What's Good?

 I recently listened to the last few episodes of the Good Place Podcast, and they end each episode by asking "what's good?", which got me thinking about how we view life. So often I will ask people how they're doing, and their response will be something about being fine, surviving, or making it. These are what my responses usually sound like, too. People have such a tendency to focus on the negativity around them and let it fester. I myself have depression, and it makes it difficult to slog through some days because all I can see are the bad things in the world. But one of my favorite YouTubers is Jules on the WhatCulture channel, not because the content in his videos is any different from that of the rest of the channel, but because every video he narrates ends with him encouraging the viewer in some way, whether it be to remember that they're amazing, or that it's better to build bridges than burn them, or any number of other things he's said in order to just be a positive force. I think that is one of the hardest and most important decisions to make each morning--whether to be a negative force or a positive force that day.

I don't think this post needs to be very long, because I really don't have much more to say, but I felt like it was necessary to take the time to remind you that while it may often seem easier to focus on the bad, the feeling that comes from focusing on the good is so worth the effort. So whatever may happen, whatever stress you have, whatever problems arise, let me encourage you to take the time each and every day to stop, reflect, and ask yourself:

What's Good Today?

Look Under Your Seats, Everyone's Special!

I realized the other day that I hadn't made a blog post this week, and I was going to try to do better about getting one written every week. I then took another day to think of something to write, and yet another day to actually sit down to write it. It would seem that my creative process still needs a little work. But that's alright, because that's what trying to be more regular with posting is all about--creating consistency. Consistency makes process, I suppose, and everyone's process is different because every person is different. I'm proud of myself for getting a fairly smooth segue to my planned topic: "What makes someone special?"

Everyone is different--even identical twins have differing personalities and individual senses of self--but are those differences what make someone special, or are they just the result of a random sequencing of genetic materials pulled together by an organism that was itself pulled together in a random sequence? I don't think that answer really matters very much. It's a definite fact that no two people have the same genetic sequences, so everyone is definitely different, and is therefore individual. I think the real question is "why does it matter if you're special?" I've always been concerned with the "why" of actions--something that drives my wife crazy sometimes. Very rarely am I worried about things that happen around me, but I am obsessed with finding out why they happened--especially in the case of the motivations behind social interactions. Anyway, parent's have a tendency to tell their kids that they are special--possibly to give them a sense of self-confidence, but probably more likely as a way for the parents to live vicariously through their children. This tendency can lead to a great many things--whether that be a contempt for their parents or society from someone that hasn't achieved much, a drive to achieve great things to "prove to the world what my parents knew all along," or a pondering of what it means to be special by a writer looking for a blog topic. Whatever the result, the question still stands of whether being special stems from individuality. It certainly makes you unique, one-of-a-kind, completely original, but I think in the long run the real answer is that what makes you special and why it matters if you're special have the same answer: you have to answer it for yourself. There is potential in everyone to do something in their lives that makes them feel special, and that something is the not only the reason that they are special but is also their answer for the question of why it matters to be special.

This seems like a very random thing to be writing about, but it really is just what came to mind last night. So I guess I'll end this with a question--what makes you special?

Practice Makes Perfect

 It's been awhile since I've been on here. Since this blog is supposed to be a way for me to practice writing while getting my thoughts out of my head so they can swim somewhere else, it's probably not a good thing that it's been so long. They say that practice makes perfect, which is a way for teachers to get their students to "do the thing" on a regular basis. But really, I think it's that practice makes discipline. Doing the same thing every once in awhile in an attempt to improve the execution of the act isn't going to bring that execution to a level deemed as perfect, but that's what practice is. Technically, I'm practicing writing right now, despite not having done it for nearly a month. But if I continue to only write a post once a month, it's not going to yield wonderful results. Repeated and consistent practice, however, will have a much better chance of long-term improvement. That's discipline. So my argument is that practice makes discipline and discipline is what makes perfection.

I would also argue that discipline requires more than just consistent practice. Discipline is born out of desire, time, and action. I used to take piano lessons in middle school, and while I did put the time into practicing, I never really had a great desire to play; it was something my parents made me do because I wanted to play the drums. I don't really mind now, since I have learned that I really don't have the coordination to play drums and the piano tends to be a more versatile instrument to be able to play. The thing is, because I didn't have the desire, I never developed the discipline to stay with it and become a good piano player. I can still play a few songs and I can read music (slowly), but I never tell people I play piano (I do say I can play if it comes up in conversation). In the case of my writing, I do have a desire to write, just as I have a desire to paint and read, but I don't dedicate the time I need to into any of those things, and so the action and discipline don't happen like they should. If that continues, things that I like to do are going to become things that I can do, but not things that I do.

So now I'm sitting here writing a very meta blog post about writing, but it's what I want to do. It's what I decided to put time into. It's the action I took, and hopefully it's an action that I'll build the discipline to do more often and more regularly. Because discipline makes perfect and I want to at least get better. I'm going to go read a book now.

The Brokenness of Comedy

 Last night, before falling asleep, I got to thinking about comedy. Comedy is designed to make people laugh, but so often the people doing the comedy don't feel like laughing themselves. When I was in high school, I did a stand-up routine for a talent show. I used jokes from other comedians, because I've never really good at developing stories, even funny ones, into the form of a joke. Everyone has their strengths, and that's just not one of mine. But my delivery was good enough to make people laugh, so that's apparently one of my strengths. One of my brothers has always said that I'm the funniest person he knows, which I think is an interesting by-product of a childhood that resulted in myself and my siblings not being good with emotions. For me, one of the by-products is using comedy to get those around me to feel a happiness I thought I couldn't.

That seems to be a pretty common thread. The prominent example that comes to mind is Robin Williams -- a renowned comedian who committed suicide. He spend so much of his life making other people happy, but was himself depressed. Not that there's a direct correlation between happiness and depression -- depressed people can still feel happy, it's just a lot harder to maintain in. Another example that comes to mind is Adam Devine. I watched a comedy special of his where he did stand-up, and there were several times that after finishing a joke he would just mumble "stupid." It seemed less like an acknowledgement that his comedy is lowbrow, and more a form of self-deprecation stemming from a place of doubt and fear. But then, as someone who suffers from depression and self-doubt, I am reminded of the saying that to a man with a hammer every problem looks like a nail.

I'm not saying comedy is bad or that all comedians are depressed, just that it's interesting that, at least based on observation of this one facet of humanity, people give that which they lack. Perhaps it's a cry for help from a broken people trying to put more of what they need in their lives into the lives of others.

What is the Focus?

It seems strange to start a blog without any idea what the focus of it is going to be. While it's not entirely true that this blog has no focus, the previous statement is still a good example of life. We go into life and reach several milestones with little to no focus for a long time. We are born with no focus, become teenagers with little focus, and usually don't really know what we're going to do until around age twenty. If the average life expectancy is about seventy-three years then, on average, humans go through more than a quarter of their lives with few ideas about what they will do with the other three quarters. Why is that? Why do we blindly follow a path that we don't know the destination of?

It makes sense that in developmental years we wouldn't choose our own path -- it's both unsafe and unwise to leave a developing mind to wander untethered into the cesspool of modern society. So the real question is why don't we do more to help those minds develop in a way that allows them to know their focus and thus have something to work for.

Ironically, I type this while completely distracted from what I'm saying, the white noise of the house punctuated by the anime my wife is watching right next to me. ADHD has a tendency to take my focus off the thing I'm trying to do and put it on something that I have no reason to focus on. In a restaurant, I hear a conversation between the family three tables over better than the person right in front of me. Focus is a funny thing. It can mean so many things. If this were a college paper, it would be horrible because there is no consistent thesis throughout. And because I've been ending sentences with prepositions, switching between first and third person, and I started this sentence with "And." Obviously I majored in English. But does that mean that's my focus? Does it mean I want to be a writer? Does it mean I want to teach English? Maybe. Maybe I don't know what I want, what my focus is, what this blog is about. But maybe someday I'll find out. For now, this blog is going to be a pouring out of thoughts as a way for me to practice writing. Not necessarily because I want to be a writer, but definitely because I want to be a better writer.