step42.com

It’s monday night and I’m sitting in a coffee shop enjoying an espresso. People are hunkered down studying with a few exceptions of groups doing work. Despite this hectic environment, I am feeling quite a bit calmer than I have been in the past weeks. The mental chaos seems to have subsided quite, and I have managed to calm my mind down to a much more tolerable state. At times it seems like a magic switch has been flipped, though it doesn’t stay where I want it.

Of course this has all been caused by a girl and being stuck in the same frame of reference I’ve been stewing in since Freshman year of college. That stereotypical socially awkward, shy, computer nerd. Being stuck in that frame caused (and sometimes still causes) me to withdraw into away from people into the comfort of my own world. When confronted with different situations, that frame dictated how I would act.

Frames in general shape how people interact with the world. The mindset that someone views the world through can completely dominate one’s actions. Where the socially awkward computer nerd sees a group of people about to judge him, a social badass sees a group of new friends. Most people are not even conscious of how our mind frames things and how much it plays into how we act.

Last week I was stuck seeing things from a place of desperation and had the urge to act accordingly. Right now though, I’m feeling like a much different person than even a week ago. At this moment, I’m the cool guy that could go up to any person in this coffee shop and start a conversation with them. I’m the intriguing one that people are drawn in by. Everyone here is someone I could approach.

Re-framing is a powerful thing, though not some magic pill. Consciously deciding to change how you interpret the world takes quite a lot of effort and failure is frequent and frustrating. More often than not I’m stuck in the same old position I’ve grown used to. Moments when I am able to successfully re-frame my outlook are becoming more and more frequent though. And that is something that puts a giant smile on my face.

I need some recommendations on paperbacks to buy for my trip to london.  I’d like to start something new for this trip.  Any recommendations for good travelling books?

Though I may not strike many as someone who likes poetry, there is some that I really enjoy. I’m not one to sit down and read through a book of poetry. The only time I read it is here and there when I find one that seems intriguing. Otherwise, I tend to stick with spoken word. Reading poetry is rigid and emotionless in my head. I think that comes from reading too much philosophy.

Saul Williams came to MSU to do a Q&A and recite some of his poetry. Even when answering questions his words had a poetic hint to them. He talked about how he got into poetry and music, as well as what it was like working with Trent Reznor and what he went through growing up. It was especially interesting hearing him talk about the personal transformation that he put himself through after college.

As he was answering a question about his religious views, he went into a story of how he went through questioning established standards and how he saw things in the world that he didn’t want to become. This motivated him to take charge of his life and how he ended up chronicling much of his journey in his poetry. Hearing this helped me identify with him and gave me a great feeling hearing other people’s stories of their journey.

One thing stuck out to me. At a certain point he was talking about how the Gregorian calendar basically sucks (though he used better words). In this rant, he talked about how the human race has quantified time in such a way that we think in hours and minutes and seconds rather than experiencing moments. His final point along those lines is that we need to re-evaluate and look for “moments instead of minutes.” Those of you who know me in real life know about my “watch.” Usually I don’t get into the philosophy behind my watch because it’s too much explanation for simple conversation, but now I have this simple phrase to say that explains it all.

Most of my friends know that I really enjoy philosophy. Philosophy, however, isn’t something that tends to come up in casual conversation however. From time to time I find myself in some sort of philosophic argument, whether it be the necessity of evidence to justify a belief or why Ayn Rand was crazy. Every time I happen upon some philosophic discussion, I revel in it. It is my bread and butter. More often than not, however, my present company doesn’t respond well to philosophic inquiry.

Enter alcohol.

A few weeks ago I was out at wine night with three of my friends. We got on the topic of diets and it was brought up that the human body didn’t evolve to digest meat and it evolved more effectively to digest plants. Building upon that assumption, my friend claimed that that is the reason why people should be vegetarian. Here is where I saw my opportunity and took it.

Stealth drunken philosophy trap GO!

After a few drinks, everyone seems to be a bit more predisposed to arguing. Question a drunk’s reasoning and you’re in for an earful. Luckily for me, that’s exactly what I was looking for. Granted, the argumentation can be a little rough on both sides, but it’s better than nothing. One just has to keep an eye on the line between arguing and getting punched in the face.

I recall the moment vividly. It was as if my friend had held up a giant bullseye that was just itching for some potshots. Right after he said that, my mind slowed a bit as I contemplated attacking. My favorite way of starting these interactions is one word: Bullshit. Quickly followed by coy smirk. And that is just what I did.

I’m not sure if I should feel bad for pushing people’s drunk buttons for my own philosophic entertainment, but I sure do enjoy it. Ever since the my junior year, when it seemed like a drunken conversation about god happened weekly, I’ve noticed a steady decline in my drunken philosophy (and philosophy in general) quota.

Now taking appointments for sober or drunken philosophy. I’ll talk about anything. Bring it on.

So the same day I post about social skydiving, I’m approached by a good friend of mine that wants to take a nice long vacation. A few weeks ago I jokingly told her we should go to Ireland. It doesn’t take long for both of us to agree that we should go somewhere. London was the choice. About 30 minutes ago I bought a round-trip ticket to London for May 5th through the 18th. Half of that should be spent in London proper, and the other half Dublin. Amount of time from the plot being hatched to it being carved in stone: about 22 hours (and it only took that long because I was thoughtful enough to make sure that I could get it off work).

So there it is. I’ll be off to do some real social skydiving in jolly ol’ England in just over three weeks. This time three weeks from now I should have just taken off from O’Hare and should be around Ohio on my flight to Heathrow.

Ever since I was introduced into the social scene as a kid, I’ve always been rather shy and introverted.  Throughout high school and then in college, I only ever met people through my friends and on rare occasions through class or extra-curricular activities.  I had the same group of friends through high school and struggled maintaining a social circle through the first half of college.  Through no real effort of my own, I was absorbed into a social circle beginning my junior year because of my roommate.  Now that social circle makes up a majority of who I spend my time with outside of work.

I’ve always known that I was not very good at making friends, at times painfully so.  I always tended to get rather anxious when meeting new people and I never warmed up to people very fast.  Like many computer nerds like myself, I took refuge in my room on the internet, which only served to make things worse.

After graduating, I was hit with a rather acute case of 20-something angst.  I took a long look at my life, and realized if I wanted to enjoy things from then on, I would have to make some changes to my social habits.  Since then, progress has been rather slow.

One practice that I’ve found quite useful has been Social Skydiving. The name makes it sound like more than it is.  Simply, social skydiving is the practice of merely saying “hi” to strangers.  This may seem like no big deal, but for me it’s been quite a big step.  Having gone from avoiding eye contact with other students in the dorms, to greeting strangers as I’m walking around town has been quite the eye-opening experience.

I didn’t start straight into talking to strangers though.  At first I took things slow and only made a conscious effort to simply make eye contact with people and smile.  This was the hardest part.  Eye contact can be a pretty powerful thing and can make you feel fabulous or insignificant based on what happens.  Actually saying “hey” to people was a relatively simple transition from the smile.  I’m not incredibly consistent with this yet though.  More often than not, I stick with the smile, though it’s probably somewhere close to 50%.

It’s surprising how effective such a simple thing can be at changing your mindset about things.  I no longer get anxious when talking to new people and I’ll warm up to people over the course of a single night instead of months.

The next hurdle I have is actually making conversation and keeping it going with strangers.  I’m not sure how that fits into the skydiving analogy though.

As a side note: the 30sleeps.com blog is a great resource for this kind of stuff.  I highly recommend it.

So, last night I ended up at a house party in EL. I expected to see the group of friends that had invited me, but not many other people I knew. About 10 minutes after arriving, I ran into an absurd amount of unexpected faces. Somehow I ended up knowing about half the people at the party.

One unexpected person was this one girl who was in an Intro to Feminist Philosophy course that I took the first semester of my senior year. I recognized her, but only to the extent that I knew that i’d seen her before. On MSU’s campus, even though there are 40,000+ students, recognizing people is incredibly too common. It’s odd how often I run into the same people around campus, outside of class, even though there are so many people on and around campus. I would think that the probability of running into a random person from a class at some party outside of school would be incredibly small, yet this small world syndrome seems to crop up all the time and show just how, even on a campus of 40,000, everyone knows everyone.

Anyways, back to the story. Her name was Erin. She was the one that remembered that we took a class together over a year ago. Every philosophy class tends to have at least one person who plays devil’s advocate, and in this class I was that person. Sure, it rubbed many of the women in the class the wrong way. How could this guy come in here and question this stuff? As a philosopher though, it was my duty. One sided philosophy is nothing more than useless ego stroking. I must have made an impression on her though, because even after a year and a half, she remembered my name in an instant. The entertaining part was that she didn’t remember my friend Tony’s name, and he was her partner for an in-class project.

Seeing that I left such an impression put me in a great mood the rest of the night. Sure it was a semester’s worth of hearing me talk that did it, but the end result is the same. Someone remembered me. That may seem like nothing, but having that impact without formally meeting someone gives quite the ego boost.

The events of last night made me realize that I want to have that ability, to leave a vivid enough impression on people that they remember me years later. The challenge is reducing the amount of time that is necessary to create such an impression from five months in the same class, to something within the first few hours of meeting someone. I need to think about this more to figure out what steps I can actually take to actually accomplish this task.

It’s odd how a feminist philosophy course taken on a whim my senior year of college could still be coming back into my life and teaching me things.

Or at least 42 is usually the answer, so why not here too? Either way, the end goal is freedom.

Freedom to live life how I want to. Freedom to live where I may land. Freedom to enjoy every minute I can take.

The impetus for starting this blog came about from the bout of 20-something angst that I’ve been dealing with since I started working. There is was, pondering the cliche saying: “Here I am, my whole future in front of me…” not having any real direction aside from my job. Everyone is familiar with the Office Space-esque 9-5 job that makes people want to kill themselves, and I didn’t want to end up there. Granted, I had a leg up being that it is an interesting job that I enjoy doing, but everything grows old after 10-20-30-50 years of repetition.

Seeing this, I decided to make it my goal to avoid such a scenario. Sure, it sounds good, but I had(have) no idea how to actually fully accomplish it. How do you break free from the standard life track that 90% of everyone else in this country follows?

The answer (aside from 42): I don’t know, but this is my attempt to find out.

Come, join the ride.

Here it is. step42.com. Here is my attempt to record my journey through life and experiments hacking it. In the weeks months and years to come I plan to write both reports on my success and failures hacking my life, as well as analysis and insights about things i hear. Step42 is here to help all of us live life awesome.