Twerking

Recently I was made privy to the likes of hip hop sensation Lady, and her song "Twerk" Here is a link to the Music video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPhYRtK0fBU

 Forget what you may have thought folks, THAT is TALENT. I didn't even realize it was possible to clap your ass cheeks together like flap jacks let alone get 7 women together in the same room who could do it WHILE DOING HAND STANDS. And holy shit! That one lady who was SITTING DOWN and  could raise her right butt cheek with ease! That takes serious coordination and body awareness.

Who knows there made even been a massive subculture of people who devote their lives to "twerking"... It's basically belly dancing for your butt, right?......

Wait, THERE IS!

THE TWERK TEAM has over 100,000 followers on twitter. They are frequented with questions like, "I need to learn how to Twerk now, can someone teach me?"

So, I think I want to join in on this apparent twerking revolution. I'll start by following the twerk team, the I'll watch all of the how to videos. and Within the year, I'll be shakin' dat ass all up on a lady's front bum.

Peace

Bartender

"Hit me up with a lemon squirt mangotini on the rocks with extra Cointreau and some asparagus". was just one of the things that was yelled at me yesterday during my first day as a bartender. I'm really cool so I already knew exactly what this was, I just didnt know where the asparagus was. Everyone knows that asparagus has to be kept at exactly 39.8 degrees Celsius if its to add flavor to a lemon squirt mangotini. It was NOT. This asparagus was sitting sadly, at a 39.4 degrees Celsius. I had to improvise.

I started juggling limes to distract the patron, but this wasn't too his liking . He pulled out pineapples and started juggling them. I knew I had been beat. So I decided to do a back flip. As soon as I did a back flip the rest of the people at the bar clapped, but I couldn't please George, the man with the mustache who so gallantly ordered the Lemon squirt Martini. I was done for. It was all my fault. My first day at the bar, a failure, and all because of asparagus....

Not really.

I mostly just run drinks actually, but I totally wish this is what did happen.

Moving Out

In  a few weeks. I move out of my appartment in Tallahassee into a 3 br 2 ba house. The house has a fireplace, and a back yard. For the first time in my life, I really feel like I'm moving into my own place. It was the first lease I've signed that wasn't also signed by my parents, and I am doing the moving entirely on my own.

There have been some shifts that have occured within my soul in the last few months, most notably, that I feel like a man. It started when I got hired at melting pot, and knew I wouldn't need to ask my parents to help me pay for rent any more. I got the phone called and proceeded to jump around the house screaming. "WHO IS A MAN!!! THIS GUY! I AM A FUCKING MAN!. FUCK YEAH"

Haha, who knew that getting a job would add so much self esteem?

Moving out is another chapter in becoming a man. I havent lived with my parents for 5 years but this is the first time that I feel like I'll be legitimately on my own. It's terribly exciting.

I have a habit of living in filth, but now that I will be moving into yet another new apartment. I won't be living that way any longer. These are my plans for my new place

Live in a neat, and clean appartment,
Learn to shave with a straight razor
Start wearing wife beaters
Do Yoga at least twice a month, preferably once a week.
systematically remove fear and insecurity from my life.

You see I always had this fantasy that sometime in my mid twenties I'd be shaving with a straight razor, wearing a wife beater, and have a six pack underneath that wife beater. It seems that this dream will be realized this year. I'm excited.

I've been removing fear from my life this summer, which has done wonders for my personal growth.

The take away message from this post is this:  Expect the new and improved, neat and tidy Josh who shaves with a straight razor and isn't afraid of jewelry

Toodles,

Josh

YOLO

Today at the gym I saw a guy wearing a shirt that said YOLO because when you live like us you only need to live once. I have nothing against YOLO as a philosophical concept, but I do generally despise the culture it has created. YOLO or "you only live once" should inspire each person to take responsibility for his/her own life and take action to create the greatest life possible, but instead people throw YOLO around as a way to rationalize things away. It's a shame that sayings like this CAN be analyzed in ways that are exact opposites of each other. But it is just how things are now, I suppose. The thing that gets me the most about YOLO is the stigma that the t-shirt expresses. YOU only live once and because of that YOU should live a lifestyle that I deem to be "really living". I just feel like people use YOLO as a way to fit in to a culture rather than a way to empower themselves.

Because of this, I will always prefer "Carpe Diem"- Seize the day! It seems classier because it's in Latin. ha. And for me, it is free of the stigma that there is a "right way" to live and to do things.

The Battle Continues

"I never tire of saying that the only really transitory aspects of life are  the potentialities; but as soon as they are actualized, they are rendered realities at that very moment;  they are saved and delivered safely into the past, wherein they are rescued and preserved from transitoriness. For, in the past, nothing is irretrievably lost but everything is irrevocably stored"- Viktor Frankl


I love this quote, Just the idea that  life if the process of building itself. Each of us as individuals is given one task, to build a story, and so at each moment we collapse from all of the possibilities a single choice that we put into our own personal bucket, and at the end of life that bucket is us. All of the moments we chose make up our story.


I sometimes feel like I can't unlock myself. That there is something inside of me that needs to be realized and I can't realize it. It's an interesting feeling, I usually describe it as "yearning" or "quiet desperation" but at the end of the day it is ultimately this feeling that keeps me going. It fuels my desire to see whats at the end of existence.

In 1977, Illya Prigogine won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing the theory of Dissapative structures. A dissapative system is any system that is operating outside of thermodynamic equilibrium, It is a system that creates order out of entropy. Every physical and chemical reaction in the universe is acting towards more and more entropy. "For dissipative systems to sustain their growth, they must not only increase their negentropic potential, but they must also eliminate the positive entropy that naturally accumulates over time as systems are trying to sustain themselves. The build up of the system’s internal complexity as it grows is always accompanied by the production of positive entropy (d_iS > 0), which must be dissipated out of the system as waste or low-grade energy. Otherwise, the accumulation of positive entropy in the system will eventually bring it to thermodynamic equilibrium, a state in which the system cannot maintain its order and organisation"

This is a long analogy I know, but bear with me :). That quiet desperation or yearning that I feel, IS the fact that I am operating outside of equilibrium. The human being is sort of a system that is designed to turn stress into something more. Creating triumph out of tribulation. Creating order out of chaos. That is what I think, at least.   There is always the choice, to stagnate, to stop moving, to give up or to let go and grow more complex.. When the stress ( positive entropy) is too much, it makes sense that we want to stagnate, and that we go crazy. It's hard to maintain an organized mind when trying to hold onto everything.

We all  have events that cause an undue amount of stress on us, whether it's a break up or the loss of a limb, but its how we use that chaos to create order and to actualize our human potential that we create meaning. It's in those moments of the greatest stress that we are lucky enough to choose which potential meaning we want to rescue into our past.

At then end of your life, what will be in your bucket?

Overcoming approach anxiety and lessons learned

This summer has been about overcoming various fears of mine.  So I decided to start off by tackling approach anxiety with women. I do this rather simply. Every time I go out to a bar I  ask at least one girl on a date. Granted, I'm not expecting to meet a serious romance this way, but I figured what better way to conquer a fear than to confront it directly.

About a month ago I went to a bar with a friend of mine and my eyes beheld quite an attractive lady in the distance. I was a little bit to much of a pansy to just walk right up to her and say hello. So I took far to long to scope out the situation. We made eye contact several times and blatantly checked eachother out, yet for me that still wasn't enough. I waited too long. She was leaving with her friends.

BUT NO!!! Knowing that if I didn't complete my mission I would feel like a complete failure I decided to charge. She is leaving with her friend, I RUN after her and finally catch up to her as she is just outside the door. I say, "Excuse me, I noticed we were making eye contact throughout the night and a good bit of it was rather sexy so I thought I'd come up and say hello!....... And, I think we should get some salad."

So she and her friend are giggling the whole time this is happening, so I obviously did something right, and besides the awkward approach I was pretty pleased.

Her response: blah blah blah, Boyfriend, blah blah, cute, blah.

I didn't really even listen I was SO HAPPY OF MYSELF!

I marched around the bar for a while dancing and giggling to myself, elated, overjoyed that I had taken a step in the right direction. If you know me you'll find it as no surprise that when I ordered my next drink I immediately shared my triumph with the bartender. "I'm so happy, she said no! I don't care!!"

So Many of the girls sitting around where I was at the bar over heard this and began to giggle. And little did I know, apparently this is charming behavior? Four or Five girls came up to me after this moment to tell me how it was cool that I just went up to talk to that girl and that I was brave.

WLASKKHF! WHAT?!  I felt like an idiot.  Of course! I was owning myself, Confidence. It's a shame that understanding something in principle is not the same as understanding it in practice, but at least its never to late to learn!

A swing set changed my life

 I went on a date on Thursday with a really cool girl. We had a picnic, I baked cinnamon rolls and snickerdoodles. We walked through the woods and played some games. It was a nice date. During the course of the date, she sat in a child's swing. You know? The kind that have the over head seat belt. So I started to push her and the swing flipped over. I was pretty terrified she had gotten hurt but instead she hung there vigilantly, flying like super man, off to save someones day.

Obviously I needed to do that. so I got in, snapped myself in and she pushed me. What I didnt take into account was that I am significantly heavier than her, and this seat was designed for people less than a third of my weight. Needless to say, the place where the safety harness plastic seat belt thing hooked in didnt not hold my weight. I fell and off came the over head plastic belt thing. the Belt thing and my throat collided with the force of a hard punch.

First thought, "ow."

Second thought " MY LIFE IS OVER!"

Yes I crushed the hell out of my larynx. My instrument what I have chosen to use to make my career. I was absolutely horrified. In that moment I needed to cry, but was unable to because I knew that THAT would cause even more damage.

For those that don't know me in person. My singing voice is my life. I study Opera currently at Florida State university, and just sang my first role back in May.

As I sat and reflected on the fact that my life was "over" I accepted that that is a real possibility. I let it sink in.  I could quite easily lose all willpower to make something of myself if that was the case. I could see myself easily turning to a self destructive means of coping. Though that would be quite easy. I am making a public promise that it will not be the case. Even if I never sing a good note again. I promise to make my life the best story I could possibly write.  I won't let it bring me down.  Life is not for certain, and this event really humbled me. I am thankful for what I have already accomplished. I feel as if I have lived a full and wholesome life already and I promise to continue to make the most of everything.

Anyway, I went to an Otolaryngologist. It turns out I have bruising on my right vocal fold. this means I really smacked the shit out of my larynx. I may need a Cat scan next week, but that is unlikely. It seems likely that everything will heal fine and I will be able to sing.

But most importantly from this, I learned that in this moment I could respond in any way I wanted, I was tempted to want to seek pity, because its so easy. Convince people that a circumstance ruined my life and give up. But I won't be a person like that. I won't give up. I refuse to live a passionless life. Whether it's singing or something else. Rest assured that I will give all of me to  whatever it is I do.

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedom—-to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."- Viktor Frankl