The Right Side of Life

A recent purchase

So, I just got one of these on eBay:

And a copy of this, also:

Here’s to productivity going down the drain!

Coincidence?

Is it just me, or does John McCain remind you of a certain villain from the Batman movies?

The Rebirth of Hope

Remember LiveJournal? It’s still around of course, but my fellow Generation Y-ers who used LJ have since moved on to Blogger, Tumblr, Wordpress, their own Web sites, or any number of other options for blogging. To say we’d outgrown the capabilities of the LiveJournal platform would put it simply.

But I didn’t quite grasp the profundity of that idea until the other night. Late into the night and on into the earliest reaches of daylight, I read all of my old LiveJournal posts, dating back to early 2004. And suffice it to say, I’m not the person I used to be. But that’s putting it mildly. Not only am I not the same person, I’m not a shred of that old person. But even that doesn’t really do it justice.

I’m so far removed from the person who wrote those posts, I can barely remember what it felt like to be that person. In good literature, it’s fairly easy to not only get inside the author but also get inside his or her characters. You can feel with them, cry with them, laugh with them. I found it difficult to really empathize with the character I had described, but the funny thing is, I was writing about myself.

Hope, sensitivity, naivety, tasteful discretion — they all bounced off the pages with the effortless energy only a kid could contrive. Despite the somber and saddening nature of most of my old posts, I found myself laughing at them more often than anything else. How young I was, how immature.

But aside from the emotional infancy displayed in the posts, I also saw the tenacity, vigor and determination that shaped my entire life up to that point and has since fallen from its apex in 2004. I was cocky and confident, not worried about early academic difficulties in college, because frankly, I knew I would succeed. I had nothing to worry about. It was me; I simply did not fail. I had it all planned out — a degree in Finance with a close-to-perfect GPA which would then vault me into any MBA/JD program of my choice. I had my sights set on UPenn, Harvard and any of the other top universities.

I had made the rookie mistake of becoming content with myself, and I had reached a plateau. After succeeding for so long, I had come to expect perfection, even when I didn’t put forth a perfect effort. I had, quite simply, made myself a synonym for perfection and excellence.

Needless to say, life got in the way. Plans changed, I was beaten down, humanized, and forced to see life for what it really was — a challenge, a journey, and a quest to better yourself. And it was at that point, in mid-2005, when I realized that in order to succeed in this new battleground, I had to change my combat tactics. The old methods would no longer work. And I resolved to change, for the better.

And as I continued to read my posts, and as the tone began to shift from hopeful determination to absolute despair and depression, I began to remember. I began to empathize with the old me, the me who had written so eloquently about so much pain, the me who never ever lost hope, the me who really thought he was reaching his breaking point, the me who nearly lost sight of his hopes and dreams, the me who finally found the strength to persevere, to grow, to develop, the me who made a beast out of himself to get rid of the pain of being a man.

It was close to that time that I stopped writing in the LiveJournal, and despite my growth, despite my Phoenix-like ascendancy from the proverbial ashes, despair was still right around the corner, ready to take me down again. The very last sentence I ever wrote in my LiveJournal was this:

“I’m so, so frustrated.”

It was over something trivial, but at the time, the weight of the world was still crushing down on my shoulders, and a baby’s breath could have taken me down. That was on April 7, 2007. At that point, I felt like I had nothing left to say.

But my Rebirth of Hope came soon, and almost a moment too late. It’s been more than a year now, and I’m going strong. I’ve left a lot of my past in the dust, and I’ll reflect on it, but it feels like an eternity ago, and I’ve since been reborn. I have my drive, I have my determination, I have my goals, but more importantly, I have myself back. I have all the tools to do everything I’ve always wanted. My rebirth has come, my hope is here, the future is near. And it’s looking brighter every day.

Amazon Prime is awesome...

…because it will bring me this faster.

I just discovered it on iTunes, and go figure, it was less expensive on Amazon. Plus, I get the CD’s album art, too. Sweetness.

I love John Mayer’s live performances, but I think he’s about due for a new studio album, too. Come on John, woo us once more.

An Homage to the Greatest Generation

Tonight at dinner, I asked my grandma to tell me a story. My grandma just turned 86 years old and is a recovering stroke victim from a stroke about 10 years ago.

She replied, “I can’t think of any.” This is the same person who would regale me with endless stories of her life during World War II, her childhood, her art career, and so on. A little discouraged, I tried to coax her into thinking of one, knowing that her memory and mind aren’t what they used to be.

“What about the one about how you were at the football game with Papa Joe when they made the announcement about Pearl Harbor,” I said, hoping to remind her of one of her most infamous stories, which I’ve heard dozens of times but wanted to hear again nonetheless.

To my surprise, she said, “I can’t remember.”

I was shocked, but not only that. I was sad. This is THE story she told me. I wish I could remember the teams that were playing, but long story short, she and my grandfather were at an NFL game when an announcement came over the loudspeaker that the Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor.

Gradually, I kept pushing her to remember stories. Not the football one — that one has been lost forever, I’m afraid. But others slowly but surely came back into focus for her. She remembered the one about the Arizona Army base she and my grandfather were stationed at while he was training troops. How the camp doubled as a German POW camp. How it was so barren, and so desolate in Arizona at that time, the POWs would rather stay in the camp on their own accord than try to escape because exposure to the Arizona desert, with no civilization for hundreds of miles, meant certain death.

She remembered how the soldiers my grandfather was training would beg her to paint their portraits so they could send them to their mothers. How they would push and shove each other to be next in line.

She remembered her career as a commercial artist, and the time someone in the city wanted a painting from her so badly, he bought all the supplies for her to use, including the paint and a piece of stretched canvas so big, it had to be delivered to her home studio on the back of a truck.

We talked for a while, she remembered stories, she laughed, she smiled, and I told her I was going to make her tell me a new story every day. She said, “That’s a great idea.”

Why do the elderly forget things? Why do they lose track of what they were passionate about?

I think it’s because no one asks them to remember. Well, I’m going to start asking both of my remaining grandmothers. I’ve heard millions of stories from each of them, but now is the time to listen.

America’s Greatest Generation is lonely, and we are losing them now more quickly than before. If you’re able to, talk to your grandparents. Ask them a question. Ask them to tell you a story, even if you’ve heard it all before. Hear it while you still can, because one day, there will be no more stories to listen to.