivers something useful it has served its purpose.
Disrupting the Program
Jun 10th
In my time adjusting habits and making changes I’ve noticed a peculiar thing-there’s a gap between making a change and the point when it sticks that I find myself at a loss for what to do next. It’s not because I don’t know what to do, in fact with most things it’s simply a matter of doing something once and then staying consistent. Rather it’s a strange feeling best summarized by, “this is not what I do.” If I leave myself unguarded it turns to listlessness and that’s usually my biggest barrier to long-term change.
Then it occurred to me: I largely identify with automatic behaviors. I don’t just get up at a certain time of day, my sleep patterns define me. I can’t recall the number of times I’ve said, “I’m a night person” without so much as a thought. Who decided I was a night person? What does that actually say about me? If I altered my schedule would that fundamentally change me?
Take a look at someone who wants to get a higher paying job. Many times they’re defined by their income bracket. “I’m a person that makes x amount of money every month.” They carry that with them as they embark on their job search. Some of them will achieve their goal and some of them won’t but it’s clear in many cases it becomes a form of self-sabotage. Because they make so much money they think it’s all they deserve or they’re uncomfortable with the thought of having more, not because having more would somehow make their lives worse but because it’s a threat to their identity.
I can think back to when I was a hundred pounds heavier and I couldn’t see myself as anything other than fat. It persisted for a very long time, so long in fact that I’m still unwinding some of the lingering attributes of that mindset. With all that fat taken off my body it’s almost like an older version of myself has died and really, that’s the truth. I’m not the same person I was when I began. To get where I am I had to kill him and he didn’t go quietly.
So keep this in mind-you are not what you desire to change. You’re not fat, you’re not short, you’re not poor, you’re not old, you’re not etc. Those are all parts of your story but zero in and you miss the whole. The real you goes deeper and extends far beyond singlular traits. That’s why we have the power to change and it’s why, your will permitting, nothing can stop you.
The Lighter Side of Ruthlessness
May 26th
So as of Monday I have been officially disowned from my father’s side of the family. The long and short of it is that I said some things I should have said a long time ago and they just weren’t hearing me. Though I’m proud of myself the feeling is bittersweet; a couple family members I thought I was close to turned on me and will probably never speak to me again.
And I’m better off this way.
I fell out of contact with my grandparents a good five or six years ago. I was in a very different place-very bitter and angry. Because of them I lived in a house that nearly killed me and I took on a slew of hateful, limiting religious beliefs whose effects I am still undoing today. It’s my responsibility to deal with that; I’d never try to pass the buck. It doesn’t change the fact that when they tried getting hold of me it couldn’t simply be swept under the rug. I knew them as domineering people who defined love as a fondness for those who did as they were told and before another word could be said I had to know if that had changed.
My question was answered when “you hurt me” got twisted into, “I blame you for all my problems.” None of my feelings were valid in their eyes. I stood my ground, stayed civil, and walked away… I walked away with a smile.
I’m not gonna say it didn’t sting. It was like pouring peroxide on an open wound. You can’t stitch yourself back up without feeling any pain, not when you’ve let something fester for years and years and years. But the feeling is a lot like when you stand outside after a heavy rain and the sun is poking through the clouds. No matter how exhausted you are you can’t help but feel optimistic.
I’ve always been one to say that I don’t care about blood but I’ll let you in on a secret, dear reader-I do, I just didn’t think blood cared about me. Now I can drop the facade because there’s no going back. There’s no way to trick myself into thinking I can or should make amends. There’s a beauty in that I could never see when I stood at the sidelines, a freedom I couldn’t comprehend and was too frightened to grasp. Yeah, I hurt a few people, but the truth is they needed to be hurt. It’s a pain they created a long time ago, I just struck the nerve. May it awaken them.
All that’s left to do now is move on.
Of Scars and Smiles
May 21st
If you’ve found your way to my humble corner of the internet odds are you’ve heard the phrase, “what you resist persists.” If you haven’t, take a moment to let it sink in. It sounds like one of those fluffy new age catchphrases but it’s true-when you understand what they mean by resist.
Let’s say somebody comes after you with a knife. You grab his arm, break his wrist, and you walk away unharmed. You’ve attained what you want by resistance, have you not? And unless that dude loves pain he’s not coming back for more. You’re in the clear.
But go a little deeper-what’s going through your mind? If you’re able to pull that off it’s one swift motion from beginning to end. You acknowledge the situation and you react. There’s no pause, no hesitation, no second thoughts. You are without conflict.
Now let’s replay that scenario under the assumption that you don’t wanna get attacked. I know, who does? But let’s assume it’s all you can think about. You’re so focused on what you don’t want that your brain shuts down. Maybe you black out and don’t even realize it’s happening. You get stabbed and if you’re lucky somebody calls an ambulance.
That’s what they mean. To put it in the plainest terms possible you are resisting whatever you don’t want to acknowledge. “I didn’t think it could happen to me” is the polar cousin of the above statement. “Didn’t think” is in truth, “wished it wouldn’t” and so the very possibility was ignored at the cost of preparation. Ignorance is bliss until the rains come but when you’re sitting on the roof of your house you’ll wish you had a raft.
This leads me to something else nobody wants to say but cannot cannot be ignored: you can’t deny reality while simultaneously acting as the master of your own life. If you feel hopeless when you look upon your current circumstances then you’re not in a position to make things happen. Any dreaming you do is just that-dreaming. Your goals, your plans, it’s all another form of escapism. What separates an achievable dream from wishful thinking is your willingness to look life dead in the eye… and smile.
That’s right. You’re a hundred pounds overweight? You live in the ghetto with a deadbeat spouse? You’ve never had more than ten dollars to your name? Then it’s your chance to prove yourself. Where others see problems, you have to see opportunities. Where they see obstacles, you have to see a chance to get stronger. When they run into a brick wall, you gotta smash through it.
Why? Because you’re beautiful. Even you, Fred. Don’t deny it-with a bit of eye shadow you’d make a great chick.
I’m gonna wrap this up before my stream of consciousness hi-jacks the conversation and leads us a thousand different directions. Let’s end with a question: do you love yourself enough to pursue what you want? Because if you do that’s all that matters. You can accept anything life has to throw at you. You can take your knocks and keep moving forward. Those scars you used to hide become badges of honor. You’re not as flawed as you think. All that stuff you beat yourself over is just marks of your identity. When you see that everything starts coming together.
When the tidal waves come you might get scared but you’re still gonna smile.
Absence
May 17th
Ol’ Cado here put himself on a cleansing regimen a couple weeks ago. An unfortunate side effect is that I’ve had a hard time concentrating on anything which did not feature pretty blinking lights or wasn’t really, really shiny.
You see, for most of my life I was a fatass. A couple years ago I knew I had to do something when I looked in the mirror and thought, “dayuuuuum.” Since then my health has drastically improved and I daresay I look pretty good without the third chin. However, healthier is not healthy, so I began taking supplements and what have you to see how much further things could improve.
The answer was “a lot” coupled with “stay near the toilet.” I’ll spare you the horrifying details, needless to say the worst of it is out of my system. I’m gonna work on ironing out a couple ideas I had and you can expect more updates starting at the end of the week.
Intuition: Salsa With a Side of Pain
Apr 20th
When we left off ol’ Batman found himself strapped to a conveyor belt moving toward a mechanical Shark. Poor Robin, he wasn’t doing any better; the aquarium they stuck him in was nearly full. (Of laughing gas. Not sure how that was supposed to work.) Joker, Riddler, and Cat Woman joined together in a laugh straight from a cartoon…
Probably because it was. I need to turn the TV off before bed, methinks.
Anyway, my last post stopped where I said intuition will sometimes throw you into the fire and that is where this will begin. It’s worth emphasizing because when I hear people talk about “flashes of insight” and what have you they’re usually thinking of something good that happened to them, a blow that never landed because their insides screamed, “dodge!” at just the right moment.
It’s the classic, “God=Good, Devil=Bad” mindset rearing its head. To summarize, if you didn’t suffer any pain then that is unquestionably good but if you did then something is out of whack. Leaning into the punch is never, ever a good idea no matter how badly you need to get hit.
That’s right, sometimes you need to take a blow before you’ll come to your senses. I’m stating the obvious here but it is often the obvious which is hardest to accept. If you tell most people they need a little hurt before they get their payoff and they’ll look at you like you spoke spanish at a KKK meeting. They will go on and on about work ethic and about how nobody else has any but if you ask them to lay their cards on the table they don’t have much to show for it. At best they’ve spun their wheels, and while it may have hurt I’ll agree you don’t need that kind of pain. It’ll go as soon as you make the choice to let it go. That’s the entire reason it exists: to get you to make that choice.
The pain I’m talking about is like what you go through when you’re strength training or when you’re building a knowledge base from zero. More to the point, it’s the kind of pain which accompanies pushing through a fear.
Now let me stop for a moment because that is a bit of a jump: how would fear stop you from strength training? Well, do you wanna do it, and I mean really wanna do it? Do you see it as something which would make you a bolder, sexier, and more confident individual? If the answer to those questions is yes then what’s stopping you? If you feel like the wind was taken out of your sails that’s a form of fear. To accomplish your task you’ve got to push inward and conquer it. This can be applied to everything from relationships to ambitions.
Intuition is, in part, a mechanism meant to aid in your growth. If you’re not scared shitless it isn’t doing its job. It’s all well and good when it tells you to step out of the road when a car is coming or it gets you to duck before bullets fly but that doesn’t mean it’s only there to help you avoid danger. For it to function properly you’ve got to accept the whole thing, every part, even the stuff you don’t like.
And that, dear reader, is the beginning of real power.
Intuition: Quick, Dirty, and Saucy
Apr 10th
What is that incredible, ever-elusive, and always misunderstood intuition everybody talks about? It’s a feeling, we’ve got that nailed down. Now, what is that feeling and why should it be trusted? “Follow your bliss” is well and good but how am I, the layman, supposed to know what that is?
We humans, we’re complicated creatures. We lie to ourselves 90% of the time. It’s not our fault, we were conditioned to do it. Society advocates individualism and passion only when it falls inside the bounds of what society itself wants. If you wander outside those confines then you’re not being true to yourself and the way back to grace is to do as you’re told.
I know, I know-I’m talking about it like it’s some kinda devil that exists apart from us and makes us dance around on strings. You know what? It is. It ain’t really there but a lot of us answer to its beck and call. You’re doing it every time you obsess over what people think and you’ve got no clue who “they” are. Sometimes you make up a fantasy person to anchor your paranoia, say you base it on your mother, but that excuse goes bye-bye when it turns out she loves whatever had you worried. That edgy dude you brought home for dinner? She’s got a thing for bad boys. Hell, you’ve gotta work overtime to keep her hands off of him.
If you find yourself in a similar conundrum there’s one question you need to ask: what am I getting out of it? Nobody does anything without payoff and if you get high off of self-sabotage your gut is never gonna shine through. That’s where the above comes into play: people tend to mistake their conditioning for their heart’s desire.
Let’s take food for an example. If you had never been to a fast food joint you’d walk into a McDonald’s and look in disgust at the gray rat-mesh they call a burger. There’s enough fat and grease in their products to keep you in the bathroom a whole damn week. But what happens when you eat it day after day, breakfast, lunch, and sometimes dinner? You feel awful sluggish. Your waistline expands. Your dick stops working right. You can’t think straight. If things get real bad a friend will walk up to you and you’ll ask yourself, “why is this Big Mac talking to me?”
Your body screams for mercy. You can feel a part of yourself pulling back whenever you walk through the golden arches but you forget all about it when the sweet and sour sauce touches your lips. Your mind perks up and your outlook brightens. You’re ready and rarin’ to go… Until you crash an hour later.
That is the essence of false intuition. It’s what happens when you’re programmed to respond to something in a certain way regardless of your true feelings. That’s your payoff-you feel positive when you do what you’re supposed to and you feel terrible when you don’t. Breaking the habit means taking a lot of shit and that’s what keeps us hooked. The constant crashes are tolerable so long as a few highs a thrown into the mix.
If you follow my example to its logical conclusion, the body’s cries get quieter and quieter as instinct is dulled by a force of habit. The “heavy user” doesn’t know anything is wrong because constant sickness is the norm. Eventually his body has to turn on itself to get his attention and only then is he be able to turn things around.
You can take two things from that:
1. Real intuition is ever present but it can be buried.
2. It’s easy to mistake a learned behavioral pattern for a genuine expression of yourself when it’s all you know.
The good news is that the real you hasn’t gone anywhere, the only thing you’ve gotta figure out is how to let it surface. That’s a time consuming process but I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s doable and you’re worth it.
With that out of the way, there’s something else about intuition most people don’t acknowledge: it’s not purely a pain-avoidance mechanism. Sometimes when you’re doing all you can to stay out of the fire it’s gonna tell you to jump in. That’s beyond the scope of this post so look for a follow-up; ol’ Cado is just getting warmed up.
Did I Say San Fran?
Mar 26th
This here is an example of not thinking your goals through. What do I mean by that? I mean the whole relocation thing was not something which sparked my passion, I was only gonna do it because I could. I’m finding that that’s great when you can just up and go but if you need motivatin’ it’s not gonna happen.
If you’re a newcomer, let me get you up to snuff: this post was originally titled “The San Fran Challenge” and in it I declared that I was going to:
1. Create a livable income via freelance writing
2. Move from Michigan to San Francisco
3. Get it done in two months from the date on this post
I did not do any research, I didn’t think about the costs, I didn’t ask myself if it was what I really wanted, I just knew any place sounded better than here and that’s where my friends were (supposedly) going. And sure, when you get down to it, you can go just about anywhere on any budget within nearly any timeframe, the question is how desperate are you?
I’ve never been to Cali and, while I’d love to visit, I’ve got no idea whether I’d wanna stay there. If I wanted to move for economic reasons I’d be better off in Texas. They haven’t done so hot with avoiding cold weather the last few winters but if I hated that half as much as I say I do I would have walked out of Michigan years ago. No sir, to create enough momentum to get myself there I’d need to have a reason and that reason just wasn’t coming. (Kinda like me with my last ex. Seriously, if a handjob would do the trick I would do it myself.)
Ol’ Cado loved a place called Ann Arbor before he set his sights on San Fran and it’s to that love which he returns. It’s a city with a towny feel, a quirky little place where 50′s diners employ bald goth chicks to serve vegan sandwiches. There’s a bookstore on every corner and attractive people in the comic shop. If you’re lucky, you might just catch a showing of “The Wall” over at the last theater with enough balls to use a traditional projector. It is, to put it succinctly, everything I love in life wrapped in a strip of bacon. (If you see me trying to eat a building do not be alarmed-that’s how I show my love.)
So with my senses back in working order, the challenge stands but the details change. In what way, you ask? Well I’d tell you if I wasn’t stalling.
First things first-speaking realistically the original date, June 1st, probably ain’t gonna happen, but for my own sake it can’t go much later than that. The new date is June 30th. If I don’t have some pictures of my new place posted up here for all of you to see then…
This is where the details are sketchy. Originally I said that if I failed I’d post a video of myself in a dress singing this. Thing is, that’s not a punishment. Did you read the post before this? I do that shit for fun. Now granted, all out public humiliation is not on the table, but there has got to be something which would 1. be fun to watch and 2. stretch my comfort zone.
The point of something like that is to make this a win whether or not I come out on top. If you’ve got something in that vein leave your suggestion in the comments. You might just land yourself on my blog roll if I like it well enough.
So with that little pit stop out of the way it’s time to get rolling.