Top Priority

So about 1 month ago I picked up a CD from Mos Def entitled " The Ecstatic". One of the songs named "Priority" has been playing in my head this morning, and during my morning meditation it sounded through, and I found an impactful line to carry on down. Top Priority for me during my meditations is definitely my breathing. This morning prioritizing my life seems to be somewhat a strong message. I still feel as if I am playing with a computer for the first time with the concept of prioritizing things in my life. It isn't something new but freshly exposed to my mind. It seems so vast, but last night after beginning a list of mid range and long range goals, it doesn't seem too far off that I could place those items in order of priority. I noticed as well that when thinking about what could be done to improve the quality of life I have in my day, I thought about curtains…..yes, curtains. Curtains have always inspired in me a feeling of well being, I grew up with sheets the majority of the time substituting for curtains. But my girlfriend brought up the priority of curtains compared to other items we want to upgrade our life. I am sure everyone has these conversations day in and day out especially married couples but it didn't leave me thinking about any item in particular in my life, it made me think of priority as it applies to my life, and to be more narrow and focused my days. Priority hasn't been much a large part of my life, not as far as making way for it in my life. But one thing I have noticed is once things are not prioritized things in your day to day tend to get messy. Things in my life had been messy far too long for it to be anything but familiar. There has to be precedence in my life. I saw that spending one hour of focused job searching time would result in about 10 jobs being applied for give or take a few with tailoring my cover letter slightly to be addressed to each company. When you add consistency to that, in just a few days I have applied to over 20 jobs. It only takes one, and the law of averages is around 10 percent. Priority is almost the anti-distraction, or perhaps distractions opposite. I have been enjoying being able to get things done with such efficiency. That was totally a pat on my own back, but I have to be proud of some progress. Placing priority goes down to what is distracting in my own head during the day. Many times my mind is my own worst enemy, drudging up unlikely, or even likely but pessimistic outcomes and scenarios. But with priority of thoughts, the mind obeys commands already given. Which leads me into the next portion of this mornings meditation.

The brain being like a computer program. Upgrading your software as well as your hardware! Well I am surprised I have never written about this. Well I have been thinking about programming, reading about programming, and have wanted to program computers my whole life. Not thinking about the one that matters more to me than any I have dreamed of or even approached. My own! I was reading the "Idiots guide to programming" and it lists a breakdown of how programs work. I was taken by this immediately. First that you have a program that runs one task at a time, you have programs which choose options, and you have continuous tasks. That brought me to the forefront of what I am as a person, I have vital organs which are constantly at work, I have other features running one operation at a time with multiple little programs like during the act of eating, and I have free will granting me the ability of choice. I thought first this morning during this thought about muscle memory, as I have been working out, training my muscles to be stronger, and to keep my body running much healthier. I wrote about the cycles in "Anything can be done", and I believe this is somewhat of a follow up to that. The funny thing about all these different pieces to this progressive structure is how quickly things begin to go once you start. I remember when in the midst of classes you really needed to be there daily for the more advanced sections because everyday you progress so much more quickly than the last. It is how I feel in the world of well being with writing, reading, exercising, eating healthy, and meditation. I feel like I was just in the midst of partying my face off, or drinking my liver into submission and now I am about the furthest thing from any of these. I have to tell you I made a rule to reserve junk foods and alcohol consumption to the weekend. Well, I have to say I love my pastries, but I have been making them from scratch at home, even though soda's have been apart of my junk foods too, I haven't felt too bad, though sometimes I do feel bad even on the weekend. I also made alcohol a weekend thing, and I pretty much dropped it all together last weekend. I can't even seem to finish a bottle of wine, with my girlfriend! It's so interesting about what the body does for itself, and how it begins to work for you. Well anyway back to the programming concept, it has been doing wonders to get on a program but to realize it, well that came this morning, and it goes back to my pie concept in "Anything can be done". Now realizing that programs and sub programs are an equivalent structure to the pie chart, I will now refer to the concept as programming. I have a chart that I have been keeping to maintain information on what is going on in my program daily.

Multi-tasking with self. So this has been coming up in my meditations often and I would like to start discussing this. So there are tasks I think of often in order to regulate my meditation sessions, and a few examples are listen, find your balance, focus on breathing, etc…so I have been working to find a balance between a few of these at the same time. As I did I felt almost a nirvana like sensation come over me. I have felt this once before in meditation, an orgasmic feeling running up my spine while my mind was focused on a blank existence. Often in my meditations previously I would concentrate on blanking out my mind, and controlling my imagination to the point of perfect black. Now more and more I am letting my conscious be free, but maintaining focus on priority number one breathing. But multi-tasking seems to have been working for me, and makes me feel expansive. I would really like to get some thought on this from the community. I don't know how many people have put much effort into this portion of meditation but I am curious to know.

Virtualization pretend guide. Sounds like I am sticking to this computer concept, and possibly that has to do with more than just reading a few books and being inspired in the last month, it has to do with a good majority of my life being in love with technology specifically related to computers and robotics. But during the course of my meditation yesterday, I was relaxing focused on my breathing, and a thought came to me or rather, I got outside of myself. I approached my thoughts as if I were a few feet above my head looking down upon myself, and I noticed I breath normally with one nostril. To get some balance and take in larger deep breaths with both nostrils I pretended to do so in my mind's eye. It worked, I continued this method, and it continued to work. I had a great advancing day with imagination yesterday, pushing myself to figure out where I want to go. I have maintained a lot of big dreams in my life, I love being that person, though I was penalized many times for my imagination, I see it as a tool.

Today I want to do something extraordinary. One thing. In a radically different way from what I know. Dedicating 1 hour or 1 day a week to something extraordinary sounds like a good plan. Put together a program, prioritize tasks, carry out tasks, evaluate.

I haven't yet evaluated myself during this time. I said that I have been finding things about myself I don't like and discarding those, and finding things I do and maintaining them. But a thorough evaluation of myself hasn't yet been performed. I haven't really ever seen that happen in my life. I have been such a vilan to myself by blocking off doors to evaluation, or even the effort to do it myself, with honesty and clarity, something that can be worked off of.

Self Analysis, for a purpose, so what is the purpose. To identify my strengths and to maintain those, and to identify weakness's and to overcome them and discard what is not needed. To beautify my code, or to solidify my foundation. I am finding out daily I want less of what even I think of as promising.

Anything can be done

Today I began running and I started off gloomy because I have lost a partner in running for now due to injury. I also lost my last weeks worth of writing. I have begun dedicating myself again to the practice of writing, and have started with a goal of 1 hour per day. I began publishing my blog last week, and have been pushing forward to develop good content. I had made a topic index, in order to introduce variety, in which I will begin again. The important content to me in the last weeks writings that is gone is the lessons that came up in meditation, and even the explanation there of receiving lessons.

Today I am having a great morning, my meditation was uplifting to say the least. Anything can be done with enough time and effort. Running has been a friend through the last month, giving room to inspiration, love, passion, and thought provoking information. I have found energy in new ways, and found outlets in order to use that energy for something positive in my life. I am working actively on replacing my life's cycle, part's are being analyzed, and those that are not needed I am discarding, and I am finding new habits which develop and expand my life. Staying healthy and growing up as an adult were my goals along the way, and somewhere in the last month I finally decided that it was time for that to happen in a very now sort of way. I have had my bad days in the last month, but I have come leaps and bounds with my daily cycle from where I was.

I was running feeling the tinge of the cold air in my lungs this morning. I realized something very early on in my life about cycles, that everything eventually ends at some point. Pain is temporary. "It will all be over soon". But I have been feeling good in my days, and have come to look forward daily to my runs. The tinge was not the looking forward I was hoping for but 5 minutes or so into the run, my breathing relaxed, my muscles did as well, and my rhythm kicked in. Breathing in and out, and looking at the morning clouds, I realized more each step that everything in my life is just a cycle after another cycle. Running I stated to my girlfriend last week "has to be one of the most difficult things to start off doing", I know that I am running, and as I said, I love to run, but it took me a long time to run. I have run throughout my life sure, but it is something that is difficult to make a commitment to. But if you broke running down into small cycles, small increments, and built up from there like modular systems, it would be easy and remain so for as long as you were running the cycle. Like the exercise program I am working on is built like this. It was used for people training for U.S. Navy SEAL/s. But it starts off as an easy effective workout offering you a moderate challenge at the beginning and progressing steadily as you move into the later part of the cycle. When you begin you may be only running 2 miles a day 3 times a week and totaling 80 pushups and situps, but by the 8th week your running 16 miles a week and doing 200 pushups and situps per day. I explained in one of my blogs as well, there is about 3 main parts to what's going on in my life regarding health, I am eating healthy and cooking from scratch daily for myself, and my girlfriend, I am meditating, for what started as 20 minutes a day, and now is 30 minutes 2 times per day. Finally I am exercising with my routine. These are all cycles I am pushing up in time, to make them further apart of my day's plan, and looking to commit myself to. There is a reason and method to the madness in all of this, and it comes from a drive inside to be in control of me. I highly recommend Macolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point, & Outliers". How it relates is the 10,000 hours to mastery. I won't ruin it for you, but it relates to developing my habits and pushing my daily times.

Completing beneficial cycles. "I was thinking to myself the other day, hey It seems like the pace of life has kicked up, like when it's Wednesday before you know it, then it's the weekend and your having a good time, wondering ,man that week went by fast. I was feeling that same way about how the weeks were flying by around my 3rd week of running. I am doing 160 situps now and my running has improved tremendously. I kicked up the pace this morning after my 15 minute turn around. Cycles, and habits as a theme and concept have been running through my head. Changing my life has been running through my head. I got a message during one of my meditations which I lost, it was titled "find your balance, and pick up where you left off". For me I know it is my personal overcoming statement. A recognition of self. A longing, to overcome my shortfalls. Many times I have failed I have walked away not looking to learn a lesson, but being shamed in pride. "If at first you don't succeed, try try again". Not my own, but it works. I have been finding that to be an extraordinary breakthrough for my meditations, for my running, it has been universal. Completing the cycle is not the interesting part as looking at the amount of time spent on the cycle, and the amount of cycles gone through. Cycles being like pieces of pie on a pie chart. I have been putting effort into developing what my impression of myself is, and what my character adds up to. How much I do what I say I am going to do. And how I feel about myself at the end of the day. I definitely have not lived up to what I felt I would be by this time in my life, and that is what my life is about right now. Being who I want to be, and having the power to change those pieces of my own pie that effect how I feel 100% of the time.

I started out just wanting to plan my day, so that I could be more efficient and keep my memory in tact by writing down what I thought was important at the moment. I have a thought of a concept, of something like an imagination station for myself. Where I can use my topic index, along with what I see and imagine in my meditations, and as I am going about my day in life, I can find things that I would like to discuss and write about. It looks like adding these together in a topic index where I can track what it is that I am writing would help to offer some variety with my writings. I still haven't had a chance to take the library resources class on there archives and indexes. But I believe that can help for some more advanced topics, to give myself a challenge once in a while.

More than anything in my life, I cant be lazy, and I want to be a great person. In my life I have fallen short of feeling like just a person some days. That has to stop no matter what. I want to be my higher self, and something that my friends and family can look up to. I also want to be a healthy example to and for myself, and those who I care about around me. Today I realized even the hard things are easy, because of cycles, there is only a long series of cycles, or a short series. Either way all it takes is a little time.

Letting it flow in the meditation was a side-note. I allowed my mind to just imagine. Where I want to be in the future, what I want to be doing with my time. I can see myself at a desk in a room that's very futuristic, I have 3 monitors in front of me, I am receiving e-mail, I think to myself, I need to be on the computer to be profiting in life. It doesn’t matter how I get there, what matters is to go there in mind first. What am I doing at my next job, working in cycles, what cycles will I be involved in. I have to progress in my imagination it was hard to see myself anywhere besides at the desk. But it inspired me to dedicate time to organizing my time with MS Onenote.

I am looking forward to developing my writings with the beneficial nature of how things are going in my life right now. I hope that this can be a beneficial writing for someone out there to take from or add to there life's cycle. Wish you a good cyclical week, hopefully your pieces are your own.

Introduction Blog

Today feels like the beginning of my life. Well to start, I am 27, a mixed child from Los Angeles, and yes today I feel like it's the first day of my life. This has happened before in my life, but there is something different that I am doing this time. I am realizing I don't have the control I want, and I have never experienced the amount of control in which I am seeking to. I haven't stumbled upon a lump some of money or found a good replacement for heroine, I am dedicating time in my day to getting healthier and being a better decision maker. It took me a while to get the courage up to get going on this, but the time has come for me to grow up, and develop some new habits that will increase the joy and passion I have for life.

Getting out on the road. Running was the start of this movement, back at the end of September I quit the worst habit I believe I have ever had. Smoking cigarettes. That was a 6-7 year habit for me. I started very late in my life. The first time I had ever tasted a cigarette I was very young, I was dating my first girlfriend I believe, and she wore a cool leather coat, she was white, with blond hair, I followed her home the first day we were official, and she pulled out a cigarette and asked if I wanted to take a puff. I said sure, I have always been an experimenter, and the first taste was terrible. I didn't touch another one again for 10 years. It was a fatiguing, lethargic habit. I have had my fair share of issues with alcohol, and other non-prescription drugs, but none as painful to overcome, nor as depleting of energy. I still can't fully function currently at peak with my lungs, or have full use of taste buds, many of my senses feel as if they were hampered. Now that I have been actively working on my health I have been experiencing leaps and bounds of improvement in my state of mind, and in my relationship in various aspects of it. Running 20 minutes a day 3 times per week for a total of 1 hour per week really killed a lot of the initial quitting cold turkey issues. I was also doing 4 sets of 20 sit-ups and 15 push-ups for 2 weeks. I took a week off of running but escalated the push-ups and sit-ups by 5 per set per week. I am now at 4 sets of 35 sit-ups and push-ups and running a total of 1 hour 10 minutes per week. Running has been amazing, but moderately difficult. I can admit that there are times in which mental strain and physical strain could have had me walking much of my run, but this is the area in which much of my improvement through the weeks has come as I have stuck to the routine. Building a work ethic from scratch. Many of my thoughts have been reinforced by other good habits as well, one of which is reading. Positive, contextual quotes from reading have fed a state of mind which is much more relaxed and prepared for the arduous task of running.

Breathing has come to be a core component that is just as important as the exercises themselves. Stretching is a part of my current routine, but I have to mention what's been going on in the area of breathing. I was a smoker previously, and have quit cold turkey. This aided mostly by the running which I started helped to get my lungs going in the right direction. Awesome, here is a major component to mental and metaphysical well being that has worked great so far for me. Meditation. 20 minutes, 2 times per day. It has been like having a personal mentor inside of myself. I started a mediation log, where I am tracking useful thoughts as I am in a relaxed state of conscious. Smoking had a lot to do with my decision making process. It became the excuse to take a break, it was the reason for interaction, it became a major part of why I would or wouldn't do any particular thing in my life. I didn't really think about it while enjoying them one after another, which I did thoroughly. I will even admit I didn't necessarily want to quit when I did, that based on previous attempts at quitting. I also never had as much strength as I do now to mentally overcome. Smoking aside the meditation has been my mental stimulant and replacement as a habit. I felt so empowered today after completing my meditation on the lake. Patience has been a huge subject that has many of occasion passed me by, it felt as though I could internalize the concept this morning. Sitting on the rocks relaxing my mind & body many of the answers of my life present themselves in vivid color, and though I may wear glasses my mind's eye has 20/20 vision. I feel like I am setting my self up with good actions in order to lead my thoughts. One of the important quotes I associate with today is action & modification. Much like shoot, aim. The showing up in any of these things was the hardest part. I am glad that has been the truth, for me as well as anyone who reads this.

Besides the breathing, the running, there is also the cooking aspect of this. From scratch just like this writing. Finding the bulk section at Win-co Foods! Simply amazing. I have gotten to expand in the area of cooking in such a vast way I can't say that I was really a cook prior to the last 2 months. I have made multiple breads, and baked pastries for the first time in my life, just had to say that as I am speaking about health and pastries are generally loaded with sugar, but mine have been quite low on the sugar. But everything from soups with dumplings, to sea food pastas with shredded ginger and garlic. I have made more varieties in the dishes these last 2 months than I have ever. I wasn't a terrible cook that is to say before hand, and I would say my recipe repertoire was about 15 dishes total. I would say I am well into over 50 dishes that have been really, really good, not all due to me, and I have had a girlfriend to help with many of these dishes, but it's a much different style of cooking that goes on in the kitchen now. Our freezer is stocked with seeds and nuts, our cabinets have containers of flour, many seasonings and herbs. I used to cook with not so much as a look at a recipe book, and now I draw from about 4 major cooking references on a daily basis. Food has been a tremendous part of this lifestyle change. The food hands down has been the best I have made and many dishes have found a place as my favorites of all time, topping my family recipe's with ease.

I have become fascinated with foods and there ingredients lately. The list of important specific nutrients I have fallen in love with are, iron, vitamin A, C, Beta-carotene, proteins, omega's, pro-biotics, and fiber. That's not all, I am addicted to information on herbs and seeing there applications for culinary and medicinal use. Namely Mullein has been my friend as a healer of the lungs. This weekend I found the local health food store which carries herbs in bulk. Yippy! I felt like someone is trying to upgrade my food for me. It's amazing they have a wall full of goodies. One of my dreams is to open my own farm and be able to provide a CSA program of bio-intensive vegetables, herbs, fruits, grain's, and seed-bank. With so many nutritional options from cooking, to raw cooking, to juicing, and endless amounts of recipes and ingredient varieties I am more than happy about the fact that I have fallen in love with the entire concept of non-fast food.

Moving forward, is as easy as breathing and putting one foot in front of the other. I have been looking for a job lately. Back on the job hunt, and I am totally broke at this point in my life. But I also feel better than I have in a long time right now in my life, which puts me in the best situation I have ever been in for finding a suitable place for me to work and utilize my skills. I feel like the writing already explains what it is I have to do in my endeavor to find a job.

I hope this writing has been helpful, please leave me your comments, questions, or suggestions.