I like to think that I’m someone who balances his interest in both the journey and the destination. Being at either extreme means missing out on a sizable part of life, in my opinion. If I generalize it a bit: To be focused on the journey means to live life in the present, while focusing on the destination means the predefined goals are most important. To me, these two things are complimentary. The journey is of little consequence if you don’t know where you’re going, and arriving somewhere is considerably more enjoyable if the path taken was itself enjoyable. So, I try to be aware not only of where I’m (hopefully) going but also where I’ve been, where I’m at and all the in-betweens.

The questions that interest me most are the “big ones”; you know, “What does everything mean?” and the like. I don’t suspect I’ll find any answers to these questions. Rather, I like to think that my awareness of them helps guide me in setting of goals and paths toward those goals. In that regard, success is determined somewhat by how well I know myself, so I try to be quite introspective and more importantly honest with myself. I regularly will “check myself” to see how I’m doing when it comes to my goals and if the path is making me happy. I also accept that change is only as scary or exciting as I want it to be and so I try not to prevent myself from making big changes in my life if I feel it is in my best interest to do so.

This post isn’t going to be about any of that.

What this post is about, is the fact that it has been sitting in a draft in my WordPress for nearly a year. Eleven months! Why is that?

It really goes to show just how funny of a thing time really is. June 2008 felt like yesterday and oh my how the time has flown by. The second half of 2008 was an interesting time. I made my share of mistakes but set the stage for some great successes as well. And so far in 2009 those successes have been falling into place. Six months ago if you’d have told me that the love of my life would be moving in with me in late June I would have laughed.

Work has taken its fair share (some might argue more than its fair share) of time lately as well. It built to a head not that long back but I learned an important lesson in the process. I learned that while I have capacity for taking on a lot (not just work, but many other things as well), I do have some limits. A lot of that has more to do with keeping myself happy than it does with any actual “limits”; sure there are of course real limits to what I can handle, but the bigger question is how much do I want to tackle, why, and will it bring me closer to my goals?

It’s interesting (to me) to see how my life has progressed to this point, and I’m really looking forward to the next chapters. Does that mean a new begining around here? I suppose it couldn’t hurt.

My birthday was a few days ago and now I am 26. Of the last eight years that I’ve “been an adult” I feel as though the last three have been some of the most formative ones. I may not know exactly what I want in the long run, but I have refined a usable philosophy for attacking the things I want to accomplish with my life that is going a long way toward that goal. It’s even pretty simple and breaks down into just a few points.

Take nothing for granted.

In my opinion taking things for granted can be a very easy thing to do for someone like myself who has been well-advantaged for my entire life. Not just in material things but family, good friends, intellect and health. Like anything of value these all require attention and care and an un-selfish attitude to stop from thinking that I am inherently entitled to these things. Through this I can appreciate what it is I really have and come just that much closer to true happiness.

Good things require hard work most of the time and smart work all the time.

While I feel there can be a degree (albeit a small one) of luck in many situations, the fact of the matter is that actions are what count most. But I don’t subscribe to the idea that all good things come from hard work. Rather I try to work hard at working smart. Patience is the key virtue here I feel. If more care is taken while planning great things, more productive work is the result, but that requires an individual (or organization) have the presence of mind to go about things in a thoughtful way that guarantees success, rather than initiating a flurry of activity that is likely to not be the best possible plan.

Don’t force focus; focus on what moves you.

This one I will admit is something that I think works best for me because of my personality… Being honest I think that one of my real strengths is in the fact that I have a very large breadth of knowledge and interests. I definitely have quite a bit of depth in certain things (computer science and music for example) but even in those huge fields I tend to study a wide range of topics rather than specializing in a few things. Some people might not consider this wise and I admit it doesn’t work for everyone; we all have different ways of doing things. For me I consider it a huge strength because I rely on it to see topics from many different angles.

That said, I’m like that because I’m honest with myself about if I’m enjoying whatever it is that I’m doing. Simply put I study, work and participate in the areas that are most interesting to me at present time and rarely force myself to focus on a topic if it stops becoming enjoyable just because I may have been working on it for.. however long I may have been working on it. Chances are that it will become interesting to me again and in the future I’ll turn to it once more, but then armed with all of my additional experiences and things I’ve learned since.

…but you need to be able to know what you want to concentrate on.

Everything I said above about letting my interests take me wherever they may doesn’t mean I go around life without a game plan though. I do spent a good deal of time thinking about the big picture and how all the little things I’m interested in fit in the grand scheme of things. This sort of planning is essential for me to stay productive and for me to keep myself in check; making sure that I’m always working toward my goals.

Some concentration needs to be forced occasionally then, if only to ask myself, “Is this really furthering to me toward goal x?” Balancing the whims of the present self against the long-term outcome is a critical aspect of all successful people I think. (Of course, you can go a little crazy with this notion as well and I’m definitely not advocating that.)

Always look at the world with wonder.

I mean this not in the sense of a yokel, but of someone who is not jaded to the truly amazing aspects of our universe. Appreciate that which deserves appreciation. In some ways this goes back to my first point of not taking things for granted. If I can continually look at things with fresh eyes I keep thinking about things from different perspectives. It’s said that the wise listen first and talk second. I think this should be applied to how we see things outside ourselves as well. Listen to everything around you and become enlightened.

All that said I have felt a sense of productivity and clarity about the things I’m working on lately that is just fantastic. I think it’s sort of a long-term form of tunnel vision. I sometimes experience that sort of complete concentration while working where I slip into the zone or the groove or whatever you want to call it and time seems to lose meaning as I accomplish things that might take me days if I wasn’t in that state of mind. This feels like that but at a higher level; almost in the background. Needless to say I’m taking advantage of it while it’s here!

So at 26 it’s nice to see that while I’ve definitely made mistakes along they way I actually do seem to be in control of my destiny for the most part. I know there are times when it can feel like you’re just going through the motions but when that moment of clarity comes where you snap out of it and realize that you have the ability to do the great things that you want… Well, it’s liberating.

I just spent a week at my company’s Durham, NC office. It was an intense amount of work and learning but it was fun. Times like that are good examples of the sort of thing I like about my company. You sit down with a bunch of other smart people and you talk about stuff that interests you. At the base level that’s what it’s all about.

Now that I’m back my head is full of thoughts and ideas of things to work on, but I’m mentally drained at this point and I know I need some time to decompress. There are a million things I should or could do… But you know what, being able to let go and not choose is feeling pretty relaxing right now so I’ll just ride this weekend out and see where it takes me.

“You’re going to throw out that blank piece of paper?” I asked, probably sounding a bit more intense than I meant to.

“Oh, I guess I was. Why?”

“It hasn’t had a chance yet, I’ll take it.”

I always seem to write some of my best ideas on scraps of paper. Just like with that piece of paper at work I think I’ll take this one, fold it up and put it in my notebook and give it another chance.

My mystery is why the hems of many of my t-shirts curl up after I dry them. No matter what I do it seems to constantly happen. Ironing seems to be the only cure. Nothing seems to be able to prevent it. I’ve tried different drying temps, drying times, fabric softener in the wash, no fabric softener in the wash, etc. Some t-shirts do seem immune however, given that you fold them soon enough.

One day I hope to solve my mystery, but I don’t count on it.

It’ll also be short because I think what I have to say is fairly common sense, namely that the more you think about and have to do, the less time you have for other things. Unfortunately (fortunately?) it feels like it’s doing nothing but speed up lately. Gone are the days when it felt like Friday was an eternity away. Now it’s more like I start worrying about the following Monday on Thursday morning. That’s messed up.

Perhaps a lot of people don’t explicitly think about what all this business about time implies in the more general sense. In many ways I feel it points to just how little we really understand about time as it correlates to consciousness. Not only does the passive experience of time flowing by seem to change pace based on your state of mind, we also actively deal with many different scales of time at once. Or at least people who are any good at planning do.

Music seems to change the way I perceive time quite a bit. If I’m working hard and listening to something I really enjoy it seems to keep my brain occupied in a way that keeps me from getting bored. More information to process perhaps… Time moves along very quickly when I drop into a groove like that. Music can have the reverse effect as well though, causing time to slow down if I’m lost in my own thoughts for a while.

On the other hand I’ve found that I can be very busy buy if my mind isn’t occupied in a constructive way time seems to just crawl. Consider the statement “busy work.” For me it means some set of mundane and time consuming tasks that make it feel like time is effectively at a standstill. Just because I’m doing a lot of stuff doesn’t mean you’re really thinking all that much. In these situations it just drags on and on… The opposite seems to be true for plenty of people though, so take from that what you will.

I guess this wasn’t that short, and I’m not really done so I’ll split it into two parts. More later!

There are a lot of different qualities that a person needs to embody to attain their goals. Of course, a big part of it is what the goals are. But I think that there are also some common traits that are perhaps the foundation of success. I was able to come up with the following: knowing how to plan properly, being persistent and being patient. (Note that they all start with the letter P, which is just a lucky coincidence.) My list probably isn’t exhaustive, but these seem like some of the most critical general traits.

To begin with, planning seems like an obvious one. If someone is not able to actually figure out what his or her goals are, how can that person possible accomplish anything? Past that she need to be able to reason out what the steps are to reaching a specific goal and then to be able to map out the steps for each of those subgoals. Being able to plan for a variety of circumstances is pretty critical too.

Persistence doesn’t really require much explanation. Simply put once the plan is laid out a certain level of drive is required to stick with it. Depending on how difficult the goal is a little more persistence might be required.

The last one is the most important one I think. Patience might seem a little odd coming after a trait that might seem at odds with it, but I actually feel they go together quite well. First, a person needs to be patient with themselves. Not complacent or making excuses; that’s quite a bit different. Patience is the trait that lets someone persistently execute his or her plan in an effective manner. Without patience emotion can take over and in my experience an over-emotional response won’t help at all.

On that note, if I had to throw in a runner up I’d say passion. Funny… That starts with the letter P as well.

That’s a big part of the reason I haven’t posted here lately. It’s been on my mind and in fact I’ve had plenty to say; just not enough time. Between the crazy deadlines at work, serving as a judge for the MSU Engineering Design Day competition again, various social engagements and homeowner responsibilities it’s been tough to scrape together much time for myself.

April has completely evaporated and May looks to be even worse. My sister is graduating and then needs help moving from East Lansing. I have several friends getting married not to mention the various parties that are associated with each. Then there will be my weekend of personal enjoyment, aka DEMF (note the countdown to the right). The lineup looks killer this year and I fully plan on spending all three days down in Hart Plaza.

But despite being so busy things are good. The trees are getting green and birds are chirping. The last few days have been a bit cold for my taste, but honestly this is a great time to be in Michigan. Actually, all the weather in Michigan that isn’t January-March is pretty awesome in my opinion.

I’ll have another post soon about some of the cool stuff I’m working on from a musical perspective.

Things are lightening up a bit at work thankfully. Actually I should just say that I’m nailing down some deliverables, so it’s all good. I’m glad too, since I ended up working a fair bit this weekend.

On the home front I’m getting my digital life back in order thankfully. I’m not really entirely set back up yet, but it’s getting there. I still need to install all my music software still actually. Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow after Aikido.